Name a good thing and a bad thing about the film.
Good thing: Randy Quaid is hilarious.
Bad Thing: Will Smith is not. not that he ever has been.
Good Thing: Explosions
Bad thing: everything else
Good thing: Alien guards routinely fail to notice 50 year old space ships pulling up to dock so we should be able to kick their ass in any war.
Bad thing: The fate of the world depends upon Jeff Goldblum.
Yeah, I would really like to know what was going on in that Alien's mind in between the part where they are trying to break away from the docking arm holding the ship, and where the alien opens up the cockpit window and they hide and then they pop up.
Either they have really bad sensors on the mothership with no radiological alarms, or the alien guy is cousins to the head alien and is doing a job with little skill requirements.
Good Thing: The White House gets blowed up.
Bad Thing: Brent Spiner destroys his non-Star Trek acting career with that shitty performance.
Good Thing: Brent Spiner is strangled to death
Bad Thing: The Aliens themselves suck ass
Good Thing: They made an honest attempt at "re-imagining" The War of the Worlds - and did pretty well.
Bad Thing: It gave them the idea that they could "re-imagine" Gorjia/Godzilla just as well. :angry:
Quote from: Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck on August 14, 2007, 06:36:12 PM
Good Thing: They made an honest attempt at "re-imagining" The War of the Worlds - and did pretty well.
I will remember you said that in case I need to blackmail you later. ;D
Quote from: Principal_Skin-trade on August 14, 2007, 06:40:33 PM
Quote from: Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck on August 14, 2007, 06:36:12 PM
Good Thing: They made an honest attempt at "re-imagining" The War of the Worlds - and did pretty well.
I will remember you said that in case I need to blackmail you later. ;D
Still rather watch ID4 than the Tom Cruise debacle. ;)
And Brent Spiner still claims that Okum wasn't killed - that he's been promised that if/when they do a sequel, he'll be in it.
Quote from: Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck on August 14, 2007, 06:44:25 PM
Quote from: Principal_Skin-trade on August 14, 2007, 06:40:33 PM
Quote from: Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck on August 14, 2007, 06:36:12 PM
Good Thing: They made an honest attempt at "re-imagining" The War of the Worlds - and did pretty well.
I will remember you said that in case I need to blackmail you later. ;D
Still rather watch ID4 than the Tom Cruise debacle. ;)
The Tom Cruise one was less than fantastic, but come on. Independence Day is just crap. It's not Sci-Fi. It feels like a made for tv movie like "V".
Quote from: bettertomorrowamy on August 14, 2007, 06:48:36 PM
It feels like a made for tv movie like "V".
Tell me you did
not just diss "V - the Miniseries"...... :grr:
I don't know... they(Tom Cruise and Independence Day) are both pretty bad on many levels. I would dare say they are both on par in terms of awfulness. Is awfulness a word?
"V" sucked. I'm sorry. I watched it as a kid and liked it, but then a few years ago I watched it and I almost smacked myself.
Bad acting, poor story development, and the plot made no sense.
Just like ID4. Terrible dialog in it.
Well, at least V was made in the 1980's. 1980's cheesy is much more tolerable than 90's cheesy.
Hmmm.... Was there something wrong with ID4? It's not Casablanca, but it's a pretty solid movie.
Good Thing: The fun parts.
Bad Thing: The "funny" parts.
I said this before, but I must bitch and gripe again
Good Thing: The film eventually ends
Bad Thing: Nothing happens for 46 minutes, and then when something finally does happen, you will wish for those 46 minutes back.
Quote from: bettertomorrowamy on August 14, 2007, 06:55:44 PM
.....and the plot made no sense.
You mean the plot that Kenneth Johnson wrote to try to demonstrate how a group like the Nazis infiltrated society and took over before good people even realized it's happening by using the Aliens as their stand-ins? From promising business men better profits to courting the Youth and forming groups that make them feel special (and encourage them to inform on their parents) to - through the use of lies and propaganda - turning everyone against a group within the society (in this case the scientists) who can hurt them? So that they can take over the media and round up entire blocks of people or have whole towns disappear in the night and have no one question it because it's just them protecting us, right?
