A Sound of Thunder (2005) User Reviews

Prepare to thunder towards the exit

[TheMovieMark · 4/10 · 1 September 2005]

What exactly is the sound of thunder? If this movie is any indication then it's the sound of moviegoers thundering towards the exit, demanding their money back. Yes, the movie is that bad.

"Hey Johnny, how bad is it?" This movie is so bad that Ray Bradbury wishes he could invent a time machine so that he could go back in time and NOT write the short story, thus preventing this movie from ever being made.

"Whoa, that bad?" Worse. In fact, this movie is so bad that Ray Bradbury might kill himself just so he can roll over in his grave. I know you think I'm trying to be cute, but I'm being serious. This was one of the strangest movie experiences I've had in quite a while. The problem is that I went into the movie expecting to enjoy it. I thought it had the chance to be pretty good. So at the very start I was trying to make excuses for what was unraveling on screen.

The first thing to induce unintentional laughter was the fact that Ben Kingsley (the owner of the time traveling safari who's only interested in how much money he can make) looks like Bob Barker. Nice poofy white wig, Ben. Oh well, no big deal, I can laugh that off. Then we're introduced to the first CGI dinosaur of the movie. "Hmm, that sure looks really fake," I thought. "Oh, I know! It's supposed to be fake. They're tricking the hunters into thinking the dinosaur is real, but it's mechanical or something." Nope. Imagine my sheer horror when I came to the realization that the dinosaur was supposed to be real. Wow. At this point I started to get nervous.

Then came the incredibly bad green screens. Folks, these are some of the worst green screens I've ever seen. My words cannot do justice to how fake they looked. Some might even say they looked faker than those things Pamela Anderson tries to pass off as breasts. When you can tell that the actors are walking on a treadmill then you have serious issues that are long past addressing. I was absolutely shocked at what I was witnessing. Honestly, I started to get confused and thought, "What in the world is going on? This movie cost $80 million to make, there's no way it can look this bad." Where there's a will, there's a way, and somebody must've had a strong will to make this as cheesy and as goofy as they could because I cannot come up with any other explanation.

I actually like the concept of the movie - the butterfly effect - the theory that something as small as a butterfly flapping its wings can produce long-term effects on a dynamical system. However, this movie presents the theory in the most outlandish, most unbelievable way imaginable. Sorry, but I just didn't buy it. One of the scientists in the movie argues that if you kill a bee, then that bee can't pollinate a flower, and an animal will not be able to eat that flower, thus that animal will die and can cause damaging long-term effects. Um, if "Flower A" never blossoms then an animal that's hungry will just go find "Flower B" and eat that. I don't think the animal will immediately die AND CAUSE HUMANS TO TURN INTO ALIEN-LIKE CREATURES!!! Come on.

So the movie decides to take the "butterfly effect" to the most extreme depths that it possibly can - fine, whatever. What *really* bothered me is it doesn't care to explain why killing the butterfly resulted in the world being taken over by horribly rendered CGI creatures. It would have at least been nice to have an explanation as to why and how such drastic changes took place because of one simple butterfly.

The butterfly would've been killed in a volcano that erupts right before they head back to the time machine anyway, so how do you explain that? Well, if your name is A Sound of Thunder then you don't. You just say, "Here's the premise, now we're just going to become a monster movie and have the good guys be chased by bat monsters in the dark." Well, I'd be interested in hearing what's said when this movie becomes one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) flops of the year.

At about the halfway point I realized that there was no need to continue to rationalize why the movie appeared to be so bad. I accepted the fact that in this case appearances were not deceiving and this was just a really horrible movie. If you can accept that from the start then there is plenty of unintentional laughter to be had.

Once our heroes started being chased by weird ape/bat/dinosaur hybrids, I just kicked back, laughed, and shook my head at the fact that the CGI is as bad (if not worse) than what you see in Sci-Fi Original movies starring Lorenzo Lamas and Michael Paré. I wish I were exaggerating.

I honestly don't know how this movie was allowed to achieve such mediocrity. You know when one of the characters starts off with an American accent, then begins to fluctuate between American and British accents, and then eventually settles into her native British accent that everybody involved has obviously thrown in the towel and said, "Screw it, let's just get this over with." You would think that in the year 2005 a movie with an $80 million budget wouldn't look more like a movie that was made on an $8 million budget. I'm sorry, but CGI this awkward on this size of a budget is just inexcusable. Way to go Hollywood. We can only hope a few jobs are lost over this disaster.

Why do they keep making big budget drivel?

[j_kaye · 3/10 · 31 August 2005]

I just saw this movie this evening as part of a promotional screening. This movie wants to be a strong moral tale about how humans should not mess with time travel for fear of disturbing our natural evolution. However good Ed Burns is as the lead, you are never convinced by the story as it is full of clichés and seemingly tacked-on action sequences. They get chased by monsters for so much of the movie you start to ask yourself it they got confused between the sci-fi and horror genres. The special effects are plentiful, however they are atrocious, fake and gratuitous in the sense that the camera lingers on CG monsters and landscapes for so long that it seems perhaps they wanted to show off how much money they spent. But it adds nothing to the otherwise weak plot, which - now that I think of it - has a simplistic comic-book quality to it. But if the latter were completely true it should be more surreal and not have so much awful superfluous dialogue that actually just sounds like it is set on repeat ('you don't know what you are messing with in time travel..' and the like). If you happen to have nothing else to see, rent Timecop. Yes, this movie is that bad. P.S. Ben Kingsley, why did you do this movie? After seeing you in so many wonderful movies, even as a great villain in Sexy Beast, this performance just looked like you were making a bad used-car salesman impression.

