Pointyskull

Enjoyed this one a whole hell of a lot. Those of you who didn't I weep for your movie-going soul...

gmanca

This was fairly good but I can totally see the validity of the complaints about this film, there's a lot of annoying shit littered throughout. As a film though, it works; there's proper structure, every plot point has a conclusion, which at worst is saccharin, but on average sufficient.



The end film is easily the best thing.

JumpCutz

Fixed.

Para Para

It didn't. Joe got it back from the officer after the bus incident.

gmanca

They didn't show that and it wasn't said.

Are you saying it was when he was kneeling behind the bus? For how explicit it was shown throughout the film, that sequence wasn't clear.

Mazje

I thought they showed the kid specifically getting the locket back from the dead soldier after the bus attack.

Falc04

You are correct sir...

Pizza

As I weep for yours and most of America's movie-going souls.

Pizza

I agree. None of the kids seemed to know how to run away from the train. They kept running along side with it. Spectacular to watch? Yes, but they did need to shave a bit of it off. I kept thinking of Unbreakable while that scene played out and how much more powerful that train wreck was dispicted by showing us so little of it. Still, the train wreck here was amazing, but too long.

Anubis2005X

Yes, I've seen it twice; this is correct...

Superboy

This movie is why I stopped going to see movies. It was immensely derivative, the best parts of the movie are the parts it borrows from other films, the special effects and action set pieces felt empty and stale, the characters were totally flat and uninteresting, and in a few years, no one's going to give a fuck about this movie because JJ Abrams is a total hack. Anyone who watched Alias knows what i'm talking about.

bluetoast

Now that I think about it, that train crash was probably heavily influenced by the one in The Greatest Show on Earth. Spielberg said that it was the greatest crash put to film in his Cecil B. DeMille Award acceptance speech a few years back.

As for the movie itself, I really enjoyed it, and I did like the kids. So many times they seem like awful actors or characters...just see that trailer for Rock Em Sock Em Robots for an example. This was...real, like people said. I even liked the other random people like the stoner photo technician.

I also got a very General Grievous vibe from the monster, and yeah, didn't really dig the design.

Also....I want to see a Pulp Fiction parody where the kid goes back specifically to get the locket. The monster can be on the can waiting for his Pop Tarts.

gmanca

Yeah, the kid actors were great; it's not their fault the dialogue was a bit too cute by half.

One thing I did like that you wouldn't see in Spielberg film is that the kids were in actual danger and one gets hurt. It added to the realism of the effects and I applaud Abrams for not following so close.

Thanks for the replies about the locket, I totally missed that portion so that final bit didn't make sense to me in regards to where it came from. Still, the officer portion and the final piece portion was pretty bad.

Pizza

The monster was poorly thought out:

TomOpus

whoopdido

I'm not sure what this really means. Most of Spielberg's films have the kids in danger and many times they get hurt. The vast majority of the time, the kids turn out fine and sometimes it's completely implausible that they turn out fine, but that doesn't mean they weren't in real danger.

I don't really know if it's necessary to worry about spoilers when it comes to Spielberg movies, but there are spoilers in the next two paragraphs.

Even take a movie like The Goonies...the kids were in danger for pretty much the entire movie. The "bad guys" may have been complete morons but they were still considered dangerous felons that had killed people in the past and they narrowly escaped death numerous times throughout the movie.

Saving Private Ryan had a little kid in a bombed out house where a sniper was picking people off left and right. Jurassic Park had dinosaurs running around eating people and how many times did the kids narrowly miss getting eaten themselves. Jaws...shouldn't even have to say. Schindler's List...shouldn't even have to say. Close Encounters had a little kid get abducted in an extremely scary way. Temple of Doom had kids as slaves. If you consider the robot kid in AI as a real kid, then he went through all kinds of bad shit.

Frankly, it seems like you definitely don't want to be a kid in a Spielberg movie. Chances are you'll survive, but just barely.

gmanca

The Goonies is a Donner film and Saving Private Ryan/Schindler's List are based on historical events.

I'm talking about line-of-fire stuff, the things that made Spielberg make a sappy segment for Twilight Zone because of the Vic Morrow incident.

whoopdido

And Super 8 is an Abrams film. Spielberg was a producer on both.

So you're only talking about being shot at? I don't see how the kids running away from the alien in Super 8 was any more dangerous than the kids running away from dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Or how the train wreck was any more dangerous than the mine cart in Temple of Doom or pretty much any scene involving a kid in that movie.

Sure, Spielberg gets a lot of flack for possibly being too sentimental and he LOVES happy endings, but I definitely think he puts kids in real dangerous situations from time to time. They just tend to survive.

Geofferson

Finally saw this and really dug it. Cast was great and I really enjoyed it. Great summer fare.

SuckaMC

Holy shit, people, did you even watch this movie? I think some of you were too busy thinking of ways to hate the movie to be bothered to pay attention to it.

The Army/ Airforce randomly blowing up the town? There was a close up shot of a soldier screaming exposition on how there equipment was malfunctioning.

Why was the alien taking people? They was a shot of the alien chewing on a leg! and the kid said: OMG, its eating them!

How was the locket in the dads uniform? The kid retrieved it from the same guy who took it after the bus scene.

What were the blocks? The whole separate classified film talking all about it (although you said you went to the bathroom.)

This is the worst case of lazy film watching I've seen in a while. Lots of, "Hmmm, I missed that." These were things plainly showed and that did not have to be inferred.

Anyway. Great movie.

No hard feelings, folks.

arminius

1. So stop pulling the trigger. Weapons don't load themselves.

2. So it was just a monster. Probably a pet of whoever actually flew the original spacecraft.

SuckaMC

The way it was presented was that the actual munitions were misfiring. The kids see that tanks firing and say: what are they shooting at? The soldier says something to the effect that everything was popping off by itself. Also shots of the tanks being pulled over sideways confirm that they had little control of what was going on.

arminius

I get that. However a tank cannon can misfire once. A machine gun you just twist the belt. An ATGM is also just 1 shot. Once the weapons started to malfunction all the firing would have stopped in a few seconds. It would not have went on like in the movie.

I did like the movie, but as others have stated, the kids part was pretty good, the monster part not so much.

SuckaMC

Trust me, I'm picky when it comes to that stuff in movies (multi-shot bolt action rifles infuriate me).

But pointing out inaccuracies on how weapons function and asking why the military were randomly blowing up the town when thats clearly not what was going on are two wildly different things.

whoopdido

Ha ha. That would be kind of funny. Like the alien's "dog" sneaks onboard and then gets out and wreaks havoc.

Actually when you think about it, alien monsters that destroy things would probably make more sense if they were actually alien animals vs intelligent aliens that mastered space travel.

Wouldn't you think that a race of beings that was actually capable of travelling to another world would be sophisticated enough to NOT have to destroy stuff and kill people? However, if an alien animal got on board it would truly be a monster most likely. Ya know like if an alien race had never seen a dog before and all of a sudden a huge St. Bernard comes running out the the space ship and starts tearing into things.

Kinda sorta like those things that fell off the Cloverfield monster. They weren't anything to the monster but to us they were major baddies.