The bat was on the wall in Mel Gibson’s house, though, which made no sense to me. Sure, Meryl had moved in with him, but why didn’t he put his bat up on his OWN wall?
Actually that could make sense for a couple reasons:
First, as was mentioned in the movie Joaquim adored his older brother, so it could’ve been a gift.
Second, he was regretful and unhappy with the way his career turned out, so he may not have wanted the reminder in his own house.
Ah, yes, much better thread than the other one, and earlier too. 
I agree with many that it is a story of regaining faith; the alien invasion is not the main plot. I loved the movie, and believe me: that praise coming from an agnostic, like myself, is no small feat.
Nobody did notice that the lamp in the kids room had an American revolutionary patriot figure, an inside reference to Mel’s recent “I will defend my ground” The Patriot movie.
I just have to say I nearly cheered when I saw Phoenix take down that bat. There’s something oddly exciting about watching some all-powerful alien get beat mercilessly with a bat. Maybe it’s just me.
I expected to hate this movie, so I went in with negative expectations, and ended up liking it a lot. I was especially impressed with the combination of fright and humor, often within the same scene (most notably when the Phoenix guy is watching the Mexican birthday party scene on TV).
My theory about the people in the Middle East discovering the alien’s weakness is that the Middle East is the source of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, and that people there were using Holy Water against the aliens – that would match up with the description of “primative” and also tie in to the movie’s theme of faith.
I hadn’t noticed the weirdness of having the bat hanging on the wall of Mel’s house, as opposed to Phoenix’s own house, but maybe the house was a family house, and both brothers grew up there?
One thing that I kept thinking is that a farm is a lot of WORK, and we don’t see anyone doing that work, although I guess they do get caught up with the aliens pretty quickly. I was also curious as to how Mel managed a working farm during his priestly days, when presumably he would have a full working day with church duties. It’s not as if either farmers or priests just slack around all day.
Loved the shot of the alien at the birthday party, and I think it’s a deliberate reference to the big foot film. There was another moment in the movie when I thought it referenced something else, but I can’t remember what it was now. Darn. This is the kind of movie that I would have enjoyed watching on DVD at home, because throughout the movie, I kept thinking of things I wanted to discuss with people (and of course I would NEVER talk in a movie theater, thank you very much).
Overall, though, the main theme fell flat for me – I think the central question is one of faith, and what it is and what it means to people, but the answers to that question were all very weird, to me. I would be slightly freaked out if my own personal priest came by his faith in such a grabby way – ooooh, killed my wife, I have no faith … hey! saved my son! thumbs up for faith! I hope his car battery doesn’t die next week, that would be terrible for the poor members of his congregation. A faith based on coincidence has to be one of the weakest ideas ever.
Saw it last night and you can add me to the “Disappointed” column. (Although, I did think the film was well set-up. I also liked the concept of the aliens, instead of being peaceful emissaries or conquerors, being like a band of interstellar barbarians or pirates who raid and loot ripe planets and then move on.)
Also, this isn’t my idea about the movie but someone at this site’s messageboard at this site suggestedit could of been a dream. I don’t subscribe to this view but does put some of the rather odd scenes (e.g., the UFO book with the picture of the lookalike house under attack, the easy way the aliens were dispatched, etc.) in an interesting perspective.
Maybe it was a board with a nail in it.
I thought that, when the alien was holding the boy hostage, Mel Gibson would bust out with “GIVEMEBACKMYSON!” No such luck.
BTW, that should have been “it could HAVE been a dream.”
[nitpick]
A full grown, angry german shepherd could easily take out two 4 foot kids in a blink … i don’t care if the kid did learn his home alone survival skills from his older brother. What’s with using the barbeque fork to kill the dog anyhow? I guess he must have used the force to get the weapon from the grill he walked away from … a la silent bob.
“I don’t hear my children” … did anyone find either of the kids to be all that noisy to begin with? When they’re not killing pets are they usually playing a ripe-and-rowdy game of bang the metal trashcan?
