Am I Missing Something?

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Particle accelerator, opposing beams of protons, power, vacuum, magnets, cooling... that's all the details about the experiment. Not even a black hole is mentioned in the movie. I'm not an expert of physics, but even for me there was way too little explanation what is going on. Aura? The only explanation of the glow above the facility is "aura" and lightning? Come on... Why electric sockets are set on fire? What happens to Denver whose high-rise buildings looks to be sucked in by a force field? Why that happens on the other side of the globe at Paris and London? We don't even see any destruction done except one district set on fire. I expected the movie to be more scientific than this. Instead, it focused on the main scientist's daughter and electrician's wife. There is not even a dedicated power plant for the accelerator, only a transformer station. All in all, the message of the movie seems to be that there are obsessed scientists paid buy evil corporations, and an opposing environmentalist group that is trying to stop the evil experiment. The bad, bad corporation also is growing gmo crops made from cancer metastasis cells just to make the company even more evil, even though the gmo thing does not influence the scenario in any way. So instead of science fiction we get a caricature of careless scientists on a leash controlled by evil corporation who together are ready to destroy a city for profit. And an Occupy movement that are "fighting" to save "our universe". This certainly prefers fear over science, and there is enough of this madness already. A cheap way to fuel the amateur anti-whatever opposition.

I see a lot of criticism here of the irrationality of the plot and its anti-science tone. I agree that the plot was irrational, and also, that the scientists didn't behave like real ones. Yet I don't mind the nonsensical nature of the threat - after all, isn't that always the case when disaster on a global scale is the threat? (i.e. mega-volcanoes, shift in earth's magnetic field, alien invasions, zombies, etc.?)It's always necessary to suspend disbelief or it's impossible to watch anything of this genre. As to showing scientists negatively, I didn't get that sense as much as showing an attack on the real villain here, "corporate greed." The driving force behind all the "wrong-headedness" was the corporate head of the project, played with scenery-chewing glee by Treat Williams. If I have any complaints about its political correctness, I'd say it also threw a barb at "occupy Wall Street" and Greenpeace, and the symbol of greed (i.e. Williams' role) had a Jewish name, which was admittedly something I had to keep overlooking.Why my relatively high rating? First, the surprisingly affecting back-story of the Russian lineman, along with good unusually good acting for this level of movie, by the Russian character, his wife, the lead scientist and the main protagonist, played by Steven Weber. His eye-rolling teen daughter was fairly well played too, given the clichéd nature of this role (you could interchange her with the daughter in "Under the Dome.") Also, and here is the real spoiler: did the world come to an end? Well, not entirely, but the lack of clarity on that was in itself unique (we only know that Denver, Paris, London and the Pyramids took direct hits) - so the lack of "finality" is unusual for this type of film. And on a related note, from the first 10 minutes I had been expecting the real villain, the corporate CEO played by Treat Williams, and the scientist who prostituted herself to him, to be zapped into smithereens by "dark energy," by the end of the film, as a sort of divine justice for their blindly going ahead with the project they knew to be destructive. So ... SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER big surprise, NOTHING happens to them. This is the long way of saying that despite a lot of apparent clichés, in the end, this was not your typical "B" sci fi movie - it was not all that predictable - and that is what accounts for my relatively higher ratings, along with surprisingly nuanced performances by some case members (i.e. Steven Weber) amidst some stock-villain types.

I love Christina Cox, her performances are always amazing and she's clearly the star of this show. However, the plot is nonsensical and irrational. The scenes are nice and special effects are not bad.But the biggest problem with this series is the PLOT and MESSAGE being sent to people that is completely the wrong message to send to people. Your typical UNORIGINAL Frankenstein message "Stop playing God, scientists!" This is by far the dumbest, anti-intellectual message movies/films have spread throughout the decades.Without spoiling anything... Scientists discover a source of energy but certain things happen that cause disasters and it simply logically doesn't follow why they would happen in other random areas. It also doesn't make sense that they can't just pull the plug. It further doesn't make sense why an evil CEO would risk jail time and possible catastrophic results just to not have a "bad quarterly review." A lot of plot holes are included in the movie, such as the Russian-sub-plot as to how something could be kept under wraps.Essentially the conclusion the filmmakers want you to draw is: Science is crazy, magical, and accidents "might" happen. Which is simply the antithesis of what science is about and accidents such as this never happen on this scale in scientific experiments by scientists. There's a reason they do pre-tests to pre-tests to tests, and in this film, they act like even those pre-tests can go wrong.The worst "energy-related disaster" in our REAL world, such as chernobyl, was because of engineers who didn't know what they were doing. It was because of lack of safety protocols, lack of computer automated systems, and outdated equipment that was UNDERFUNDED. That is the lesson to learn from Chernobyl, when you don't invest in a technology for increasing its safety standards.So if anyone thinks that they should draw the lesson of: "We shouldn't fund such experiments, we don't fully understand!" -- That is the incorrect lesson. The mere act of not-funding-something, is the lesson to be drawn from real life events like Chernobyl, because machines and systems get too old; protocols become outdated; and these technologies never improve and become safer.As for the "Don't play God" nonsense, why would God give humans the ability to do these things if he didn't want you to discover them? Or why would he allow millions of people to die, in such a "failed experiment" just to teach a simple lesson about that? It makes no sense logically or philosophically, and filmmakers should stop trying to create conclusions for their audience that they probably never even asked a philosopher about.

This presentation was a mess from beginning to end (thank goodness I had the PVR to fast-forward the commercials). Parts and characters are not re-connected, suspense is supposed to come from the fact the none of the characters (parents or teens) can communicate properly, and the action frequently grinds to a halt to allow people to express their otherwise suppressed feelings for one another. Along with all this, the plot line as expressed in the guides (and at IMDb) is INCORRECT. It is stated 'when two scientists attempt to discover unlimited energy, their experiment is hijacked and sabotaged by eco-terrorists. The result is a dark energy black hole that could destroy the planet. ..' ** Spoiler ** The experiment is NOT hijacked by Eco-terrorists - their role in the experiment mishap is very limited, but they do fashion some minor sabotage at a power sub-station. The threat to the planet is caused by some very stupid scientists, and some extremely lax supervision by the local authorities, when an energy firm starts tampering with some powerful forces that have already gone wrong elsewhere.No sustained action, crummy dialogue, inexplicable ineptness and decision-making by supposedly smart people make this 2-parter a prime candidate for a pass. Try any Brit suspense series instead for none of the above.