Attraction (film, 2017)

Hakon, a representative of an extraterrestrial race , biologically identical to the human, but more advanced technologically, wanted to secretly fly to planet Earth for research. At this time in Moscow, people gather in large open spaces to observe an unusual phenomenon - meteor shower . The alien ship - “Sol” - fell precisely into this stream of meteorites, and its masking system was disrupted. The Russian military discovers an unidentified object , not like a meteorite , over the territory of Russia and, suspecting that it may belong to NATO , decide to shoot it down with accompanying interceptors . As a result, a wrecked giant alien ship crashed in Moscow, while destroying and damaging several metropolitan high-rise buildings. As a result of the disaster, 232 people are killed and more than 500 injured.

The leadership of the defense department of the Russian Federation , represented by the commandant of the city, Colonel Valentin Lebedev, decides not to allow the development of the conflict and wait for further events, since the ship did not show any aggression, despite the attack of earthlings. It becomes obvious that representatives of extraterrestrial civilization are trying to fix their transport. For this reason, the site of the fall was surrounded by a fence and cordoned off by the military. In Moscow, a curfew was announced in connection with the events.

The plot also focuses on the relationship between Muscovites: schoolgirl Julia Lebedeva, her father, Colonel Valentin Lebedev, who manages the defense department’s operations] in connection with the incident, and Artyom, a friend of Julia, a representative of modern aggressive youth from Chertanov. Relations do not develop in an incomplete family of Lebedevs - the father, being a military man, is constantly busy, and he is little interested in the details of his daughter's life. He is very strict and in his own way, in a military way, tries to protect her from troubles, the same teenager protests and tries to arrange her life herself. Being a high school student, Julia meets with Artyom, who does not find approval from Valentin Lebedev.

During the disaster, a close friend of Julia and Artyom, Svetlana Morozova, dies, which causes both hatred of the aliens. Trying to figure out the purpose of the visit of an alien ship, the guys, together with their friends, secretly go to the closed zone of its fall, cordoned off by the military. There they meet with Hekonom, dressed in a high-tech exoskeleton . The alien saved Julia from falling from a dilapidated skyscraper, but he himself suffered as a result of the aggressive actions of Artyom and his friends.

The guys find an alien exoskeleton and take it to their garage for study. Unbeknownst to them, Hakon fell out of his suit and, unconscious, was picked up by Julia, who came to him under cover of night to help him recover and "get out of planet Earth."

Meanwhile, the military finds one of Hakon’s artifacts, takes them to a laboratory, and tries to research it.

Julia, with the help of a classmate, decided to transfuse her own blood to an alien, since his anatomy is very close to human. Recovering Hakon (as Julia called him - Khariton ) looks like an ordinary young man. At the same time, he almost instantly masters the Russian language. Khariton briefly tells Julia about the goals of his visit and asks to help him get his high-tech items back and return to his ship, Sol. Still burning with anger, Julia chases him out, and, not knowing the rules of conduct on a street in Moscow, he ends up at the police station. Some time later, Julia calms down and still decides to help the stranger, using her position as the daughter of Colonel Lebedev. Together with Khekonom, they manage to return to him an artifact (the so-called "shilk"). All this leads to the development of romantic feelings between Julia and Khariton.

During a visit to the Max Korz music concert, Hakon and Yulia literally for a moment teleported to Hakon’s home planet, which, unlike Earth, is ecologically cleaner, the climate is identical to Earth and where death is defeated . The stranger said that in reality he was not going to get to Earth, but because of meteor shower the ship lost control and he had to board. If people try to get close to the ship, Sol, according to the alien protocol, will destroy it so that the technology of the aliens does not reach people. After the disco, Hakon and Yulia go to a closed area, but they meet a group of aggressive guys led by Artyom who beat them. As a result of the skirmish, Hakon manages to repel the attack, and one of the attackers is mortally wounded from a pistol due to the intervention of Julia. The military noticed this and immediately arrested Hakon and Julia, while the attackers managed to escape.

