Battlefield Earth: Part Duh

[Tref]

Originally Posted by Gn2Dlnd

The Commodore gives "War of the Worlds" two thumbs up!

MY ASS!

Hello to the Commodore. Long time listener, first time caller. I have a question: were there any references to Orson Welles in WotW? Spielberg has been known to throw in the occasional classic film homage in his movies (see, Report, Minority). Recognise any? I'll take my answer off the air.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Ok, first of all, apologies to Gn2 for my very subjective movie tastes.

We ended up seeing this today with my sister-in-law. They wanted to see it so Greg and I acquiesced.....and I enjoyed nearly all of it.

Things I liked:

• The characters. Much more believable than in most of these kinds of movies. Dialogue, acting, backstory, interaction, all good in my book.
• The effects. Pretty damn seamless. Saw some stuff that was pretty amazing, shocking, surprising. Alien crafts, carnage, whathaveyou, all well done and entertaining.
• Believability. Yeah, aliens fantasy blah blah, but the way that the mob reacted to everything was very well done. People don't just run screaming from something that amazing - they stop and look and it ends up getting them killed. One scene in particular involving a mob had me in tears.

Things I didn't like:

• THE ENDING. WTF is with Spielberg and endings now? I won't give it away (although it is the same as the original story) but it's so poorly done that the audience was laughing. The last 15 min sucked all the good feeling out of the movie.

Spoiler:

• Seeing the aliens. It was kind of cool that they had 3 legs just like their craft, but I really liked the faceless automoton destruction better. Keeping them hidden would have been more fun.
• The Tim Robbins bit. He wasn't that good...a little too kooky. And the basement scene went on far too long. Again, didn't need the aliens in there - the snaky surveillance thing was plenty.

Yeah, there were some cheesy moments, but I enjoy that to a point, and this movie didn't cross that point. I really, really enjoyed this as a popcorn movie up until the basement scene went on too long, and it was downhill from there.

Originally Posted by Boss Radio

As far as the 9/11 references, that tragedy gave us a new visual lexicon to draw upon in order to accurately telegraph what the aftermath of a disaster would look like, at least to us in the USA. Flyers of missing people? Why not? That scene would most likely play out the same.

My thoughts exactly. Although it's annoying that, once again, it's mostly in New York. I'm so sick of New York in movies like this. It's like nothing ever happens elsewhere.

So yeah, sorry Gn2, but I'd recommend this to action movie fans with a caveat about the ending. If you like this sort of thing it's worth seeing in the theater for the eye-popping effects and great sound.

[Gn2Dlnd]

Originally Posted by Tref

Hello to the Commodore. Long time listener, first time caller. I have a question: were there any references to Orson Welles in WotW? Spielberg has been known to throw in the occasional classic film homage in his movies (see, Report, Minority). Recognise any? I'll take my answer off the air.

Thanks for taking your answer off the air, Terf. Always nice when a longtime listener calls in. I recognized no references to Orson Welles or the Mecury Theatre. Unless you consider the constant eating of people to be an homage to Orson's corpulence.

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

...shocking...carnage...screaming...tears...WTF... sucked...cheesy...downhill from there...annoying...sick...sorry

You honestly weren't offended by the 9/11 imagery? I'm saddened to think that people have become inured to this sort of manipulative filmmaking. I find it ironic that the same filmmaker who made "Schindler's List," self-servingly uses imagery in "War of the Worlds" that should remain sacred.

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

Originally Posted by Gn2Dlnd

that should remain sacred.

I almost want the word "sacred" stripped from language altogether unless someone spits inside Notre Dame and must then be told that it's impolite to spit on sacred ground. Actually, they should be told that it's horribly rude and disgusting to spit anywhere in public, even if they come from a country where it's *okay* to spit in public, because it should *never* be okay to spit in public. I've seen an exhibit on infectious diseases and the final word on that seemed to be, "NO SPITTING IN PUBLIC! DO YOU WANT CHOLERA?!?!?!"

Of course, the mucus and sound alone are enough to make ME against spitting anywhere I have to see you spit, but far be it...........Ah, I'm turning into a farbe.

Anyway, one man's sacred space is another person's sacred space, No it's MY sacred space and I want you out, But I tell you it's MY sacred space and I will stand my ground and fight, Well so will I then because this is the sacred ground of MY people, who have been here for thousands of years, Don't you talk to ME about thousands of years......

Same goes with a nation's history and iconography. Is the flag a symbol or should it be considered a sacred symbol? Should The Last Temptation of Christ never have been written, just because someone told my pal Niko he had no right to reinterpret the dogma of a faith he himself believed in?

Team America could not have been made pre-9/11. No doubt many found that film to be hugely offensive but I thought it was a really fun, rollicking, and decent satire of a post-9/11 world.

