Andron (2016)

Thanks for the memories!

Simply A Masterpiece

Purely Joyful Movie!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The movie business is supposed to work like this: you start out working in whatever low budget movies you can get and work your way up. Once you are well-established, you protect your brand name by choosing only good movies to participate in. Eventually your star slowly sinks and you take on any halfway decent role that is offered to you. This all means that, by agreeing to be in this movie, Alec Baldwin and Danny Glover's days of stardom were waning, because they had to have been desperate to take on their roles in this disaster. I would wager that if Baldwin knew that after this movie he would once again find fame and fortune via his recurring role as the Donald in SNL, he would never have taken on this film. Afterall, why trade your dignity and reputation for a paycheck unless you really need the money?Let's face it, this movie is based on a tried-and-true but tired formula. In a future dystopian society some dictator hosts some kind of win-or-die game to maintain control, and some hero/heroin eventually emerges and wears the mantle of freedom to rally the entire population. Hunger Game and Maze Runner immediately come to mind, but there are a large number of others. Frankly, I am quite tired of these movies of people being treated like mice in an experimental maze. Might as well keep it simple and just make a movie where the people wear mice suits and where they pull the right levers to get food or the wrong levers to get zapped by electrocution. It might actually be more entertaining than this movie.I won't bother repeating everything that numerous other reviewers have already said about the convoluted plot, bad acting, less than memorable characters, etc, except to say that they are all true. To say this movie is a dud is being charitable. When the movie finally, and mercifully, lumbered to its end, I was aghast to hear the pronouncement: congratulations, and welcome to level 2. Then they doubled down on the insult by showing Baldwin looking back at you with a smug smile, as in, see ya in the sequel. OMG I sure hope no Hollywood financier is stupid enough to invest money in a sequel, because, dude, you will lose all your investment!

The world is now run by Really Evil Corporations, who for evil reasons nuked the earth and enslaved all 2 billion remaining people. Every year, to keep the slaves from revolting, the Really Evil Corporations hold a Hunger Games, er, Andron tournament.Ten slaves are chosen to compete in an Evil Maze for the ultimate prize - their freedom. Also, time travel exists, so the slaves are from different eras and the game itself happens in a different time period each year. But the other 2 billion slaves can still watch the Evil proceedings in real time because the players have nanocameras embedded in their eyes, and they have really good WiFi.The maze is haunted by an evil ghost lady who can shoot lightning out of her fingertips, and evil ninjas with red pants and glowing LED eyes. Also, the maze drops random weapons for the contestants, because video games. Oh, and the contestants have selective amnesia.The entire thing is orchestrated by Evil Alec Baldwin, whose presence in this movie tells us he spent all that Capital One money. Evil Alec sits behind a desk in a well-appointed palace and manipulates the game while yelling at his hot Secretary. But Evil Danny Glover, who also needs money, is Evil Alec's boss and the two have creative differences about how they should gruesomely kill people in this maze. Maybe they're worried about ratings. But how can they be when the only audience is 2 billion slaves who don't get any other channels? They're the only game in town, like baseball in mid-July.Anyway, this is hands-down one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life. The plot is nonsensical. The dialogue veers from cringe to cringe. The movie even robs the characters of names, so we get conversations like this:"Hey, where's that guy with the glasses?""I don't know, wasn't he with that other girl?""What other girl?"There is one mind-blowing thing about Andron: That this script wasn't immediately tossed in the reject bin, nevermind given the greenlight. It's one of those movies that makes you marvel at how ANYONE could have thought it was a good idea.Fair warning, this movie is not the kind of bad that's fun to watch because it's unintentionally hilarious. It's just bad. Proceed at your own risk.

This movie is unbearable bad.Bad acting is cloaked with a story of such stupidity that it is only matched by its complexity. Nearly not bearable and completely useless. No Message, just fragments of mismatching story parts combined with brain dead violence.If - after watching this movie - I'd been asked for a plot, I'd honestly have to say: "Sorry, no clue. But there's dramatic music, minor special effects and some violence"An absolute need not see.Let's hope the don't waste any money for a sequel.

