Posted on 06/17/2011 1:36:19 PM PDT by pabianice
"Super 8" is an almost scene-by-scene remake of "ET." That is not a compliment. Same-same. Kids. Evil U.S. military. Robotic killer soldiers/airmen. Misunderstood monster that just wants to get home. What a waste of time. Even the CGI is second-rate.
There are a few differences. This time the alien is big and can raise hell with the military that has kept it captive and tortured it for 24 years (it's set in 1979 for absolutely no reason except to trot-out old cars, hairstyles, and music). The plot is moronic, with the kids saving the day, of course. The US Air Force could successfully sue Speilberg for slander. His repeated characature of the US military as neo-Nazis is so ugly as to make the viewer turn away from the screen. In this movie the Air Force tortures aliens, destroys entire towns to hide their guilt, and murders civilians that become inconvenient. The character of the Air Force colonel in charge is a copy of Col. Kurtz in "Apocolype Now," except this actor isn't fat and can remember his lines. Adults are portrayed as, at best, bunglers and losers, and at worst, careless monsters. The kids, of course, have all the bravery and all the answers.
I have watched with dismay as Speilberg has gone to exciting director in "Jaws" to this shambles of a film. Shame on him and shame on anyone paying to see this fiasco after being forewarned.
I agree.
After making a lot of money for MGM and a number of successful pictures, King Vidor was able to do a pet project of his called "The Crowd", which MGM thought would not turn a profit.
Sometimes a director has to do a few films he would not like to make in order to do his "important" work. There was never a time when all movies were both artistic and entertaining.
“What was your objection to it as a whole? It ‘entertained’ virtually everyone who saw it.”
It could have been a really good movie, but they slipped in a lot of coarse, vulgar things that didn’t belong in a kid movie. They ruined it.
That seemed to be the style movies in the 80s, pushing the envelope with filthy mouthed kids, gratuitous violence and sex.
They weren’t aristocrats. Mostly it was the landed gentry looking to marry well. Like I said, only Emma was wealthy and she wasn’t an aristocrat either.
Close enough. That’s the group they wanted to be in if they weren’t already. And that obsession made them shallow and boring. Heavy on the boring.
Apart from that one line you mentioned there really wasn’t anything coarse or vulgar in E.T.
Oh I see you ONLY like monster movies. Sad for you, the world has moved way on from that. Though Cloverfield was a nice throwback.
Did you see it in the theatre when it first came out? They had that kid screaming “Damn it!” and other things.
Yes I did. That was one of the teens I think. Kids had been saying Damn it for a long time before that. It’s not really considered foul langage anymore.
You forgot to say, “In my opinion.”
Did you see "E.T."? It had the same name-calling. That's kids. It hasn't changed in a thousand years.
Yeah, that’s the movie I’m talking about—E.T.
It’s a shame that entertainment has become so corrupt and we are so corrupt we accept it.
They’ve been saying ‘Damn’ it in movies since the 1930s. Do you object to Hell too?
They’ve been saying ‘Damn’ it in movies since the 1930s. Do you object to Hell too?
Not in children’s movies. That’s what I’m talking about. That type of movie began to take a dive in the 80s, E.T. as an example. The coarse and vulgar scenes in that movie were unnecessary and ruined the movie. Thankfully children’s movies have a new genre that appear to be cleaned up from the days of pushing the envelope. They weren’t making any money on them and had to clean up their act.
It obviously didn’t ruin it for the generations of people who loved it. At that time, children’s movies had mostly been the province of Disney. E.T. wasn’t strictly a children’s film anyway.
You’re right about that. Many people love the world and have no ability to discern creeping corruption.
In the 1930s and 40s, children used to read comic books that people were worried about. There was no ‘Golden Age’.
It’s popular, everyone else does it, so go for it.
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