You mean that plot?
;)
Independence day would have been a solid film if not for Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch, all the cheesy dialogue and gaping plot holes. Basically, it's all Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich's faults.
Good Thing- Fox as a potential Post Apocolyptic Chieftess.
Bad Thing- The President going up on a suicide mission, to almost certainly leave his child, (who just lost her mother,) an orphan.
Quote from: Principal_Skin-trade on August 14, 2007, 07:16:40 PM
Independence day would have been a solid film if not for Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch, all the cheesy dialogue and gaping plot holes. Basically, it's all Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich's faults.
Well, again....if Brent Spiner is to be believed....they originally wrote the movie to be a comedy. That's what he was told when he signed on. But then they heard that Tim Burton was playing
Mars Attacks! for laughs. They were afraid people would wait for Burton's movie if they stuck to that so they went "Serious Lite". Supposedly this change was decided after they'd hired everyone.
Does that excuse it? I don't know.
I just think it's a good movie to just entertain you.
And a little trivia....it was also the most rented movie the weekend after 9/11. Which, ironically, Fox was scheduled to show it that weekend and pulled it because they thought it would be "insensitive" to show it.
And btw....everytime I want to really hate Tom Cruise, I read something like this (from the trivia section of imdb's listing for
War of the Worlds):
"While filming nearby, Tom Cruise, along with a 20-member entourage, including Steven Spielberg, visited a Lexington, Virginia, Dairy Queen. Cruise saw a jar on the counter with a photo of Ashley Flint and her story. Flint was in a go-cart accident a few months earlier, leaving her family with a mountain of hospital bills. Cruise put $5000 cash into the jar."
On the other hand...who walks around with $5000
cash? I mean, even if you have it..... ???
Quote from: Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck on August 14, 2007, 07:11:33 PM
Quote from: bettertomorrowamy on August 14, 2007, 06:55:44 PM
.....and the plot made no sense.
You mean the plot that Kenneth Johnson wrote to try to demonstrate how a group like the Nazis infiltrated society and took over before good people even realized it's happening by using the Aliens as their stand-ins? From promising business men better profits to courting the Youth and forming groups that make them feel special (and encourage them to inform on their parents) to - through the use of lies and propaganda - turning everyone against a group within the society (in this case the scientists) who can hurt them? So that they can take over the media and round up entire blocks of people or have whole towns disappear in the night and have no one question it because it's just them protecting us, right?
You mean that plot?
;)
No, the plot of "V".
Quote from: bettertomorrowamy on August 14, 2007, 08:15:05 PM
Quote from: Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck on August 14, 2007, 07:11:33 PM
Quote from: bettertomorrowamy on August 14, 2007, 06:55:44 PM
.....and the plot made no sense.
You mean the plot that Kenneth Johnson wrote to try to demonstrate how a group like the Nazis infiltrated society and took over before good people even realized it's happening by using the Aliens as their stand-ins? From promising business men better profits to courting the Youth and forming groups that make them feel special (and encourage them to inform on their parents) to - through the use of lies and propaganda - turning everyone against a group within the society (in this case the scientists) who can hurt them? So that they can take over the media and round up entire blocks of people or have whole towns disappear in the night and have no one question it because it's just them protecting us, right?
You mean that plot?
;)
No, the plot of "V".
Then we're talking about two different movies.
That may have been what the writer was going for, but the movie they made was crap. It's just like the original Battlestar Galactica. So much potential, but then they throw all this bad dialogue at you. I never care about the characters.
But back to the good and bad.
Good: Earth is free from Aliens.
Bad: Earth is covered in blown up space ships, and uninhabitable because of radiation from bombs and the alien ships.
