Reviews

Back in '96, my 25-year-old self took the original ID4 for what it was. For all its semi-intentional goofiness, it had a certain silly charm. At least I could sit there with a mocking smile as the rah-rah American jingoism was on full display.

But this one? Seriously, large parts of it felt like the kind of fan fiction a 13-year-old might come up with, if he had to write a script for an ID4 sequel.

Sure, if everything you need to be happy is a gazillion tons of eye candy, this movie delivers. But somewhere along the way, it dawned on me: I simply don't have enough suspension of disbelief to be able to enjoy this.

I mean, there is SO much in this "plot" that hardly makes any sense at all. It is just dumb. It is a bloated mess. Even the goofy 1996 original seems starkly realistic after watching this. And that ought to tell you something!

(Massive "spoilers" ahead … duh!)

Okay, so the world united after the War of 1996. After harvesting alien technology we built a planetary defense. Well and good so far. We are celebrating the 20-year-anniversary of the original victory against the aliens …

… and then a strange, globe-shaped craft appears near a human base on the moon. It is shot down. And then … and then …

… the celebrations just go on! Yay us! The American president announces the event as if it was nothing much to worry about.

HELLO?!!! Do alien intruders appear just about every fortnight and are casually shot down without further incident, or what? REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED BACK IN '96, FOLKS? If the movie took its own premise even remotely seriously, the first appearance of an alien craft — ANY alien craft — in twenty years ought to instantly trigger a global red alert and a mass exodus from all major cities. All celebrations would be canceled, and the global defenses would go to the equivalent of Defcon 1. The people in the movie just seem to shrug off the little incident on the moon.

Eventually it turns out that the ship we took out represented a Good Alien species. They had come to warn us that the Bad Aliens are on their way back. But despite being supposedly super-intelligent, the Good Aliens never had the foresight to send some kind of introductory message to indicate their peaceful intentions. They just turned up, rather abruptly, over a military base on the moon. Did it never occur to the oh-so-intelligent Good Aliens that we just might be a little trigger happy after the events of '96?

Sure enough, the baddies appear only minutes later, and this time they have a ship so big that it … wait for it … COVERS THE ENTIRE Atlantic OCEAN! (Strategic mistake #1 on the part of the aliens: They should have set their ship down smack on top of the US instead, crushing those pesky Americans into the ground. They are the ones that always foil the plans of the invaders, remember?)

What do the aliens want? It turns out that their plan is to drill down to the earth's core and extract metals from it! Apparently that was their goal back in 1996 as well (we learn that one ship landed in Africa and started drilling away, but the process was interrupted when the Mothership was destroyed).

And so the credibility of the plot collapses completely. In the original movie, it was suggested that the aliens wanted to exploit all sorts of earthly natural resources. But if they just want to extract metals from the planetary core, there must be millions of uninhabited planets all over the cosmos that can give them what they need without them having to enter into any military confrontation whatsoever. Heck, even in our solar system they could just go and mine Venus instead! We are treated to some kind of attempted "suspenseful countdown" as the aliens are penetrating the outer crust. Supposedly everything will go to hell in a handbasket once they reach the molten core, and during the "climax" we are incessantly informed that an ever-dwindling number of minutes are left before the core is penetrated.

Again I have to say, HELLO?! Does anyone think the entire planet will explode like a balloon just because the aliens reach the molten core? Incidentally, how do we know how many minutes are left before the core is reached? We-e-elllll, you see, there was a ship full of treasure hunters out there in the ocean, and they had just located a shipwreck full of gold … but then the aliens came, and the treasure hunters are suddenly hired by the American government (for $ 100,000,000, no less) to keep an eye on how Bad ET is progressing. And of course, a ship originally equipped to look for sunken treasure will have ALL the instruments needed to perform detailed scans of the earth's crust down to a depth of many miles.

Seriously! This is the kind of garbage the lazy scriptwriters are unabashedly asking us to swallow.

And so, you wonder, what staggering feat of narrative originality will these same writers bring us as the climax approaches? Well, uhm, there is actually … AN ALIEN QUEEN! And since Ellen Ripley won't swoop in to save the day, and James Cameron still hasn't had the time to sue, it is time for ex-President Whitmore to make the … gasp … ultimate sacrifice.

I barely raised an eyebrow. At this point, the "realism" of the movie was at about the same level as a Tom & Jerry cartoon anyway. Sizewise, the Alien Queen is such a physical impossibility that she makes any version of King Kong look like an Attenborough documentary on primates.

I just didn't care anymore. Nor should you.