The “She’s severed in two and the truck is holding her together. Want to talk to her?” was just a bit silly. I’m not a doctor, but I’d be willing to bet that the amount of blood loss she would have experienced would have incapacitated her. Period.
Cliche after cliche after cliche. What jackass says, “I’m sorry I hit your wife, but it was like, supposed to happen … ya know?” Dumb.
[/nitpick]
That being said, some of the scenes are rather genius. Mel also did a great job, as usual.
MNS needs to knock off that irritating “I did this” attitude. The whole fading out of his name after the closing scene made me want to throw rocks at the screen. Unless, of course, he wants his name synonymous with crap movies in which case he’s got me so spooked I’ll avoid paying $8 to see another of his flicks.
You’re 1 for 3 MNS. Keep trying, you arrogant bastard.
Send out Simon Belmont! The holy water, the whip. Earth can’t lose!
As dumb as the whole pummel the alien thing was, I too found it oddly satisfying. Maybe because the last part of the movie was so much running and hiding, it was nice to see a little bit of ass-kicking.
I’ll probably post a thread in GQ (with a spoiler warning, of course) and ask how a creature could live that was weaken by water. I can understand being weak against carbon dioxide or even plain ole O[sub]2[/sub], but water? 
This has been known to happen with people who are hit but subway trains and get caught between the train and the edge of the platform. Don’t know how likely or plausible it is with getting smashed between a car and a tree (the subway involves twisting things pretty tightly).
I assume the aliens were naked because clothing would inhibit their natural cloaking ability.
I also harbored the thought that the alien was going to heal the boy.
Put me in the enjoyed-it column, but it wasn’t nearly as good as his other two major films (but certainly better than Wide Awake, which also directly addressed the faith issue).
Man. Before I started browsing the thread, I hadn’t realized there were so many clueless people on the SDMB.
The first rule about the movie (and if you don’t understand this, then you’re brain has been melted down by too many dumb action films) is this:
"Signs" is not about aliens
I’ll repeat that, since so many don’t seem to understand it:
"Signs" is not about aliens.
And it’s not about crop circles, either – that was just a convenient tag for the critics to use, because if they said what “Signs” was really about, it would have spoiled the movie.
The aliens and the crop circles are McGuffins. They are completely irrelevant to the movie, and especially to the point of the movie. At most, they are a way to sell the film to the marching morons who wouldn’t sit through a film that has some real depth to it.
What is “Signs” about? Quite clearly, God, and especially faith in God. Hell, even an agnostic like me can pick that out.
Mel Gibson is a priest who lost his faith due to the death of his wife. Much of the film is a study at how grief affects a family, but at the end, there is a clear statement that 1) God exists 2) He has a plan, and 3) everything that happened to Gibson’s family was all designed to save his son.
Now, I’ll grant that the plot is a bit too well contrived; it comes across as the screenwriter’s plan, not God’s. However, the screenplay does do a great job of taking the loose ends and using them to make its message.
But the aliens are not important. They are just the device to move the story along. If you criticize them, you are just exposing your own shallowness.
Plot holes? Bah. Those who say so don’t know what a plot is.
RealityChuck, I agree with you, although there’s no need to insult people who see things differently.
As has been mentioned, in his last three movies, Shyamalan took B-movie ideas and gave them A-movie scripts, in which what seems to be the main plot device – ghosts, superheroes, aliens – is really just to draw us into the characters’ personal story. So Signs could have used some non-fantastic crisis. But I don’t think the use of fantastic elements is just a gimmick. There’s a good reason why such elements have been used in thousands of stories; if you imagine how you would really react to such things happening, they’re very powerful ideas.
I’m an atheist myself, but my interpretation is that Father Graham never really lost his belief. When he’s close to despair he tells God that he hates him; I think he had been denying his own faith because of anger and grief. I don’t think his faith is based on coincidence; I think it’s an inherent part of his make-up, and the coincidence that saves his son gives him a reason to let himself feel it again.
