Welcome back for another edition of A Second Look with Jeff Stockton! In this segment I will take a "second look" at a past LRF release with a fresh set of eyes.
When Nexus first hit in Season 10, I remember landing in a pretty specific middle ground: I didn’t dislike it across the board, but I couldn’t shake the sense that it was an ambitious original sci-fi trying to explain itself into greatness rather than earning it. The core setup is clear enough—Arda, year 2500, a once-prosperous society now crushed under the decades-long tyranny of Commander Only (Jeremy Irons). After Only discards his longtime general Scathal (Ben Kingsley) in the wake of his wife’s funeral, Scathal links up with rebel Milo (Joel Edgerton) and forms “Nexus,” gradually recruiting Kassidy (Natalie Dormer), Orion (Michael B. Jordan), Tyrin (Rob Gronkowski), and Sergio (Daniel Kaluuya) to chase Only across hostile regions (desert Ranel, the monarchy of Ilvania, the island Zadiv) before storming his ship, the Red Mark, for a final confrontation that ends in an escape-and-sequel-tease. Back then, my biggest positives were fairly specific: it was refreshing to see Kingsley in a big-budget genre piece as something other than the obvious villain, and some of del Toro’s world-building instincts do peek through the haze - enough that I could see the movie it wanted to be. But it also felt overly convoluted and sluggish out of the gate, with far too much runway devoted to narration and setup, and not nearly enough to making me care - even something as fundamental as the wife’s death is treated like a plot memo rather than a dramatic event.
Taking "A Second Look" my opinion is a bit harsher - and honestly, I think the film earned that harsher look. The exposition isn’t just heavy; it’s structural, as if the script is terrified we’ll miss a detail, so it keeps talking instead of dramatizing, and the “Nexus” team’s emotional dynamics (Milo vs. Scathal, Tyrin’s seduction, Orion’s rage) repeatedly get explained or announced rather than built through behavior and choices. The casting is the real anchor, though: it’s hard to buy this particular ensemble as a cohesive rebel unit, and the stunt casting is especially disruptive—Gronkowski and Kate Upton don’t just feel “miscast,” they feel like they’re from a different movie, which keeps puncturing whatever gravity the story is trying to conjure. Even the pieces that should be slam-dunks - Irons as a tyrant, del Toro’s supposed creature-meets-tech imagination, the promise of a propulsive trek across distinct landscapes - get swallowed by franchise-minded sprawl. The film keeps widening its scope (drones, royalty, multiple realms, “weakness transcripts,” sequel propulsion) instead of tightening into one great central narrative with a clear emotional engine. In hindsight, Nexus plays less like the first chapter of an epic and more like a pitch deck that accidentally got filmed.
Original Grade: C
New Grade: D+
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