Is the 65 Movie Bad? 3 Reasons It’s Not Great

Is the 65 movie bad? With all of the potential that this film had to be something novel and captivating, it rather settled for being an unimaginative narrative that just falls short of mediocre.

The movie 65 lacks a clear identity but is rather a sequence of occurrences happening independent of a fleshed-out history.

It truly feels as if all of the characters had just met each other that same day and were acting out scenes rather than witnessing real people of this constructed universe interact with each other.

The artificiality of 65’s characters and storyline is something that even the presence of the talented Adam Driver could not salvage.

Is the 65 Movie Bad? 3 Reasons It’s Not Great

65 is a science fiction movie that travels back to the time of the dinosaurs' extinction from Earth 65 million years ago. When Mills (Adam Driver), an alien being from Planet Somaris, becomes stranded on pre-historic Earth with only one other lone survivor, 9-year-old Koa, they must find a way to escape the planet before an Earth-shattering meteor wipes away all life.

These 3 aspects of 65 stuck out as the biggest reasons why it fell short of being a good movie: the artificial characters, the lack of a clear identity, and the boring dinosaurs.

1. Artificial Characters

From the very beginning, Mills’ relationship with his family feels forced.

The energy between the characters feels nonexistent.

I’ll also say that these “people” that we’re encountering are not Earthly beings, but rather aliens from a different planet.

Although they are technically not humans they function practically like human beings with really advanced technology despite being older than cavemen.

The lack of creativity in crafting these aliens that end up discovering Earth is very disheartening to witness.

Given the storyline, there is so much room to play with alien capabilities, form, and culture, yet they somehow manage to make the aliens even less novel than your average human being.

Another annoying aspect of the lack of creativity was the over-reliance on technology to solve the characters’ problems.

Every issue could be solved with a strangely specific app on Mill’s technical device which could already somehow cleverly navigate nearly everything in this foreign land.

Mill’s daughter is his clear source of motivation from the very beginning of the film but her presentation as this precious little angel is overdone and annoying.

She looks like a 15-year-old girl (she’s 14 in real life), yet she is twirling, flipping, speaking, and crying like she’s 6 years old. The incongruence of her actions with her age is cringe-worthy instead of endearing.

This actress, Chloe Coleman, was also cast as the motivational daughter character in Dungeons and Dragons too. Talk about typecasting.

2. Lack of a Clear Identity

One of the biggest overarching issues with this movie is its lack of identity.

The music is giving Space Odyssey and Star Wars, the visuals are giving Jurassic Park, and the acting is giving audition tape.

It’s strange to see the music communicate this science fiction theme while the visuals give more of an adventure theme and the characters give us nothing.

The incoherence of the different stylistic elements of this film is distracting and instead of presenting the audience with something fresh, new, and interesting, we get a hodge-podge of poorly replicated ideas that have already been done and were better executed in the past.

3. Boring Dinosaurs

Apparently, we were supposed to be afraid of the dinosaurs.

Their presence was supposed to get our blood pressure up and make us fear for the safety of the movie’s protagonists.

I’m not sure if it’s just that the protagonists were boring or that the dinosaurs weren’t scary but I was cooling it the whole movie. Eat them if you want, dinos, I don’t mind.

The not-so-terrifying dinosaurs in this movie just don’t look good. The T-rex is weirdly walking on all 4’s. The CGI they used looks stiff and unconvincing.

There is also just an overall lack of understanding of the movie’s predators. I think that giving them a sense of motivation might have given them a bigger presence in the film.

A dynamic like a mother dinosaur trying to protect its child.

A starving T-rex who’s run out of food.

A herd of dinosaurs whose home was destroyed by the spacecraft that crash-landed on their property.

I don’t know. Something to make these dinos a little less one-dimensional and something to actually fear.

In Conclusion…

65 is an incredibly predictable movie with not much to set it apart in how the protagonists’ journey to the end.

One of 65’s few redeeming qualities besides Adam Driver is that it’s a swift movie with a 93-minute runtime. Unfortunately, though, the overall story is quite bland for such a grand concept.

More thought and effort could have gone into differentiating Earth from Planet Somaris, fleshing out the characters and the dinosaurs some more, and creating a more exciting storyline with more clever obstacles and tactics with which to overcome them.

Overall, 65 failed to bring anything fresh to the table, rather poorly replicating popular thematic styles.

The 65 movie is bad but not the worst. At the very least, this underwhelming film doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Rating 4.7/10

Is the 65 movie bad? Let me know in the comments below!

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Peace, love, and lots of popcorn,

IMO