I’m glad I don’t have any faith myself, but I know a lot of people can’t be happy without it, so as long as they’re not burning people like me at the stake, that’s cool. One of my core beliefs is that you’ve got a right to your own beliefs.
There’s an interesting parallel between Graham and his son. Morgan, drawn throughgout the film; Graham’s fractured relationship with God is carefully mirrored in Morgan’s relationship with Graham. Morgan rejects Graham as his father (“I wish you were my Dad,” he says to Merrill) blames Graham for his mother’s death, just as Graham blamed God, and tells Graham “I hate you,” just as Graham tells God. Graham’s response to being told “I hate you” is interesting too - “That’s fine,” he says, as if he’s an uncaring God.
Make of that what you will. I agree, though, that the film is obviously not supposed to be A Realistic Portrayal Of An Alien Invasion, and criticizing it because it’s not like “V” is sort of missing the central point of what science fiction is supposed to do, anyway.
In fact, if I can go out on a tangent here, I think people’s expectations of science fiction are remarkably narrowminded these days. Science fiction originally was what I’d call Bradburyesque scifi, or Wellsian; the idea that you use scientific concepts to create fictional scenarios and let characterws respond to it, and that allows you to explore a variety of themes. Everything’s a “what if” scenario:
- What if you could convinct people of crimes before they occurred? Would it be right to punish them? How would people justify or be opposed to that? (Minority Report)
- What if you could create artificial human beings? How would people feel about that? What rights would such beings have? (Blade Runner)
- What if people colonized Mars? (The Martian Chronicles) What sort of things might happen there?
- What if human evolution was caused by an alien intelligence? (2001)
However, I think we’re now seeing a new kind of science fiction phenomenon, the Star Trek/Star Wars/Tolkein type, or what I’ll call the “Canon” school of sci-fi. The basic idea behind this is to create a universe with a set of (ideally) unchanging rules and history, and just base conventional stories within that universe. The “what if?” question becomes unnecessary. What matters is strict adherence to the “canon,” which is why you hear Star Wars and Star Trek babbling endlessly about what “counts” and what doesn’t in the context of the “universes.” If you actually examine the stories behind Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and any one of a thousand book series you’ll find at your local superbookstore, the “What if?” questions aren’t there the way they are in the works of Ray Bradbury or Robert Heinlein. They don’t matter; what matters is The Canon; Tell a story, any story, as long as the Star Destroyers have a certain number of turbolasers and the Enterprise’s warp drive is used to route phaser power. The absolute nadir of this is the Mechwarrior universe, which is so antiseptic, boring, and wrapped up in its own internal consistency and inflated self-importance that it’s unintentionally hilarious.
IMHO, there’s way too much of the second kind of sci-fi now, and way too little of the first. That’s why “Signs” is eliciting such a confused reaction; it uses a traditionally science fiction concept (space aliens invading) to explore some what ifs and some wonky themes. Because its use of the traditional sci-fi bad guys is not according to convention, everyone gets upset. I think it’s blindingly obvious the aliens didn’t need death rays or a complicated backstory involving a long list of characters and political intrigue to just make them look like scary monsters. The last thing I’d want is some “Signs Canon” where I learn about the aliens’ interstellar empire and the saga of Emperor Gnttykk, who son Hgggysst was slain in the Great Battle of Sirius in the 15781st Year of the Fourth Age of Geek.
A movie that does this really well is “The Thing.” What is The Thing? Where’s it from? Did that big ship belong to it, or to whatever creature it last imitated? It’s never really explained, because it doesn’t matter. The purpose of the Thing is to elicit paranoia and fear, because “The Thing” is ABOUT paranoia and fear, not about the monster. Sure, there are scientific holes in the concept. Huge ones. But who cares? That’s not the point to the story. And the aliens in “Signs” aren’t the point to that story, either.
Not being like “V” is a good thing.
I really fail to see how anyone could think that was a good movie. The questioning faith theme was endearing enough; but executed horribly IMO.
