…and yet everyday here on earth people mix Bleach with Windex, , fill the atmosphere with known harmful gasses, even smoke cigarettes, or drink to excess.
That’s because people are idiots, it’s convenient and they’re addicted.
I saw it this morning, and I found it to be one of the dumbest movies I’ve ever seen. And what the HELL-
The kid just knocks over glasses of water onto it? Why not grab a supersoaker, or have the little girl run in with the garden hose? And why didn’t we get to SEE the alien melting into a puddle? D’uh. And what’s up with the foil hats? That was just stupid!
This movie SUCKED!
putting my reply in a spoiler box because some of it gives away the story line
I for one really liked the movie, yea ok it doesnt make sense that the aliens came to a planet covered with 78% of water, but aside from that, it wasnt bad. And maybe the kid didnt grab a supersoaker cos they didnt have one, and maybe the kid didnt get a hose because when theres an alien in your front room you probably dont think rationally, besides with the amount of glasses of water in that room, hardly needed a hose, and if shed gotten the hose, the dieing wifes words wouldnt have fit in…
The foil hats were just some dumb humour, it was mentioned on there news that the aliens were reading minds and that was the only way to prevent it…
Want to talk about holes in plots, you may as well talk about the fact that an alien race came to the planet in the first place, and if you do that you rule out ET, Close Encounters, ID4… any other alien movie really
I loathed all of your examples, so that’s a moot point in regards to me at least.
Moreover, M. Night should have said “I’m going to make a movie about faith, and that’s it” instead of making a movie that’s mostly about faith until the last 10 minutes when he gives us a giant rubber alien and the Secret Weapon to defeat it.
The movie didn’t need that! The aliens just needed to leave and never be seen again! Then it would have been a movie about faith instead of a movie that tried to have it both ways and, imo, suffered greatly because of it.
I took the movie as a comedy with a few thrills. It failed as a thriller, as a “message” film, but there were so many truly hilarious moments it made it worth watching.
[quote]
Originally posted by Delly
any other alien movie really
you dont like ** any ** alien movie? What I quoted were merely just an example of the more popular alien movies
Does the movie explicitly say that it was water? I didn’t see any of that in the version of Signs that I watched. My theory is that they are adversely affected by something in the water. It’s the country, so maybe something in hard water. The lake could have also contained it, and the aliens would have avoided it. Maybe there really were ‘bugs’ in the water.
You’re assuming that converting him was the only purpose of the events in the movie. Gibson’s conversion was a footnote’s footnote in a larger game. That the movie focused on him does not mean he was more important than anyone else on the planet. In fact, that was what I liked most about the movie: an alien invasion told from the POV of an average bystander, not a frontline soldier or a military commander.
All of this is based on huge assumptions: that God meant to kill the wife, that God wanted the aliens to invade, that God was capable of preventing any of the events depicted in the movie. It is interesting how many criticisms of the movie (barring those on a purely technical level, such as “the aliens looked stupid”) are rely on assumptions based on similar movies and stories, and not on anything stated in the movie. The movie, in fact, gives us almost no “hard” information on the aliens at all, beyond what we actually see the aliens doing (weakness to water, poison gas, etc.) We don’t know why the aliens came here in the first place: to conquer? Seems unlikely, given how inhospitable the planet is to them. Personally, I assumed they were intersteller slavers, dropping in on a primitve backwater planet for a quick snatch-and-grab before the space cops showed up to chase them off, but the idea that they were, in fact, straight up demons from hell is an attractive theory too.
And before anyone says, “Why would you want slaves whose body chemistry is a powerful acid to you?” I want to say two things: First, we weren’t necessarily slaves (or food, if you prefer that interpretation) for the aliens that were capturing us: they might have intended to sell us retail to a third (or more) species. And secondly, ever seen Aliens?
Of course, you’re assuming that the aliens we saw were the aliens who built the space craft. You drive a car: do you know how to build a car? Of course, that’s an imperfect analogy, as whoever did build your car was the same species as yourself: the same cannot be said with any certainty of the aliens in Signs. Or, like hebesphenomegacorona said, “That’s because people are idiots, it’s convenient and they’re addicted.” Dammit, aliens are people too. No reason why they can’t have the same frailties that we do.
Duderdude, would you mind posting an example of what is, in your opinion, a good alien movie?
I’d buy that to an extent.
Certainly, the CNN-type freeze frame shot of the alien walking through the courtyard is supposed to be a campy homage to grainy Bigfoot-type footage.
One thing no one’s mentioned in this thread is that M. Night (Can Never Get His Last Name Right) makes very good use of sound in the movie. I sensed the “thriller” tension through a wind chime or a breeze running through the crops, or as Roger Ebert noted, “unanticipated silence.”