Good Thing: Somehow the primitive tribes people of the Hootu's and the Tootsies managed to shoot down an Alien spaceship
Bad thing: There is not one single thing in the whole damn movie to remotely explain how all the bullshit regarding how the uploaded virus managed to work!!!!
Good Thing: IT WAS FINALLY RIFF'D
Bad Thing: Not Enough T&A ;D
Good: That alien thing didn't even need to be interrogated to spill the beans about their plans.
Bad: The suggestive nature of the Space Ships and their targets.
Quote from: bettertomorrowamy on August 14, 2007, 06:55:44 PM
"V" sucked. I'm sorry. I watched it as a kid and liked it, but then a few years ago I watched it and I almost smacked myself.
Bad acting, poor story development, and the plot made no sense.
Just like ID4. Terrible dialog in it.
GAAAAAH THEY'RE ACTUALLY REPTILES!!!
QuoteAnd a little trivia....it was also the most rented movie the weekend after 9/11. Which, ironically, Fox was scheduled to show it that weekend and pulled it because they thought it would be "insensitive" to show it.
Yeah, what was up with that? We had this hardcore conservative friend of ours that came over the Saturday after 9/11 and INSISTED we watch
Independence Day. I don't really understand the reason. I guess watching a small beleaguered force of the last REAL Americans getting the world to kick some serious alien butt was a cathartic war cry since all King George could muster was "Live your Lives."
Anyway:
Good Thing - Fast paced fun entertainment.
Bad Thing - Totally improbable.
Quote from: DoctorZ on August 18, 2007, 07:40:02 AM
QuoteAnd a little trivia....it was also the most rented movie the weekend after 9/11. Which, ironically, Fox was scheduled to show it that weekend and pulled it because they thought it would be "insensitive" to show it.
Yeah, what was up with that? We had this hardcore conservative friend of ours that came over the Saturday after 9/11 and INSISTED we watch Independence Day. I don't really understand the reason. I guess watching a small beleaguered force of the last REAL Americans getting the world to kick some serious alien butt was a cathartic war cry since all King George could muster was "Live your Lives."
Guess it was the same reason that, when Lebanon was in the middle of a civil war the most popular video rental was Rambo movies.
Gave them an outlet for their frustrations over not being able to do anything themselves.
Good thing: ???
Bad Thing: three words: President Bill Pullman
Quote from: Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck on August 18, 2007, 11:01:24 AM
Gave them an outlet for their frustrations over not being able to do anything themselves.
More likely is the images they see on the news brought similar movies back into their subconscious (I also heard Die Hard was big after 9/11). Then when people try to think of something to do, the movies are close to the surface in their heads.
One of the most common things I heard people say about 9/11 coverage was how unreal it was and it seemed like a movie.
I watched Ghandi after 9/11.
good thing: The initial attack explosion sequences. I think they were really well done.
Bad thing: everyones acting and I hate to say it, I think Will Smith was the best of the lot, his acting was sub par, however it wasnt as obvious as say, Bill Pullman, that gay guy(I'm sorry I forget his name), Bill Pullman(he deserves two mentions) and Jeff Goldbloom.
On another note, I had never thought of this as a War of the Worlds story. Just because when I saw it the first time I wasnt really into the whole War of the words thing. It is a different depiction and does do the story justice, however I find it amazing NO ONE has come up with a good ending for the story. I kind of feel the "cold" scenario was the most plausible, but ID4 made that even seem dumb by adding shields to the crafts, making me think aliens would have already thought about infections, just by showing how far advanced the aliens were. For ID4 I think simply nuking the ships while the weapon doors were open would have done the trick and actually would have been plausible, but that is never enough for hollywood.
Heck They still could have flown into the mother ship and nuked it, and guess what, wouldnt that ruin the entire invasion by itself? no need for a virus the damn mother ship is gone! There I found the answer, wasnt too complicated. Not too mention then Will Smith would be dead, making everyone happy.