Kon-Tiki

What a weird coincidence that such a movie came out attempting for an Oscar nomination the same time with Life of Pi, with both exhibited many similar things about survival in the ocean, though the subject matter in each film may be entirely different.

Anyway, even though I have not watched nor have any knowledge of the original, I am impressed with the way this film was made. It was pretty well-balanced with no major flaws in my opinion. Well acting performances by the cast were complemented by a high level of cinematography technique that made looked like the entire journey on the raft was really shot wide in the ocean. Like Life of Pi, there were certain marine animals that were infamously being shown from the real life account of Kon-Tiki, and the CGI made on the animals were so real you probably cant tell if those animals were fake.

Probably the major point of improvement that the film can work on is the lack of character development of the other participants in the Kon Tiki, aside from Thor Heyerdahl himself. I am not implying there was none, as we get to see Thor's mates conflicts happening from the start till the end, but I wish I could have known more why they decided to join and their background story. Understandably, with the time given the film had chosen to focus on Thor instead with a lot of plot material explaining why he had to venture into such a journey.

I was also curious if there were more that could be shown about a group of men enduring a raft journey across the ocean in +100 days. But overall, just by solely comparing the similarities, this is much better and believable than Life of Pi as well as a very satisfying movie experience.