Morten Tyldum
90 connections found
Filmography
View:
Connections, in both directions
The Shining (1980)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced Passengers (2016)
Visuals Themes Characters
His art-deco bar is modeled after the one Nicholson frequented in “The Shining,” an altogether more potent examination of the horrors of isolation.
Things take a decidedly dubious turn when he spies fellow Passenger and would-be writer Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), and he ponders the contrived ramifications of waking her up to his only real confidante, an android half-barman named Arthur played amusingly by Michael Sheen, who might be informed by The Shining (another tale of fear and isolation) and has an Isaac Asimov-esque line in philosophical deficiencies.
He is an android designed in the image of Lloyd, the creepy barkeep played by Joe Turkel in The Shining, and he speaks entirely in clichés.
Film fans will immediately detect a nod to “The Shining” in the bar sequences, which possess the same echoing sense of dislocation and weirdness.
The only company Jim has is android bartender Arthur (Michael Sheen), who has a friendly reserve that’s chillingly reminiscent of the Overlook Hotel barkeep in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining — although Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is much the greater touchstone for Passengers, especially the angle about relying on “foolproof” machines.
All alone and with no way of contacting the sleeping crew, Jim spends the next year roaming the empty ship, with no one else to talk to apart from a droid bartender played by Michael Sheen – a fittingly creepy character who seems to have been pulled straight out of The Shining.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced Passengers (2016)
Themes Visuals Characters Plot
The vastness of space, here, has been reduced to sitcom size, with none of the ruminative investigations that characterize the genre’s finest films, like “2001: A Space Odyssey,” ”Solaris” or Interstellar.”
Jim is in a hibernation pod on the spaceship Avalon, headed from Earth to a colony planet called Homestead II, when the ship (which looks like a hybrid of a couple of crafts from “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” embraced by a helix) goes through a meteor shower.
Director Morten Tyldum, working from a script by Jon Spaihts, doesn’t push the sci-fi genre forward as much as quote some of its greatest hits, from “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” to “ Moon ,” “ Gravity ” and “ The Martian ” and Ridley Scott’s “ Prometheus ,” which Spaihts also wrote.
The only company Jim has is android bartender Arthur (Michael Sheen), who has a friendly reserve that’s chillingly reminiscent of the Overlook Hotel barkeep in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining — although Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is much the greater touchstone for Passengers, especially the angle about relying on “foolproof” machines.
“Passengers” is supposed to be some sort of combo platter of “2001: A Space Odyssey” meets “Titanic,” but it is difficult not to chuckle as a massive space station soars through space while the story careens all over the place, as if the screenplay had been struck by structure meteors creating some deadly plot holes.
The Blue Lagoon meets 2001: A Space Odyssey in the new movie Passengers, an intense romantic drama about two lonely souls abandoned on a giant spacecraft.
Awards season always makes room for at least one plummy-toned veddy-English drama (think The King's Speech), so it's no surprise to see Benedict Cumberbatch refereeing ye olde internal wrestling match between British reserve and tortured feeling in the "based on a true story" feature The Imitation Game.
The film’s distributor, The Weinstein Company, scored at the 2011 Academy Awards with the similarly themed The King’s Speech, so odds are in The Imitation Game’s favor that it will stand among this season’s contenders—despite the plot’s flaws.
The keep-it-moving, keep-it-bright pacing also evokes a more recent film, the similarly tweedy and 1930s-set “The King’s Speech.”
Unlike The King’s Speech, which won a clutch of Oscars for its dull propriety and Masterpiece Theater vibe, The Imitation Game is vibrant and lively, engaging you on three levels: The fascinating way the Nazis managed to outwit the rest of the world until Turing came along, how his giant contraption (essentially the world’s first computer) will work, and what will happen to him and everyone he knows when the truth about him is finally revealed.
It’s the Weinsteins’ bid for this year’s The King’s Speech (2010), and it shows; and it might work, but it’s by no means a lock.
