Kostya

Yeah yeah yeah...

I went into this expecting it to suck bigtime, and it didn't...

But it wasn't very good either...

Firstly, thanks to Uncle Steve, we knew that Spoiler: Robby would miraculously survive his sojourn over the ridge of death, despite some kind of napalm strike seconds after he departed. Because as if Speilberg would have a sad ending, not to mention the oh so subtle symbolism of the statue at the end there...

Secondly as everyone's already pointed out the plot had some absolutely ridiculous aspects. The only excuses I can come up with are really stupid ones like Spoiler: the aliens planted the machines there, kind of like combine harvesters, and were waiting for complex life to develop so they could 'farm' us. But frankly, I think a set up like the Matrix would probably be a lot more efficient, and safe. and so on...

Lastly, the aliens I found fairly unimpressive, their weapons were... in inefficient to say the least. The only scenes that made me squirm were the Spoiler: people killing other people in desperation, which is an aspect of the 'end of the world' scenario that I think is the scariest of all. The British version of Threads for instance, scared the crap out of me as a youngster. The dude climbing through the windshield with his bare hands, ugh...

All in all, worth the price of admission, if you're a student or senior... :P

Gilda

Part of what made the aliens scary was that

Spoiler: We don't know why they planted the machines, or why the activated them now. The motive was, well, alien.

But I completely agree with you about the human element being even scarier:

Spoiler: The scariest part being when the mob attacks the van, and Cruise has to take it back at gunpoint, and then has it taken from him at gunpoint, and then that man is murdered for it. It had a Lord of the Flies quality to the savagery shown.

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feelgood

Napalm strike? Not a chance, kinda dumb move by the military to do that, especially after ordering their men to move the line further down the hill and wound up killing them all. Besides, Hollywood dictate that cool things must be seen including the aircraft that dropped the Napalm bomb which wasn't seen.

Again, as Hollywood would dictate, that wouldn't be as fun as the way it's been done in the movie. Besides, that's the way it was written in the novel, you could argue with HG Wells on that point.

Um...their weapons were in-efficient? Please enlighten us as to what would have been more efficient? I'm sure that weapons that vaporize victims would far be more efficient than guns, otherwise with guns, you need to get rid of the bodies Especially millions of them. Again, that's how it was done in the original novel.

Again, in the original Novel, London was dead but most of the city was still standing including the bridge, although, they were mostly covered in red weed or whatever it was called. Even some people were still heading toward to large cities like London.

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Roark

I just saw this yesterday. I thought it was just okay the ending and plot irks have alreay been brought up. Was it entertaining? Yes, but I guess I expected more from the movie. I do love that little Dakota Fanning though she's going to be a really good actress as she gets older.

billege

--That threw me too. It just doesn't make sense. Spoiler: Bury advanced fighting machines in the ground for millenia, if not eons, then wait until humans have an advanced society, then move in. Right.
--Spoiler: Somehow they have this super advanced tech, but no biology. Okay...I can't blame Steve S. for that though, it's an old book.
--Spoiler: Son surviving. Given the movie's overall tone of realism, that was a distinct knock against that theme. Why bother to be (overall) a realistic view of an alien invasion, then throw in straight BS happy ending? The kid ran into a firestorm per some unexplained shmarmy internal thing "he had to do." Well, that was just a cheap plot device to put big Tom in the position of choosing his young daughter or his estranged son. It was poor form, especially from Speilburg. Generally speaking, when people run into a battle line that is completely decimated by an overwhelming force, they don't live.


True realizm would be an orbital bombardment or a virus engineered to attack humans. War against technology high enough to travel the stars does not need to include anything landing on earth, period. If you want our land, but not us, at all, there's no reason not to nuke a planet senseless from orbit. Or, use kenetic projectiles big enough to destroy cites but not leave radiation. If one has to fly by a asteroid belt to get to earth, why not snag one or two? Or, you problably have biology skills sufficient enough to exterminate us via disease. Either way, there's simply no reason to come mop us up personally. That whole concept is driven by the need to make a movie where humans have a chance. If you can fly the stars, it's likely you can destroy us from orbit, but that would make a shitty movie.


