|
|
Post by Demon Angel on Feb 4, 2005 5:36:45 GMT
Well I didn't know where to post this... So I made up a new thread, So sorry that I am maybe going over old teritory...
So we go off to the movies to see the grudge at a dark and and scary 9.30pm showing... Doesn't scare you... Didn't scare me none either...
But what became before the movie... What really scared me... Was the cruisy trailer... I may not be a fan but I still think my opinon is a valid critism... After all where would we be if film critics only went to see movie's they liked... 
Well, sorry to the fans but the more I see and hear of the cruisy movie... The less I like it...
The begining sequence got my attention... But then all my dreams that it might actually be good were shattered...
It apears to me that like the up comming movie Constine (whatever... the one wid Mr. Matrix Keanu Reeves...) It's more a case of flashy *Look How Much Money We Have* Special effects, Big names and NO PLOT!
I am still stewing over this being a modern day movie, what was wrong with doing it as a period film? And whats with the Cruisy, I am the man character... And I have to save my family Sh!T... It's been done over a HUNDRED TIMES BEFORE!
When I seen the interview and they said they wanted to do something to the movie that hadn't been done before... Where they talking about the same movie?
They are just rehashing some OLD IDEAS... Throwing in the Martians so they can call it WAR OF THE WORLDS... ;D Are there really so few idea's out there.. I am highly disapointed... Then what else can we expect from big bussiness...
|
|
|
|
Post by phillev on Feb 4, 2005 21:42:09 GMT
You are entitled to your opinion but I think alot of people on this board including myself will disagree with your comments.Its fair to say that this sort of film has been done before but dont forget WOTW was probably the inspiration behind alot of the alien invasion type movies that have already been done before so why shouldn't it have a chance of being remade with todays latest special effects.As long as it doesn't go for the cheesiness that spoilt ID4 and tries to be gritty and realistic which judging by what the other people have said about the latest trailer it seems to be doing I reckon it will be fantastic.
|
|
|
|
Post by themotile on Feb 4, 2005 22:08:46 GMT
The trouble is that Spielberg is an American, he loves America, he loves the burbs and he loves the people this is reflected in all his movies set in america. So to relocate WOTW to America was a logical step and to be honest theres nothing wrong with that after all I read WOTW every summer and I dont read it for the period costume or for the tour around Woking, I read it for the scary martians and the massacre of mankind.
Now with the locality change to America it also follows that you have to move it forward in time otherwise it would be cowboys and indians against the martians with wooden houses in the desert, not nice eye candy is it.
The benefit being we get big set pieces allowing the martians to reak true anarcy with skyscrapers and big bridges.
Spielberg is perfect for the job too as long as he doesnt pour syrup all over the ending.
|
|
|
|
Post by Killraven on Feb 5, 2005 0:53:52 GMT
Spielberg is perfect for the job too as long as he doesnt pour syrup all over the ending. Er...remember AI anyone??  And then there's ET, and Close Encounters...etc...etc |
|
|
|
Post by quaderni on Feb 5, 2005 1:47:30 GMT
Hey Demon Angel! (Advisory warning: serious bile towards Spielberg) Don't feel alone. Plenty of loathing over here. For whatever it's worth, you can look over my previous postings to find pretty scathing stuff on Spielberg (and, to be fair, Hines too). My thoughts are it'll be worse, far worse, than film disasters like Pearl Habour or the recent garbage that's been spewing out the Hollywood mogul offices. In fact, I'm hoping it'll be so dreadful that Tom Cruise will finally disappear from the big screen (some people wish for world peace). I'm already practising movie critic lines like 'deathly', 'terminally putrid', 'vomit-quality acting', 'cinematic partial-birth abortion', 'enematic experience', and the like. Wells's original story - with its critique of militarism, colonialism, and Victorian morality - has no place in the American soul, so it'll have to be watered down with all sorts of gross homilies about the resilience of the American suburban family as a place of inculcating morality and patriotic sentiment - really, can you imagine how the disease ending alone will play with focus groups in America?!?! Less than 40 percent of the country believes in any form of evolution, so bacterial micro-evolution wiping out a super-evolved species will pose a major narrative puzzle. Again, imagine the focus group discussion after the film in Burbank: 'I don't know', Darcy - a night clerk at Wal-mart's - will say, 'I just didn't like the ending. It didn't seem, you know, realistic enough'. Her friend Tiphanie (spelled with a heart over the 'i') agrees: 'Tom Cruise used to be sexy but now he just seems so old. And I hated the ending. I had faith we'd defeat the Martians. I just don't think disease could have doen it'. Jason, a night assistant manager at PI Chang's, agrees. 'I just don't believe in evolution', he says. Also - what if some actually thinks the movie is a veiled critique of US policy in the Middle East?!?! Uh oh! Wells would have a thing or two to say about that, I'd wager, but you don't want to loose the 51 percent moral values crowd in the US. Better drop anything cerebral. Car crashes, explosions, fires, dead bodies, blood, and violence - keep it coming, keep it fast, but keep it self-referential so the crowd might be inspired to buy the latest E.T. special director's cut DVD. Oh yeah, and the Martian dolls and tripod action figures. Then the major problem - the pièce de la résistance when it comes to verisimilitude: 'We all know now there isn't life on Mars'. That last point, folks, will be a killer: the sheer fact of suspending disbelief long enough to sit through the movie will be a major problem. 