Had you already seen 28 Days Later? 28 Weeks Later was the sequel nobody cared about.
I suppose I’m not spoiling it by telling you that in the movie, Sky Marshall Dienes lives long enough to resign after that first invasion of Klendathu. In the book, if you’ll recall, Dienes and his entire unit are wiped out to a man fighting a delaying action against the bugs while what’s left of Earth’s military scrambles back to a safe enough distance that the Arachnids won’t slaughter them all. Rico even says that after that, the best the MI could do for a long time was make hit-and-run raids and harass the enemy here-and-there because they had lost so many good men on Klendathu. It really was a poorly-thought-out mess just like in the book; it doesn’t matter if you’re an army of automatic-rifle-toting Hollywood pretty boys/girls, or an army of Mobile Infantry in Marauder armour.
I’ve read about what Paul Verhoeven says he wanted to do with the movie, and we’ve talked about it so many times before (like here and here), but you really can’t take Starship Troopers any more seriously than you can, say, Robocop, for example. It’s just plain fun to watch.
Maybe we’ll get what we came for someday when someone makes John Steakley’s Armor or Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (or even Forever Peace).
It’s been a while since I’ve bought any Marvel comics, but to my reckoning, Magneto and the X-men have been at odds philosophically since Day One, and the movies repeatedly capitalize on this. Both Professor X and Magneto want Mankind to accept mutants living among them - the former through peace and understanding, but the latter through conquest. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that Magneto desires mutants to live above Mankind, with mere humans groveling at his feet.
Please tell me you at least stayed long enough to watch Juggernaut chase after Kitty Pryde!
Mandy Patinkin’s character was going to be named “George Jetson”, but Hanna-Barbera nixed the idea. That’s why James Caan declares that he will not go around introducing him to people as “Sam Francisco”, and asks if he can just call him “George” instead.
The gag is that the aliens pick human names to be known by amongst the humans, sometimes with unintentional consequences (“we named him after your Earth politician, Richard Nixon”), but sometimes with nods to characters or situations in other works. The comic book featured an alien detective named “Mason Jar”.
As to whether the premise is wasted… maybe that’s why they thought there was enough material there to continue with a TV show. I thought the appreciable angle of the drug-smuggling plotline was that most of the aliens really do want to assimilate into Earth society, but as a whole had to hide the fact that their masters had controlled them with narcotics. It was a dirty little secret they wish they could have left behind. There are always a few in every crowd that want to take more than their fair share, and are willing to exploit their own kind, however …
I liked Gary Graham better in Robot Jox.
Signs I can not excuse, but we probably don’t want to open that can of purple worms again.
Independence Day gets a pass because you’re not supposed to take it seriously - it’s a “Humanity! F$#^ YEAH!” movie deliberately wrapped in obvious cliches so you can have fun watching it on a big screen. The first time I saw it was when I lived in Houston, and you better believe we all cheered when President Whitmore authorized nuking the saucer.
