BEFORE: Wrapping up some loose ends tonight - I think this is the last film from M. Night Shyamalan's filmography that I need to watch. Plus I've heard so much about this film already that I basically know the plot, and the twist - which is fine, but I'm not treating that as an acceptable substitute for actually watching the film itself.
THE PLOT: A family living on a farm finds mysterious crop circles in their fields which suggests something more frightening to come.
AFTER: I understand the film in principle - we're supposed to take the small story of one family's encounter with the aliens, and extrapolate that to the larger story of the aliens invading multiple cities around the world. The problem is, it mostly violates the rule of "show, don't tell". We are told, via radio and TV news, that the aliens are invading countries in Europe and Asia as well as major U.S. cities - but we don't get to SEE very much of it.
Nor do we get to see very much of the aliens on the Pennsylvania farm, either - which creates a great deal of suspense, and also has the added bonus of keeping the special effects budget down. You might see a leg here or a couple of fingers there - which creates the feeling that the aliens might be hiding just out of shot - or would have been seen if the characters had turned their heads just a bit earlier...
Mel Gibson plays Graham Hess, an ex-reverend who seems to have lost his faith in a higher power after the death of his wife. He's raising his son and daughter with the help of his brother, Merril (Joaquin Phoenix) and together they discover crop circles in their fields, and then have to decide how to react once the alien invasion starts.
As Hess's son points out, there are two basic reasons for aliens to come to Earth - the first would be for exploration or contact, to foster better relations between planets and welcome the humans into the global community. The second reason, well it's not so pretty - it means that another species ran out of resources on their planet, and they've come to Earth to harvest it, enslave humanity, or both.
In the famous H.G. Wells novel "The War of the Worlds", invading aliens were defeated by a simple, unseen Earth bacteria - there's something like that in this movie, which I won't reveal in case anyone (besides me) hasn't seen the film, but it does present something of a plothole to me. If humans were to travel to another planet, we'd probably avoid places that had atmospheres of sulfuric acid or methane - even if we needed some resource there, the risk would outweight the benefit. I'm just sayin'.
Also starring Abigail Breslin, Rory Culkin, and my buddy Michael Showalter in a cameo (as the chatty guy in the Army recruiting office)
RATING: 6 out of 10 flashlights
Maybe the aliens had never encountered water and thus didn't know it was toxic to them?
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying it's impossible - just very, very, extremely unlikely. We do call water the "universal solvent", which I would imagine would apply to the known universe. However, there is always the unknown universe, and the possibility of a planetary life-form that is based on silicon rather than carbon, and perhaps even the absence of water. But the possibility seems very remote, and would change the Earth science concept of how life could "work".
ReplyDeleteYes, perhaps their bodies are 99% sulfuric acid instead of water. But it still indicates faulty research on the part of this so-called "advanced" civilization. They can travel across the galaxy, but can't be bothered to find out what on the planet is hazardous to their bodies?
They're like the intergalactic equivalent of American tourists in Mexico, I guess...