Wonderland (2024)

Interesting short stories only told at surface level, and a lack of understanding in AI

Okay, this movie is... weird. It feels like an incomplete draft with missing scenes, actually it's almost like they had shot a short series and edited the key scenes into a movie. There is not enough context and world building which makes it confusing. I get that the science fiction aspect of this movie is not its focus, but it really needed an extra 15-20 minutes at the start to properly explain how exactly this Wonderland service works. Like how are the AI characters programmed and what are they programmed with? There are so many ambiguities but they'll be spoilers. It's almost like the movie itself doesn't know the answers. I can't tell if the director is inexperienced in the sci-fi genre or they cut out those scenes because the basic foundation to make a coherent story wasn't there. At one point towards the end it was straight up a fantasy movie and not science fiction anymore lmao.

But then, I actually like the subject matter, the actors and parts of the movie especially in the first half. Most of the scenarios were actually interesting and complex -- but they weren't fleshed out at all. Which brings me to the point that this movie just has too many characters. Basically every story was only on surface level, some were just left hanging or abandoned. Suzy and Park Bogum's arc especially suffered from this, it needed way more screentime to be properly developed. I hate to say this but some of their parts felt half-baked and wasted their onscreen chemistry. Tang Wei on the other hand had the most complete arc and probably the most touching one.

It's a shame because I think if they expanded the material and went more in-depth for each arc, or removed all the arcs other than Suzy/PBG and Tang Wei's, it would have been way better. But alas the potential was wasted. Nonetheless, I think at the very least this movie can spark some interesting post-watch discussions.

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