Since “The Imitation Game” addresses each of these topics, one imagines its distributor Harvey Weinstein has been touting the movie as “The King’s Speech” meets “The Social Network” meets “Milk.”
That life has been the subject of a play ("Breaking the Code" by Hugh Whitemore) and several books, and going its own way with an invented set of characters, the Tom Stoppard screenplay "Enigma" explored similar themes of love and deceit and a race against time.
Benedict Cumberbatch cultists aside, theatergoers who saw Derek Jacobi play Alan Turing in 1986 in Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking the Code may balk at seeing a Hollywoodized biopic that covers much the same ground.
Graham Moore’s screenplay is based on Andrew Hodges’ comprehensive 1983 biography Alan Turing: The Enigma , as was Hugh Whitemore’s stage drama “Breaking the Code.”
It’s easy to overrate a dreary, expository drama like the best-known telling of Turing’s story, Hugh Whitemore’s play and teleplay Breaking the Code , in which every line is factual and few are captivating.
The story was masterfully dramatized on London and Broadway stages by the play Breaking the Code, starring the great British actor Derek Jacobi, but the movie delves deeper into the personal life of the subject.
That life has been the subject of a play ("Breaking the Code" by Hugh Whitemore) and several books, and going its own way with an invented set of characters, the Tom Stoppard screenplay "Enigma" explored similar themes of love and deceit and a race against time.
(Some viewers may recall that this ground was covered by Michael Apted’s 2001 Enigma — a largely fictionalized account complete with name changes.)
The film’s very title refers to a game posited by Turing to deduce whether one was speaking to a man, woman or machine – a forerunner of the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner to which this owes a greater debt than such apparently comparable fare as 2001’s Enigma .
On a historical level one can fault this retelling of the English breaking of the Nazi Enigma code, the complex system through which German military instructions were sent to the field —an episode of World War II previously dramatized, though none too successfully, in Michael Apted’s “Enigma” (2001)—for inaccuracies.
The 2001 film Enigma, fictionalised the story by eliminating Turing completely and making it into a spy thriller.
But the film does a far superior job in depicting Turing and his story than the earlier film "Enigma" (2001) starring Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet.
It’s Alien and Jim is the monster.
A plot that references 2001 and the first Alien in its opening moments (and the classic Doctor Who story The Ark In Space throughout) has mechanical engineer Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) mysteriously awoken from cryogenic slumber aboard the starship Avalon 30 years into its 120 year journey to Homestead II, a faraway planet that will eventually pick up some of the slack from an overpopulated Earth.
And I do mean far: the journey takes 120 years, during which the Avalon's 5000 passengers are in deep hibernation, like Ripley in Alien.
First seen in Alien (1979) and reimagined as cellular-level magic in Elysium (2013), the autodoc’s surgical capacities were unflinchingly featured in Prometheus (2012), which was scripted by Jon Spaihts on the strength of his Passengers screenplay.
No, this isn't the second coming of "Alien" where the Nostromo crew is brought out of hibernation for what initially appears to be a rescue mission but ultimately boils down to a nefarious (and ultimately deadly) reason behind the wake-up call.
Directed with panache by the bold stylist Morten Tyldum (Headhunter, The Imitation Game), the story begins with passengers and crew in suspended animation for the long haul in cool-looking sleep pods straight out of James Cameron’s Aliens.
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Directed by Ron Howard
influenced The Imitation Game (2014)
Themes Plot Characters
Turing’s story may evoke memories of Ron Howard’s phony, falsified and sentimental Oscar-winner “A Beautiful Mind.”
Though commendable for not forgoing from the story, a step-up from the John Nash biopic A Beautiful Mind which this film resembles in content and structure, Turing’s sexuality is still kept at arm’s length.
“The Imitation Game” doesn’t embarrass itself by trying to explain convoluted mathematical issues; there’s nothing on the order of “A Beautiful Mind”’s forehead-slapping breakdown of game theory.
The Imitation Game walks a fine line in making the familiar effective, also reflecting A Beautiful Mind at points.
