[Spoiler]Overall, I enjoyed the movie although I know I would have LOVED it if they got rid of all that “whisperers” crap. Or if they must keep them, have them be figments of a crazy mind (like the kid is crazy or something, don’t have them really exist).
I think it would have been much more powerful film if they didn’t add all the stupid alien stuff about repopulating a new planet. They could have focused more on the breakdown of civilization/religion and more on the father dealing with knowing that his son is going to die and there is nothing he can do about it. They can still do that whole, “You and me together forever” thing.
So yeah, movie was lessened by the need for some sort of happy ending. I did enjoy all the disaster scenes and the end of the world.[/Spoiler]
I think the religious bent was interesting in that pro-religious, end-of-days type movie goers will interpret the creatures as angels, whereas I think the director means them to be seen as aliens who have been assumed to be angels by people in the past.
That’s what I took from it too. That Judeo-Christian beliefs are founded on misinterpreting these alien sentinels as God/Angels. The ship at the end was obviously supposed to be Ezekiel’s wheels-within-wheels. As me and my friend left the theater, I was calling them Space Angels. It eventually got truncated to ‘Spangels’. It was good in a Twilight Zone sort of way, with a really hammy ending. The premise was interesting and original, and the first 2/3 of the story unfolded nicely with some nice VFX, but the ending I felt was contrived and trite. Really, it could be said the whole time capsule/number thing was just to fuck with Cage’s character, since the Spangels just ended up taking the boy themselves, anyway. But, hey, it was entertaining. I give it a C+.
[spoiler]I think that Cage was saying that he “knew” it wasn’t over in the sense that he finally submitted, albeit under duress, that there was an afterlife and that somehow the family would be whole again. However I think the character also understood what the aliens were trying to do and was simply telling the child what he needed to hear in order to get him to save himself. In other words, it’s intentionally vague and both meanings were paradoxically intended.
ETA: I just realized I misread your original point. Cage tells his son he knows it’s not the end and that they’ll be together. He also tells the same thing to his father later. He’s basically saying both things, just to different audiences. In both cases I think both meanings are possible and it’s supposed to seem profound.[/spoiler]
This was my biggest complaint too. The “whispers” were simply inconsistent with the plot. Why did the girl 50 years ago hear them? Why did they indicate all these tragedies? What was the point of the warnings if that’s what they were? Once the end was happening why did the two new kids hear them? Why did Cage’s son start writing numbers? If the world was ending what could those numbers mean? Was he just copying the same numbers the 50s girl was? If so, it makes no sense.
Again I think the director was being intentionally vague. I’m not sure if we are supposed to think they are angels or if they are aliens. I’m not sure if he is saying that “god” and “angels” are really misinterpreted aliens or if he is saying that the difference between the two is meaningless and that they are the same thing by different names. All in all, I think the director was trying to be profound without picking a side. I’m not sure if this is a smart, artistic, open thing to do or if it’s a lazy, unclear, gutless thing to do.
I’m not going to bother using spoiler boxes at this point; the last several replies are nothing but spoiler boxes… if you’ve made it this far into the thread, clearly you have more than a cursory interest, so
open spoilers follow.
I thought the same thing. I enjoyed the first half, then the angels/aliens came in and it just seemed… weird.
I had hoped throughout the movie that they’d be significant in some way during the climax, or at least explained a bit. Best guess? Some kind of “angels were here” marker.
I think it’s intentionally vague, but why would angels need spaceships? I have no idea why the angels/aliens didn’t make their intentions known up front – or at least give off a less creepy vibe. I’m sure the director wanted to throw in a “twist” that the bad-seeming guys were actually good; but really, that was obvious from the first few scenes. “Oh, they’re so vague and creepy that they must end up being good guys.” One of those moments.
Actually, the whole thing… what was the purpose? Little girl hears voices, telling her to jot down the major disasters of the next 50 years… so that Cage’s kid will receive it, Cage will get it with three to go, let the next two prove that the numbers are real, WARN him that the end is coming… to what end? So that he can make peace with his father? Let his kid go? Seems to me the angels/aliens really had no reason to do that to begin with. Just let the end come when it will, grab the kids before, and off we go.