I won't "review" the content of the movie in any detail, but provide some thoughts about how this film should be approached. I consider myself a Tolkienist (in fact I saw this movie on opening night because I secured a promotion deal with the local cinema: I spent four hours until midnight writing people's names in Elvish writing!) It is to be expected that many fans of of the original book will perceive this movie as a bloated, garbled monster version of the written story they loved. It is important to realize, before going in, that this is not simply "the movie of the book". This is Jackson's The Hobbit, not Tolkien's, and they are best appreciated as independent works. They represent different media, come from different centuries, and have partly different target audiences. The children's book was written before Tolkien had any idea of the grand trilogy to follow; Jackson had already produced his Lord of the Rings trilogy and somewhat understandably tries to make the prequels resemble it, in tone and scope.

One could argue that Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, when complete, will set up the LotR film trilogy far better than Tolkien's simple children's book sets up the literary LotR. (The change in tone from children's book to grand epic is VERY pronounced, even grating for those who try to read The Hobbit after finishing LotR.) Incidentally, Jackson's prequel trilogy apparently will not spoil the LotR trilogy the way the Star Wars prequels give away important plot points of the original movies. When finished, Jackson's six Middle-earth movies can be profitably watched in sequence of internal chronology.

To be sure, Jackson's Hobbit trilogy is "based on" the 1930s children's book in the sense that the characters have the same names and visit much the same places in somewhat the same order (though new characters and places are also added). Their basic motivations are also the same. But beyond that, one should not expect much "fidelity". There is hardly anything that isn't greatly embellished and vastly elaborated, mostly so as to allow for a FAR darker tone and MUCH more fantasy action (i.e., fights). The spiders of Mirkwood here approach actual horror, as compared to their rather more children-friendly literary counterparts (where we have Bilbo insulting them with silly "Attercop" rhymes).

The wizards' conflict with the Necromancer of Dol Guldur, which in the book happens entirely "offscreen" and is just briefly alluded to when Gandalf has returned near the end, is here actually shown. This is understandable; Gandalf would otherwise be completely absent for much of this movie. Also, Jackson's audience will already know that this is the start of the war with Sauron, and the all-important Dark Lord could not well be ignored. Tolkien in his letters noted how Sauron casts just "a fleeting shadow" over the pages of The Hobbit; in Jackson's movie the shadow is darker and deeper.

Entire new subplots are freely created and added to the story. The Elf Tauriel and her unlikely infatuation with one of the Dwarfs is clearly meant to add a love story where the book has none, and have at least ONE strong female character (no concern of Tolkien's when he wrote a story for children in the 1930s).

The continued survival of ALL the protagonists despite their endless brushes with death doesn't just strain credibility -- it utterly and completely banishes and eliminates credibility. We are left with FANTASY action in the truest sense, to be enjoyed for choreography, not plausibility. If cats have nine lives, a Jacksonian Dwarf clearly enjoys a three-digit number of lives.

So, viewed as an independent work, is this a good movie? Technically it is nothing short of brilliant, full of detail that can only be appreciated on the big screen. Smaug is, hands down, the best-designed movie dragon the world has yet seen. If I were a teenager instead of a ripe old 42, this wealth of fantasy action would probably have exited me no end. It is nice to see Legolas again, even if he is not in the book. I liked the sequences with the amorphous Sauron. Poor Evangeline Lily would however look better without those silly ears, which are simply too big and look just as fake as they are. Also, I'm not sure the hinted-at Elf-Dwarf romance adds much to the story. All things considered, I'll award Jackson's re-imagined "The Hobbit" seven stars.

There were also seven stars in Durin's crown, for those of you who can understand the literary allusion ...

Babylon 5 is a flawed masterpiece. It is very sad that some of its true potential was compromised, because of executive meddling and threats of cancellation.

The change of station commander from season 1 to season 2 (Sinclair > Sheridan) is awkward. Plainly the original intention was that Sinclair was to be the protagonist throughout. His replacement is by all means an excellent character (and actor), but it would be better if Boxleitner had been cast from the beginning. There is also the Talia/Lyta mess: who is to be the resident telepath? Clearly this has to do with what actresses were available, not with story concerns. (Once "Lyta" was able to return, "Talia" gets written out!) But by far the saddest development occurs in Season 4, which the creators thought would be the final season. With cancellation looming, the carefully planned five-year arch could not be realized, and so we have a truncated end to the Shadow War that had been so wonderfully set up over three seasons.

Then word comes that there would be a fifth season after all! But alas, now the creators had RESOLVED THE MAIN CONFLICT! Clearly the epic conclusion to the Shadow War was to have been the subject of Season 5, which JMS early on described as consisting of nothing but "WHAM episodes" (as he wrote). Not so the season 5 that was eventually produced. It could not help but to come across as somewhat inferior, since the main plot had been hastily resolved while everybody thought Season 4 would be the last.