The death of people as a result of the ship’s catastrophe, domestic difficulties (the ship becomes the cause of depletion of water in the city, as the ship’s material absorbs water strongly — it is brought and released at a rate), as well as hysteria in the media and social networks, cause growing dissatisfaction with local residents and the desire to expel aliens. It is Artyom, inflated to the limit with various troubles, who calls Muscovites to revolt against the authorities and attack the alien ship in order to “protect their land” from outsiders.

Having broken through the perimeter defense, the rebels approached the ship, but were stopped by bots of an alien race, protecting the secrets of more advanced technologies. The Russian military also tried to stop the escalation of the conflict. Being in a state of affect, Artyom puts on the previously found Hackon exoskeleton and in it arrives at the battle with strangers. Bots also did not want to harm earthlings, their goal was to protect their technologies from people and they sought to minimize the number of victims. In the end, the confrontation ended happily. No one died, the rebels were neutralized. However, Khariton suffered: having covered Julia with his body, he was shot by Artem from a machine gun .

The bots carried the bodies of Julia and Hackon to the ship. Julia’s life was saved. The artificial intelligence (AI) of the ship briefly told Colonel Valentin Lebedev about the purpose of the visit, observing the problems of mankind on planet Earth throughout history and plans for an alien race for contacts in the future. AI also said that Hakon, who had biological immortality, sacrificed his life to save Julia's life.

The plot of the film is expressed in the form of voiced thoughts of Julia at the end of the film: “The truth is that one stranger from far space believed in us more than we ourselves. People say that they will not be able to live as before ... I certainly can not ... ".

At the end of the film, signs of the current ship regeneration mechanism appear around the body of Hackon (a hint that he may have survived).

The music for the picture was written by composer Ivan Burlyaev. The soundtrack includes 34 tracks ^[12] . To record the soundtrack, the latest musical workstation (synthesizer) Yamaha Montage 8, which was not sold anywhere else, was used at that time.

On January 26, the soundtrack for the film was released on Yandex.Music ^[13] , and on January 27 in iTunes .

The shooting took place in strict secrecy in different regions of Moscow, mainly in Chertanov , and at the facilities of the Ministry of Defense with the participation of the latest military equipment of the Russian armed forces . The shooting involved APCs , helicopters, robots, drones , Tiger and Typhoon armored vehicles, as well as the Admiral Kuznetsov heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser ^[14] .

During the filming, the actor Alexander Petrov cut open his leg with glass and damaged his tendons, after which he was forced to remove his cast and use an understudy ^[15] . In addition, Fedor Bondarchuk expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the close relationship between the main characters - actress Irina Starshenbaum and actor Alexander Petrov - creates difficulties in the production of the film ^{[16] [17]} .

Filming was completed on December 12, 2015 ^[18] . The budget of the film amounted to 380 million rubles ^[6] or, according to other sources, 520 million rubles including film marketing ^[19] .

Visual Effects

The visual effects involved 255 artists of the Russian company “Main Road Post”, which until that time worked on the films “ Metro ”, “ August. Eighth ”,“ Particularly Dangerous ”,“ Stalingrad ”,“ Duelist ”. It took about a year and a half to work with effects. The most complex effects are considered to be the moment the spacecraft crashed ^[20] .

The first trailer for the film was shown on June 9, 2016 on the Rossiya television channel in the Vesti program ^[21] . The second trailer was released in September 2016 on YouTube on the Sony Pictures channel ^[22] . The third trailer was released there in November ^[23] .

The rental and distribution of “Attraction” was handled by Columbia Pictures ^[24] . The premiere of the film took place on January 22, 2017 at the Formula Kino Chertanovo movie theater (Severnoe Chertanovo district) ^[25] . The film was released in wide distribution on January 26 in Russia ^[26] . In China, the film will be released later ^[27] .