And WHY were those two kids (and the others around the world) chosen? For what reason were they ‘special’? Because they could hear the aliens/angels? That doesn’t seem to be the best criteria on which to select the new Adam and Eve.
That reminds me of another question we had coming out of the movie. Were there multiple children taken from around the world and planted on the new world or not? I was of the opinion that there was just one set of kids that we saw and that all the other spaceships were just taking samples of life to plant around the new globe. That at least holds with the blatant Adam and Eve allegory. Though, that’s just speculation, I didn’t see anything either way which clarified that question.
We also discussed this point. My hope is that all of the spaceships brought humans to the new planet. If not, it’s gonna be a pretty white, anglo-saxon, protestant culture.
ETA: I also giggled at the fact that it took 4 or 5 alien/angels to pick up each pair of children… This from a superior being? Ha!
Angels or Aliens? They have to angels. I could handle aliens. But I can not handle shape-shifting, telepathic, prescient aliens who have chosen children to populate a new world.
Either way, why would aliens or angels take ‘children’ to polulate another planet. “Hey, let’s drop the beings with no survival skills on a new planet and see if they survive!”. It was a good thing they were able to bring bunnies. At least they could have one protien meal each .
And why would aliens or angels want to screw with the kids. Why tell them about all the horrible stuff that’s gonna happen that they cannot stop? Why whisper the numbers to them?
The whole thing with the numbers.
He wouldn’t have been able to ‘break the code’ unless he knew the pattern. 6 digits for the date, 8 digits for the location and then we have the death total, which could be 2,3,4,5 or 6 digits. Some of these probably looked like dates themselves. Or the death totals combined with location number looked like dates. And if he thought they may be dates, that would have thrown all the numbers off.
He is supposed to be scientist. His first thought when he came upon the 9/11 numbers should have been “What a big, hairy coincidence!”. his second thought should have been “Maybe someone is pulling my leg.”
He told the other science guy that he saw the letter removed from the capsule and handed to his son. Made a point of it. He saw neither. He was 30 or 40 feet away with a whole bunch of kids in between them. Even someone standing 10 feet would have had a hard time seeing it, and that would be if they were paying attention to it.
The other science guy says “As a scientist, I think we should step away from this”. Yeah, that’s what scientists do. They see something they cannot explain, they pretend they never saw it.!!
It’s always nice to see that during ‘end of the world’ panic, a fella can still drive his oversized gargantuan pickup trick anywhere on the eastern seaboard.
Sorry, I just needed to rant because I ain’t getting my money back. And I didn’t think it was worth it’s own thread.
I’m resurrecting the thread because I just saw the movie this past weekend and had some other questions.
I, too, liked the movie (mostly), but I had many of the same questions badger had. In addition, one big one: Were the aliens from the future and knew that all these disasters would happen, or did they somehow cause them to happen? And, if it’s the latter, doesn’t that make them “bad guys” after all? I mean, they cause the deaths of millions of people and abduct the children to repopulate another planet–not real sympathetic characters, ya know?
Caleb, speaking for the aliens, says that the disasters were to “pave the way” for the impending Armageddon. Huh? If you’re going to reveal motives, you certainly owe the audience more than revealing it through a child who didn’t speak very clearly. Have the aliens speak for themselves!
Re the bunnies: if the purpose of that was to repopulate the animals as well, didn’t you feel sorry for the kids (and the ship) that had to bring the elephants?
And the ending (which I HATED!) was just begging for something to be shouted out in the theater. Mine was, “If a snake offers you an apple, JUST SAY NO!”
After I left, I thought of “Oh my God, it’s signed Slartibartfast!”
For our South Park fans: “I’m sorry, the correct answer was Scientology!”
Or the one my friend came up with at a different showing: as the credits began, he just stood up and shouted, “What the FUCK?!”
All in all, decent idea, great disaster effects, LOUSY LOUSY LOUSY ending.
