Movie and Television Reviews

I thought to myself: "Where have I seen this theme- man exploiting nature and corrupting an innocent culture with his greedy ways and lust for conquest?"

Then, it came to me: just about everywhere! So, I go on youtube for a clip of Ferngully in order to make my point in a humorous way and bam! I discover that somebody had the same idea:

**update**

It's worse than I thought. One would expect Big Hollywood to ding a movie for its overt liberalism, but Variety?

Thematically, the film also plays too simplistically into stereotypical evil-white-empire/virtuous-native cliches, especially since the invaders are presumably on an environmental rescue mission on behalf of the entire world, not just the U.S. Script is rooted very much in a contemporary eco-green mindset, which makes its positions and the sympathies it encourages entirely predictable and unchallenging.

It's a near 100% rule that people love messages in movies...as long as they agree with them (making a point of not having a message is a message too- nihilism). So, who will love the messages in this movie? Anti-Americans and Naturists.

**update #2**

Apparently, it urges people, indirectly, to root against Americans and encourages military desertions.

**update #3**

A more in-depth analysis here.

FernGully: The Last Rainforest (Family Fun Edition)

FernGully 2 - The Magical Rescue

Dances with Wolves - Extended Cut (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

Pocahontas (10th Anniversary Edition)

Pocahontas II - Journey to a New World (Disney Gold Classic Collection)

Tags: "anti-american", environmentalist, lefty, liberal, mashup, progressive

1. There's a worse, more unctuous, movie maker than M. Night Shyamalan.

2. GM has nothing to worry about. Four predator drones, firing Hellfire missiles, can't take out a Suburban driving in the middle of an open field.

3. When will the human race learn to stop acting so destructively and listen to Hollywood screenwriters (Rhetorical question. Answer: We should, right now!).

4. Never trust a scientist. They're self-righteous and aren't good at taking orders. They're clever enough to evade a whole Army base, too.

5. On the other hand, they're the only ones who can be trusted with saving the earth.

6. Eventually, humans will evolve into a self-healing, electricity manipulating race with dead pan deliveries who spew lines strait from a fourth-grade essay on recycling.

7. The Army needs a genius Ph.D doing some kind of specialized research to administer an IV sedative to an alien with big veins.

8. When advanced aliens power down the earth, they prefer to do it in sequence, like dominoes, instead of all at once. You didn't know that each building has its own generator?

9. A person camping out in the arctic needs to cover his whole body in a three-inch thick parka except for his face because everybody knows that the human nose and ears are impervious to cold.

10. Forget Pilgrim's Progress and the Left Behind series: No work, none! is more simplistically preachy than one by a Hollywood liberal with an agenda.

Bonuses:

11. When aliens talk to each other, they prefer to speak in an Asian language, even though they're like 100 times smarter than any human. I think it has to do with the many names the Aleut tongue has for "snow."

12. The shooting for the film obviously occurred before the last election made the need for saving humanity moot.

13. Super-smart aliens have staked out earth for hundreds of years, but all it takes is for a woman to cry to change their minds about whether to extinguish the human race.

On alien movie sorting:

There are two types of alien movies: In the first, aliens are hostile and must be defeated. Examples include Independence Day, The War of the Worlds, and half of all Star Trek episodes.

In the other type of alien movie, we humans learn something from the aliens. Fiction being a huge canvas on which to paint one's world view, it's always whatever the writer thinks is humanity's biggest problem at the time. Popular things we must stop right this instant are war, non-caring, mistrust of strangers, and getting-along in general. Examples of such films include E.T., Iron Giant, and the other half of Star Trek episodes.

The hostile alien movies are not only more fun, but usually degrees more intellectually sophisticated than the second.

What's been bugging the American conscience, Hollywood, recently has been the environment (after a couple of years in which concern centered around George Bush). Not counting I am Legend or the other virus movies, we've had The Day After Tomorrow, and The Happening, the previous leader in the-most-insufferable-Hollywood message-movie-that-involves-possible-human-extinction sweepstakes.

The movie:

Oh yeah. The movie. A complete mess. The Day the Earth Stood Still or, as it will be known, The Day You Walked Out of the Theater; is two (four, five?) hours of nonsense and cliche. The big robot is cool for about three seconds. We follow a barely acting Keanu Reeves: He's running around, evading the police, teaching stuff, calling on the phone with his finger. His co-star is as annoying and the woman in Star Trek IV. I would have destroyed the planet just to rid myself of the little kid- Where's the Death Star when you need it!?

Nothing works: The special effects, the story, nothing. **Caution: spoiler below relevant viewing.

As a classic sci-fi remake, Spielberg's The War of the Worlds is much better.

You're better off watching:

The Iron Giant (Special Edition)

Star Trek Movie Set (The Motion Picture/ The Wrath of Khan/ The Search for Spock/ The Voyage Home/ The Final Frontier/ The Undiscovered Country/ Generations/ First Contact/ Insurrection/ Nemesis)

Star Trek: The Original Series - Season One Remastered

The Happening

E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (Widescreen Collector's Edition)

Independence Day (Single Disc Widescreen Edition)

War of the Worlds (Widescreen Edition)

The War of the Worlds (Special Collector's Edition)

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Pilgrim's Progress: Journey to Heaven

Left Behind - The DVD Collection (Left Behind / Left Behind II - Tribulation Force / Left Behind - World at War)

The Day After Tomorrow (Widescreen Edition)

**This is just to show how profoundly stupid this movie is: An advanced alien arrives on earth to, essentially, judge humanity a la God in Sodom and Gomorrah or Noah and the flood. He has spies throughout the world. He can monitor everything electronically as well. Why is he shocked when somebody shoots at him? He couldn't have anticipated that?

So, he decides to kill off humanity after a conversation with a spy and a confrontation with a mean defense minister who is, like, in charge of defending from unannounced invasions.

In the end, he doesn't go through with it. Why? Because he felt bad for a little boy and the lady cried. I've heard of guys losing their judgment faculties at the sight of a woman's tears, but this is ridiculous.

One more thing: The movie alludes to Noah, but misses the perhaps more appropriate comparison with the Sodom and Gomorrah story: "If there are ten good men," etc.

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Tags: environmental movies, environmentalism in movies, obama, progressive