So yeah, this is probably a bit late in the phase (I’ll likely repost this in round to anyway) but I’m going to do something no one ever does, analyze a film. First off let me say the following, I don’t find circle to be an outright bad film, but I feel it misses the mark. Also, obviously, spoilers
First off for context (for all those who haven’t actually seen the film), here’s the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAlpm2oRzy8
I admit that the trailer is pretty cool, but the execution is...somewhat lacking. I’m going to break this up into a number of sections with each individual issue I have with the film. First up….
THE CHARACTERS
The main issue with Circle is that there is 1. Very little incentive to get attached to any characters as they will die soon and 2. Very little development of the characters anyway. In fact the characters only reinforce stereotypes about the world instead of challenging them, the cop is racist, the businessman is sexist, the soldier is oh so honorable, the atheist has no morals and the banker is only concerned about himself. Aside from the issues of simply validating society’s stereotypes, it’s also hard to relate or root for any of them and makes their struggle more trivial as instead of feeling the need to ask “what would I do?” I instead simply ask “well, who’s next”?
However, you may ask, “well, okay, but some characters need to be flat right?” And that would be an okay concern if it weren’t that all the characters were. The eventual victor is so vapid I don’t understand a thing about him, and the people who join him in the final 4 are a child, who’d only characteristic is that they are a child and scared, a pregnant woman, whose only characteristic is she is pregnant and a dude who has literally no lines in the entire film and does nothing. Not exactly the compelling leads you need to make a story interesting. Like, was it too much to understand more about these people who make it so far, we get some token background of some characters, why not the “main ones” at least. So that’s my first issue. Next one is:
THE THEMES
CIrcle tries to ask a lot of good questions, like “why is this happening?”, “who does humanity preference?”, “what will we do in this situation?” and “what happens when we approach the last person”? However, it doesn’t answer a lot of them in a meaningful way. We never find out the motivation for the circles, just that there has been an alien invasion and reasons, so that’s problematic. Secondarily it seems to contradict its main idea, as it first begins to believe we would protect the least well off (as the child and pregnant woman makes it far) and then flips this to a nihilistic point, as the last person actually tricks them into getting himself out alive and then a lot of the other survivors turn out to be children and pregnant people, so which is it? Do the self interested make it out or someone else? I can understand trying not to answer the question but instead we just have contradictory answers.
Also, everyone just assumes there will be a winner? Unclear why this is true, but they seem to assume it to be true, could’ve been interesting for the winner to end up in another circle or something like that, but do we get that, nope. Which also may have been better if you want a nihilistic take on the cycle. Also, the question of what would you do is already sucky if everyone is just stereotypes instead of seeming like actual people. So already we have weak characters and themes that are not fleshed out nearly enough, you just have stuff happening. However what I find to be the worst is that:
IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH BETTER:
Circle is held back by the fact it focuses too much on the circle, which is an interesting concept, and not enough about after the Circle or the fact that it is literally one sample. It also doesn’t explain why it happened, doesn’t even give any answer for it, to quote Rubber there was “no reason, no reason at all” for it.
Instead we could start with someone remembering their circle, and flashing to it throughout the movie, knowing who won, but not exactly what happened, allowing there to be tension. But now instead this person goes through the world after they’re all done, running into different people, trying to rebuild society, figure out why it happened and hearing about their circles. Now we can think about what humanity does in those situations while actually getting character development. And if you want to make the main character slimy, we now have a way to make it more compelling, cause now we know him, but know the choice they underwent as what it was, true making people ask what they would do in that situation. Also the themes are just done better in pretty much any war film with better characters. Overall, Circle is mediocre, it misses the mark, and that’s why it really shouldn’t win. I’ll like repost this with comparisons to it’s opponent if it makes it through.
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What are the odds?
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