A Beautiful Mind and Enigma are obvious comparisons, yet The Imitation Game has something for everyone: war adventure, betrayal, political intrigue, love, romance, drama, deception, comedy and heroism.
As played by Benedict Cumberbatch, Turing is a genius in the "The Social Network" and "A Beautiful Mind" mold: brilliant but utterly lacking interpersonal skills, with an added dash of Drax the Destroyer's literal-minded humorlessness.
We’re reminded of the old Lina Wertmüller movie Swept Away, in which a spoiled rich woman is stranded on an island with a working-class sailor after their cruise ship sinks.
The people who made “Passengers” may have wanted to heighten our sense of wonder with a few space walks reminiscent of “Gravity” (minus the dramatic gravity).
And the movies — “Gravity,” ”Interstellar,” ”The Martian” — have been among the best blockbusters in recent years.
Take two of Hollywood’s hottest stars (Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt), maroon them on a long-haul space flight, add some tricksy Gravity-style survival problems, drop in a soupçon of Interstellar-level life and death profundity and, hey presto, high-concept mega-hit meets awards season hopeful.
Take a heaping helping of “Titanic,” mix it with healthy doses of “The Martian” and just a pinch of “Gravity.”
Director Morten Tyldum, working from a script by Jon Spaihts, doesn’t push the sci-fi genre forward as much as quote some of its greatest hits, from “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” to “ Moon ,” “ Gravity ” and “ The Martian ” and Ridley Scott’s “ Prometheus ,” which Spaihts also wrote.
There is, at first, a thrilling what-if in Jon Spaihts’ screenplay, which concocts a sort of Titanic in outer space, with dollops of “Sleeping Beauty” and Gravity thrown into the high-concept mix.
Operation Mincemeat (2022)
Directed by John Madden
influenced by The Imitation Game (2014)
Plot Themes
The attachment of a personal story made Operation Mincemeat seem like it was trying to copy The Imitation Game .
Based on a novel by Ben Macintyre and adapted by Michelle Ashford, the film recalls other wartime British thrillers, such as Their Finest, The Imitation Game, and most recently, Darkest Hour.
Couple that with the calibre of war films that us Brits deliver – The Imitation Game , 1917 and The Reader to name but a few – and I knew that John Madden’s Operation Mincemeat was going to be right up my street.
Joining a laundry list of titles about behind-the-scenes ingenuity that helped win WWII, think “The Imitation Game” or “The Darkest Hour,” “Operation Mincemeat” manages to hold down the fort even when its own clunky storytelling (and lengthy runtime) can sometimes stand in the way.
Ranging from big action thrillers ( Dunkirk ) to the tense cerebral mind games of espionage and tactics like The Imitation Game , all while tugging at the heartstrings.
He signs up to the CIA and excels at the tests he’s given, proving himself so capable that he becomes a lynchpin for the intelligence team, a sequence that feels like Stone trying to force a parallel between Snowden and Alan Turing – or at least Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Turing in The Imitation Game .
Gordon-Levitt’s Snowden is more like Alan Turing, the brilliant but socially inept Second World War computer pioneer portrayed in The Imitation Game.
Here, instead, Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) recalls CIA-training—clichéd spy-mentor moments and computer prodigy scenes, playing like The Imitation Game updated to the ’00s, ensue.
He ends up joining the CIA -- under the tutelage of an instructor (Rhys Ifans) and supervisor (Nic Cage) -- and much like Benedict Cumberbatch's Alan Turing did in "The Imitation Game" proves his intellect and problem solving are unparalleled.
Instead of constantly reminding “Sherlock” fans of his Emmy-winning role as the Arthur Conan Doyle’s master of deduction, Cumberbatch has broken his own code of how to distinguish this particular eccentric genius as a completely separate but yet no less compelling entity.
Voyagers brings to mind everything from the occasionally watchable Hunger Games franchise to Chris Pratt gaslighting Jennifer Lawrence into procreating an entire human race in the stupendously misguided and heroically awful Passengers .
