Okay, got it. I’m going to try to see this in the theater. It’s showing in exactly one theater in my state and will require a bit of a drive but seems worth it.
I would drive an hour to see it just to avoid paying Amazon. Or Netflix, Apple, HBO, Disney, etc. Over an hour, your call. Let me know what you think.
Had one of the big studios taken it over, it would probably have sent in a team of writers to bleed all the quirkiness and originality out of it. It would have tripled the budget and tried to cover the hollowness with expensive special effects. And there would have been a swarm of superfluous producers to hamstring the director with interference.
Sam Rockwell’s costume was homemade (because they didn’t have any money). Gore Verbinski and a couple of friends went to a used electronics store — the last stop for junk before the junkyard — and started picking up random parts that they thought would look cool on his suit. There is a blaster that looks like something out of Mars Attacks. And Asim Chaudhry, a British actor with whom I was completely unfamiliar, plays the best redshirt character in the history of redshirts.
Just go along for the ride and have fun with it.
Double check to make sure it’s still in the theater. It appears to be entirely gone here, but it may be hanging on in some arthouse theaters. Which can be fun to go to. It might be pretty empty since the streamers have most people conditioned to be couch potatoes, and it’s now available for home viewing.