How I would have loved to see Season 4 and 5 as they were originally planned and should have been! It is tragic that JMS was prevented from presenting his true vision in its full scope! But as I said, even in its flawed state, Babylon 5 must be regarded as a masterpiece. The Vorlons and the Shadows are uniquely fascinating as fictional aliens go, all the more so because there is much we never learn about them. The big conflict is ultimately not good vs. evil, but a conflict between different philosophies about how the younger races should be tended and "assisted" in their evolution. The Vorlons want order and discipline, whereas the Shadows are creating havoc and conflict to stimulate evolution by the survival of the fittest.

Their supertechnology as "First Ones" is well realized, with organic ships (even if some of the 1990s CGI inevitably looks somewhat inferior today). And it was in a way strangely uplifting to learn (as the end of season 4 takes us one million years into the future) that HUMANS MAKE IT and will finally evolve to the same almost transcendent level as the Vorlons!

Maybe the strongest moment of all come at the end of season 3, where our protagonist has been lured to the homeworld of the Shadows by his supposedly-dead but recently-returned wife Anna. Unfortunately the Shadows have destroyed Anna's real personality and implanted her brain with a new personality loyal to themselves.

Even after all these years, I still clearly recall the image of Anna closing in on our hero after he calls the bluff, several Shadows following behind her. "I know this is not the Anna that you knew ..." she finally confesses, sounding chilling and seductive at the same time, "but I can love you as well as she did." Then our horrified hero jumps, seemingly to his death. And seconds later, the fireworks begin. Multi-megaton fireworks.

Great television. Great storytelling.

As many have pointed out, there would be potential for more here, but the movie doesn't stink. The rusting, massive ship is very well realized, and forms an atmospheric setting. If the movie makers had only known what "subtlety" means, and cut back on cheap scares, they could have produced something almost up there with The Shining! Yet even the movie as it is shouldn't be regarded as a total trainwreck (or shipwreck...) Some of the acting may be so-so, but young Emily Browning as ghost girl Katie deserves all the praise she can get. In the flash-back scene where we finally learn just what happened on the ship back in 1962, the despair of the still-living Katie is absolutely believable, and harrowing to watch. Also, some of the special effects are, at the very least, decent. You may have to suspend a lot of disbelief, but there really is a quite unique eerie beauty to the final scenes where the sinking ship is surrounded by a literal SWARM of newly-released spirits. With quite a few vulgar scares eliminated and a more subtle approach to the whole story, this could have been a great horror movie, and even the missteps of the film as we have it don't altogether spoil it.

This is not a TV movie with much of a drive to it; for the most part it moves along very patiently. But it did manage to stay vaguely interesting, and somewhat more so after the half-way point. If you know something about Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes alike, it may be amusing to watch this interpretation of the relationship between the creator and his creation.

The flashbacks to Conan Doyle's "youth" and his encounters with Dr. Bell come across as slightly awkward since the actor is obviously just as middle-aged as ever -- especially when seen in a lecture hall full of twenty-something students that are supposedly his peers.

The end may not make a whole lot of sense, though. So Mr. "Selden" was actually some kind of manifestation of Holmes himself? Our first thought is then that the whole affair was psychological -- just Conan Doyle's own fantasies playing out before our eyes. But "Selden" is apparently just as visible to Conan Doyle's butler, to his mother and to Dr. Bell -- interviewing them while Conan Doyle is not even present. So do we go for a wholesale paranormal explanation here, with a fictional character entering the physical world to influence his own author? When that character is supposed to be the ultra-rational Holmes, it becomes something of a contradiction in terms to involve him in a semi-supernatural phenomenon.

But be that as it may, the TV movie did manage to hold my attention throughout, despite its low-key/undramatic style and patient pacing. The relationship between Conan Doyle and his new girlfriend was also beautifully presented, in the same patient manner (and the actress wasn't hard on the eyes). We'll give the whole seven stars. Just don't expect anything like an action movie.

I saw the trailer months ago and actually felt faintly intrigued, even though I'm plainly not in the targeted demographic (over two decades too old and probably the wrong gender as well). But I am quite willing to enjoy a movie I'm not expected to take really seriously. I haven't read the book and only consider the movie as such.

I won't bother to explain the premise; read other reviews! Let it be said that it is unfair to dismiss this as just a crude Twilight paraphrase.

Some say the young protagonists can't act, but hey, do you demand Oscar quality from a flick like this? I noticed nothing grotesquely sub par. As for the dialog ... well, you didn't really expect Shakespeare either, did you? Just go with the flow. I never cringed, which is more than I can say about certain sequences in Star Wars.