He became one of 34 films approved for distribution in China. ^[28] Rental is planned in 43 countries ^[29] . Later it became known about 74 countries ^[30] .

On the first day of rental on January 26, the film raised 44 million rubles ^[31] . For the first three days at the Russian box office, the film collected 267.6 million rubles ^[32] . According to preliminary data, the film collected 413.4 million rubles in the first week of rental, showing 5 results among Russian films ^[33] . The film led the second week of hire, collecting 275.2 million rubles ^{[34] [35]} .

In total, on March 1, 2017, the film’s box office amounted to more than 1 billion rubles ^[36] , which made “Attraction” the highest-grossing film of 2017 in Russia at that time ^[37] . Analysts noted that the picture, and a month after the premiere, continued to stay among the leaders of the rental ^[38] .

The rights to hire “Attraction” were sold to 74 countries around the world ^[39] . According to the Roskino company, “Gravity” was the most popular among western distributors among Russian films of 2017 ^[40] .

As Bondarchuk himself says, the film has social implications , but even without the director’s comments, it is clear that the aliens in “Gravity” merely personify the image of a “stranger” ^[41] .

According to the scriptwriters ^[42] , the reason for the creation of the film was the riots in Biryulev 2013 .

The film received generally restrained and approving reviews in the Russian press. More or less positive reviews were published by the authors of Afisha ^[43] , Kommersant ^[44] , Fantasy World ^[45] , KG Portal ^[46] , Colta ^[47] , Forbes ^[48] , “ Komsomolskaya Pravda ” ^[49] ,“ Arguments and Facts ” ^[50] ,“ The Art of Cinema ” ^[51] and“ Snob ” ^[52] . Neutral reviews were published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta ^[53] , Poster Mail.ru ^[54] , Film.ru ^[55] and Alex Exler ^[56] . Critics of Regnum ^[57] and TimeOut ^[58] spoke negatively about the film. Lenta.ru noted negative reviews of some users of social networks ^[59] . The average rating was 6.3 ^[60] —6.5 ^[9] out of 10. In the Western press, “Gravity” received a neutral review from Hollywood Reporter , whose author called the film secondary and too straightforward in its morality, but fascinating and spectacular ^{[61 ]} .

Positive reviews noted the main subtext of the film as criticism of xenophobia and lies in the media (“this is the first genre anti-fascist film” ^[47] , ““ Attraction ”demonstrates and exposes the mechanisms of mass manipulation ” ^[43] ). Oleg Menshikov’s acting and special effects were also praised (“each scene looks like all 380 million rubles” ^[45] ). In the negative reviews, the script was primarily criticized, some authors noted plot holes in it (“the script relies on endless assumptions and incredible coincidence of circumstances” ^[58] ). Some critics, known for their xenophobic views, noted the film’s subtext, on the contrary, as a flaw (“Bondarchuk shot an undisguised and very effective propaganda of migrant love” ^[62] , “Bondarchuk’s film is oriented to the West, where they will be happy to see Russian savages” ^[57] ) . In both positive and negative reviews, the film was described as a fantastic melodrama ; noted that the advertising campaign mistakenly presented the film as an action movie (“The problems addressed in the film are much deeper and more relevant than it might seem from the promo video” ^[46] ).

According to co-producer Alexander Andryushchenko, in case of commercial success, the continuation of the film will be shot ^[63] . According to the director Fyodor Bondarchuk, the script for the continuation has already been written ^[64] .

In March 2017, the project director Fyodor Bondarchuk officially confirmed the continuation of the project ^[65] . The budget for the second part is planned in the amount of 645 million rubles ^[66] . July 25, 2018 in the media there were reports that the shooting of the picture began in Moscow ^[67] .

The estimated release date for the movie Invasion (Attraction 2) is January 1, 2020 ^[68] .

• The official page on the website of Art Pictures