This might be the second most predominant criticism I’ve come across, and while I consider it to carry slightly more water than criticism number 1, I still have to return to the issue of perspective. I know it would be nice to really dig into Jodie Foster and William Fichtner’s characters, to truly understand their psyches and motivations and what their childhoods were like and what traumas or impactful moments could have led them to the people they are in the film’s present, but not only is that not this movie’s concern, it’s a necessary consequence of putting the audience, us, in the mindset of the impoverished, desperate, and justifiably resentful people of Earth.
It’s no different than a novel being told in the first person limited point of view, except that we don’t get to hear the character’s inner monologue. But we do see everything from their perspective like we would in a novel, and that means that the villains are presented as villains, without sympathy or too much exploration. Of course there are complicated factors that go into present-day real-life scenarios where the wealthy could easily use their resources to provide healthcare and assistance to underprivileged people, but ultimately, if you’re one of the people in desperate need of help and capable people are unwillingly to give it, isn’t it more like that you’ll be less concerned with their circumstances than you are with your own? It’s limited thinking that turns these others into aliens, essentially, but that’s precisely the point.
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