* out of **** (Warning, review will have spoilers)
V was a quite a popular miniseries in its time, and it still has quite a bit of fans, but something tells me that has more to do with nostalgia than actual film quality. The movie itself, to put it simply, sucks and it sucks badly. It's a hodgepodge sci-fi "epic" that takes its audience as nothing more than idiots who will be in awe by the premise of an alien invasion. Oh, there have been smart and fun alien invasion films out there. David Twohy's The Arrival is the perfect proof of that and Independence Day, corny and stupid as it sometimes may be, is well made escapism. V is just terrible, mostly full of second to third rate acting (except for the underrated Marc Singer), a script I could have improved on, and horrible special effects that were lame even by 1980's standards.
Admittedly, V does begin intriguingly enough. Fify giant alien spacecrafts situate themselves above Earth's major cities. Eventually, they reveal themselves as the Visitors. They look human, though their voices do sound a little odd and they are afraid of light. They claim they come in peace, and just about everyone in the entire world except for our lead characters fall for their act completely. Basically, there's going to be human resistance, and it's all going to be led by TV movie actors whose careers have pretty much gone nowhere.
Let me go into Kenneth Johnson's script and what I found so moronic about it. Taken as a straightforward story, this film has plot holes and logical lapses the size of an oil tanker. First of all, we have to believe that the United States government would be dumb enough to be duped so, so easily by the Visitors' claim that they have arrived on peaceful terms. I realize Johnson is probably trying to make a point (a la his WWII allegory, which I'll get to in a moment), but the fact is, considering untrustworthy so many governments are these days, we just don't get duped so easily these days, not to mention the fact that the Visitors' spokesman is as unconvincing as they come.
There are many individual scenes that serve to do nothing more than insult any viewer's intelligence. Take, for instance, the scene where Marc Singer boards the Visitor spacecraft and records the aliens speaking, who at that EXACT moment, just happen to be laying out there entire plan for world domination, and afterward making a snack of some poor rodents just to further show how evil they are. Worse yet, they actually speak in English rather than their native language and for some reason, they (and just about every other Visitor) decide to keep their human skinsuits on all the time, despite how unbelievably uncomfortable it must be for them, considering their reptilian origins.
Johnson must think he's done a great job with the character development, since he so often focuses on many different human characters. What he doesn't seem to realize that he's done nothing more than create cardboard AND stereotypical cutouts. Hispanics are portrayed as being illegal smugglers, African-Americans are either hoodlums or "lovable" old men with hearts of gold (Uncle Tom's Cabin, anyone?), and teenagers are either completely naive and impressionable fools or whiny, spoiled brats who can't (or won't) accept the consequences of their actions. Johnson probably believed he was trying to display a theme of brotherhood and teamwork, but all he does is insult the people of these ethnic backgrounds.
The most annoying of all the characters must be the anthropologist and his family. He's got three daughters, all of whom incessantly complain. His oldest daughter is actually the dumbes, leaving me to believe that she has to be either the cable man or the mailman's kid. She actuallly falls in love with a Visitor and decides to have unprotected sex with him, all because she's in the throes of passion while being locked up inside a giant spacecraft! Hmm, I can't guess what's going to happen from there.
But by far the worst element of Johnson's script has to be the WWII allegory. Adding this aspect to the story, he must have thought this would put it above most other sci-fi films. Judging from audience response, they seem to have fallen for it. These are probably people who wouldn't feel a thing unless they got whacked in the head with a sledgehammer. Johnson bludgeons us enough with this incredibly lame allegory, which serves to show me nothing more than the fact that Johnson does indeed seem to know WWII existed. There's the Visitors' symbol, which so closely resembles the Nazi swastika, you'd think everybody in the movie would have to be blind not to notice that. We even get to see a re-enactment of he prejudice the Jewish people went through, except the treatment is aimed at...scientists! Johnson further bangs us over the head with dialogue involving how charismatic the alien leader was and how he took power. Gee, I can't seem to think of what other dictator that reminds me of.
Johnson's direction is a bit better than his writing, at times even more than competent, but also at times spectacularly bad. Every time a character comes to the realization that there's something fishy about the Visitors, he does a slow zoom close-up to their face, mainly focusing on their squinting, "thoughtful" eyes just to show us these people are "smart" and suspicious. But my favorite has to be when Johson suddenly decides he's making an anti-war commentary and films a battle scene in slow-mo through they eyes of Faye Grant as she watches the death and destruction around he, to say nothing of the hilarious contrast by the fact that everyone else around her seems to be cheering their heads off. He actually caps this battle off with Grant aiming a pistol at an incoming shuttlecraft, and even dose a zoom-up towards her deathly serious face to show us that she has, indeed, taken charge! Well, at least she doesn't shoot the ship down. Then again, how the situation is resolved is just as lame. Singer flies by in his own shuttlecraft and fires, causing some damage to this one enemy ship that's holding the Visitor in charge of this attack, and this somehow justifies the retreat of ALL of the alien crafts! Amazing, just imagine if all war was like that, bring your gutless leader along and at the very first little sign of trouble aimed at him or her-escape! For that matter, why this fleet would be led by a scientific officer makes no sense. After this battle's over, the fact that the location of this rebel base has been revealed doesn't seem to make the humans just a little twitchy. What's to say the Visitors won't send another fleet? The answer: probably their double-digit IQs.
