Signs -- Definite Spoilers

Cafe Society
21

While I acknowledge the acting and the directing sense (see my OP at the start), I still cannot believe the slack they’re cutting Shyamalan for this. If he had pulled so many absurdities in any other genre he wouldn’t have gotten away with it.

What if Mel Gibson had been a firefighter who had lost his faith, and in one scene we see him putting out a fire with vegetable oil? How many people would defend the film because of the quality of the acting, or the sense of lost faith rekindled, or the gorgeous cinematography? Eveybody would be going: “Salad Oil?”
I swear, that’s precisely how ridiculous and distracting virtually every of the sf/fantasy elements is in this flick.

22

The idea that the alien that we saw seeming to be lo-tech doesn’t bother me. I imagin that the aliens that actually fly the spaceships have other ‘fighter’ aliens, perhaps as slaves. (just like paratroopers probably can’t fly the plane they jump out of) They wouldn’t give their slaves tech that the slaves could turn on their masters. Plus these guys are naturally pretty tough.

They thing that I would have done that the ‘stupid’ humans didn’t do is that I would have gone out and altered the crop circles. If they are using them to navigate then turn their road signs to gibberish.

23

Yeah, I think Shyamalan is proving to be much better as a director than as a writer. I hope that in the future he gets some writing help, and focuses on his directing talents (which are considerable).

24

Overall, I liked the movie, but, once again it is important to realize one salient fact:

"Signs" is not about aliens

The aliens are a McGuffin. Criticizing them is like complaining that Uranium isn’t really a black powder that can be stored in wine bottles, or that you can’t make a propeller completely silent, or that a song can’t really be a secret code. It wins a gold medal for Missing the Point.

The movie is about faith in God, and I admire the fact that Shyamalan snuck in a serious theme in a film that was obstensibly a mindless thriller. It is the story of how Gibson was able to regain his faith (the final shot encapsulates everything the movie was about).

Now, you can argue flaws on that basis. The situation did strike me as a bit too contrived. Certainly, too, there’s a bit of pretension just in tackling the theme. But Shyamalan deserves a lot of credit for trying, and for creating a entertaining story that proves his thesis.

So it’s just plain cluelessness to criticize the aliens and what they do. The aliens don’t matter. They are only there to dramatize the main point about the need for religious faith.

25

Tone it down, man.

The movie is about aliens. I’ll agree that it is also about faith in god, but for His sake, the entire development of the story and driving force in the plot is the “alien invasion”. To believe in the fear that drives the family, we need to be presented with fearful and believable aliens. You could argue convincingly that he should have never shown the aliens at all, I’d agree with that. But once you show them, they’re fair game.

Just to do some criticizing on what you do believe to be criticizable, I question the lead character’s journey and behavior. A minister loses his wife, and loses his faith. He becomes so cynical that he’s given to long speeches about hollow coincidence. His ex-ballplayer brother kills an alien with a bat and some glasses of water, and he gains his faith back. Suddenly a not-that-amazing coincidence has become evidence for God. It’s fairly equivalent to the coincidence that Merrill described, the avoidance of a mouthful of vomit. I don’t buy the flip-flop, and I’d hardly say that the movie has proved that religious faith is necessary in life, if that even was Shyamalan’s thesis, which I’m not entirely convinced of, either.

I really dug Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense. There were some very cool moments in Signs. And I look forward to M. Night’s next movie. But I’m not going to give him a pass on some brutal dialogue, frying-pan-on-the-head subtext, and half-baked storytelling because he has made the admirable attempt to invert a cliched genre.

26

The entire basis for the invasion is that the Aliens have a strict code against killing. Here’s how it works:
(A Scene at the Alien Homeworld)

Leader: You! Yes, you! Who are you?

Random Alien: I’m a Second Undersecretary for Colonization.

Leader: Yes, you’ll do perfectly. Go to the Recruitment Center. We need volunteers.

RA: Volunteers?

Leader: For our Glorious Invasion of Earth!

RA: Will it be dangerous?