'Mars attacks' is camp, not tragic drama; I really don't see how a 'modernised' telling of the story can overcome this fact. Of course, I have little faith in the aesthetic choices of your average American (bad, really) - although I myself love camp. Spielberg, I think, will have a hard time overcoming the hollywood 'no-brainer' hill - because it's not a hill, it's a huge mountain - and huge mountain that he himself has helped to build. At least Independence Day was totally hilarious. Why do I read Wells's _The War_? The big themes it asks: colonisation, evolution, bio-ethics, animal-machine relations, modernised war, genocide. Neither of our two directors are really up to the task, in my opinion. Possibility of flop: 45 percent. Potential aggravating factor: whatever's going on the Middle East. OK OK OK, troll rate me away -- and Mal has already pegged me a serious cynic. Seriously, though, I'm being polemical - just offering a 'purist manifesto' for all the other obnoxious purists on this site. This site is seriously fun, so please please please take it all with a grain of salt....  |
|
|
|
Post by themotile on Feb 5, 2005 6:01:13 GMT
Holy cow, you sound like me going on about Hines and Pendragon, I didnt realise I sounded like that so I will tone it down a bit.
The only small flaw in your rant is Scindlers list, that and the belief the film will be bad based on other unrelated American bad films.
I read War of' every summer, I dont read it for the socio political extremist messages or the anti establishment undertones I read it for the human drama and the kick ass martians so who cares where its based as long as its dark enough without a sweet sickly Spielberg ending.
|
|
|
|
Post by jeffwaynefan on Feb 5, 2005 11:54:07 GMT
Guys, its just a film - there's always the book that cant be changed.
|
|
|
|
Post by quaderni on Feb 5, 2005 19:33:43 GMT
Holy cow, you sound like me going on about Hines and Pendragon, I didnt realise I sounded like that so I will tone it down a bit. The only small flaw in your rant is Scindlers list, that and the belief the film will be bad based on other unrelated American bad films. Hey, good cheers, Motile - and I appreciate your good humour! (I'm always afraid of incurring your wrath!) I had hoped that my rant would be taken as funny, not as mean-spirited... Apropos of nothing, though - oddly enough, I really like Spielberg's camp - _Jaws_ and _Poltergeist_, for instance - but I am less inclined when he goes 'serious' on his audience (coming from a family that survived the worst horrors of WWII, both in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, I rather resent him on this point - but that's a whole other story). Nevertheless, I have other issues, too - purely aesthetic, in fact. I like to compare Spielberg with Stephen King. King is one of my favourite writers, for a variety of reasons: not only can he tell a darn good yarn, but he can tell it in a crystal clear, engaging language that speaks to a broad audience. But he's also very honest, I think, about what he's doing. 'I'm a salami writer', King once said in an interview to the _Paris Review_, 'I try to write good salami, but salami is salami. You can't sell it as caviar'. I like that kind of frankness in any writer, artist, or filmmaker. In any case, these are just random thoughts that aren't worth anything. Best wishes for now, and bon weekend! |
|
|
|
Post by Necronmaniac on Feb 5, 2005 20:47:36 GMT
Time for another uber rare post by myself:
Ok let me start by saying im obviously a bit of an odd one here since i cant remember ANY film that i have been to watch at the cinema where i walked out thinking "Oh my GOD!" why did i just spend 3-4 quid watching that?" i say thats odd since everyone else here seems to easily be able to pull 5-6 films AT LEAST that they abvery *friendly* personely despise. I suppose this kind of explains why im finding it hard to see what it is about the spielberg version that everyone HATES so much (ok i correct myself not everyone but some people). Everything i have seen about the film has been top drawer, the effects, the cgi, everything, i cant find ONE bit of footage or still that ive seen that has made me go "ohhh not sure about this". Changing the setting and location doesnt make it any less war of the worlds, its still going to have that focus on one mans struggle for survival, its still gonig to have the dark, desperate feel of human kind being massacred. OK so we are swapping cannons for tanks, ships for subs etc but the core of the story, that of humans, the dominant species of this planet, being simply...usurped in the blink of an eye will still be there, moving it to america only keeps it in line with the martians attacking the most powerful nation in the world at the time. People should stop being too purist and start get excited at the idea of going seeing another take on the idea, i had my concerns at first i will admit but i have been hugely impressed by what i have seen so far. I dont think its about some upstart from americathinking he can do it better than Wells, its about him realising that Wells' stories and the messages and themes within them are as important and relevant in todays world as they were 100+ years ago when he wrote the book, and that the best way to show those messages to the people is by setting it in the world they know, not a world that most people know nothing about nor care about.