I think, though, that this thread reveals a weakness in the movie. Is it an homage to B-movies? (It takes itself too seriously.) Is it a Sci-Fi thriller? (I hope not.) Is it a movie about faith? (Isn’t the pay-off a bit simplistic?) Is it one of the late 90s/early 00s “ending with a shocking twist” movies? (If so, the twist is lame and easily anticipated.)
Why the aliens are invading is NOT IMPORTANT. God damn it, your missing the point by getting hung up on something like this. The point of the movie was to see how an alien invasion looks from the PoV of an average family.
I don’t see why people get hung up on the water thing, while we are at why not start up a thread about why aliens would invade a planate where a lethal disease was so common in the air?
The aliens couldn’t even get past a flimsy pantry door!
I recall one of the kids theorizing they wouldn’t use technology for fear it may be used against them. But common! A battering ram isn’t rocket science!
I haven’t seen it, but I’ve a fair idea.
OK, arguing about vulnerable-to-water is a bit beside the point, but it’s such a STUPID vulnerability. It’s possible, but since practically any common substance would cause a lot fewer arguments (can anything be more likely to kill the aliens due to being in the air, being obviously covering the planet, etc), WHY? It’s like they had a vulnerability to someone shouting “APPLE-PIE” while touching their left ear. It technically works, but it detracts from the tension while everyone says “WTF?”
Maybe it’s just me, but the fact that you can’t easily pigeonhole the movie into any particular genre seems much more of a strength than a weakness.
I’m going to make this point for the third or fourth time on the SDMB: if you wanted to make a science fiction explanation about the water, it would be entirely reasonable to suppose that the aliens have a biochemistry that reacts violently to fresh water, but not to salt water. There’s a lot more of the latter than the former on this planet.
And again: we don’t really know they were aliens in the first place, or what purpose the crop circles might have had, or anything else about them. They could be demons; that makes just as much sense.
Graham pretty much states the theme of the movie in the scene where he talks about two kinds of people: those who weigh evidence on a purely logical basis and see coincidences, and those who have faith. Faith doesn’t have to be proven; that’s the whole point. In the end, it doesn’t matter that others might not share Graham’s conversion, which is really just a return to his normal state. It’s in his nature to have faith; he’s been trying to deny that since his wife’s death, because of pain and anger. He can’t really be happy without it. Humans are beings of both intellect and powerful emotions.
I’m one of the group of people who see coincidences; I don’t have any faith myself, and suspect that I’m incapable of it. Sometimes when I try to deal with all the things that happen in the world on a rational basis, that’s just not adequate emotionally. I imagine that having a belief that there’s an ultimate purpose for everything, or at least that there’s some sort of cosmic benevolent entity, that someday there’ll be perfect understanding, must be a comfort.
Maybe I’m wrong; is that what faith feels like? Actually, that’s worth a whole separate thread.
Maybe so, and I should add that I liked the movie, if not at the **** level that Ebert (for one) did.
At the same time, I get the feeling the movie could have been better had it been focused more to a particular genre, or sub-genre. That’s of course IMHO.
See, the way I theorized it was that the water didn’t kill the aliens; they were killed by the atmosphere.
Stick with me here
Ok, the aliens had on no clothes, weird claws, and that hose thing that sprayed the gas. This all seemed weird to me, until I looked at them as wearing an advanced body armor type thing, both to enhance their fighting abilities and protect them from something…maybe the nitrogen in the atmosphere. The suits were made from something that reacted poorly to H2O…let’s say potassium. The water dissolves the suits–if they were actually potassium that alone would injure the alien–and exposes their poor, naked flesh to the elements.
Of course, then people will wonder why they would invade a planet with a toxic atmosphere. Ok, maybe they’re gonna terraform (alienform?) the place after they’ve killed us all.
Yeah, it’s a crap idea, but I really get bored at work sometimes.
The movie started out pretty good, but once they revealed the aliens and started inserting little bits of humour, I lost all FAITH in it (chuckle chuckle).
Having said that, I think the water hangup is pretty stupid. Water doesn’t fly out of lakes and oceans en mass and attack. Sure, it rains, but we seem to be able to avoid rain pretty well. I mean, humans react pretty aversely to tornados but that didn’t stop us from colonizing the American plains…
The movie started out pretty good, but once they revealed the aliens and started inserting little bits of humour, I lost all FAITH in it (chuckle chuckle).
Having said that, I think the water hangup is pretty stupid. Water doesn’t fly out of lakes and oceans en mass and attack. Sure, it rains, but we seem to be able to avoid rain pretty well. I mean, humans react pretty aversely to tornados but that didn’t stop us from colonizing the American plains…