A Sound of Thunder (2005)

This was a decent sci-fi movie, and I've seen quite a few time travel shows. (Small spoiler here) You have time tourists who are warned that the slightest interruption in the past can cause a cascade of disastrous repercussions in the future. Here, the changes in the evolution of nature don't come immediately but instead through a series of time waves. The acting and special effects were good too.This is certainly better than the effect in Ray Bradbury's original story "A Sound of Thunder", where stepping on a butterfly 65 million years ago only caused a change in the outcome of a Presidential election. Now that's too much of a stretch.My main problem with the movie, as a scientist, is that the movie completely overlooks the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Any interference with the evolutionary time line the travelers made during the age of the dinosaurs would have been greatly impacted by their mass extinction around 65 million years ago. However, no mention is made in the movie of the effect the mass extinction could have had on ripple effect caused by the killing of the butterfly.

What the hell is happening with this movie?!Alright, time travel! I love it. Super poor cg-effects? not so much.Let me break it down for ya real quick! A Sound of Thunder has kind of a decent story, it's almost original, not a too shabby take on time travel. Mixed with some Total Recall, and a little sprinkle of Jurassic Park. Ish.Here is the movies main problem. Horrible special effects. Now, I don't use words like horrible when describing special effect too often. I got thick skin when it comes to CG. But here? Oh my. There's some painful green screen here. The movie is set in the future, so when they are walking in the streets, backgrounds and cars are CG. And not in a good way. It's like TV-movie quality.Also some of the acting is pretty bad. But again the real problem is the CG, and special effects in general, damn. They are badly directed and badly made. It looks really low budget, but according to IMDb it's in the 50 mill range, so they really should be better.I think the director is just too old, and inexperienced with CG, thats my theory. But aside from the very bad CG effects, this is not that bad a movie. Got some good ideas.

My goodness what a disappointment! Even with a low budget one can make a good scifi or time travel movie if the plot is intelligent and the actors are convincing. None of this is the case with this sad piece of wasted time. The actors apparently are only in it for the money; particularly Ben Kingsley acts so mechanical, bored and not connected to his role that one can feel how much he hated his job(and himself, probably, for having to make a buck by playing in this movie). The CGI is so poor that one wonders if it is due to the lack of money for special fx or because of the incapability of the CGI designers. The plot.... what could be a good idea is completely wasted in the ever growing paltriness of the effects and the ridiculous CGI-generated characters (a dim rip-off of Jurassic parc characters). The time travel issue is merely a pretense for silly chases and bad acting. Apart from few minutes in the beginning, the entire movie displays the lack of money and the un-inspiredness of playwrights and director. I didn't even watch the movie to the end. Summary: Waste of time.

I've seen much, much worse lines and logic in bigger budget sci-fis that hit the screens. I've seen equal quality acting in blockbusters like Transformers, Battleship, etc. I mean - come on - it's Jurassic Park with a twist of smart. It's a film for kids that can be enjoyed by adults. What it lacks are ripe special effects, because I hear they went bankrupt during the final production stages. So really - this movie should have the same rating as John Carter or Jurassic Park. Since I have been thrown so many stupid special effects and 3D gimmicks lately, I learned to disregard them, and weigh in a film more by it's story than by the bling. If You read light sci-fi, you don't get 3D bling there either. So I say, if the acting was OK, and the story was OK, then the movie was OK. Decent sci-fi with decent entertainment value.