{"id":9557,"date":"2017-09-27T08:45:08","date_gmt":"2017-09-27T16:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/09\/27\/news-3330\/"},"modified":"2017-09-27T08:45:08","modified_gmt":"2017-09-27T16:45:08","slug":"news-3330","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/09\/27\/news-3330\/","title":{"rendered":"Our First Look at Psychedelic Sci-Fi Thriller, \u2018Annihilation\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Sarah Emerson| Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2017 16:02:37 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

The trailer for Ex Machina<\/i> director and writer Alex Garland’s cosmic sci-fi thriller Annihilation<\/i> is finally here. The movie stars Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac, and is based on the Southern Reach Trilogy by speculative fiction author Jeff VanderMeer. <\/p>\n

So far…so good? (With one major exception.) <\/p>\n

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VanderMeer’s brand of psychedelic, Lovecraftian horror is wildly imaginative. Annihilation <\/i>drops us into some near future, narrated by a stoic, emotionally impenetrable biologist (played by Portman). Part of a covert government operation, the biologist and her unit are dispatched to a pristine wilderness called “Area X.” Their task: survey, collect, and come back alive.<\/p>\n

Only, this ecologically perfect environment isn’t what it seems. Something otherworldly, even extradimensional, is lurking there. And the team’s leader, a brusque and manipulative psychologist, has ulterior motives for her crew. The expedition soon becomes compromised, and the biologist must face not only extraordinary threats, but also herself.<\/p>\n

Garland’s adaptation looks<\/i> stunning. But I wish he’d remained true to VanderMeer’s biologist, who was part-Asian. The psychologist, too, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, was a person of color; being described as an Indigenous woman in the books. <\/p>\n

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Neither of these characters were expressly defined by their races, but speculative fiction is overwhelmingly white (especially on screen<\/a>), and it would’ve been nice to see that component of VanderMeer’s vision preserved. <\/p>\n

Annihilation<\/i> won several sci-fi literary awards, and is the first in a series of two other books, Authority <\/i>and Acceptance<\/i>. The film is set to hit theaters on February 23 next year.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/rss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Credit to Author: Sarah Emerson| Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2017 16:02:37 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is that a glimpse of the Crawler?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10643,13328,10378],"tags":[15181,15183,15180,1561,1449,9027,15182,10633,15184,180],"class_list":["post-9557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-independent","category-motherboard","category-security","tag-alex-garland","tag-annihilation","tag-ex-machina","tag-film","tag-movie","tag-natalie-portman","tag-oscar-isaac","tag-sci-fi","tag-speculative-fiction","tag-trailer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}