Worse than expected.

[Boba_Fett1138 · 4/10 · 1 August 2006]

Yeah sure, the movie its visuals already did looked horrible and not very promising but the premise and the cast looked good, so I still sort of expected to be entertained by this movie. This however unfortunately wasn't the case. The premise is good but the story is filled with improbabilities and is logically flawed.

This movie is potential flushed down the toilet. The main plot is interesting and somewhat original. It's good enough to make a good adventurous movie out of would you think. This movie however fails to entertain and I think that that is this movie biggest flaw. Perhaps it takes itself too serious and a little bit more humor certainly wouldn't had done the movie any harm. Instead it now is nothing more than a lame and cheap looking movie, filled with the one unlikely event after the other, that also steals a bit too much from other, more successful movies. Mainely "Jurassic Park" obviously.

The characters also don't help to make the movie any more compelling or at least interesting to watch. I still think that Edward Burns did a fairly decent job as the 'heroic' main lead. The rest of the characters however really get muddled in into the movie and they get very little interesting to do. The movie rather relies on its visual, which are extremely poor. Catherine McCormack also plays a very irritating character. Basically all her character does is complain and talk about how right she was and the rest oh so wrong. Her character just isn't a likable one. And the rest of the characters...well I already have forgotten their names, I think that that is saying enough about them. It certainly is true though that Ben Kingsley's performance alone makes this movie worth watching. He is really excellent in his sort of villainous businessman role but from the moment when he disappears out of the movie the movie really goes downhill rapidly.

Visually the movie is extremely poor. It has some dreadful looking CGI effects and they couldn't even get the more simple 'blue-screen' effects look convincing in the movie. The sets are also awful and cheap looking, like they can fall over and break down every moment.

The movie never gets tense, exciting or adventurous since the story is brought in the least interesting and engaging way possible. It's a very distant movie with distant characters that fails to impress. There are plenty of action sequences but all of them are so ridicules looking and far from believable that they never get tense or good enough.

So basically this movie is lacking in everything that is needed to make a genre movie like this one a good and successful one. It's sad to see how low director Peter Hyams has sunk to the last couple of years, after making some good movies in the '70's and '80's.

4/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

No budget for FX or Advertising...

[kurosawa · 3 September 2005]

I have lived in the Los Angeles area for about a year now. When I can, I enjoy seeing free screenings of movies. As I understand it, these test screenings are done by marketing-research companies at the behest of the movie studios. You watch a movie for free and then you fill out a form explaining what you liked and didn't like about the movie. The company then selects a smaller group of viewers for a Q & A focus group.

So I saw a free screening of A SOUND OF THUNDER about six months ago. We were told that the special effects were just "mock-ups" and therefore to not judge those effects too harshly. And we were promised that for the actual release the special effects would look spectacular.

I just watched A SOUND OF THUNDER on its opening Friday and the special effects were EXACTLY the same. They used the mock-ups, the "pretend special effects," for the release.

Which leaves me to believe that the test screenings got such bad feedback that the studio decided to cut its losses. They didn't advertise this film very much and they didn't spend any REAL money on the special effects.

One thing they may have changed was some of the editing. The pace felt a little better than the original free screening. I mean the movie has a lot of problems but it seemed like some small things were cut or at least cut differently.

I'm hoping that the DVD will have a commentary track so we can hear the behind-the-scenes story of what really happened. But I doubt the studio will put any bells and whistles on the DVD release.

I agree with everyone else. This is a bad movie (with the exception of Ben Kingsley's interesting character work). But it was made worse by the studio's lack of commitment and backing.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

[RandomTask-AP · 2/10 · 31 August 2005]

The possibilities of time travel make for complex science fiction. As one of Sci-Fi's great writers, Ray Bradbury saw the potential for making a point and used it to a frightening end. As a lame-duck director, Peter Hyams saw the opportunity to make one more project and maybe give his career some much-needed resuscitation. The misaligned dichotomy simply results in a mess.

In the mid-21st Century, Travis Ryer (Ed Burns) leads prehistoric hunting safaris, from which the Time Safari (groan) company earns its bread and butter. Having seized the time machine built by Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack), Charles Hatton (Ben Kingsley) built up his company to overcharge the indulgent rich who seek to have a new experience. On a trek with a pair of thrill seeking buddies, a couple of things go wrong, and although everyone survives, the mistake causes changes in time and evolution. It is at this point where the noticeable deviation from Bradbury's story occurs. In the original tale, there was no going back to fix the problem, and the time travelers were left to face the horror of a world which had been subtly altered to permit ignorance, bigotry and fascism to be the dominant qualities of mankind. In the hands of these screenwriters, the mistake simply becomes a vehicle to generate a variety of creepy-crawly monsters that stalk the people of the story as they try to literally race against time and fix the mistake.

The script drags all the clichés out and leaves the actors to cover them. There is the greedy CEO, the disillusioned scientist, the noble hero, loyal sidekick and even a corrupt official. The scientist expresses her outrage at the corporate abuse of her invention to the hero who is a better man than she expected. All the actors do everything they can to rail against the pitfalls they are presented with. Ed Burns conveys an easy hero's swagger and knows that he'll get more mileage out of underplaying than by shouting. Catherine McCormack does a highly competent job of spouting endless reams of technobabble while managing to sound like she actually knows what she is talking about, but she and Burns simply have no romantic chemistry. How Academy Award Winner Ben Kingsley ended up as part of the production is anyone's guess, but the quirks that he piles into the carnival-mouthed "Charles Hatton" are the single best bit of entertainment.