|
|
|
|
Post by nervouspete on Feb 6, 2005 0:18:01 GMT
Time for another uber rare post by myself: Ok let me start by saying im obviously a bit of an odd one here since i cant remember ANY film that i have been to watch at the cinema where i walked out thinking "Oh my GOD!" why did i just spend 3-4 quid watching that?" i say thats odd since everyone else here seems to easily be able to pull 5-6 films AT LEAST that they abvery *friendly* personely despise. I suppose this kind of explains why im finding it hard to see what it is about the spielberg version that everyone HATES so much (ok i correct myself not everyone but some people). Everything i have seen about the film has been top drawer, the effects, the cgi, everything, i cant find ONE bit of footage or still that ive seen that has made me go "ohhh not sure about this". Changing the setting and location doesnt make it any less war of the worlds, its still going to have that focus on one mans struggle for survival, its still gonig to have the dark, desperate feel of human kind being massacred. OK so we are swapping cannons for tanks, ships for subs etc but the core of the story, that of humans, the dominant species of this planet, being simply...usurped in the blink of an eye will still be there, moving it to america only keeps it in line with the martians attacking the most powerful nation in the world at the time. People should stop being too purist and start get excited at the idea of going seeing another take on the idea, i had my concerns at first i will admit but i have been hugely impressed by what i have seen so far. I dont think its about some upstart from americathinking he can do it better than Wells, its about him realising that Wells' stories and the messages and themes within them are as important and relevant in todays world as they were 100+ years ago when he wrote the book, and that the best way to show those messages to the people is by setting it in the world they know, not a world that most people know nothing about nor care about. I've read the book more times than I care to remember, and believe it to be a chilling, atmospheric work of genius. And I think that Spielberg's version will do every justice to it. I'm with you, Necromaniac! And I've lost count of the films I've spent money on and hate! (Latest one: 'Elektra', last time I'm going along with the crowd "Let's go see this fun, disposable film for a laugh!" consensus, then. An obvious self-deceit.) |
|
|
|
Post by themotile on Feb 6, 2005 5:15:55 GMT
Ive walked out of two films in my life;
Lara Croft 2 the cradle of life.
and...
Batman & Robin.
|
|
CPP
Junior Member
Posts: 38
|
Post by CPP on Feb 7, 2005 7:23:07 GMT
OK, I'm new here so excuse the ignorance... but is there any indication in the marketing hype on the Cruise WOTW that the invaders are from Mars? Or are we to assume this because of the title alone?
Just wondering.... I'd hate to be really pissed off if they are not...
Given earlier taglines for the marketing campaign, I am thinking that some NASA rover "trips a switch" on the Red PLanet, sending into motion some nasty, subterranean Martian "thing" already here on Earth...
Or maybe I just drank too much gin during the Superbowl.
|
|
|
|
Post by Demon Angel on Feb 10, 2005 9:54:05 GMT
I do realise that people are going to disagree with some of the things I have brought up. So be it. The board is all about discussion and thats what we are doing... If we all agreed on the same things and disagreed on all the same other things... Things would get rather boring wouldn't they. I am just voicing my opinion like everyone else... If we tread on some toes... so be it...
It's true the novel will remain unchanged, a fair point and if the movie a disaster... I hope it doesn't spoil peoples opinion...
What about those who don't know about the novel... OR have no idea because there willbe people that don't know that this as been based on a novel... Will it turn them for or against?
Another thing... The book as a lot of suttle under tones.. Political, social... Will this be portrayed in a modern version?
|
|
And then there's ET, and Close Encounters...etc...etc 
