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Capt. Nemo
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
630 Posts |
 Posted - 12/13/2008 : 9:27:32 PM
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Well?
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"Ward, the Beaver blew up the 7-11 again."
"I'll have a talk with him Dear" |
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2008 : 08:40:24 AM
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As to not give too much away but ***SPOILERS BELOW***, the highlights are:
- Jennifer Connelly can't act
- Annoying kid...really annoying kid. Had the aliens announced they were destroying the earth because of him, I could have bought it.
- TDTESS or product placement hell?
- Amazingly, the reason the aliens wanted to wipe out humanity made more sense than the 1951 version. It was still weak, but definitely more plausible.
- Morality wise, the aliens are superior in that they will save the life of someone even though they just unleashed Gort to wipe out humanity.
- Kathy Bates was badly miscast.
- The US military has the ability to move a 50" tall robot and then happens to have a facility in which to study it.
- When an object is about to strike the earth at amazing speeds, it is best to have your science team hovering around the impact point in helicopters.
The best summation is that it isn't bad enough to be good. Even with it's short running time I was hoping for it to be over. I wouldn't see it for more than matinee pricing.
I summon Bigger Fish! |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2008 : 2:17:12 PM
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I thought it was better than I expected, but by no means good. The core of the movie is intimistic and has the best moments, like when the kid takes Klaatu to the cemetary, but whenever the movie retorts to blowing stuff up or having lots of people walking around the scene the whole thing screeches to a halt.
And yes, the kid is nauseating, there are problems with logic everywhere* and the whole thing isn't much fun.
* My favourite WTF moment was when Klaatu is shot and the doctor who attends him notices the skin and flesh are peeling away. Not knowing anything about alien phisiology, he decides to allow the process to continue. Can you imagine if things were the opposite and alien doctors were operating on a human? "Oh, he's losing so much of this red fluid. But it looks like a natural healing process, so we'll allow that to continue." |
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New Hinda
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Israel
469 Posts |
Posted - 12/15/2008 : 12:10:07 AM
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| As I've said before on this website-WHY!!!??? I can't understand the Hollywood mania for remakes. If a scriptwriter would just spend a pleasant afternoon poking around in the used bookstores of Los Angeles, he or she would find anthologies of FINE science fiction and fantasy stories that have NEVER been filmed and that are either in the public domain or have very cheap film rights. If the story has never been filmed, nobody can compare your remake with the original. You can create your own characters,make your own mistakes. By the way, AIRPLANE was based on a film called ZERO HOUR, which was based on a teleplay by Arthur Hailey called "Flight into Danger." Has anyone ever run across the suggestion that Hailey based his teleplay on a short story by Wilbur Schramm called "The Voice in the Earphones," a talk-down-the-pilot story with supernatural overtones? |
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 12/15/2008 : 05:02:46 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by New Hinda
As I've said before on this website-WHY!!!??? I can't understand the Hollywood mania for remakes. If a scriptwriter would just spend a pleasant afternoon poking around in the used bookstores of Los Angeles, he or she would find anthologies of FINE science fiction and fantasy stories that have NEVER been filmed and that are either in the public domain or have very cheap film rights. If the story has never been filmed, nobody can compare your remake with the original. You can create your own characters,make your own mistakes. By the way, AIRPLANE was based on a film called ZERO HOUR, which was based on a teleplay by Arthur Hailey called "Flight into Danger." Has anyone ever run across the suggestion that Hailey based his teleplay on a short story by Wilbur Schramm called "The Voice in the Earphones," a talk-down-the-pilot story with supernatural overtones?
Last night it dawned on me that the movie didn't really have faith in itself. Neville's comment about the non-action parts being the better parts of the movie is true. I believe they had the action parts because they didn't believe that the premise and intrigue of the idea would make it work. The result is action scenes that are boring and don't add anything to the film. And, it negates a chance to look at the ideas offered by the premise.
One positive of the film is that choosing Keanu Reeves was smart. No one is ever going to claim he is a great actor, but putting him in the right role can make use of his abilities. Reeves did a good job of presenting someone who looks human who isn't human. In some ways I think that was a better approach than the original which was Klaatu more as an amiable stranger from a different country.
I summon Bigger Fish! |
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Flangepart
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
2329 Posts |
Posted - 12/15/2008 : 12:58:18 PM
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Oh, how I loath all the horror confirmed of this film...a film worse then the stuff scraped off you're teeth in the morning...
Yep...
Its a guilded cockroach.
Oh, how I wanna see it given a nuclear scale riffing!
