(SPOILER WARNING!!! This article does contain spoilers, if you haven’t seen the movie, just see the first paragraph to be informed without spoilers!!!)

Everest is a good mountain climbing movie with awesome cinematography of Mt. Everest, but the story may be too tragic for my liking.

Rating: 4 Stars

There hasn’t been many mountain climbing movies as of late. It seems to me that as a kid there was a lot of those kinds of movies. Of course, as a kid, I was blown away by these kinds of movies, and the tragedy it can bring. I remember movies like K2, and how good that movie was watching as a kid. Now, if my memory serves correctly, the last mountain climbing movie has been the so so movie vertical Limit which really shows the dangers of an adventure like climbing the highest mountain. There was even a Christian movie about mountain climbing called The Climb, which at the time was the best Christian movie I’ve seen, All these movies have a thrilling capacity that makes these enjoyable, but the stories can be a little too thin. Now that I heard that they are making another on about Mt. Everest, I was in, because we haven’t seen a mountain climbing movie in a while. Then when I heard the cast, I was all the way in. When I try to see it in a regular movie theater, it wasn’t there. Ends up, that it is exclusively on IMAX, which made sense to me. So that’s what i did.

What I Like: Let me start of by saying the cinematography of this movie was awesome. Director Baltasar Kormakur really created nice scenes of the beauty of Mt. Everest, and the country of Nepal. Kormakur really did  great job of showing the culture of Nepal, and why they pride themselves of the Himalayas Mountains and the tourism it brings. That one scene where they were crossing a long rope bridge from one mountain to another was awesome and shows how scary that trek can be. The character development in this movie was spot on. With that big of a cast, it is hard to do, but they managed. Really the story is about mountain climbing companies who take people to climb Mt. Everest with all the safety precautions necessary, and each climber has their own unique story of why it is important to them to reach the summit. With most of these characters you can relate, and actually try to pull for them. The acting in this movie was top notch, but you expected that with these great actors on board.

The So So: When I went in to see this movie, I thought it was a fictional survivor type of movie, but as the movie began I found out it was true story. So it made me even more intrigue. As the climax in the movie progressed it started to really become a tragedy which wasn’t expected of me. So when the movie went down, all the deaths was really depressing for me. Especially when the main character, the mountain climber director Rob Hall, played by Jason Clarke, tragically die. Out of all the characters, he was the one I was hoping he survives, because he was doing it to help all the people reach their goals even if it means pushing the envelope a little bit. Now he left his pregnant wife Jan, played by Keira Knightly, to be all by herself. Seeing all these good people die, was just too depressing and tragic for me. (Especially when I thought it was going to be a survivor story, not a tragedy.) The fact that it is a true story is even more depressing.

What I Didn’t Like: The movie spends so much time developing the characters and make them relatable that when their deaths happened it was so fast and simple. I believe the movie didn’t gave their deaths justice, and they deserved that at least. The one character that did survive was Beck Weathers, played by Josh Brolin, was in my opinion the least relatable and least developed character in the movie. I didn’t take a liking to him from the beginning, (maybe cuz he was wearing a Dole/Kemp T-shirt), and he’s the one that survives. If he died, I wouldn’t have cared. Jake Gyllanhaal’s character as Scott Fischer, who pretty much played a douche in the movie, deserved more to survive than Beck. The way he survived maybe miraculous, and painful with all the frost bites, but a movie with great attention to mountain climbing detail, never really explained how he survived the storm, while others didn’t. The climax of when the storm approached was too quick, and expected more from the story. Also, when all the characters were starting to climb Mt. Everest, it was hard to differentiate from one another because they were all practically wearing the same jackets and face covered. It kept me guessing whose who, and confused me a lot.

Overall: The movie is cool to watch and seeing the great shots of Mt. Everest on IMAX made it worth it to see it in that format. Just be prepared for it to be a tragedy without a happy ending. I realized I’m a sucker for happy endings, but can you really blame me!!!

Rating: 4 Stars

(Sidenote: The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel- A sequel that really wasn’t necessary, especially when I wasn’t a fan of the first one. Just like the first movie, I couldn’t care for the characters, and what they were doing. The problems were almost similar to the first movie. It is greatly castes and acted, but that is all I give credit for. Not even a great cast can forgive how boring this movie is. Especially when they make two of these snooze fests.
Rating: 2 Stars)