Independence Day: This movie sucks donkey balls. Seriously.
See title. Also:
Mario: hey, while I'm makin' calls and generally workin', could you start the Independence Day thread? I forgot to make it yesterday
Jon: I would make any thread but that. I don't think "I hate this movie intensely" is a good starting point for discussion.
Mario: heh, it's a good way to start things off. I started Uncle Sam by pointing out its shortcomings
Mario: talk about why you didn't like it. Movie clubs aren't just supposed to be us gushing about how awesome some guy's fake rubber monster costume was
Jon: I hate that bit that starts at the beginning of the movie and ends at the end of the movie.
Mario: that's just ridiculous! The movie was good cheesy SCIENCE! fun and you know it. You only hated the part near the end where the Britons in Iraq were glad to hear that the Americans had formulated a plan
Jon: No, pretty much all of it sucked.
Jon: The only good bit was when the President nearly got his brain melted. But then he didn't. So it wasn't good.
Mario: Will Smith punched an alien in the face!
Mario: he defeated superior technology and biology with a punchin'!
Jon: Yeah, apparently so hard that he knocked it out through the armour it was wearing.
Mario: they said it was bio-armor. I'd assumed the alien had tactile feedback through it
Mario: also, it just crash-landed, so it may have already been in a weakened state
Jon: Building pain receptors into armour kind of defeats the purpose.
Mario: then why make bio-armor at all, if it's not supposed to be a natural extension of your own physiology? Without pain receptors, you might not back off from the heat of fire or something, and before you can do anything your entire bio-armor is engulfed in flame
Jon: Bio-armour to me means it's more been grown than manufactured.
Jon: And sure, you'd maybe put in tactile feedback, but you sure as hell would limit it.
Mario: it looked enough like normal tissue to me. They were able to cut it open with a scalpel
Jon: That'd make it pretty crappy armour then, really.
Mario: it was probably better than their frail bodies. The big heads and tiny bodies aren't really conducive to walking around and picking fights
Jon: I dunno about that. I mean he did manage to kill an entire medical team.
Mario: in his bio-armor
Jon: Weren't they his tentacles from within the armour?
Mario: I couldn't tell where they originated from. The tentacles were flailing about when he was in the ship too, in full armor
Mario: besides, they were a technologically-dependent species. Once their shields went down, their ships' hulls weren't terribly resistant to conventional human weaponry. The fighter planes went down with a few stray machine gun bullets
Jon: Yeah, it really just doesn't bode well for interstellar species. Apparently these jerks were shit-hot at the conquering thing and they got beat by fighter jets and a drunk.
Mario: supplemented by a computer virus. Without Jeff Goldblum's amazing programming skills, the drunk guy would have been grossly ineffective
Jon: It would have been funny then though.
Mario: oh, no doubt. But also a bit of a downer when all of humanity is wiped out by the alien ground troops
Jon: No, I'd probably still find that funny too.
Mario: we watched some sort of special edition of the movie, with re-integrated deleted scenes
Mario: I must say, it was right to remove them, because they just created more useless backstory
Mario: but it was nice to see Brent Spiner get an extra scene, he deserved it
Jon: Which one was Spiner?
Mario: the nerdy scientist at Area 51 with the long grey hair
Mario: also Data from Star Trek
Jon: Oh, the marionette.
Mario: yeah
Mario: Stef was pleased to see a cameo by Jayne from Firefly
Jon: Presidential security dude?
Mario: Area 51 security dude
Jon: Actually, speaking of that, we could put Serenity on the list.
Jon: Possibly Mars Attacks.
Mario: hey, while I'm makin' calls and generally workin', could you start the Independence Day thread? I forgot to make it yesterday
Jon: I would make any thread but that. I don't think "I hate this movie intensely" is a good starting point for discussion.
Mario: heh, it's a good way to start things off. I started Uncle Sam by pointing out its shortcomings
Mario: talk about why you didn't like it. Movie clubs aren't just supposed to be us gushing about how awesome some guy's fake rubber monster costume was
Jon: I hate that bit that starts at the beginning of the movie and ends at the end of the movie.
Mario: that's just ridiculous! The movie was good cheesy SCIENCE! fun and you know it. You only hated the part near the end where the Britons in Iraq were glad to hear that the Americans had formulated a plan
Jon: No, pretty much all of it sucked.
Jon: The only good bit was when the President nearly got his brain melted. But then he didn't. So it wasn't good.
Mario: Will Smith punched an alien in the face!
Mario: he defeated superior technology and biology with a punchin'!
Jon: Yeah, apparently so hard that he knocked it out through the armour it was wearing.
Mario: they said it was bio-armor. I'd assumed the alien had tactile feedback through it
Mario: also, it just crash-landed, so it may have already been in a weakened state
Jon: Building pain receptors into armour kind of defeats the purpose.
Mario: then why make bio-armor at all, if it's not supposed to be a natural extension of your own physiology? Without pain receptors, you might not back off from the heat of fire or something, and before you can do anything your entire bio-armor is engulfed in flame
Jon: Bio-armour to me means it's more been grown than manufactured.
Jon: And sure, you'd maybe put in tactile feedback, but you sure as hell would limit it.
Mario: it looked enough like normal tissue to me. They were able to cut it open with a scalpel
Jon: That'd make it pretty crappy armour then, really.