Marvin the Paranoid Android to Buzz Lightyear "Too infinity and beyond-i've been there, its rubbish!"
"Hoody Hoo, i waste 'em with my cross bow!" Bob Herzog- KODT
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 12/15/2008 : 1:27:25 PM
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A pendantic digression: A pet peeve, I wish the people who made this movie (and other like it with a similar environmental message) would take the ten whole minutes it would take to review the Earth's history. I mean, really, human induced climate change is a bad hair day compared to older cataclysm of Earth's past. We've got a long, long way to go before we can inflict anything on the scale of the big five mass extinctions.
"I am Temujin ... Barbarian ... I fight! I love! I conquer ... like a Barbarian!" |
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RossM
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
427 Posts |
Posted - 12/15/2008 : 1:36:43 PM
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| Just the volcano eruption at Krakatoa spewed in more pollution into the atmosphere in a few days than millions of cars do. Mount St. Helen's spewed so much ash into the air that we had pollution alerts here 3,000 miles away. Hollywood makes a lot of money and gains a lot of self satisfaction by being very politically correct but the actual world is far more complex than they think they know. |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 12/15/2008 : 1:41:05 PM
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Even on a story level they could have slipped in something like:
"Hey, you know that thing with the dinosaurs? That was us."
"I am Temujin ... Barbarian ... I fight! I love! I conquer ... like a Barbarian!" |
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New Hinda
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Israel
469 Posts |
Posted - 12/16/2008 : 01:04:32 AM
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| The Biblical story of Noah and the Greek myth of Deucalion are both based on an actual event. There were no horrible, evil Republicans riding around in their horrible, evil SUVs when it happened. |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 12/16/2008 : 05:40:57 AM
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Well, uh, my point wasn't to criticize climate science but to point out that even if human caused global warming is occuring (which I know many here don't accept) any changes that it will bring about will be bad for certain species and for human civilization as it is presently configured and not for the biosphere as a whole which has weathered far worse situations in the past. Anyway humanity would die out before it could do any serious damage to the biosphere (well, other than detonating all our nuclear arsenals) because we depend on it for our survival and any damage we caused would kill us off before we could irreparably harm it. My main point was that the movie's premise is dumb, which I guess we all aready knew.
"I am Temujin ... Barbarian ... I fight! I love! I conquer ... like a Barbarian!" |
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 12/16/2008 : 07:21:11 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Ericb
Well, uh, my point wasn't to criticize climate science but to point out that even if human caused global warming is occuring (which I know many here don't accept) any changes that it will bring about will be bad for certain species and for human civilization as it is presently configured and not for the biosphere as a whole which has weathered far worse situations in the past. Anyway humanity would die out before it could do any serious damage to the biosphere (well, other than detonating all our nuclear arsenals) because we depend on it for our survival and any damage we caused would kill us off before we could irreparably harm it. My main point was that the movie's premise is dumb, which I guess we all aready knew.
Let's face it, the original movie's premise was actually more dumb. We aren't any closer to running around the galaxy with our nukes than we were then. I give them credit for giving the aliens a more plausible reason. Of course, you rightly point out that we couldn't wipe out like on the planet even if we tried. Even detonating all of our nukes wouldn't wipe out all life.
I summon Bigger Fish! |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 12/16/2008 : 07:26:25 AM
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Yeah, the original premise was pretty dumb too. I wish all these busybody aliens would mind their own business.
"I am Temujin ... Barbarian ... I fight! I love! I conquer ... like a Barbarian!" |
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Flangepart
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
2329 Posts |
Posted - 12/16/2008 : 5:02:52 PM
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[/font=Arial Black]Yep...I mean, if the aliens are that far ahead of us, by the time humans get stardrive and advanced wepons, woulden't the alien be even farther ahead?
Kinda like haveing flintlocks aginst guys with MG-42's as it were...[/font=arial
Marvin the Paranoid Android to Buzz Lightyear "Too infinity and beyond-i've been there, its rubbish!"
"Hoody Hoo, i waste 'em with my cross bow!" Bob Herzog- KODT
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hbrennan
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Philippines
1455 Posts |
Posted - 12/17/2008 : 01:30:21 AM
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As I predicted - just another classic that just didn't need to be re-visited (see "I Am Legend")
"...yet it hadn't destroyed his brain."
re: Charles "The Butcher" Benton (1956)
http://www.henrybrennan.com/
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 12/17/2008 : 03:10:32 AM
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| I did like I am legend. The ending is utter crap, but the rest of it is good enouh to compensate. Also, there's some alternative cut out there that replaces it with a much better one. |
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