There are a LOT of other little problems, even continuity errors. The Visitors supposedly have reverberating voices but there are many scenes when it's obvious that effect isn't there. A cop who seems sympathetic to the human rebel resistance is seemingly EVERYWHERE, as well as a rebel who I saw get arrested at a road block but stil ends up fighting later at a Visitor guarded armory. What Visitors would be doing guarding U.S. military weapons is something only Kenneth Johnson would know (Considering that they should usually be guarded by, oh, humans). I can't forget to mention the shuttlecraft chase. There's actually a scene where a shuttle flies upside down, but the passengers' hairs never stick up (or down, from the view you see it). And I'm very sorry to say this to Kenneth Johnson, who probably failed zoology, but reptiles (specifically iguanas, whom the Visitors resembles) actually do relish light!
All in all, this is a huge, huge mess of Dune (David Lynch version) and Highlander 2 proportions. Hell, Lynch's Dune and Battlefield Earth were actually better. At this point, it feels a little moot for me to mention if there was anything I actually liked about the movie, but there were a couple of things. Marc Singer delivers a terrific and charismatic performance as the hero, making some scenes more bearable than they should be. And I did like the opening helicopter battle sequence, which was directed with a frenetic touch and superbly edited. The assault on the armory is also another well-choreographed action sequence, and actually quite realistic when you consider how difficult it is to fight in a skirmish. Otherwise, this is as bad as big-budget sci-fi gets. V was actually followed by a sequel, which (to my memory) managed the not-so-hard task of being better, even though that film itself isn't anything to really write home about. In the end, Johnson must have believed that he was trying to hit in a hard message, that persuasion and charisma can hide true evil, but the only theme I got out of this is that dumb heroes can only prevail from dumber villains.
V was a quite a popular miniseries in its time, and it still has quite a bit of fans, but something tells me that has more to do with nostalgia than actual film quality. The movie itself, to put it simply, sucks and it sucks badly. It's a hodgepodge sci-fi "epic" that takes its audience as nothing more than idiots who will be in awe by the premise of an alien invasion. Oh, there have been smart and fun alien invasion films out there. David Twohy's The Arrival is the perfect proof of that and Independence Day, corny and stupid as it sometimes may be, is well made escapism. V is just terrible, mostly full of second to third rate acting (except for the underrated Marc Singer), a script I could have improved on, and horrible special effects that were lame even by 1980's standards.
Admittedly, V does begin intriguingly enough. Fify giant alien spacecrafts situate themselves above Earth's major cities. Eventually, they reveal themselves as the Visitors. They look human, though their voices do sound a little odd and they are afraid of light. They claim they come in peace, and just about everyone in the entire world except for our lead characters fall for their act completely. Basically, there's going to be human resistance, and it's all going to be led by TV movie actors whose careers have pretty much gone nowhere.
Let me go into Kenneth Johnson's script and what I found so moronic about it. Taken as a straightforward story, this film has plot holes and logical lapses the size of an oil tanker. First of all, we have to believe that the United States government would be dumb enough to be duped so, so easily by the Visitors' claim that they have arrived on peaceful terms. I realize Johnson is probably trying to make a point (a la his WWII allegory, which I'll get to in a moment), but the fact is, considering untrustworthy so many governments are these days, we just don't get duped so easily these days, not to mention the fact that the Visitors' spokesman is as unconvincing as they come.
There are many individual scenes that serve to do nothing more than insult any viewer's intelligence. Take, for instance, the scene where Marc Singer boards the Visitor spacecraft and records the aliens speaking, who at that EXACT moment, just happen to be laying out there entire plan for world domination, and afterward making a snack of some poor rodents just to further show how evil they are. Worse yet, they actually speak in English rather than their native language and for some reason, they (and just about every other Visitor) decide to keep their human skinsuits on all the time, despite how unbelievably uncomfortable it must be for them, considering their reptilian origins.
