@mechajutaro said:

My guess; not enough folks saw it, and TMDB is still building it's membership as the heir to IMDB

The low ratings seem consistent. Right now it has a 4.7 on IMDB as well.

@acontributor said:

You're guess is as good as mine. My main criticism is about the premise since it's very impractical for everyone to leave Earth even if its atmosphere is poisoned all of a sudden. If they can set up airtight greenhouses on rocket ships, they can do it on Earth. It's a lot easier and less risky than sending everyone into space. Earth already has massive underground shelters in place as well.

Another reason might be just that most people expect more from a science fiction movie. These days it's rare to see science fiction that doesn't also have a horror or adventure element to it.

As far as practical/impractical, I thought this film was making a deeper point. After my OP I went out to try to find some reviews/critiques of IO. It seems like most people (both viewers and critics) found it painfully slow and dull (for example the Rotten Tomatoes reviews were scathing). Some folks didn't like that the dude left at the end (which kinda misses the point if you were paying attention...Sam literally says, "Go and tell them to come back to us." This works logically and with the ending.). The other main criticisms came from scientifically minded people saying this isn't how it would be, blah blah blah. I don't fault them for wanting accuracy, but again, it's not the main narrative feature.

In the end, I think I liked it because it was beautifully shot, raised a cultural issue, and dealt with it in a surprising way. It was as much a character/humanity study as a SciFi flick, and I suppose that turns off many in the SciFi realm. Fair enough.

I found it boring, I think 4 is suitable rating for it.

@acontributor said:

If they can set up airtight greenhouses on rocket ships, they can do it on Earth. It's a lot easier and less risky than sending everyone into space. Earth already has massive underground shelters in place as well.

This is what bugged me about the Mars series from a few years ago. They interview all these luminaries irl about Mars who keep harping on the idea that we HAD TO colonize Mars, a planet that would take a year to reach, has no native life, temps that wouldn't support life, no atmosphere, and about 1/2 Earth's gravity, because the future of the human race depended on it. It makes me LOL so hard.

Most sci-fi is fairly dumb, but as for this title, it appears to feature a bIack character. Do bIack audiences watch sci-fi? Also, I do believe there's some fatigue with respect to the forced diversity in casting lately. People of liberal persuasions would see the poster art and think, "oh look, a descendant of slaves escaping Earth. How nice." The bIack audience would look at the poster art and think "what's he doing with that white girl? The Asian audience would look at the poster art and think "he's not Denzel Washington. Why would I want to watch him?"

I prefer sci-fi, but I saw the poster art, read the log line, and wasn't motivated to watch it, even for free.

While it's certainly true that 'star power' helps to sell tickets and good acting can better "sell" the story to the viewer, it's not my biggest gripe with this movie. I actually thought the the main duo was just fine, but the story itself was just too weak. I don't need a horror or a comedy aspect in a sci-fi movie as long as the story is solid, and here it's biggest problem - the scientific premise doesn't check out and consequently all the science part becomes almost irrelevant or at the very least very questionable. And considering that this is a sci-fi movie, there goes about half of what the viewer is supposed to buy into.

The philosophical part of the story is enticing, but the movie just glosses over it quite quickly - not allowing the viewer to contemplate on the subject with more impactful scenes. Ultimately the ending felt rushed leaving viewer with several unanswered questions. Overall, the story development is just too slow, the twist is quite predictable and combined with plot holes and the rushed ending it's just about average. As a result I rated it 5/10*.

It's actually a shame since it seemed promising.