this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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To be fair, part of the premise of that movie is to immerse yourself in absurd ideas in parallel universes... for reasons. So it's not surprising that it gets confusing.
See, I didn’t hate it because it was confusing, I hated it because it felt boring and cringy. Once you get over the initial genre hopping whiplash, it’s just more generic action tropes and multiverse nonsense that had already been done to death by the time that movie came out. At the insistence of the people I was watching with, I admittedly didn’t make it past the expository bagel scene, but once I got the pulse that it was a slice-of-life drama and John Wick thrown in a blender with Rick and Morty, I didn’t mind turning it off, and I usually hate not finishing movies.
I kind of agree that's what I never really got about it. It's not mind bending. It's a classic example of movie snobs having never considered that sci-fi could be art and getting confused when the movie asks the audience to make the slightest leap in imagination.
The thing I did like about it a lot is that it's a very rare movie, especially an action flick, in which the main character is a 40+ year old woman who actually gets a character arc. That was cool.
The ending is fairly relevant to the quality of the movie
Noted. I’ll give the rest of it a shot sometime.
Alright, I got around to finishing it sooner than I expected.
Fully agree: the second half of the movie does actually go somewhere with all the nonsense. The character development is fantastic, and the sci-fi actually is used as a creative way to explore self worth and interpersonal relationships.
I stand by my frustration with what comes across as gratuitous, dated feeling humor and tropes (Scott Pilgrim, Rick and Morty, “so random! XD” Internet culture), but it definitely has a lot more depth and substance than I was ready to give it credit for.
Wow that was fast lol
I'm glad you liked the second half. I generally agree with your assessment that it has a lot of lol XD so random stuff in it, but I think the later parts of the movie do a good job of justifying that thematically by bringing up the idea that meaningless randomness is inherent in a multiverse, or at least that finding it meaningless is a common way of dealing with a multiverse.
The gimmick was gimmicky, sure - and they made sure to do it as gimmicky as possible, all part of its charm.
Its staying power was in the unique story of a mother pulling her daughter away from the precipice of spiralling self-destruction by opening her heart and mind to new ideas and breaking the cycle of generations of cultural abuse.
It genuinely has a wonderful message, and I remember it for that, and less for its action/scifi
See, for me that was the appeal.
I feel like a lot of the audience is so media illiterate they didn't get that and instead treated it like some cinematic masterpiece with all these deep messages.
The bagel scene was silly nonsense completely on-par with your metaphor, but it was fun too. Anyone who thinks the bagel has all these deep layers beyond just a quippy scifi joke is the embodiment of the "To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty" copypasta lmao
It's not confusing at all, it's one of the most straightforward and easy to follow plots imo. Would definitely satisfy the "second screen" requirements of most at-home streaming audiences lol
Honestly, maybe that's the real reason it became so popular. Even a child could keep up with it.