Leader: Dangerous? Of course! The aboriginals have primitive but deadly weapons, and the planet is covered with poisonous dihydrogen oxide. But if it weren’t dangerous, there would be no glory! Now get going!
(On board the Flying Saucer, hovering over a field)

Pilot:OK, you “volunteers”, get out.

RA: But nobody told us what to do!

Pilot: You’re supposed to make Crop Circles.

RA: With what?

Pilot: Take those Boards, stakes, and Rope.

RA: I thought we used the backwash from our Star Drive.

Pilot: What? Are you nuts? Get out there and make circular patterns.

RA: OK, but why?

Pilot: They’re …uhhh… signal markers. Yeah, that’s it. They point the way to the major cities.

RA: But I can see the cities from here. They light up the whole sky!

Pilot: Are you questioning the High Command? Get out there and make Circles!

(On Board the Big Ships, just before the invasion)

High Commander: I want you Aliens to go out there and attack those houses. Bring back specimens for the glory of our planet!

RA: But we haven’t had any military training!

HC: You won’t need any. You can outrun and outjump any of those earthlings. And you’ve got those poison gas implants.

RA: But they onmly have a range of six inches! Their guns can shoot farther than that!

Second Random Alien: Don’t we get any suits?

Third Random Alien: Don’t we even get any clothes!?

HC: What are you? Aliens? or Wimps? You oughtta be able to lick those Earthings with one hand tied behind your back! You don’t need suits against Dihydrogen Oxide. It would just …uhhh… it would just trap that deadly stuff against your skin. Now get out there and fight!
(On the Saucers, returning to the Alien Homeworld)

High Commander: Well, how did the Harvesting go?

Pilot: We sent out 10,500 troops.

HC: How many returned to the ships?

Pilot: 134

HC: Sounds like a pretty good harvest to me. Maybe now there’ll be a little elbow room.

Pilot: At least until the next Harvest.

27

Wrong. The aliens are simply a McGuffin. The story works just fine if, say, terrorists were substituted for aliens. The aliens are only the means to an end, and is no more essential than the McGuffin in any Hitchcock film.

The story is entirely the reaction to the alien invasion. But aliens aren’t essential to the plot. They were just there as a selling point, since a movie about faith, God, and redemption isn’t going to draw an audience.

Here is something was a basis for debate. The clear point is that there was a plan that allowed Gibson to save his son. The points supporting that are strong:

  1. His wife’s last words. Gibson first thinks they were just random neurons firing. At the end, though, he realizes they are advice on how to save the son.
  2. The brother. Remember, he moved in after the death of the wife. If the wife hadn’t died, the brother wouldn’t have been there. There wouldn’t have been a bat even available. The point is that the wife’s death was used as a way of saving the son.
  3. The asthma – keeps the son from dying from poison gas.
  4. The glasses of water – make the bat more effective.

The four points all fit together to make the message clear: that there was a guiding intelligence who used the wife as a catalyst to save the son. These random events turned out to have a deeper purpose. What Gibson though was mere coincidence, he realizes is the sign of a greater intelligence guiding his life.

Now there are certainly issues with this. God killing the wife in order to save the son seems a big harsh (though otherwise, the brother wouldn’t be there). And it is a bit contrived – the suspicion is that the guiding intelligence is not God, but M. Night Shyamalan.

28

Reality Chuck, as I indicated in my very first post, the movie is about a minister’s regaining his faith, so I agree you are quite correct about the aliens being a McGuffin. But I feel that a film-maker has a responsibility to make his McGuffin credible, and this Mr. Syamalan has not done – by a very, very long shot. Suspension of disbelelief is required for a great many movies, sf and fantasy especially, and it is a very fragile thing. If you shatter it, you will be a long time getting it back, if ever. The problem is that the suspension of disbelief in Signs will not survive a moment’s critical thought. If Shyamalan won’t believe in his aliens, why should I? And – make no mistake about it – they are essential to his plot. Shyamalan chose to put them there as the drivers of events. Without them, Hess would spend the whole movie sulking. But if they are ridiculous or inconsistent, then they’re not a credible threat, and the audience begins to concern itself with their inconsistencies more than with Hess’ redemption. You can’t pass this off as a failing of the audience. It’s the film-maker’s fault.
It’s not that you can’t pull this kind of bait-and-switch with your audience. Peter Scheffer does it all the time. His movies aren’t about historical situations – they’re about God and Man (just like Signs, ostensibly). But he makes his historical plays believable, if not historically correct. So The Royal Hunt of the Sun isn’t really about Atahuallpa and Pizarro – it’s about God and Man. Amadeus isn’t an accurate bio of Mozart, and was never intended to be – it’s about God and Man (the title itself is a giveaway). But Schaeffer never had the Luftwaffe showing up in Amadeus, or Mozart composing the Blues. If he did, we’d stop caring about the theology of the play/movie and start worrying about the ludicrous inconsistency. Syamalan’s aliens are that bad an inconsistency. They distract from the point. That’s what makes Signs disappointing.