--This was Independance Day part II, without the plot. Which says a lot. It was more realistic, but I don't generally go see my "Aliens invade the world" movies for a heavy dose of realism.


I'm just going to 2nd that, and move on.
It was not a "bad" movie, but it was far from "good." I think this makes the first time I went to see a Spielburg movie and left it feeling truely let down.

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feelgood

Spoiler: You must've missed the part where Martian's lighting storm was actually an distraction to quickly deploy the machines. Remember the part where a CBS crew were found next to the destroyed aircraft and the reporter showed Tommy boy a frame by frame of the lighting strike hiding a pod of some kind before it struck the ground?

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Looking out the window, that's an act of war. Staring at my shoes, that's an act of war. Committing an act of war? Oh you better believe that's an act of war

billege

Yeah, I caught that. My point is that I don't understand the point in burying superadvanced fighting machines deep in the earth, then leaving them there for untold (but implied to be) lengths of time. <i>Then</i> come back via lightening storm so much later.

I suppose one can explain that by saying "their motivation is truley alien" so we're not supposed to understand. But, that's lame. Why an alien species could take over the planet, but chose to bury machines and wait 1000 years, is beyond me.

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I can sum up the clash of religion in one sentence:
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Janey

what is ID4?

feelgood

What point of the movie did the Martian buried machines deep inside the ground? It looked like they simply sent a small pod to quicky pentrate the ground and quickly gather required resources that's available to them within the area, to build the machine within a short period of time before before rising to start killing people.

Independence Day. Link

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MageB420666

And how likely is it that there is a unknown large quantity of the neccesary metallic elements located directly under an urban neighborhood?

It was stated in the movie that the machines were buried a long time ago and that the aliens rode the pods down into them so that they could control them and destroy all humans (and cows).

The writers/producers/director could have kept the aliens method of travel from mars to the earth the same as it was in the book, and had the movie make a whole lot more sense. Which for those of you who don't know: The aliens shot over in large cylindrical objects, had the machines unscrew the lid on it (from the inside, the machines and aliens where both inside the cylinders), and proceeded to do what they did best.

Would have fixed so many plot holes. Cause it takes a really, really, really^extremely, powerful telescope to see something the size of a bacteria on another planet.

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MexicanOnABike

id4 is independence day... they named it ID4 since Independence day is on july 4th. ID4.

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Beltruckus

how could it be id4 when it was a remake of a movie that was done IN THE 50's!!!! seriously (btw i know you don't actually think it's a sequel you jsut think it was really alike) ID4 was cheesy and more humerous than WotW. Which i liked more about wotw is it was more serious and dark.

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Kostya

Well my thinking is as follows: Spoiler: As I understand it the aliens were quite literally using humans as 'fertiliser' to grow their disgusting red weeds everywhere. This seems to be fairly implicit in the scene where the suck the blood out of a guy and spray it on the weeds, and Tim Robbins goes nuts. So, one would assume, that having millions of bodies would be a very good thing for the aliens. Moreover, the vapourising rays killed 1 person at a time, some kind of big big vapourising bomb (assuming you wanted to vapourise your fertiliser source for no reason) would be much better. Now, assuming I buried my big machine in the ground and then had millions of years and some goodly number of my alien brethren working on the problem I could probably hook that up. They did imply very clearly that they buried the machines, and that the 'pods' coming down in the lightning were merely pilots who took control of the machines. It's a little difficult to tell exactly how deep these machines were buried, but I also find it rather strange that nobody, anywhere detected or found an uber large pod buried under the ground. Also hilariously they managed to pick the spots where there would be cities. Even more hilariously they picked the spots some time ago, when the geographic and seismologic conditions were entirely different. They are super smart I suppose, but that seems even more of a damning indictment of their poorly thought out plans of world domination, that they could predict with accuracy the distribution of earth's inhabitants, and yet managed to lose the war due to the flu. As for the napalm strike, agreed no planes were seen, but my only concern was that there appeared to be an awful lot of fire in the general vicinity of Robbie's body, or it's implied location, and yet he survived with the customary Spielberg 'small facial cut'.