This is what happens when you hire a foreign director who can't speak English and therefore can't communicate with his cast. He was on the DVD extras. Since he didn't understand a word he was filming, how could he make a decent movie or anticipate what the English speaking cast or audience would like? I have not seen hunger games, etc, so I'm not judging this movie by comparison. However, this so-called labyrinth looked like they were filming in an abandoned power plant. I sure hope it wasn't a nuke plant for the sake of the actors. It wouldn't be the first time a director exposed his entire cast to radiation & they ended up with cancer. (Howard Hughes; The Conqueror film with John Wayne, Hayward, Moorehead & 90 others got cancer from filming in the Utah desert downwind near the Nevada nuclear test site). The control room & cooling towers & water systems in this Andron film sure looked like an old nuclear power plant. Oblivion (a movie I loved, was partially filmed in an abandoned power plant in New Orleans. It was not nuclear as far as I know but was leaking water all over the cast, crew & equipment while filming Oblivion. These abandoned power plants are pretty awful. Wet, rusting, dangerous, crumbling, possibly toxic and are rotten locations to use for filming. But they come cheap.I gave Andron 3 stars because I actually loved the few glimpses of the futuristic city. One of the best future cities I've seen. Too bad more of the movie wasn't filmed there using a different plot. Gleaming glass future cities would have been a much better theme.Baldwin & Glover should have reversed their roles. This is not a racial statement. It's a personality observation. Baldwin would have done much better as the asinine Chancellor with Glover as the game Host. It was also in bad taste to show Glover owning a slave. He was clearly uncomfortable.I agree the ridiculously oversized office the size of the French Palace with a single desk & CG screens & controls in the air was indeed absurd. It reminded me of the oversized, empty CG sets on the V 2009 TV reboot series. There should have been more technology & a place for Baldwin's assistant to sit instead of her walking across a football stadium sized room in a rubber suit every time he wanted to have her perform a task. (like ST:Voyager's 7 of 9).There was the total lack of logic behind the plot. 9 Billion killed in a catastrophe caused by this handful of corporations running the world. Using the games as a way to thin out the remaining 2 billion slave population they couldn't feed by encouraging them to bet their lives on which of the 10 contenders would win; & die if they picked a loser.The lack of logic is where they claim they can't feed the 2 billion surviving slaves. They should have the slaves plowing & planting crops & orchards & process fish & food production instead of sitting around, filth encrusted, watching games. 2 billion slave laborers can do a lot to produce food & the privileged few elite would not need to kill off their labor force. These few elite leaders were clearly Not smart. It also made no sense why their slaves were filthy & living in squalor since the gleaming city of glass spread as far as you could see. So plenty of available room & technology for their slave laborers. Also, if they killed off all the slaves, these elite idiots would have to do their own work. Somehow, this population thinning reminds me of the Georgia guide stone. NWOThen we are stuck watching these actors in their young 20's, who have no memories of who & what they are; wandering around this nasty abandoned power plant, doing stupid things & getting picked off; one by one by trick walls & glowing eyed robots. Victims too stupid to stick together or fashion weapons & too stupid to not leave any weapons lying around. The females (except 2) stand there looking stupid while the guys are pounded trying to bare hand fight robots.I wouldn't chastise the acting skills of this cast. They were young actors mostly in their early 20's. Even famous actors often started doing low budget flicks to pay the bills & get experience. Some of the older actors do the same. Remember Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns?The problems on this film were a rotten writer and a rotten director who couldn't communicate with his cast. But they all had to praise him in order to get hired by others.The best way to watch this is with your finger on the fast forward button. Go normal speed whenever you see Baldwin, Glover, the future world or the bald black female because she has the entire plot in her dialogue & acting. Also, go to normal speed whenever they are outside. Otherwise, just fast forward. The victims don't know who they are or what they are doing there, so you won't miss much.I usually fast forward through any battles or fights on any movie. There is no value in watching mindless violence no matter how fancy the special effects may be. I have no desire to watch faces punched in. Also, how many laser, sword or gunshots do you have to see? They all look the same. It is boring. I would much rather see sci-fi, high tech & intelligent interaction & fresh new story lines like the film Oblivion with Tom Cruise & Morgan Freeman.As I said, the futuristic city is the best part of this film. Have your fast forward ready for the rest as I described.