there are 2 ways to approach a sci fi flick, the premise for just about sc i-fi film is the event, whether its 2001, travelling to Jupiter in 2001, or struggle with an Apocalypse, the choice the film maker must take is to decide to either take the Macro-scopic view you can also call it the Micheal Bay view of making a movie or you can take the microscopic view.
Bay Formers takes a the macro view, everything is grand and epic, armies versus armies, everything is giant and big, explosions are huge, the action is epic in scope, but all during the movie you couldn't care less about Sam or his new girl friend Carly or the Autobots.
Another Earth was refreshing because it took a pin point, microscopic view of the event, (both movies had similar events, another planet coming into earth's view) but Another Earth developed the characters and you really cared about what happens to them, you cared about Rhoda and her quest for forgiveness, you hoped to see John get better and recover from his grief.
Another good example was Bladerunner, it was a microscopic view of Decker and really nothing else, we really weren't show what happened on outward off plants, we didn't get to see how the replicants rebelled or even what they were planning to accomplish. (yes I know its based on a book that answers my questions but I'm talking about the movie)
So my point is I really enjoyed Another Earth because it took the road less travelled, it went against the grain of most modern sci fi films. kudos to them and to a wonderful film, great story telling!
There are movies which tried really hard to straddle both approaches, Avatar made a solid attempt at being micro as well as macro. David Lynch's Dune tried to accomplish this also. I think the movie which was able to accomplish this well was Inception, it was able to bring the story down to a personal character driven level yet it kept a very epic scope in story telling.
Excellent analysis.
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