Derwood

ok, i'm not reading this thread again until I see the movie. You people need to use the spoilers option. What's the point of answering spoiler questions without a spoiler tag?

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zen_tom

I loved the movie, very close to the original text indeed.

I could have done without the whole errant father nonsense, but thought the rest of the film was absolute classic Speilberg fare.

I too was confused as to why they changed the original version of the story and Spoiler: had the machines buried underground long before the aliens turned up to drive them but imagine it was made that way Spoiler: as an excuse to show a block get demolished by an emerging tripod. Also, Spoiler: the TV crew bit was unnesessary, knowing that the aliens rode lightning bolts into the earth didn't add anything, and may have actually detracted from the sense of dark mystery that should exist about an alien invader that's planned man's destruction for millenia - it kind of cheapened it

Anyway, I reccommend you read the text of the story, at some point - it's really incredible to think that such a contemporary idea was conceived over 100 years ago.

Gatorade Frost

Spoiler: I'd assume that everyone realises that we've got it figured out that the aliens come bursting out of the ground, but just in case I'll make this a spoiler. Anyway, my beef is that dropping aliens into pods that have been buried for millenia would be a bit like dropping us into a maggot town (as the analogy goes) with rocks and sticks instead of guns, flame throwers, etc. With ten thousand years of evolution and using our brains the weapons we have now have... uh... progressed a bit.

I'll give this movie 0 stars of 5. I hated it. The first scene happened and I sat there wishing it was over. Probably the scene with the lightning was the scariest, then it was all the same thing over and over again. Now two and a half hours later I'll grateful that I'm not there.

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Emo Philips

Locobot

I thought the purpose of this movie was to offer an opposite view of alien encounters from Speilberg's earlier work on Close Encounters and E.T. and in many respects it did. But then we get to see the actual aliens Spoiler: they're cute and chirpy with big doe eyes. It just doesn't match their behavior of frying every human they see.

Tom Cruise was horrible as usual, the man has no business acting. We're supposed to believe he's some kind of gritty longshoreman while he looks like he just stepped out of an abercrombie ad (I supposed to Cruise that would be slumming it). A lot of empathy I might of had for this character was sacrificed at the altar of Cruise's ego, making him look good.

I was unclear on what the hell was going on with the spray and the red fungus. I figured the spray was some kind of anti-bacterial effort and the fungus was nature's response. Kind of like if you boil something it will grow much nastier mold than if you cook it at a lower temperature. You're naturally selecting only the toughest nastiest bacteria to grow and flourish without competition.

The happy ending was ridiculous. With 3/5 of all humans on the planet dead somehow their mom is fine, her new husband is fine, apparently both sets of grandparents make it, and then the snotty teenager who we just saw run into certain death is fine.

I rationalized the "machines buried a million years ago" thing by figuring that machines could be sent through space faster than living creatures. So they sent the machines ahead to wait for their pilots.

Aside from the wrecked plane fusilage (how didn't that burn their house up?) I didn't find it to be exploitive of our 9/11 memories. Speilberg was certainly using things he saw from 9/11, but for the most part these things were not unique to that instance. He was trying to portray life during wartime and I'd say he did a good job, streams of refugees, missing persons boards, panic and chaos in the streets. He's made three of the best war movies of all time (Empire, Saving, Schindler) and I thought he did a good job of tapping that repository of images.

Great action and effects, atrocious acting, zero empathy for the characters, I'll give it two of five stars.

MexicanOnABike

wow... everyone hated it.
i fucking loved it!! who cares if they dont explain it all? it's still fucking great. i'd see it again.

edit: i just reread the book and it follows it prefectly. i mean the church going down? that's in the book, etc... i could name a few more.

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