MOVIE REVIEW: ANDRON (2015)

In my spare time, I am a tabletop game master and I look on the internet for ideas to implement in my game. One was the idea of a dark labyrinth (not to be confused with the Jonathan Davis album “Black Labyrinth”), like the Minotaur’s or something. In my search for maps, I found a peculiar picture for a movie called ANDRON — a joint film production through Italy, Malta, Canada, and the UK. It seemed like a good watch, so I checked it out on Amazon Prime (for free)…and now I know WHY it was free.

Our protagonists (L-R): The Doctor, Marnie, Frenchy, Beardy, Socialite, Tarzan, and Champion.

In the 22nd century, mankind had suffered and survived into a new dystopia after the Cataclysm — where 9 billion people died across the world. The world of 2018 held 7.5 billion people, so take that into consideration as the world of a century later could kill 9 billion and have people left over. With companies gutted and world resources at a premium, the corporations took over and decided to limit resources to the strong and enslave the rest. The strongest and fittest are entered into ANDRON: a computer-monitored Network competition to the death…in a maze…to determine a single winner. Said winner can free up to three others from slavery if they survive.

There are several catches to this plan:

• Betting on the games is allowed and the only going currency is freedom. If your chosen contestant wins and goes free, you ALSO go free….but if they die, you ALSO die. NOTE: this makes no sense for the slave-masters.
• The betting is under the control of Network executive Adam (Alec Baldwin, the Shadow) and corrupt politician Chancellor Gordon (Danny Glover, Beloved, The Color Purple).
• Anybody with half a working brain cell could figure out this was a population control scheme by the Network to keep people docile and happy until ready to be culled, but since everyone is malnourished and deficient in the future except the higher-ups, this plan works.

Into this new ANDRON competition, we have our contestants. I call them what I want because my names sounded better:

• “Tarzan” (actor Leo Howard, Conan the Barbarian [2011], G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra), a White guy who has hair like the Disney version of Tarzan
• “Beardy” (actor Gale Harold, Defiance [TV], Desperate Housewives [TV]), some French dude with a beard
• “Socialite” (actress Michelle Ryan, The Bionic Woman [2015], Doctor Who), a useless British woman
• “Marnie” (actress Antonia Campbell-Hughes), a German woman with a blonde rat’s nest on her head who I swore was going to die first
• “Champion” (stuntman-actor Alex Martin, Maleficent, District 13: Ultimatum), a Black Frenchman and prior winner of the ANDRON games
• “the Chinese Girl” (fashion model Korlan Madi in her first film role), an Asian woman…that’s it
• “Frenchy” (actor Mauro Conte, Rainbow: A Private Affair), a French Moroccan with a traumatic past
• “Copper” (actress Gaia Scodellaro, Watch Them Fall) an incredibly attractive Black Italian policewoman
• “Glasshole” (actor Jon Kortajarena, Quantico [TV]), an Italian asshole that wears glasses
• “The Doctor” (vocalist Skin, formerly the lead singer of British rock band Skunk Anansie), a former Network medical doctor and plant by the nascent rebellion to destroy the ANDRON program

Alec Baldwin is the Architect of the ANDRON competition.

The movie wants to make you think it’s doing something new and thought-provoking, but almost everything is cribbed from something else. It’s as if they kept saying in production meetings, “it’s like X”, “it should be like X”, or “I want it to look like X”. The visuals department either copy-pasted what was referenced or they had to go back and change things until they looked EXACTLY like the reference material. It’s a problem when doing derivative works to avoid the same visuals as the properties you copy, and this movie is a great indicator of what happens when you don’t try. The troopers seemed wholly original, mainly because their costumes were poorly executed.

Then there’s the writing: did they really have to use the same concepts from two wildly popular movie adaptations of equally popular YA novels? The answer is yes, because the people responsible for this movie wanted that Hollywood money. Why not put some Matrix in it also; that’ll get people really thinking. The problem is you need name recognition, not just borrowing elements and hope someone will watch it in the hopes of seeing something new — that gets perceived like a trick. If these people wanted to do it right, they should take a cue from the production company called The Asylum.

The Asylum’s “Transmorphers” vs. Michael Bay’s “Transformers”: if you’re not paying attention, you might have picked up the wrong one at the video store.

While their movies are also crap, they pull you in with the deceptive covers and titles called “mockbusters”: their knockoff of the Michael Bay Transformers movie was called Transmorphers. Both had big robots on their posters and video covers, both had big robots IN the films, so technically there was nothing wrong…except when viewers expect Optimus Prime and Bumblebee and don’t get that. With the movie ANDRON, they get a package that LOOKS like something new but it’s a poor retread of high-earning works. There’s no imagery that’s new, and this movie missed a great opportunity to make something new with the name ANDRON, but trying to ride the coattails of New Hollywood’s successes cost us all time and money.

This movie is a stinker, through and through. Please don’t watch it.

CHOICE CUTS:

• Let’s play a game: how many things does this movie rip off throughout? I counted the Matrix trilogy, visual assets from District 9 and the anime Jin-Roh: the Wolf Brigade the PS2 videogame Killzone, the plots of both the Hunger Games AND the Maze Runner, as well as elements from the Gerard Butler movie Gamer.
• Even in the far future, the Big NO is still in effect.
• This movie went out of its way to make sure no person of color made it to the end, and the African-looking ones got it the worst. Between being automatically seen as dangerous, the constant bondage scenes, and being killed off unceremoniously, I really have to wonder if the movie-makers had a problem with people of color.
• I was so glad when Glasshole died.
• Details matter: closeups of the trooper masks were interesting in design, but would it have hurt to shape up the edges of the duct tape framing the view-ports on the helmets?
• The movie gave us some real bad lines like, “We have to protect the girls”, “Welcome to the second level”, and the worst one was “Continue watching, slaves”.
• The standouts in the movie are Clara Pasieka (as Chancellor Gordon’s servant Amber) and Margareth Made (as Adora). With Amber, her need to be free really showed as she gambled on the ANDRON games. Adora…just looked really good in her black armored leotard.
• There are SO many unanswered questions in the world-building of ANDRON, the movie would most likely be unwatchable if they were all solved.
• What was the purpose of the Woman in White (played by Elettra Mallaby)? Was she an actual person, or a nanotech-projected hologram? Was she a referee avatar or an enforcer?
• Both Alec Baldwin and Danny Glover are “getting too old for this shit”, but they both got top billing on the posters and video covers.
• The flashlights are weird, as they have two apertures: one on the end and one along the shaft. It made no sense and is merely ONE MORE NITPICK.