29

I had a good time at the movie, simply because Shyamalan wrote a very funny script. So, I was enjoying myself immensely, even as I found myself wondering… “Is anything ever going to happen?”

Remember that scene in “Jurassic Park” when Jeff Goldblum stares at the T. Rex’s empty cage, then asks Richard Attenborough, “Excuse me- are there going to be any DINOSAURS on this dinosaur tour?”

I kept wanting to ask Shyamalan, “Are we going to see any ALIENS in this alien invasion movie? Are we going to see ANYTHING? Does this story go ANYWHERE?”

I liked the characters, I liked the actors, and I thought the dialogue was often very clever… but the story itself was rather lacking. Beyond that…

  1. Was there ANYONE in the audience who didn’t know, 5 minutes into the movie, that Mel Gibson would reagin his faith and put his collar back on at the end?

  2. If aliens are advanced enough to cross the galaxy, and strong/agile enough to jump onto a roof, should a wooden door really pose an impenatrable barrier?

  3. If water is really deadly to these aliens, mightn’t they think twice about invading a planet that’s 75% covered with the stuff?
    Heck, how did they know it wouldn’t rain that night?

But despite all my quibbles (and yes, there are more), I had fun. Actually, I’d like to see Shyamalan make a flat-out farcical comedy next time out.

30

Now that’s something I will heartily second.

31

My take on the movie is that it was about regaining your faith in God, and the aliens were a just a device to illustrate that point. I don’t think, RealityChuck, that God killed the wife as much as He let her die. I think the aliens were scary because the family found the aliens to be scary. You don’t have to be huge, with lots of fangs and talons flashing in order to be menacing. The cellar was dark and forbidding, with the alien reaching around with its large fingers trying to grab one of the kids. The audience is removed from the action on the screen, safely sitting in our seats. The family is up close and personal, with a cornered alien that is capable of anything. The only clue they have about defeating the alien is when the announcer on TV states that Mexican peasants were able to defeat their aliens in a primitive manner. Mel Gibson looks around the living room, sees the water and the baseball bat and then shouts to Joaquin Phoenix to hit the alien with the baseball bat going through the water glasses.

As far as quickly changing your mind and regaining your faith, if I met up with an alien, I don’t think I’d waste too much time regaining my faith.

When I sat down to see the movie I happily let it happen without second-guessing the director’s motivations and I think I got more out of the movie that way. YMMV

32

Of course, if the aliens had never encountered water before, then they wouldn’t have known it was deadly. Why would they be afraid of something they are not familiar with? Of course, this is just conjecture.

I liked the movie. The aliens were scary. I jumped several times during the movie.

In fact, only one thing bothered me during the entire thing. Well, two things.

First, why the heck didn’t a farmer have a gun of some kind? Seriously, let’s go up to Bucks County and see which farms are gun-free.

Second, I would have though he’d have taken the amputated alien fingers that he chopped off.

Lastly, medstar, they were Middle Eastern peasants, not Mexican.

33

I saw the movie, and I thought it was great. Loved it. The only lot hole that gave me a real problem was when Mel ran off and left the alien locked in the pantry instead of calling the cops. But, as the plot unfolded, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference one way or the other if he had, as the invasion started a few hours later.