Mario: it was probably better than their frail bodies. The big heads and tiny bodies aren't really conducive to walking around and picking fights
Jon: I dunno about that. I mean he did manage to kill an entire medical team.
Mario: in his bio-armor
Jon: Weren't they his tentacles from within the armour?
Mario: I couldn't tell where they originated from. The tentacles were flailing about when he was in the ship too, in full armor
Mario: besides, they were a technologically-dependent species. Once their shields went down, their ships' hulls weren't terribly resistant to conventional human weaponry. The fighter planes went down with a few stray machine gun bullets
Jon: Yeah, it really just doesn't bode well for interstellar species. Apparently these jerks were shit-hot at the conquering thing and they got beat by fighter jets and a drunk.
Mario: supplemented by a computer virus. Without Jeff Goldblum's amazing programming skills, the drunk guy would have been grossly ineffective
Jon: It would have been funny then though.
Mario: oh, no doubt. But also a bit of a downer when all of humanity is wiped out by the alien ground troops
Jon: No, I'd probably still find that funny too.
Mario: we watched some sort of special edition of the movie, with re-integrated deleted scenes
Mario: I must say, it was right to remove them, because they just created more useless backstory
Mario: but it was nice to see Brent Spiner get an extra scene, he deserved it
Jon: Which one was Spiner?
Mario: the nerdy scientist at Area 51 with the long grey hair
Mario: also Data from Star Trek
Jon: Oh, the marionette.
Mario: yeah
Mario: Stef was pleased to see a cameo by Jayne from Firefly
Jon: Presidential security dude?
Mario: Area 51 security dude
Jon: Actually, speaking of that, we could put Serenity on the list.
Jon: Possibly Mars Attacks.
Comments
Also, Independence Day was hilariously awesome. So there.
And the movie sucked. Even if you ignore the gaping plot-holes.
I actually liked this movie. Especially with edits, it did a great job of presenting a story with a number of interesting character and very little unnecessary exposition. Sometimes movies like these take half of the damn movie to bring us up to speed on both the characters and the aliens.
However, I agree on all fronts that Serenity should be on that list.
Also, the aliens should install Linux.
I mean even if the aliens have superior technology and a mass aerial strike is more efficient, wouldn't it really make for a better movie.
Also, I know mars attack and war of the worlds have ground things, if any one was gonna bring that up.
Best thing about the movie: Bill Pullman was also in Spaceballs.
Second best thing about the movie: I bought a toy version of one of the 'preserved' Area 51 aliens at K-Mart for a dollar, and it came with a little vat that lit up on the inside.
Third best thing about the movie: I knew a girl in high school who had a serious crush on Jeff Goldblum.
Which is a movie very different from the philosophizing book, but good (as a B-movie send-up) in its own right. Well, with the exception of the Cheshire, who also did her best to murder SCIENCE! as a physicist in a Bond movie. But Starship Troopers has ground troops in droves.
I vaguely remember liking ID4 when it came out, with the exception of the President's soliloquy and the much-mentioned Apple-luvvv, but it's been ...that long since I've actually seen it.
My summer sublet is just down the street from a Blockbuster, so maybe I can start watching and stop commenting without watching...
And Jeff Goldblum really could write up a simple virus in a few hours to wipe out an alien mothership with technology vastly superior to ours. Because he's Jeff Goldblum, that's why.
Which Distro? It should be Ubuntu or Fedora, but NOT Red Hat
Actually, the aliens were preparing for a ground assault. Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith flew over a legion of alien soldiers, and Goldblum surmised (with his dizzying and wholly illogical powers of deduction) that they were weakening Earth's main defense forces with the ships, then moving in on the ground to finish humanity off.
If you want an example of when ground assaults are a bad idea, see Signs. Except don't ever actually see Signs.
jason, please watch movies with us!
I like this movie only because of Judd Hirsch.
Oh, yeah? Name one.
Yeah right... as they showed the rest of the world for 10 minutes during the whole movie...
And besides, what sort of "natural resources" do the aliens really want? The only ones unique to lifebearing planets would be fossil fuels and if the aliens have ships that can cross the distances between stars I think it's pretty likely that they're burning something other than gasoline. It's more likely that they're looking for minerals and possibly radioactive or fissionable elements to power their reactors, in which case they'd just be able to mine asteroids and uninhabites planets for what they want. Hell, if their ships are fusion-powered then all they'd need is hydrogen, which is available in far greater abundance from Jupiter than Earth.
It is entirely conceivable that the alien was lying to President Pullman, and that their race just goes around exterminating other intelligent races for the hell of it. Maybe their religion dictates that they are the chosen master race of the Universe, and all other sentient life forms don't deserve life. Then it wouldn't matter how far across the stars you traveled, if it was for seeking out some sort of divine retribution.
Ah yes, killing them off with country music. Priceless.
I rather enjoyed Independence Day.
The problem with that is that most exotic elements don't occur inside stars until after they die. Pretty much just hydrogen and helium, right? And some (not much in terms of star composition but since stars are FREAKING HUGE probably a lot) of the heavier stuff up to iron. Anything heavier than that only gets created when supernovas explode, so the best places to look for that stuff would be planets, asteroids, etc.