Wetlook World Forum

Message # 23093.1.1.1.1

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Trivia time again!

Date: Tue 20/06/06 10:37:14 GMT

Name: Anonymous

Email:

Website:

By MK - wamtec@compuserve.com Tue 20/06/06 07:30:30 GMT

Website:

>The Tom Cruise version of "War of the Worlds" was a masterpiece of special effects and filmmaking technology.

Thats the entire problem with the film....the special effects are truly amazing, but nobody seemed to pay attention to geting a decent SCRIPT. You know a film sucks...when you find yourself laughing every 5 minutes, and it's not supposed to be a comedy, and you stop paying attention to the silly script and start focusing on the amazing production effects instead. I found myself saying...."that was an amazing camera shot....how did they do that". Spielberg and Cruise spent 200 million to make this movie.....but they could not afford to pay some high school kids $10 to pre-screen the film for them....cos any kid could point out at least 30 major flaws in the plotline (e.g. the aliens cause all electronic devices to stop working...and Spielberg makes it a point to zoom in on close up of Tom Cruise's watch that has stopped...and in the next shot......Spielberg must have alzheimers disease...cos while everybody elses electronic devices no longer work...he makes a big scene out of this guy using his CAMCORDER....so how the heck can this guy's camcorder be working...when nobody else has electronic devices that work). And while fighter jets and tanks are unable to cause any damage to the alien ships, Tom Cruise manages to bring one down with one little itty bitty grenade...ha ha.

One thing is for sure.....after about 10 times hearing Dakota Fanning screaming all the time.....everybody is rooting for the Aliens......to just zap that kid and shut her up....ha ha

MK

By AnthonyX - anthonyx@jowc.net Mon 19/06/06 16:20:04 GMT

Website:

I agree. "Forbidden Planet" and "The Day The Earth Stood Still" are sci-fi classics. By today's standards, the special effects and even some of the dialog may seem a bit cheesy, but underpinning the scripts were some very interesting ideas and a pretty good representation of scientific knowledge for their day. I only saw This Island Earth once a long time ago, so I can't comment. I've read a synopsis of the story - which would put it right up there as one of the classics.

I wouldn't be so harsh about "Contact". The book was excellent sci-fi; the movie made a few disappointing departures from the book, but otherwise captured the essence of both the story and underlying ideas. The Tom Cruise version of "War of the Worlds" was a masterpiece of special effects and filmmaking technology, but I'll take the 1953 version over it any day.

By the way... Gene Roddenberry borrowed heavily from "Forbidden Planet" when he created the original "Star Trek". Kirk, Spock, and McCoy very closely parallel the 3 principal characters in FB, which itself is a re-telling of Shakespeare's "The Tempest". For that matter, a lot of Star Trek borrows from Shakespeare, either retelling/re-interpreting the stories, quoting or paraphrasing lines, or re-enacting scenes from the Bard's plays. Likewise, you can see ideas presented in a fairly original way in the classic movies which have since been borrowed, copied or co-opted into subsequent material.

I think most of today's sci-fi crap comes about from action/adventure stories being grafted onto a sci-fi setting, rather than developing an original story out of one or more interesting ideas or situations.

By MK - wamtec@compuserve.com Mon 19/06/06 14:31:23 GMT

Website:

FYI.."This Island Earth".this is one of the best science fiction films of all time (also"Forbidden Planet" and "the Day the Earth Stood Still")......and those 50's films were so much better than the rubbish we see today like the appalling films "Signs" and "Contact". Take the latest Stephen Spielberg film "War of the Worlds" for example...this film was so bad, I kept laughing every 10 minutes due to the totally illogical script and gaping errors in the plotline. I stopped counting after the first 2 dozen illogical elements in the script....I saw a better scripting work in "Deuce Bigalow - European Gigolo"...ha ha

mk

By AnthonyX - anthonyx@jowc.net Mon 19/06/06 09:38:52 GMT

Website:

http://iwdb.jowc.net/scene-offsite.asp?id=836

Could anyone confirm for me:

1) If the picture is actually from that movie (This Island Earth)

2) It is indeed of Faith Domergue and Rex Reason