This is a hard one to grade. On one hand it is fairly well paced, has excellent F/X and production values and is for the most part entertaining. On the other hand, parts of it are poorly paced, the acting is only decent and several portions just don't make sense.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about it overall, but it was an enjoyable movie. Much better then Independance Day but not anywhere near as good as it could have been.
B

Yea, I was surprised with Fanning as well. She was good in some parts but she was basically reduced to being Newt from Aliens most of the time. As for Robbins, I find him very drab most of the time. I didn't care for him in Mystic River, but loved him in Shawshank, but found him miscast here as well.

I agree about Robbins. I've not seen Shawshank Redemption, but he seemed out of place in Mystic River as well. Though dark tone seemed to work for him, but not the content of the film.

Better than Jurassic Park and let me tell you this movie kind of "scared me" because I thought: what if it really happened? I'd be scared shitless (and I'd commit suicide). Dakota was annoying and Robby was a little punk who didn't deserve to live. The ending was stupid, was it like Signs were the aliens couldn't take our sources but then they were planning their attack for years, but was it Ray's gernade that did it? That would be stupid. Anyways, dumb movie.

You sure didn't surprise us with your review. :wink:

Eh, not for everyone, it certainly isn't your typical popcorn flick as, like Batman Begins, it is very dark. It just wasn't as good as Batman Begins though.

It's what drives me nuts about films like this. These guys can come here, take out our defenses, guard against nuclear bombs, stay buried for 1000's of years, but they forgot to safeguard against disease? WEAK!!! You want a blueprint for a film like this, watch V and V The Final Battle.

So it was disease that made them weak like that?

Sell, it hd to be something that they didn't anticipate. If they try to pass it off as being our air, that is even more stupid than Signs and the water.

Yes it was 'germs'.

Much like the Native Americans were effected greatly by diseases we had become immune to.

Though Morgan Freemans whole little "because we die on the earth we are protected by it" spheal was a little much. That and how they all miraculiously catch the disease ... and decide to turn off their sheilds when they get sick.

Does them dying make them stupid?

How did ALL of them get sick?

it's just so improbbale and stupid I can't talk about it.

Wrong story twist. If europeans had come here en masse and then they had all dropped dead from indigenous diseases, it would be an appropriate parallel. As it stands, if we were making a historic comparison, it would have been the humans that got sick due to incoming aliens.

On the other hand. The storyline doesn't sound bad (from the book) just ineffectively translated to screen. They've made successful movies with far more stretched out or far fetched contexts. It just seems that if this was going to be about biological factors, there should have been an emphsis of it from the start, ala, Outbreak (yeah, remember that film). Since it wasn't, as was just about a family surviving the event, the biological solution feels alot more tacked on the end for no apparent reason other than to ensure the family gets through it alive.

They were alergic to germs. The shields that protected their tripod killing machines developed a quick case of it, too, as those shields mysteriously quit working around the same time the aliens were being infected. Sloppy stuff, and not what I expect from Spielberg.

I heard in the book the aliens succeeded and took over earth. Was this a good adaptation of the book?

It makes perfect sense. Since the Native Americans died by the sicknesses, the white people got their land. Just like how the aliens died we got our land.

Just once I'd like to see a movie about aliens where they do take over the earth, becuase let's face it, if some lifeforce decided to travel 90 billion light years to start a fight, they'd be prepared to do so in all facets. I hated that about Signs and I hated it about War. They have been watching us for 1000's of years, yet they can't protect themselves from our diseases. Do you guys remember V? In that story the Visitors immune themselves from everything we can throw at them and the only way we defeat them is that there is interspecies mating and one of the twins dies. The scientists get a bacteria f rom the baby and create a virus that can defeat the Visitors. Much more plausible than this. I am disappointed becasue I was so engrossed in the film for the first hour, and that is what makes me sad.

Mars Attacks came pretty damn close...

That was a comedy. I mean a serious film that WAR could have been.

I know. I was just teasing.

I agree. Why do the humans always win anyways? Good riddance we could do without their nasty ways. Time to make way for a more *advanced* society.

Barbarians!

The Matrix was actually pretty much along the same lines. AT least the "foreign" species wins in that one.

No offense Baumer, but I think you are digging a little too deep. There is no doubt that there are plot holes, but I didn't make a connection with viruses per se. Actually to me it felt like they ran out of ideas and just ended it.

Or maybe I'm not thinking deep enough?

Okay, since I will not read the thread, trying to avoid spoilers, I've got just one question. Did the Spielberg not show many money shots in the trailers because he didn't want to show the best he had beforehand or is it just that there are simply not many money shots in the movie?

In a way I agree rouge.

I am not so sure about the "virus" crap either.

Morgan freeman at the end essentially tells us that somehow ... bacteria is what saved us. Then he goes on to say somehing about how because we have lived and died (what the hell does that matter) here for thousands of years we have earned the right to own earth ... or something of that sort.

I did not at all understand the ending spheil and how us dying killed the aliens.

Most of the money shots include the Tripods, so I guess that's why they weren't in the trailers. Paramount didn't want to show them.

I found the "basement" scene completely stupid. Okay, the aliens are searching for humans. But you control a 30-meter bitch, just destroy the damn house and THEN search for the humans in the debris. During that scene I thought "Here goes Spielberg trying to emulate Jurassic Park's fun".

I agree with you, though as writer, the main and really only question is, could you sell that?

Are people willing to sit through a movie where the aliens win?

I've attempted to wrap my brain around that particular scenario before. It's a tough task. You don't want to depress the audience.

Will the aliens colonize the planet? Or completely destroy it, harvesting humans and other resources? What sort of fight does humanity put up? Is there any glimmer of hope at the end?

Battlefield Earth, for what it's worth, is mostly about humanity learning to adjust after losing a war against invading aliens.

I didn't catch that. I heard the narration about "The smallest things on Earth saved us..." or something like that but seemed to miss the rest of it. Probably heard it and wasn't paying attention.

I don't know, there is just something with this theory that isn't making sense. Maybe the film just has a plot hole, or we just missed something.

Oh well.