Alpha (film): Some great visuals, but mostly a pretty boring story

Alpha is a 2018 film that is officially called a "historical adventure." However, it is based on events that are pure speculation in a place and time that isn't exactly defined - i don't suppose that really matters. It had a massive budget and had some truly impressive scenes that at times, for me, were a bit difficult to look at (due to a fear of heights.) In the end of it all the impressive visuals weren't really enough to balance out the rather boring and exceptionally predictable storyline.

As always I will attempt to be spoiler-free but if you want to go into a movie totally blind it is always better to avoid these things

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The film doesn't give us much information about where the story is taking place but we can see that it is in a rather unforgiving environment, presumably somewhere quite far north. The story focuses on the son of a tribe leader who is a teenager going through the rites of becoming a man, his name is Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee.)

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Keda doesn't seem terribly up to the task and is fearful and hesitant despite his father's patient urging. During a main hunt Keda is separated from the group and is presumed dead and thus the real adventure begins that I am certain you can figure out based on the movie poster alone. If not, the description and trailer both are very clear on this so don't get on my case for spoiling! :P

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The movie was filmed primarily in Canada but of course it is pretty evident that a lot of the film is CGI and that is just fine because most of it is done very well. Some of the scenes involving animals are a bit dodgy and cheap looking, but for the most part, i was very impressed with all the visuals.

I just can't say the same for the story: Don't get me wrong, i like the overall theme here, but you know exactly what is going to happen (in an overall sense) and it doesn't really deviate from that at all - the only surprising things are the use of situations that are extremely impractical or perhaps, impossible such as when this tribe, who makes all manor of things for hunting has no idea how to make rope or perhaps even what it is. But i suppose the entire story is predicated on them not knowing how so i guess i'll just cool my jets. There is another instance where the tribe has been shown walking for days with very little baggage and then one of the leaders says "get the carts" and they magically appear despite the fact that they didn't bring any carts with them.

_{from the Official Sony Pictures channel}

I do admire the fact that they use a completely made up language in this film although a great deal of the film is spent telling the story via imagery rather than using words. This is a technique similar to Apocalypto and at the start of the film it is not clear whether or not you are supposed to be using subtitles or not.

Basically, don't expect any twists in this visually pleasing story - because there aren't any. The happenings are pretty much telegraphed well ahead of time but it is still an endearing story that is fun to see and their 50 million dollar budget ensured that it was going to be pleasing to the eyes.

One interesting side note about this movie is that it was denied its "no animals were harmed during the making of this film" when it was discovered that 5 bison actually were killed during the production. It is unclear whether this was an accident or intentional.

My overall rating?