For the first half-hour or so, “Voyagers” appears to be setting itself up as a film that suggests what might have resulted if Harmony Korine had inexplicably been given the gig of directing the notoriously tasteless and idiotic sci-fi dud “Passengers”—the one where futuristic dudebro Chris Pratt technically murders Jennifer Lawrence because he has the hots for her, though she eventually falls in love with him despite that little hiccup.
Just when you thought you could not watch one more film of this kind, here is “Voyagers,” a title that sounds enough like “Passengers” (2016) to put you off you spaceship-grown peas and carrots.
Like “Passengers” (2016) and Clare Denis’ alluring jump into space, “High Life” (2019), “Voyagers” is more about the sexual and personality play among those onboard as opposed to the quest at hand.
Yes, its possible to do both as Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks did in Cast Away.
So Preston is left to roam around the spacecraft — which is like a gaudy futuristic cruise ship hurtling through space — all by his lonesome, like Tom Hanks in “Cast Away.”
It’s “Cast Away” in the cosmos, and it would have worked, but then Jim decides he deserves company.
Most films featuring stories of people stranded in some deserted place -- think of Tom Hanks in "Cast Away" as an example -- show the physical hardship of such an ordeal.
At this point, "Passengers" shifts from an oddly toned isolationist drama - think "Cast Away" set on the "WALL-E" spaceliner, complete with goofy robots - to featherweight romantic comedy.
The film is at its best when it shows Jim — who’s charming, but never nails his Cast Away impression — doing his damnedest to stay sane in near-total isolation on the ship.
The Social Network (2010)
Directed by David Fincher
influenced The Imitation Game (2014)
Plot Themes Characters
In adapting Andrew Hodges’ Turing biography, “The Enigma,” first-time screenwriter Graham Moore seems to have made a close study of Aaron Sorkin’s script for “The Social Network,” which “The Imitation Game” resembles in its flashback structure, many scenes of geeky young men huddled over complex algorithms, and its central conception of Turing as an Aspergian outcast who makes up in haughty, condescending attitude what he lacks in basic social graces.
Since “The Imitation Game” addresses each of these topics, one imagines its distributor Harvey Weinstein has been touting the movie as “The King’s Speech” meets “The Social Network” meets “Milk.”
As played by Benedict Cumberbatch, Turing is a genius in the "The Social Network" and "A Beautiful Mind" mold: brilliant but utterly lacking interpersonal skills, with an added dash of Drax the Destroyer's literal-minded humorlessness.
Los temas planteados por el guion de Jon Spaihts, quien también colaboró en el libreto de Prometeo (2012), tocan venas cercanas a Solaris (1972) de Tarkovski con la irreverencia post apocalíptica del programa televisivo Last Man On Earth; y la elegancia formal de Gravedad de Cuarón o Sunshine de Danny Boyle; pero tal como ésta última, todo su potencial es destruido por otra angustia, terriblemente banal: la recaudación monetaria.
You won't find Moon's musings on isolation, Solaris' pondering of love and loss, or Sunshine's psychological complexity here.
(Earlier, a slingshot around a burning star likewise recalls Danny Boyle’s underrated Sunshine .)
But as David Fincher’s redo of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” recently attested, it’s hard, if not downright impossible, to improve on the original.
The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)
Directed by Marcel Ophüls
influenced The Imitation Game (2014)
Themes
Turing’s offhand wisdom replicates a dominant theme of Marcel Ophuls’s The Sorrow and the Pity : that loners and pariahs were most likely to rise up against authority to save society at large.
Dirk Bogarde played a gay lawyer in 1961’s Victim, a melodrama with the moral dread of something from Hammer Films ’ mid-period.
Only one screenwriter—Jon Spaihts, who also co-wrote Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2014) and Marvel’s most recent hit Doctor Strange (2016)—is credited, and I have not read anything that his screenplay went through a major overhaul ala J.F. Lawton’s for Pretty Woman (1990) to make its potentially disturbing story more palatable to a mainstream, Christmas-season audience.
Perhaps earlier drafts reflected that, and it got turned into a love story ala Pretty Woman ?