The romance isn't terribly well-developed, but I guess I prefer a minimal romance to the endless pining and 'emotional' blatter of the Twilight movies. Here we are (mostly) spared any boring triangle. Instead the kiddies will be going to the library and checking out Vonnegut! Wow, a whole new generation of readers, all thanks to this movie! ;)

Some apparently feel this is beneath the dignity of veteran actors Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson, but presumably they didn't sign on at gunpoint. Thompson certainly seems to be enjoying herself.

The character that pretty much steals the show is however Emmy Rossum as Ridley, the caster-gone-dark. As soon as this deliciously evil character entered, I found myself eagerly awaiting more scenes with HER. All right, so I guess some love crap with Lena and Ethan is unavoidable, but MOVE IT ON! Let's have more Ridley, already! Can we have a spin-off movie with Ridley as protagonist, please?

The flash-back scene of Ridley being 'claimed for darkness' was also wonderfully intense, relying on psychology rather than massive FX. (But no, dear movie makers, it's not enough to have Lena in voice-over declaring: 'I was there! I saw it!' SHOW us that Lena was there, and let's have her actual reaction when the until-recently-nice Ridley amuses herself by having an innocent youth run over by a train.)

Most of the special effects are really well handled (they made the classical mistake of showcasing nearly all of them in the trailer, but hey, maybe I wouldn't have seen the movie if they hadn't!) I greatly enjoyed the stormy dinner party where Lena and Ridley enter into a Caster's Duel (you don't see an indoor cyclone every day!) The dark tentacles reaching out of Sarafine when she exposed her evil nature were nicely crafted, and connected well with the 'trailing ivy' motif that is used throughout the movie. The storm near the end was so exquisitely well done that it left me wishing that Lena had gone all the way down into darkness and flattened the entire state in her rage! It almost felt like an irritating coitus interruptus when circumstances made her (and the storm) stop.

Yet it must be said that the end did avoid the obvious cliché. Of course we were expecting the oh-so-happy outcome that Lena would be 'claimed for Light' and everything would be saccharine nice, but it was more complex than that. There is actually something empowering about the notion of 'claiming oneself' as opposed to 'being claimed', and so ending up as a REAL PERSON with both good and evil inside. Hence only one of her eyes has obtained the Evil Gleam at the end: She is neither a saint nor a devil.

Ethan however fades into irrelevance before the end, which is a very weird twist. Turns out he wasn't really present at the climax at all (you'll understand when you see it). He is neutered with magically imposed amnesia and effectively removed from the story, except for some brief scenes at the very end that suggest he is falling in love with Lena once more. Please don't tell me that in any sequel we must go through the whole 'Lena tells him about the Caster reality' routine all over again?!

In summary: There are obvious faults, but the movie doesn't stink. It has to be either six or seven stars; I'll be nice and give it seven.

In a weak moment I just might buy the DVD ... mainly to savor Ridley!

Michael Biehn fighting the Antichrist! Remember 1984's The Terminator, where Mike was content with fighting a time-traveling killer robot with an Austrian accent? That plot of that movie seems SO much more plausible and realistic now that I've spent a very funny afternoon watching 'Omega Code 2'! Indeed, it was so funny that I had to write my first IMDb review ever!

But what can I say that that other reviewers haven't said before? Here we truly have it all – a ludicrous ultra-Bible-literalist end-time scenario, unabashed American jingoism, patricide, a pathetic love triangle, cheesy CGI, and even lazy historical errors (the ignorant scriptwriters have Stone 'Satan' Alexander accepting a post in the European Union in 1976, a full seventeen years before the union even existed!)

We follow Damien ... er, Stone from his childhood, when he is duly possessed by Satan and spends the rest of the movie (d)evolving into the Antichrist, the world dictator who finally establishes that perpetual dread of right-wing conspiracy theorists: The One World Government! Brrr! Luckily, the President of the 'God-blessed United States of America' (sic!) refuses to go along with the plan. Not-so-luckily, Stone quickly disposes of him with a supernaturally induced heart attack.

Still, this allows Vice President Biehn to assume full authority, and a lot of screen time is wasted on setting him up as the great hero who will save the day in the end. You can call this a spoiler if you must: The time is indeed wasted, for ultimately Biehn's character does NOTHING of any significance! He is last seen staring stupidly into the sky when Armageddon comes and the 'Nazarene' abysses Stone-gone-silly-CGI-Satan. (Yes, we're talking horns and leathery wings here!)

A devil so incompetent that he avails himself of the hammy Antichrist seen in this movie does deserve to lose the eschatological battle. In the off-chance that the fundamentalists are on to something, I would expect the real deal to be slightly more subtle than standing before thousands of people and declaring something to the effect: "Ahh-y am your GOD!!! Worship ME!"

Three stars, every single one of them for unintended comedic value.