I watched the movie yesterday, and I am still as lukewarm about it as when I saw it in theaters.

!!SPOILERS!!

The score for me is pretty bad, I could identify atleast 3 moments where it sounded exactly like the dark knight or TDKR, with the same type of texture, instrumentation or general feel. At one point it was a note for note ripoff. The synthy song that ends the film I have to admit is great, and the main melody is great, but it does not a good score make, it's completely derivative and unimaginative.

As for the story, it feels very fabricated to me. Almost every thing feels "off". So many things in the film are lazily explained just to justify that aspect of the film being possible in the first place. Everything is just so damn convenient.

The scavs just happen to need weird-looking helmets and voice modulators to fool the guard sentries, which very conveniently also allows the film to not show them to be humans. Also the first we see of them they are running on all 4s (like humans do?). Was that to confuse the sentinels aswell, or was that just to further confuse the audience and allow for the reveal in the middle of the film?

When Tom is fighting Tom they accidentally discharge one single shot in a random direction. Which by astronomical odds is exactly where Julia is standing.

The story is clunkily written. There are 2-3 moments I counted of instanced where characters say to each other: "hey, wouldn't it be neat if this thing happened... yeah, I wish...", and then at the end of the film it happens. It aims for setup and payoff, but it's way too obvious and poorly put forward, as soon as they say it you know that is what will happen.
I think it's better than Elysium, but not by much. It's bland, it really needed a artistic push in any direction to make it really distinct. Right now it's a bunch of beautiful but sterile CG shots, and a rudimentary "chosen one" journey of killing the evil bad guys.

Will listen to the commentary just now though, will be interesting to hear other POVs.

Hey Porridgegun, I'd be interested to hear your perspective on "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "There Will Be Blood". Mind sharing your thoughts on them?

Watching the movie now.

Matt Damon gets irradiated because he steps into a room which is going to be irradiated and moves something that prevented the door from closing... What other result could there have been really? Did he think he would move the thing that blocks the door and the door wouldn't close behind him? They don't show him activating any kind of failsafe to lock the door and prevent it from closing before he goes in there?

Do they even have failsafes on the doors? Why didn't he just open the door again, move what was in the way and then close it again? Do they not have the ability to open the door again unless it closes completely? That seems stupid.

The boss forces Damon to go in to the room under threat of firing him. The boss, you would think, knows of the stupendous risk because of the above described design of the doors. Once Damon gets irradiated they apparently shut down production entirely causing superboss Fichner to get angry. Surely Damons boss should have handled the blocked door differently and with more attention since it obviously could lose them lots of time and money if he sent Damon in there and things went wrong? Why didn't he? Just so he also could have a moustache-twirling moment? If they're so money-hungry you'd think they would be able to make a simple cost-benefit-analysis and realize that it probably is worth finding a way around the problem that doesn't involve sending Damon in to certain death and loosing alot of time and money.

All this would have been solved if they just showed Damon activating a locking-mechanism on the door before he went in, but we then see the switch flip back on its own due to poor maintenance of safety features for the workers (which is alot more plausible, reinforces the theme of the rich/bosses not spending any money on the workers to ensure their safety) and doesn't require any moustache-twirling. Plus it would actually create some tension in the scene. As the scene is in the film we see Damon be reluctant to go in, but I assumed since the film doesn't show any safety feature of any kind, I guess there's no danger for him once he goes in. He doesn't open the door or reset whatever he is doing and start over. Atleast cut back and forth between Damon and the safety switch, maybe the switch is mounted on something that vibrates from another machine somewhere, and it's shaking enough to cause it to spring back into normal mode. As it is the scene is so flat, Damon goes in and then the door just closes and it's very unceremonious. Particularly since this is the scene that sets Damon off on the path he takes for the rest of the film.