Hyams fumbles the details to the point of insulting the audience. People make all sorts of irrational decisions just to forward the plot or introduce a set piece. When someone makes a mistake, they usually recheck their work. Here the tech drops a piece of equipment and visibly damages it. He re-stacks it and ignores it. Even the hero, at one point, declares that the party must go down into the dark, abandoned, unstable and partly flooded subway tunnels because "it's the only way". Presumably, it's better to have the odds stacked against you where you might run into bloodthirsty creatures instead of staying on stable ground where you might run into bloodthirsty creatures. Although there isn't any sort of racial subtext, the movie goes so far as to sacrifice the only major African-American character as a distraction to hungry monsters so the white people can run for their lives. It doesn't seem to be making any sort of real-world point, and the editor does struggle against this obviously outdated plot moment. However, it ultimately plays out badly and without dignity.

There is also no reason (other than it looks cool) to believe that changes in time would occur in visible waves of force that knock people and cars around, but not buildings or animals. One can imagine that this might have been at least fun in the hands of a militantly perfectionist filmmaker like Jim Cameron who beats even clichéd celluloid moments until they resound with the exact shape and feel he demands. In spite of making several films throughout the 90's and recent years, Hyams peaked with "2010: The Year We Make Contact" in 1984 - while standing on Stanley Kubrick's cinematic shoulders. Even taking the troubled production history of "A Sound of Thunder" into account, Hyams butchers the possibilities here.

The audience is denied the simple delight of watching special effects during a sci-fi adventure because of the shoddy craftsmanship and a lack of money. Several virtual sets were created to make a more complete city of the future, but they often look unrendered and more like a very good artist's drawing. However this is not a substitute for a good set, and it is painfully clear when actors are standing in front of a green screen. This was originally slated for a 2003 release, which would have put it ahead of the virtual productions of "Sky Captain" and "Sin City". Had things not been derailed by the original production company's bankruptcy (see the "Thunder" trivia section on IMDb.com), then maybe this would have been noteworthy in its attempt to push special effects boundaries. Unfortunately for the filmmakers, there were many times when the audience at this screening burst into laughter at some of the sights. The one thing that Hyams' FX team does get right is the gang of computer-generated creatures that should have been the design for the villain in his 1997 movie, "The Relic". As cool as the things look, it is 8 years and 3 movies past due.

Failures in effects and leaps of logic can be forgiven, but only up to a point. This is not a misfire form an otherwise successful director. This is a poor turn by a weak hand who refuses to respect his characters or the audience who has come to be entertained. Only the actors make the weak production bearable. "A Sound of Thunder" got a second chance to pull things together, but look into your own future and avoid watching this mistake.

2 out of 10

Every bit as bad as the bad reviews have claimed.

[aviator747sp · 1/10 · 8 September 2005]

USAToday.com called it: "A story that is a pale imitation of a Michael Crichton novel." The Los Angeles Times said: "The picture looks as murky as its story line… and most everything on the screen looks patently fake." CNN.com remarked: "'Sound of Thunder,' smell of garbage." But Variety.com summed it up nicely: "Every bit as bad as advance buzz has indicated..." And then some.

I first heard about this movie prior to its release on TVGuide.com's "Coming Soon" section. The single-sentence description suggesting a plot around time traveling safaris for the sole purpose of killing a Tyrannosaurus Rex that was going to die anyhow just seemed, well… a bit loopy, at least for a major motion picture. So I read the short story by Ray Bradbury, upon which the movie was supposedly based and, even though I had a hard time visualizing such a story expanded to 2 hours of running and screaming on the big screen, hoped for the best. After hearing and reading all of the dramatically poor reviews by movie critics and fans alike, curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to know if it was really that bad.

It is. It is every bit as bad. In fact, a half-hour into the film, I was completely alone, free to yawn, stretch, scream at the top of my lungs and move about the theater.

The basic premise is relatively simple, as it was a short story to begin with. In the year 2055, time travel has been patented by a greedy businessman played by none other than Sir Ben Kingsley (as he's credited), sporting a white wig that one movie critic likened to a lump of cotton candy, and yet another likened to a massive White Persian cat perched atop his head. I prefer the latter analogy. Time Safari, Inc. offers rich people a chance to travel 65 million years into the past to kill – not hunt – dinosaurs already predestined to die at the same place and time. As long as the merry band of time travelers remains on a path resembling transparent liquid metal that hovers above the terrain and do not interfere with the environment in any way, history and evolution as we know it are still preserved. Of course, the rigid controls supposed to be in effect are futile against a cowardly inept rich snob who carelessly stomps on a butterfly.

The Butterfly Effect is, of course, the theory that maintains that a butterfly's wings flapping on one side of the earth could eventually cause a hurricane thousands of miles away. In the movie, the effect causes ripples in time, i.e. a tidal wave in the form of a series of 'Time Waves' that exactly resemble and mimic the aquatic version, visibly sweeping over the Windy City at distant intervals and knocking the main characters around in Matrix-like slow motion shots. Immediately following each successive time wave, hideous distortions abound in the form of primordial and deadly vegetation, half-primate, half-reptilian creatures with the need to feed (on humans), giant reptilian bats, and not to be outdone, a brief cameo by the man-eating scarab beetles of 'The Mummy' fame. Seriously.