A lot of the “plot holes” are based on assumptions: Why didn’t the aliens wear raincoats if water is so deadly? How do you know they didn’t? We only see one alien, who’d been locked in a pantry for more than a day. How do we know that most of the aliens didn’t have protective clothes? Or laser guns? Maybe the ones at Mel’s farm didn’t have any because they gave 'em all to the aliens invading New York. These guys thought they grab a couple of extra slaves near where their ship landed. When they couldn’t get into the basement, they just took off. Who cares about the four humans in that one farmhouse, when they’ve got thousands of slaves from everywhere else on the globe?

We only see a small part of the entire invasion. It’s not supposed to make sense to us, any more than it’s supposed to make sense to the characters in the farmhouse. Or, for that matter, any more than the Will of God is supposed to make sense to us mere mortals. They’re as much a metaphor for religion as anything else in the picture.

34

Because he’s a former minister with two small children and two dogs, perhaps? What need did he have of a gun prior to the aliens showing up?

**

Why on earth would he?!

I was under the impression that the aliens were raiding, not invading. They bring a few (relatively speaking) ships, drop down over relatively low-tech areas (India, Mexico, American farmlands; They didn’t hit, say, New York, San Francisco or Paris – this wasn’t an ID4 invasion) for a quick snatch-and-grab, then high-tail it out of there. The crop circles were more “easy pickin’s here” markers than navigational aids. I saw them more akin to safety zones for the aliens.

In the end, these aliens, like just about all the others that have tried to conquer or attack Earth, wound up underestimating the humans and the humans won.

35

He just quit being a minister 6 months prior to the event. My guess is that he was a farmer/minister before losing his religion. Guns are generally quite handy on farms. If the local wildlife is starting to get at your crops, then you would probably keep a rifle around to take care of it. My guess is that any family farm type set up will probably have a gun on the premises.

Souvenir? I dunno, it didn’t really bother me, I just think that someone would do it as a sort of trophy.

Anyways, you are correct about the aliens’ motives. Even in the movie they stated it was for a quick raid. Grab some people and take off. Not conquer the earth and live there. My guess is that water being harmful to them was probably a surprise and that they probably hadn’t encountered it very often prior to it occuring.

I can’t believe I’m arguing about this. I feel like such a nerd.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and will not be posting on this ridiculous topic of alien motives/tactics anymore.

36

Thanks, Neurotik, I knew it began with an “M” and I had Mexico imprinted on my brain.

37

But did they? They had to retreat, yes, but the fact that it was noted that they took a whole bunch of humans with them makes it seem like they accomplished what they wanted to.

38

When did they say the aliens took prisoners with them? Maybe I missed that part.

I liked RealityChuck’s explanation, but if you take it back a step, it gets even more confusing. Did DOYC* see the invasion coming, forsee exactly what would happen in the house and decide to kill Mel’s wife, just after giving her premonitions? Did He know that doing so would restore Mel’s faith in Him? I’m reminded of a Simpsons scene, where Homer is a missionary in the South Pacific:

Ak: If the Lord is all-powerful, why does He care whether we worship Him or not? Ak just saying.
Homer: Well, Ak, it’s because God is powerful, but also insecure, like Barbara Streisand before James Brolin. Oh, he’s been a rock.

So maybe the DOYC is Night Shyamalan, after all.

Finally, and this is a stretch, the bit about the Middle Eastern peasants defeating some of the aliens may be a subtle ID4 reference. I recall hearing that Muslim groups were not happy with that movie when it came out, with the implication that the Americans, especially the Jews, would be their saviors.

[sub]*Deity of your choice[/sub]

39

I saw it last week, and here’s a spoiler-iffic prod at the plot…

It seems to me that the most powerful moment of Gibson’s reacceptance of a deity instead of coincidence is after giving his son the shot when the alien sprays poison at him: “He didn’t get any, his lungs were closed, that’s why he has asthma…”

Wait a minute. God gave the kid asthma just for this situation? If he didn’t have asthma, they wouldn’t have had to go up to get his medicine, and he wouldn’t have been picked up by the alien in the first place!

40

I loved it. And I agree. There was this really dead feeling when the director played Ray. “Dead” as in non-believable. I can understand a director wanting to be in a minor (very minor) role, but this was wrong…