Johnson must think he's done a great job with the character development, since he so often focuses on many different human characters. What he doesn't seem to realize that he's done nothing more than create cardboard AND stereotypical cutouts. Hispanics are portrayed as being illegal smugglers, African-Americans are either hoodlums or "lovable" old men with hearts of gold (Uncle Tom's Cabin, anyone?), and teenagers are either completely naive and impressionable fools or whiny, spoiled brats who can't (or won't) accept the consequences of their actions. Johnson probably believed he was trying to display a theme of brotherhood and teamwork, but all he does is insult the people of these ethnic backgrounds.
The most annoying of all the characters must be the anthropologist and his family. He's got three daughters, all of whom incessantly complain. His oldest daughter is actually the dumbes, leaving me to believe that she has to be either the cable man or the mailman's kid. She actuallly falls in love with a Visitor and decides to have unprotected sex with him, all because she's in the throes of passion while being locked up inside a giant spacecraft! Hmm, I can't guess what's going to happen from there.
But by far the worst element of Johnson's script has to be the WWII allegory. Adding this aspect to the story, he must have thought this would put it above most other sci-fi films. Judging from audience response, they seem to have fallen for it. These are probably people who wouldn't feel a thing unless they got whacked in the head with a sledgehammer. Johnson bludgeons us enough with this incredibly lame allegory, which serves to show me nothing more than the fact that Johnson does indeed seem to know WWII existed. There's the Visitors' symbol, which so closely resembles the Nazi swastika, you'd think everybody in the movie would have to be blind not to notice that. We even get to see a re-enactment of he prejudice the Jewish people went through, except the treatment is aimed at...scientists! Johnson further bangs us over the head with dialogue involving how charismatic the alien leader was and how he took power. Gee, I can't seem to think of what other dictator that reminds me of.
Johnson's direction is a bit better than his writing, at times even more than competent, but also at times spectacularly bad. Every time a character comes to the realization that there's something fishy about the Visitors, he does a slow zoom close-up to their face, mainly focusing on their squinting, "thoughtful" eyes just to show us these people are "smart" and suspicious. But my favorite has to be when Johson suddenly decides he's making an anti-war commentary and films a battle scene in slow-mo through they eyes of Faye Grant as she watches the death and destruction around he, to say nothing of the hilarious contrast by the fact that everyone else around her seems to be cheering their heads off. He actually caps this battle off with Grant aiming a pistol at an incoming shuttlecraft, and even dose a zoom-up towards her deathly serious face to show us that she has, indeed, taken charge! Well, at least she doesn't shoot the ship down. Then again, how the situation is resolved is just as lame. Singer flies by in his own shuttlecraft and fires, causing some damage to this one enemy ship that's holding the Visitor in charge of this attack, and this somehow justifies the retreat of ALL of the alien crafts! Amazing, just imagine if all war was like that, bring your gutless leader along and at the very first little sign of trouble aimed at him or her-escape! For that matter, why this fleet would be led by a scientific officer makes no sense. After this battle's over, the fact that the location of this rebel base has been revealed doesn't seem to make the humans just a little twitchy. What's to say the Visitors won't send another fleet? The answer: probably their double-digit IQs.
There are a LOT of other little problems, even continuity errors. The Visitors supposedly have reverberating voices but there are many scenes when it's obvious that effect isn't there. A cop who seems sympathetic to the human rebel resistance is seemingly EVERYWHERE, as well as a rebel who I saw get arrested at a road block but stil ends up fighting later at a Visitor guarded armory. What Visitors would be doing guarding U.S. military weapons is something only Kenneth Johnson would know (Considering that they should usually be guarded by, oh, humans). I can't forget to mention the shuttlecraft chase. There's actually a scene where a shuttle flies upside down, but the passengers' hairs never stick up (or down, from the view you see it). And I'm very sorry to say this to Kenneth Johnson, who probably failed zoology, but reptiles (specifically iguanas, whom the Visitors resembles) actually do relish light!
All in all, this is a huge, huge mess of Dune (David Lynch version) and Highlander 2 proportions. Hell, Lynch's Dune and Battlefield Earth were actually better. At this point, it feels a little moot for me to mention if there was anything I actually liked about the movie, but there were a couple of things. Marc Singer delivers a terrific and charismatic performance as the hero, making some scenes more bearable than they should be. And I did like the opening helicopter battle sequence, which was directed with a frenetic touch and superbly edited. The assault on the armory is also another well-choreographed action sequence, and actually quite realistic when you consider how difficult it is to fight in a skirmish. Otherwise, this is as bad as big-budget sci-fi gets. V was actually followed by a sequel, which (to my memory) managed the not-so-hard task of being better, even though that film itself isn't anything to really write home about. In the end, Johnson must have believed that he was trying to hit in a hard message, that persuasion and charisma can hide true evil, but the only theme I got out of this is that dumb heroes can only prevail from dumber villains.