But enough about the pathetically stupid script. I wanted to know if the special effects were really as bad as people claimed. At one point, the camera tracks the two main stars, Edward Burns and Catherine McCormack, as they cross a busy futuristic street in one of the worst on-screen examples of green-screen effects I have ever witnessed in a big budget movie. I can't readily explain it with words – when you see it, you're simply distracted by how fake it is… the rendering, even the lighting contrast. In another reckless green-screen scene, Burns and co-star Jemima Rooper, whose native British accent keeps resurfacing throughout the movie, are supposed to be walking along a sidewalk and immersed in conversation, but are instead spitting out stupid dialogue while obviously stationary on a moving walkway. It's as if someone pulled the plug on the computers before CGI rendering was completed.

In Sum, 'A Sound of Thunder' is every bit as bad as the bad reviews have claimed. The script is stupid. The effects are deplorable. The acting? Who cares. It may not be nearly as bad as ''Manos' The Hands of Fate,' but I would definitely consider it to be the worst movie of 2005 (thus far), and the worst movie I ever paid to see in a theater.

Wow, can't believe I wasted 2 free movie tickets on this one

[lz3broc · 1/10 · 4 September 2005]

I saw the movie poster for this and read a blurb, and though cool, my wife and I love action adventure sci-fi flicks. I ended up getting 2 free movie tickets from work and thought I'd take my wife to see this... What can i say? this movie is bad. Many times my wife and I snickered as the FX were not much better than what most any college kid with can do with their computer, a green blanket and a MiniDV cam. It was like watching something on Sci-Fi Channel at 1am on a slow holiday at home. the people in front of us got up and left, and never came back. there were only 8 or 9 of us in the theatre to begin with and there were only 2 times for this Film, which should of warned me especially since I had never seen any commercials or trailers for this ever before.

Sure there are some parts that were cool, and some interesting tidbits, but they were hard to follow. I am saddened that this guy Peter Hyams took a good story by Ray Bradbury and turned it into this crud.

Yep, this was at least a D movie... D for Dumb, Dismal, Disappointing, and D for Don't Go see this. If you like low end Movies go rent one at your video store or turn on your Cable TV.

Austin Movie Show Review

[leilapostgrad · 1/10 · 5 September 2005]

Imagine a film student who's learning to use CGI technology for the first time. His final project in class is to create a full-length feature film using everything he's learned in class the entire semester. His film would be better than A Sound of Thunder.

It's Jurassic Park meets The Butterfly Effect, but it's total crap. The production of this futuristic, sci-fi tale (based on the classic Ray Bradbury short story) is pathetically cheap and completely distracts from an otherwise interesting story. It's 2055, and time travel is now possible. When a group of safari hunters travel back to prehistoric time to kill a tyrannosaurus Rex, an equipment failure causes one time traveler to panic and step on a butterfly, thus disrupting the entire evolution of life on earth.

Cool story, right? Poorly, poorly, poorly executed. The CGI dinosaur is a joke, as are all the other "creatures," and the futuristic outside shots are so lame you can practically see the green screen outline on the actors. Shot during the 2002 flooding of Prague, A Sound of Thunder was delayed for so long because the production company went bankrupt. And it shows.

Slow death of a great story

[jdvargas15 · 2/10 · 27 August 2005]

Another awful adaptation of a great short story, this movies had some great potential thanks to the story its based on but it took a very very wrong turn somewhere along the way. The actors don't live up to my expectations there performance is unbelievable they could have just phoned it in an saved all of us a loss of time and money..i really didn't like this movie, after the acting started to bore me to death of i thought the special effects would pay the ticket but forget it they suck most of all, a wast of a very good piece of literature..Bradbury would also say this movie really really doesn't live up to expectations for his fans

If there is any other option at the multiplex take it!!!!

Best bad movie of the year!

[mooshki · 7/10 · 3 September 2005]

I live for movies like this.

Saw it in a theater with about 12 other people. 3 people left about 20 minutes in. I'm not sure if they left because the movie was so bad or because they couldn't hear the dialogue over the laughter of the rest of us.

Mediocre special effects don't excite me. Abysmally bad special effects are wonderful. I disagree with the previous commenter -- I don't think the actors were walking on a treadmill in front of the green screen, I think they were just standing in place and shifting their weight from one foot to the other.

Sir Ben Kingsley is clearly aware of the "quality" of this film and embraces the ridiculousness, having a great time reading his absurd lines.

The plot, the dialogue, the special effects, the creatures, the actor's accents -- each piece of this movie is worse than the last. There were at least three scenes that made me laugh so hard I cried.

I love dumpster-diving through bad movies in search of treasure. The recent crop of bad movies have been just plain boring. This one is the diamond that makes it all worthwhile.

Mediocre film about time travels with several terrifying animals and a lot of of C.G.I.

[ma-cortes · 5/10 · 28 June 2006]

2055 , Chicago , Charles Hatton (Ben Kingsley) an avaricious tycoon is an owner of a valuable enterprise about time machines called Tammy that is converted in a time traveler towards the Jurasik and carrying rich tourists to kill dinosaurs . Hatton receives his clients after their time safari and he likes to compare them with great explorers : Marco Polo , Christopher Columbus , Armstrong and others . Travis (Edward Burns) is a resourceful scientist at charge of the risked hunting . Scientist Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack) as invention creator warns the dangerous experiments . Thus , the machine cannot ultimately control itself and it is created a time wave similar to Tsunami which changes the earth . Then , it appears various predator animals and colossal carnivores , humans try desperately escape of weird animals and they are chased by fanged giant creatures through a leafy vegetable city .