It was… interesting. Not quite what I expected but more or less what was advertised.
I really liked the moment when Koestler realizes there really is no escape from what’s going to happen, up in the observatory when this becomes patently clear to the audience as well. Guess what, kids – there is no special escape. I was pleased to note that the “hide underground” notion was remarkably stupid and ostrich-y. I’m not sure why the US Government announced the end of the world: there was again quite patently nothing to be done, so why are you bothering people?
I would love to see a movie that actually explores the notion of knowing the future and being unable to stop it.
I’m a Christian, and I had a big ol :dubious: over the Spangels (nice!) and God’s spaceship and Grumpy Atheist Man and WTF the determinism versus chaos business was based on and the “Your scientific mind should be ignoring this obviously not a coincidence series of events!” business. I liked watching the oceans boil, though.
Um, Biblical stuff. I don’t know why they had bunnies, except for the obvious Ark business. Eden’s a big ol’ duh. Revelations indicates the world is going to be destroyed in fire. In the Bible, Caleb is included in the younger generation of Moses’s followers who actually will see the Promised Land. Abigail is a woman who is married to a man of the house of Caleb. She’s a prophetess – maybe – and ends up leaving her evil husband to be David’s wife instead.
I kept thinking the name Koestler sounded familiar – it looks like I was thinking of Kepler.
I’m quite tired, so this is about all I have at the moment. I don’t suspect I will watch it again unless I want to take it apart.
A big :dubious: at Ebert’s assessment. To the OP though, I wouldn’t consider 4 stars to be the equivalent of 100%, it’s more like a range of 76-100% (or 81-100 if it’s a five star rating).
I mostly agree with the others in the thread. I thought the movie up through the end was very good, and the ending was also very good, but that they were from two different movies and didn’t quite make sense together. I mean, the aliens as angels and spaceships as God’s chariot, and new planet as garden of eden worked very well visually, and might have been an interesting idea, but didn’t really fit with the concepts in the earlier parts of the movie. The visuals were great, and the extended shot in the airplane scene was fairly amazing, especially since they had a limited number of takes available. Nick Cage was bad. Not that he’s a great actor, but he’s been good to fairly good in some movies, but here it was like he wasn’t even trying. I guess he was going for “depressed widower” but it came off as “just here for a paycheck”.
I’ve got a strange feeling this movie either was destroyed in editing, or was edited together from scraps that were never really meant to go into one and the same movie – there were some great scenes, some visually impressive, some brilliantly creepy (the whisperer in the young kid’s room, for instance), but they seemed rather clumsily pieced together, with muddy character motivation and plot logic. You get a sense of just having to find a way of transporting the characters from location to location, so that things can then happen. Even the FX seemed to vary in quality – the burning deer at one point seemed a little below par, while the end of the world and the starship were top notch (though that’s not to say I did like the fact that the starship was there in and of itself; I think the ending, with its hamfisted in-your-faceness, pretty much ruined what was good about the rest of the movie, the subtlety – such as it was – and vague creepiness).
Other than that, there’s simply so many little things wrong with the movie that seem to just show a strange lack of care – none of this would have been hard to fix, but so, I’m left with some marvel at Cage’s near-clairvoyant ability to unfailingly pick out the right door in a building full of them, the shoddy science, stalking and chatting the woman up in a museum utilising your own kid in a scheme seemingly designed to accomplish absolutely nothing instead of just knocking at her door, and, most of all, Spangles apparently first laying out some grand scheme to get the chosen ones into exactly the right place at the right time, playing a 50-year long game and all that, and then just kinda blowing that all to hell to pick 'em up at the gas station when Nicolas Cage’s character was just setting out to do exactly the same thing for them (though why there was a need to do the whole prophecy thing in the first place wasn’t exactly explained, either; I mean, poor little Lucinda really seems to have gotten a raw deal, having her whole life ruined by whispering voices pretty much for zilch).
at Ebert’s assessment. To the OP though, I wouldn’t consider 4 stars to be the equivalent of 100%, it’s more like a range of 76-100% (or 81-100 if it’s a five star rating).