We saw people in the United States react to a tragedy on a massive scale a few years back. It will no doubt have altered our perceptions about such an event, and those perceptions will sometimes creep into film, literature, art of all kinds, etc., sometimes in minute ways, extreme ways, "tasteful" or "untasteful" ways. And they may not be to your liking, but I don't think anything that happened that day is sacrosanct.

Granted, until I'm being chased by a pack of vampires into a church they cannot enter because it's hallowed ground, I'm not sure I'll ever look at a church and think "sacred". In fact, in Los Angeles, I usually look at churches and think, "Did a giant child in possession of cinder block legos build this horror?!" However, out of reverence to those who do believe in sacred spaces, I don't stomp around swearing, etc. I do not, however, control my lusty thoughts. That's my business, even in God's house, and if he feels like looking in, hey - who wouldn't enjoy free porn? I half suspect that kind of "free cable" justifies our entire existence.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Spielberg used the image of Nazis in Indiana Jones to manipulate you into having an emotional connection to the hero as a good guy.

What EH said. I'm not one who gets easily offended over the mere mention of tragic events. It's not like he made a mockery of it, and I didn't even find it particularly overt. I'm not sure why you keep contrasting it with Schindler's List. Didn't Spielberg make money off of that too? If you have an issue with it, why would profiteering off of tragedy be okay in one package, but not another?

The movie was alright, far more entertaining than I expected going in. It wasn't fantastic, and I haven't seen an ending that abrupt since reading a Michael Chriton book, but I've seen much worse.

[Gn2Dlnd]

Sacred = semantics. I originally wrote "untouchable," but it felt a bit - Indian.

Yes we have a new "visual lexicon." But it shouldn't include Tom Cruise covered in the dust of people vaporized around him - analogous to people covered in the dust of those vaporized around them on 9/11. That is the exact point in the film when my stomach started to turn. Hogan's Heroes used Nazis, Mel Brooks uses Nazis. Nazis did horrifying things and we like turning them into buffoons. However, we don't use the ovens in our summer blockbuster monster movies.

Schindler's List, The Pianist, The Diary of Anne Frank (and yes, I thought the parody on South Park was hilarious and offensive), are ways for us to document the atrocities visited upon the Jews during World War II. They serve to elevate the audience. War of the Worlds is a summer blockbuster monster movie. The various documentaries and remembrances, Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" (which was shocking in its non-use of images from the actual impact of the planes), even the kind of dumb episode of "Third Watch" that interviewed cast members about their experiences on that day, serve to document and help us wrap our brains around what happened on September 11, 2001.

I've got a bug up my ass when it comes to 9/11. I can't be the only person who wasn't turned into a flag waving xenophobe, stayed gay, didn't figure out how to make billions off the "war," or buy an SUV who considers 9/11 to be the most horrifying day of my life thus far.

So, I agree with Miss Eliza on everything except the idea that nothing from 9/11 should be sacrosanct. Some images should. And "the mere mention of tragic events" do not send me into a swoon, but Crazy Tom covered in people dust does piss me off.

There were plenty of non-9/11 thing in the film that I disliked, but by the time I was deciding that it was a lousy movie, I had already been pissed off. Every bad director choice that came after that point was being seen through a filter of "well, fvck you too!," and "what's the next disgusting thing you're going to show me?"

All in all, I can't say I disliked the film, so much as I hated it.

If I, who has never owned one, know that you're not supposed to put meat into a composter, why doesn't Speilberg?

How is it that any of these people are able to breathe in a landscape covered in rotting blood and guts?

Why do the aliens constantly have to be dumping some sort of liquid (urine? bile? alien diarrhea?) everywhere?

If you've departed from the source material enough to have your aliens be "sleeper cells," and you've demonstrated their ability to zap you with their evapo-ray, why do they need to send the snake-eye down into the basement to find more meat? As one poster on another board put it, "They suddenly start going door-to-door like Jehova's Witnesses."

[Ghoulish Delight]

The dust people were covered with on 9/11 was that of the buildings, not of vaporized people.

[surfinmuse]

I read in the trade rag that some industry folks are dubbing this a replay of 1993, with Spielberg's popcorn-friendly Jurassic Park in the summer, followed by Schindler's List later towards the end of that year.

Working title for the movie starring Eric Bana (Hulk, Troy) and Geoffrey Rush (Shine) about the murder of the Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists is "Untitled 1972 Munich Olympics Project," and is due for release around Christmas later this year.

[Moonliner]

I've not seen War Of the Worlds yet, but I did see Spielberg on TV once. In the interview he told a story about when he was making Jaws. Apparently Francis Copula told him the ending was trite and unbelievable. Spielberg’s response was that by the final sequence in the movie "the audience is mine and I can do whatever I want". Seems like that philosophy worked for Jaws but perhaps not so well for War of The Worlds.

Is it also true that there is no mention of

Spoiler:

mars

in the story?

[surfinmuse]

Moonliner, no references at all to *** in the movie. The prologue & epilogue (narrated by Morgan Freeman) are almost word-for-word from H.G. Well's though.