This thrilling sci-fi picture blends suspense , tension , bone-chilling scenes , genuine scares and amount of images have you on the edge of your seat . Abundant special effects are generally made by computer generator , as it is well reflected on an amazing array of technical bizarre creatures , such as : prehistoric Allosaurius , giant eel, mutants animals , ferocious and carnivorous plants and insects developing a bloodthirsty hunger . The film is based on a Ray Bradbury novel , a short story titled ¨A Sound of Thunder¨ but are modified some deeds , in the book the fatal accident is produced during the presidential election and the winner results to be a fascist candidate , while the movie is narrated in actioner as well as spectacular style . The picture was averagely directed by Peter Hyams (replacing Renny Harlin who was fired from the producers for disagreements with Ray Bradbury) , though production was slowed when severe floods in the summer of 2002 in the Czech Republic caused considerable damage to the set . One major reason for the film's long delay is that the original production company went bankrupt during post-production , and there simply wasn't money to finish the film . Director Peter Hyams is a nice filmmaker and usual cameraman of his films , realizing good Sci-fi titles (¨Capricorn one¨ , ¨Outland¨) and even a similar movie about time travels , but better directed , such as ¨Timecop¨(1994) with Jean Claude Van Damme . Atmospheric musical score fitting to action by Nick G. Smith . The movie failed in the box office and was exhibited in 2005 , two years later its shooting . The movie was filmed in Republic Czechoslovakia with difficulties but had a lot of floods in Praga . Rating : Average but entertaining .

Why are people so bitter?

[cheerio-1 · 10/10 · 6 September 2005]

I don't understand why people hate this movie so much. I haven't seen such scathing reviews since Gigli. It sure seems like people (both the pros on rottentomatos and the amateurs here) are just trying to outdo each other in how nasty they can be.

Let me hit the major objections:

The time waves. Oh boy, people hated the time waves. Too complicated and it was different than the previous movies they'd seen, they said. I would point out that the time-wave theory most recently appeared in the 2005 Doctor Who series, and it made sense on its own terms. The movie took care to explain why the time waves could not be passed through, and why the alternate travel at the end eliminated them. What else could you ask for? Would people prefer the lousy, nonsensical "fade-away" theory of Back to the Future? Or the Terminator style of just ignoring the paradox altogether? I for one like to see new sci-fi ideas when I watch sci-fi movies. The griping about the central plot innovation reminds of how people hated the original Ring movie for the idea of the enchanted videotape.

The SFX. Granted, they weren't at the level of Lord of the Rings, but the movie did not cost as much as Lord of the Rings. For a movie that had so little money left over for post after the Czech floods destroyed the sets during shooting, it's rather unfair to point out that there were only a handful of vehicle models and one of the street textures came from 3D Studio Max. The effects on the whole were far better than most of what we saw in the 1990s, and they were considered adequate then. To say the SFX looked like cardboard cut-outs? Give me a break. That kind of frothing at the mouth is not helpful in a review. Moreover, the SFX always advance the plot, which is something that can't be said for the Star Wars podrace or the Harry Potter Quidditch (also known as the George Lucas et al. Bathroom Break).

The acting. One of the previous comments glowingly referred to Ben Kingsley's work in Sexy Beast. Now that movie had the worst camera-work since Blair Witch and the most turgid, obvious plot, and the tardiest pacing of any movie I saw that year. If that person likes movies like Sexy Beast (I believe the polite word for that kind of movie is "dialogue-driven"), then it's their own damn fault for going to see a monster sci-fi movie. I believe the acting could be fairly described as "competent" -- easily better than the Star Wars movies, for example. Nobody is going to win an Oscar, but on the other hand it doesn't star Russell Crowe.

The script. I agree it could have used some editing, but at no point do the characters act like complete idiots. I would have liked to have seen an explanation of why the expeditions never ran into each other until the end, and why the main character just disappears at the end. But most, if not all, of the minor plot holes could have been resolved with better dialogue. For instance, instead of wasting time saying roughly "It will hurt, when you're pulled twice," the female scientist could have said "when this machine shuts down, this version of you will die." When they're going into the subway, the main character could have said "there are monsters up here and we would die; there may not be monsters down there" instead of whatever frivolous comment he made. In other movies (much of the Matrix 2 and 3, or the ending of AI), the plots simply made no sense on a first watching. It is better, in my opinion, to have a script that could use a little editing instead of one that completely bamboozles the moviegoer. Also, the repetitiveness of the movie (such as the ape-lizards which seemed to be everywhere) seemed to be because of SFX short-budgeting -- they had a limited creature budget. As I said above I think it's a little unfair to criticize the movie for being low-budget, when on the whole it looks pretty good.

I was glad to see a B-style sci-fi movie, since its been months since the 2005 Doctor Who series finished. It had big sets, famous second-tier actors, and lots of SFX. The plot was miles better than the last four or five Star Trek movies, to say nothing of Alien v. Predator, and it's a shame that it will do so much more poorly just because it doesn't have a "franchise" attached to it.

Science fiction and fantasy extreme

[nzpedals · 7/10 · 15 July 2015]

I don't understand the vitriolic and negative reviews. Were those people expecting an informative documentary like on Discovery channel? And I don't think Ray Bradbury would be upset at the treatment his short story received. His story was fantasy, well-written and clever, and putting that on the screen would be a challenge. I think the writers, producers, director and actors have done a pretty-good job of it.

