Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by RGA (A) on July 09, 2005 at 01:27:28

In Reply to: A fair assessment, but I differ with your conclusions. posted by Audiophilander on July 9, 2005 at 00:11:41:

First I gave Independance day *1/2 / ***** the same star rating. It is a monster movie with good effects cardboard cut-out characters and cheesey one-liner dialogue.

I always take this over rehashed monster movies that try and take themselves seriously and end up being a dry bore. When you have idiotic written material or one note material espeicially in sci-fi it needs something, generally comic relief.

The Problem with War of the Worlds is that the Robbins character isn't really believable and seems to be the cameo you are complaining about in ID. Indeed, it's a Shawshank Redemption reunion of sorts which only made me long to be watching that film instead.

The aliens do not have a sense of wonder, nor are they particularly scary in any sort of Ridley Scott, James Cameron "Alien(s)" kind of way. Tom Cruise feels pride in his son rescuing people on the boat. The scene has almost zero weight since the son was not raised by Cruise which it made painfully obvious in the set-up that Cruise is a horrible father and more of a sperm doner dad.

Watching aliens flatten a city has been done to death and better by the Daleks in the TV series Dr.Who. (the longest running science fiction tv series in history). Indeed, Spielberg considered attaining the rights to making that into a film and it would have way more of an opportunity to get a nazi SS theme in there as the Daleks an alien race who want to cleanse the universe of inferior beings. It's a shame because Star Trek and the film matrix ripped so much off from that series it's quite funny.

The explanations provides in WotW are just idiotic and the sophistication of these aliens - well naturally they'd not consider bio warfare or germs viruses and diseases they could contract. Dumbest aliens in the world who only master mathematical concepts as a matter of course.

The biggest problem here is that this is non-existant science fiction. Aliens come, kill us, and lucky for us and presumably the plague they die. So what do we get instead? A father, son and daughter story. That Cruise learns to be a good dad? Well he does risk his life. Man Spielberg went to a lot of trouble for this message -- he could have achieved it in a serious film a lot better. But then it would not make a kabillion dollars.

This movie serves one purpose only -- to see aliens blow up some cities and towns and that is the ONLY purpose it serves.

The Towering Inferno I'll take you up on as first of all disaster films are at least credible. The Towering Infero had a solid idea and a commentary on greed and the American Fascination of phallic symbols. Bigger is better. The execution at that time was reasonably solid.

The funny thing is that depite the age and out of date effects I'd rather re-watch TI than WotW...and it isn't even a horserace.

Where's my copy of Aliens -- that's how Alien monster movies should be made -- or better yet, E.T. a movie that poured on the shmaltz but we let ourselves and Spielberg pour it on. In WotW itseems shallow and forced...and it is one time(and A.I) where I agree with Spielberg Detractors that this over-sentimental garbage.