In order to get to a sub-plot, presumably you must first have a plot. The aliens were extremely whimpy and apparently unintelligent. The whole crop circle idea is completely stupid unless they just enjoyed messing with us. They were so weak as to not be able to get out of a pantry or force their way into the basement.
I found Graham’s lack of hostility towards the vet particularly disturbing. I mean, not only has this man killed your wife, he’s also responsible for single-handedly crushing your most precious beliefs. I’d want his head on my mantle. Also, and I may be way off here, wouldn’t the realization that aliens exist be a far greater blow to his faith than the death of his wife? I’ve heard some religious people give reasons why this wouldn’t upset their faith but I find this fairly hard to believe.
What was supposed to be the message for them never carrying a weapon? God will provide? OK, so they are an anti-gun family, but damn, after being trapped in the cellar all night with every indication that it would be their last, why the hell didn’t they at least take the freakin’ pick axe upstairs ?
Not taking the pickaxe upstairs was, IMHO, the single biggest flaw in the movie. I mean, they had to move the weapon out of the way in order to go upstairs unarmed to face these beings that were trying to kill them. And they’d spent an entire night int he basement looking at the young kid who might be about to die based on the alien invasion. And Mel had already chopped some fingers off of one of them.
I noticed that Phoenix’s shoes were tied. Did he do that himself? Then he’s smart enough to take the pickaxe upstairs.
Other than that, though, I enjoyed the movie immensely. It was very scary, and the themes of faith were handled interestingly and respectfully. I would’ve been much less scared of the aliens if they were ubermensch, like in ID4; their frailty made them much more terrifying to me.
Daniel
In regards to the idea that aliens would make people question their faith, I can see this entire movie as an exercize in creating a scenario in which the appearance of extraterrestrials would be the catalyst for restoring someone’s faith.
As for the being pirates instead of conquerers, you don’t know that. Maybe they came, found out they were very easily killed here, thought “OH SHIT!” and left as fast as they could, forgetting about organization. And I thought the radio message that said they were harvesters was probably just some crackpot theory. 12 hours isn’t enough time to figure out much of anything when an event of that scale happens.
And as for the aliens being naked, I thought that was dumb. Sure, clothes would stop them from being invisible, but considering how advanced they are, couldn’t they make clothes that could blend in with thier enviroment? I mean, to some extent, we humans can do that.
Overall, I liked the movie, despite the plot holes.
It was beautifully done. And I laughed and I cried and I jumped and screamed when the hand came through the grillwork in the basement. But I came out dissatisfied.
I know the movie wasn’t about the aliens. And I like RickJay’s point about the types of science fiction - character driven “what-if” scenarios are far more interesting to me than techno-hardware and stuff exploding. But if you are going to pick a basket to put your story in - in this case, the basket labeled “aliens” - you have got to make sure it hasn’t got a hole so big your story falls through it. I don’t mind a few little holes; that’s the nature of baskets. I don’t care if we’re left wondering what they wanted and how they got there and exactly why they left. Speculating about a couple of leftover mysteries afterwards makes it more fun.
But the water thing just ruined it for me. Water?! It’s in the atmosphere! How could they even walk around and breathe? What, it wasn’t raining anywhere they stopped? And they want slaves (no, can’t be, they killed them - or food - or maybe they weren’t really dead…? gah) that’s basically full of water, which is poison to them? And they didn’t know any of this before they showed up? And all the rest of the objections thus far observed. (Well, I like the stupid, bad-ass pirates of the universe hypothesis, anyway. ) My daughter suggested it should have been Coke instead of water. That would’ve been a hoot.
I like my science-fiction to have basically believable science in it. You can’t just write it off with “that’s not what the story’s about” if you choose science fiction as your vehicle. All the “Hanh?” reactions get in the way of absorbing what the real story is, for me anyway. Because I was very interested in the “real story” but the thing is a whole thing, you know?
For a really pilly nitpick - one of the first things my daughter (whose boyfriend is asthmatic) said: “That’s not the way you use an inhaler!” I wouldn’t have noticed it, but there are probably enough people out there who would and it’s irritating because it would be so easy to fix.