From memory, Bradbury's story ends when it is discovered that evolution has changed because of a tiny alteration in a time-travel incident. But that would make the movie 37 minutes long, so the modern writers have to find a remedy, and stretch it out to a reasonable length.

Ryer (Burns) knows what has to be done and he has to get the inventor of the TAMI machine, Sonia Rand, (Catherine McCormack) to help, but New York is now a jungle and there are hordes of ape-lizards, and ape-bats and nasty eagles too. They have to get to a university with a working particle accelerator. What a challenge, through the flooded subway and always pursued by monsters.

Suspend ones reasoning, just take it for a way-out fantasy. And it looks better when watched for a second or third time.

The story is good, the characters are well-defined, the acting is good, (especially that of a support character Eccles (William Armstrong) who is absolutely terrified), and there is some memorable dialogue, so I've given it a 7.

For once, Catherine McCormack doesn't even get kissed!

A Sound of Dunder

[choirboy125 · 1/10 · 8 September 2005]

This movie was in every way horribly terrible. It's supposed to have a strong theme about the ethics and risks of time travel with lots of special effects to make it "look cool". The one problem, though, is that the movie blatantly disregards the laws of time and space continuum at parts, but then revolves around it in other parts. The use of the green screen was TERRIBLE!!! In one scene, they couldn't sync up the speed of two characters walking with the speed of the sidewalk going by. There were scenes in which you could clearly see where the set ended and the green screen picked up. If this was a big budget film, then I pity the fool that funded it. The directing was also awful. The feeble attempts to jolt the audience with pathetic scare tactics left me rolling in my seat with laughter. I would give this movie one star. The only reason that it even gets the one star is that this could be a good movie to rent with your friends if you're looking for a good laugh.

A Sound of Blunder

[rodnberry · 2/10 · 3 September 2005]

I saw this film yesterday and was a bit excited when I remembered the name being the same as that of the Ray Bradbury story it's based on, hoping that at least a fairly good interpretation could be made. Boy, was I wrong. I was almost completely aghast at the painfully obvious green screen scenes, most especially early on when Edward Burns and that one girl are facing the camera and walking towards it on a frickin' treadmill! I did like the futuristic city look and some of the car designs and wasn't too surprised to see so many cabs of the same design, either. After all, how many cabs of the model featured in "Taxi Driver" have there ever been in big cities? However, the subway trains were also painfully obvious miniatures. And if this is supposed to be 50 years in the future then why do they still use keyboards on their computers instead of flat panel screens like those we first saw on "Star Trek: The Next Generation"?

Anyway, it's very hard to do a decent time travel story (all of the Star Trek spin-offs all too often fell back on that tired plot device, more often to ridiculous resolutions than not), and it was unbelievable that the company would only take people back to the exact same point of time when the party kills the Allosaurus (I never knew they had twin red crests on their heads; I guess it was to differentiate them from the even more popular T-Rexes) because in reality they'd just keep running into themselves back then, which would then create multiple time lines! Of course, they conveniently ignored that little tidbit till later on when it was more important to the storyline.

The Allosaurus, looking huge and mean and so obviously fake (the Jurassic Parks dinos were far superior!) most likely probably would've just started eating everyone instead of waiting around for them to kill it moments before it would've otherwise died anyway, so there was no tension there for me. Well, tension of waiting for the stupid thing to start eating those idiots. The evolved baboon hybrid characters were interesting in concept but just looked and moved too unrealistically.

This film fails so badly on so many levels that I'm not sure I'd even recommend anyone rent it on DVD, no matter how much extra content may be included, like deleted or restored footage. After all, why waste anymore time watching this drivel than you could help? Bradbury should've had more of a hand during production of this film to make sure that it was more accurate to his short story, like the episode of some sci-fi series (Showtime's The Outer Limits, perhaps?) that I seem to recall doing a much better version of it.

If time travel were possible, I'd go back to just before I entered the theater!

[peter-gagliardi · 1/10 · 31 August 2005]

This movie was supremely awful! Regardless of the film's budget, the storyline was disjointed and nonsensical in its presentation. I felt like I was watching a patchwork of what remained on the cutting room floor!! I can't believe Ben Kingsley and Catherine McCormack (a stage actress of much laud and acclaim) would have anything to do with this. Whereas the root of the story is an interesting concept, the tree which sprung forth is most twisted and incomprehensible.

Every so called theoretical result of their violation of causality was perfectly understood by the constantly ranting scientist, Sonia Rand, who knew exactly what to expect and exactly how to resolve these events that presumably nobody had ever dealt with before. As they were navigating through this world which was being altered from simple plant life on up with each pass of a "time wave", racing against the inevitable change of themselves (because humans were apparently the "last species to evolve" in our time), they were constantly being harried by beasts reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen films. There was also this pathetic scene where Edward Burns, easily talked into leaving an injured man behind, watches on as the man (regressing to what seemed to be a conversation he had with someone when he was a little boy) quickly proceeds to get devoured by mutant reptilian baboons. However, all the while Dr Rand faced every challenge with the savvy of a seasoned pro, understanding the physics of it all with a clarity that the audience unfortunately were left to envy. (One quick question: how are there dinosaur-like sea creatures and reptilian baboons, which sleep suspended like bats, in this causality-altered world? Did their violation of the past extend even so far as to obliterate the asteroid in space that ended the Age of the Reptiles 65 million years ago???) The film resolves and ends with all the grace of a walk off a plank! Oh yeah, and Edward Burns seems to have an incredible knowledge of (completely alien) animal behavior, structural engineering, and fluid dynamics which I can tell you, got them out of more than a few jams.

I would only suggest you see this film if you are fanatically faithful to Ben Kingsley or Catherine McCormack, or if you are a MSTie who needs the satisfying fix of a perfect film atrocity! This movie should be dissected and studied by film students for years to try to gain a formulaic insight as to what ingredients add up to the worst possible movie.

Worst Film of the Decade

[uninv1sible · 2/10 · 4 September 2005]

After hearing about how awful A Sound of Thunder was, I decided to see it in the theater just to have a good time and laugh at something horrible. I got what I was looking for.

-- Warning: Mild Spoilers Ahead -- One of the most laughable aspects of the movie was the excessive and quite possibly the worst green-screen use I've ever seen. Even for a movie that was supposed to be released in 2003, the special effects are ludicrous. Every scene that takes place outdoors in 2055 is green-screened in such a bad way that there's absolutely no way to cover it up. The cars look like they were designed by a 2 year old with a Lego set. The Allosaurus looks like it was pulled straight from a PlayStation 1 cut-scene movie, and the way it acts when things get screwy is hilarious. There is also no explanation of the solid water-like walkway, how in the hell the government would have ever passed a time travel device that could be so dangerous, how Dr. Lucas manages to avoid the plant that grabs his gun, how the buildings were destroyed, etc. Pop-corn flick all the way.

The only reason I have given this film a 2 instead of a 1 is because of the apelizards, and IMDb has a picture of one on the Photos page. Other than that, the creators of the movie give you one beastie for each area of earth: air, land, water, and plants. People die, of course, in a way that is pure Hollywood, and you'll understand what I mean if you see this piece of trash.

Overall, the movie was made to entertain, not to make you think. Yes, there is some easily forgettable dialog involving apparently deep scientific theories, but they only scratch the surface of interest, and they are quickly wrapped up and brushed away for "action" to keep the audience from thinking too much about the fact that time travel as we now know it is basically impossible. Throw in cheesy dialog, awful editing, gigantic plot holes, the worst CGI and green-screening in years, a hunk and some large-breasted women, futuristic Super Soakers, and you get the worst film of the decade.

If time travel were possible...

[The-Atlantean · 2/10 · 6 March 2008]

... I would go back two hours and not watch this film.

--------------------------------- CONTAINS QUITE A FEW SPOILERS - And may put you off if you thought seeing this film was a good idea. ---------------------------------

I love time travel - books and movies. I've even written a few short stories using the theme myself. And also because an SF movie with CGI is always a good way to spend a couple of hours. Sorry, I should amend that - is ALMOST always a good way.

Therefore I so wanted this film to be good. I pleaded and begged it, but to no avail. I've reread this story several times since I first read it as a teenager, and the Ray Bradbury Theatre version is OK, although filmed in that weird American style of the early eighties, as if the sound's been stuck on later and with an odd colour shift.

But it was so bad it was laughable. I couldn't give a rat's arse for the CGI - if a film is good it doesn't matter - but the insane contrivances drove me mad. I overlooked the whole way the team was worked, and only mildly cringed at Ben Kingsley taking yet another nonsense film role like Species. The tripe he came out with was pathetic and actually beyond clichéd - not a phrase I thought I would ever use, and although admittedly he tried to inject humour into his ridiculous lines, ultimately it was a pained delivery. But then all the characters were cardboard, and I mean no disrespect to the actors in anything except their choice of employer.

But in memory of the great Mr B, I was still willing to give it a further go. So I also let pass the blatant contradiction at the very foundation of the film - the bit not written by Ray - they never quite seemed to understand the different scenarios of Time Travel at all - can you change the past (Terminator) or not? (Time Machine)

But added to this the time waves (although Zemeckis used a variation of them in Back to the Future - he made it seem convincing in Christopher Lloyd's able hands) were just silly, knocking people flying, having huge trees appear (sometimes simultaneously with the waves, sometimes not), without destroying any buildings or chucking any animals around: what was all that about, except special effects?

And the combat was so sad (the big eel-thing. I don't, I think, need to say more). And the way they were continually chased by steroid-ridden mandrills, and stupid giant bats (just shoot it!) And almost all the dialogue. And was there supposed to be some chemistry there? Missed that one. And the turning a university particle accelerator into a time warp device accurate to 1 minute in 150 million years and didn't they appear right there but back in time, so how did trooping across the city put him back at the T Rex?....

The more I think about this film, the more I am coming to the conclusion that I have probably seen a worse film, but I can't think what it is at the moment. For these reasons and more, I had to come here and rant about it.

Sorry about that.

Take a great short story and turn it into brain mush

[kolsky · 2/10 · 16 August 2006]

Sigh, they took a great subtle story and turned it into a load of turd. Makes no sense... No sense at all.

Time waves? Either you have changed history or you haven't...

Multiple hunter teams sent to the same point in time and none ever meet?

After the 'Final' time wave all the human structures and technologies stay intact?

Arrrrrrrrrrgh...

The only reason I gave it a 2 instead of a 1 is the fact that the reevolution of the human chick was SOOOOOOOO cute...

Otherwise, shame on you guys, you really screwed up...

Good and Bad

[knight_armour · 7/10 · 30 December 2005]

I heard the special effects in this movie was nothing to crow about. What I heard was right. While the dinosaur(s) - I'm not sure if plurality is warranted here - looked rather poorly modeled, the other creatures in the movie were passable. The story had so much potential but a rather poor script and lack of funding (I guess) ruined it. Despite all that, whatever remained was enough to carry me through the 95 minutes this movie ran. Ben Kingsley's talents were rather wasted, in my opinion. Overall, it starts off slow but picks up somewhere in the middle and keeps you interested if you are not the nitpicking type. Perhaps a better version or a similar story to it (with a bigger budget) will be released in the future.

Make the pain stop!

[horrorshow_devotchka13 · 1/10 · 5 February 2007]

This is the worst movie I have seen in a very long time and I have seen some pretty awful movies. This movie wouldn't have been entertaining if I had been as drunk as a sailor! It is very rare that I will come across a movie that literally, makes my head hurt. As a result of watching this movie, I suffered a massive headache for the next two days that the heaviest painkillers couldn't touch. It was bad. Time waves? Come on! Plus, if they had altered something in the past, by the time they got back to the present, the entire world would have already adapted to the change and no one would know the difference except the travelers. Logic. Please use it.

Also, I feel horrible for the author of the short story. It's always tragic when a great piece a literature gets desecrated like this.

Lets not be so harsh and short sighted.It is a good movie all things considered.

[Bhaian · 9/10 · 1 December 2005]

Before watching the movie I logged on to IMDb and looked at the user ratings just to check what I'm headed towards.After looking at the poor ratings I was put off and didn't even want to watch the movie.But I am not one of those people who need ratings on a website, other peoples' opinions to watch or not watch a movie.And I only declare a movie "GOOD" or "BAD" after actually watching it.So I watched it and much to my surprise, all things considered, it is a pretty good effort. So what if the special effects are not too good the whole idea of evolution and time travel works for me. Yes I too don't believe in evolution, but that is what movies are for. If all you people who voted 1 to 5 for it think it is that bad i'd suggest you watch documentaries from now on as by voting this low for A SOUND OF THUNDER you insult the essence of the word 'MOVIE' and their-in imagination itself.Granted his movie has its flaws but it deserves at least a 6 rating, no matter what anyone says.

Great movie, but the greatness is spoiled by horrible CG

[Nyssareen_77 · 7/10 · 12 May 2022]

This is such a good movie! The plot, writing, and acting are really good, but the use of old, clunky CGI is really distracting in some places. The animals and plants are actually really well done for 2005, but every time they do vehicles it is distracting, and I have no idea why they chose to do most of the modern-time street scenes entirely in CGI. This is one that I do actually wish someone would redo with better effects, but leave the rest of it alone.

Disappointing

[HEPgrad · 3/10 · 5 September 2005]

** Might contain spoilers **

I went to see this movie on opening night because the synopsis indicated that it might be just the kind of scifi flick I enjoy but it turned out to be quite ridiculous. I decided I just had to comment on how logic totally fails in this movie but going over the other user reviews I see that other people had similar thoughts. I'll write my piece anyway.

How can a butterfly which is destined to die in an exploding volcano (which presumably will wipe out everything for miles around as we witness the actors running against time away from the ash) cause such drastic changes in the timeline? It cant pollinate a flower that some animal would snack on. Neither the butterfly nor the plantlife would survive!! How can changing the past influence the future in waves? What determines the time interval of these "waves"? Why would you remember what reality used to be like if it no longer exists? Besides, wouldn't this cause an ambiguity in the time loop? If the present is different, how can one go back to the past & alter it? One more thing, if there were no builders (since homo-sapiens apparently don't evolve in the new reality), why are the buildings still standing?

The special effects were not that great, beginning with the first scene from the past (looks like something from Jumanji). The acting was really not that great either. I would expect to be more panicked (and yes, cursing, sweating profusely and perhaps angry, to boot) if I'm being chased by carnivores! The mouth-to-mouth in the water filled subway tunnel was laughable. And even though Ed Burns looked great with his permanent stubble, he lacked the raw sensuality or intensity of say Richard Gere (who he resembles remarkably).

The only saving grace of this movie as far as I'm concerned is that it is set in the future Chicago. Always nice to see renditions of that (as in "I Robot"). There was even a shot of the Corn-cobs with high up passages leading to another building (yet to be built). Altogether it was quite disappointing.

Couldn't agree more with the first review.

[horrordotcom · 1/10 · 3 September 2005]

This movie was hands down the WORST movie I've ever seen in theaters... EVER. Not only was the acting total rubbish, but the effects were something me and a few friends could pull off with a super 8 and some plastic dinosaur figures. They were just horrendous. The film also was grainy, and the colors were all washed out...well when it wasn't pitch black. It looked like crappy old stock of 16mm... hmmm, maybe my idea of shooting it when i was a kid isn't so far off.

So, the story is useless, leaving every corner in another direction, and leaving everything entirely unexplained, and in most cases, launching into new subjects altogether. It's actually hard to think of this film again, even to write this review.

Honestly, once you see the obvious stages, the stock footage, and the CGI that is the worst thing to ever be seen in theaters, you'll be so far OUT of this film that nothing could save it. And... it didn't. Now, I like Ed Burns, for what he is. his rom/coms are fun, and I like what he does in them, but the only person with less range is Keanu, and in acting horribly he wasn't alone in this film. The cast was just horrible - Kingsley and all.

The green screens were something that would make a crappy film school production look Oscar worthy. The fact that 90% of the cues were off (ie: an actor looking right, when their attacker is on the left, yeah it happened, and more then once). Then there were HORRIBLE continuity scenes, jumping back and forth so many times out of cue you almost wanted to stand up and bit@h slap the film itself.

OK, I gotta end this. DO NOT see this movie. It is the worst thing to EVER EVER EVER be released on film, and I'll hold that up against anything.