Mel Gibson and the Crop Circles, what a crap!

[Pielorinho]

Oh, absolutely - I was agreeing with you. You said "it felt like dirty pool", and I agreed when I quoted you - it was dirty pool.

D'oh! I somehow thought you were quoting something else I'd said. Sorry!

Daniel

 

[DonTadow]

I don't know about that. I know that, for myself, I really like some of his movies- Unbreakable and Sixth Sense, and not others- Signs and the Village. I get that sense from a lot of the other posts here, too.

Maybe it is a trend starting- that his movies don't seem to appeal as much to fans of his earlier works- but I definitely don't feel as if many (if not most) posters in this thread are polarized one way or the other.

I'm in this pot. Six sense and unbreakable were remarkable. Signs was ok. The Village was three hours of midevil torture in the middele of a national park.

 

[Ds Da Man]

Signs sucked...so did The Village (which could have been cool with some real monsters in an old village). I really dislike M. Night Shamalyans(sp?) movies. They are overrated (well...Unbreakable was cool).

 

[Turanil]

Yes, they could be demons, or zombies, or mutant squirrels, or a collective allucination, or deranged grannies with pepper sprays. If you go solipsist, they could not exist at all. But the nº 1 interpretation is that they are aliens, since they have all the characteristics of aliens, UFOs can be seen in the film, and nothing contadicts the alien idea. You can rationalize them not being aliens, but again, you can rationalize battlefield earth being a good movie (you´d need however some practice before, perhaps starting with less taxing films).

And again, it´s not important if they are aliens or not, since we agree the point of the film is how Mel finds God again, but if you hit the audience in the face with a nonsense of that caliber, you´re distracting them from what´s important to the accesory, in this case from how God did such a great thing screwing Mel´s family to how idiotic are the aliens invading unprotected a planet covered in a 75% with acid, in wich acid falls from the sky in variable, unpredictable intervals, with an atmosphere that contains acid vapors, and with the purpose of eating creatures composed in their majority of acid.

Indeed!!

 

[David Howery]

for me, the best part about Signs was the uncertainty through so much of the movie... you didn't really know if there were aliens up there or not. A lot of the weird stuff going on could have had other explanations. It's not really until the last 1/2 hour or so that you know for certain. I found the whole water=acid thing to be pretty silly too...

and I really liked the little girl who played Mel's daughter... she was pretty good for such a youngster...

 

[Storm Raven]

The warranted assumption, of course. See my post about opening shots and filmmaking 101.

Actually, it remains an unwarranted assumption - you made an assumption about this narrative based on things you saw in other narratives, with no support in the story you were watching. He knew you would leap to the conclusion, but that doesn't make your conclusion warranted. It just makes your conclusion ill-advised.

I'm not disagreeing with you here, though. Shyamalan has proven to be a one-trick pony.

And I'm not disagreeing with you on the one trick pony thing. He's been adept with it, but it is getting predictable. So much so that the furor over it with respect to movies like The Village strikes me as being somewhat silly.

To what end? Showing us a spaceship (and then hoping nobody will think that it is a spaceship, but is instead a demonmobile?) is simply opening oneself up to criticism and harming the movie, instead of helping it. I would consider that to be bad filmmaking.

How about to this end: aliens, and alien visitations, have replaced demons in mainstream culture. You can draw clear parallels between things like incubi and succubi and alien "sexual probes" and so many other elements of modern "alien lore" that I think he was playing with the comparison. If demons showed up in the modern world, why wouldn't they (as mutable supernatural creatures) appear to us, and be interpreted by us, as vile aliens from another world?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

How about to this end: aliens, and alien visitations, have replaced demons in mainstream culture. You can draw clear parallels between things like incubi and succubi and alien "sexual probes" and so many other elements of modern "alien lore" that I think he was playing with the comparison. If demons showed up in the modern world, why wouldn't they (as mutable supernatural creatures) appear to us, and be interpreted by us, as vile aliens from another world?

I had more the impression that aliens and alien visitations have replaced angels in mainstream culture. I remember reading a report about the fact that angel sightings might have been the equivalent to UFO sightings centuries ago. Which makes a lot of sense, as we "know" that god and the angels live in heaven, while demons and devils come from below. This theory obviously wouldn't fit the Signs idea.

 

[Quasqueton]

Although I really like the demons concept very much -- actually makes a lot of sense to me, I'm surprised everyone is complaining about the "stupid alien" thing instead of about the "bad God" thing.

I'm not talking about God in "Real Life" or in "Real Life religion", just how He is portrayed in the movie. Just like saying "Mel" here is referring to the character Mel Gibson plays in the movie, not Mel Gibson in Real Life.

Mel's wife dies in a horrible accident so that she can give him prophetic advice. Mel's son is born with asthma, to suffer all his life (a possibly fatal situation, itself) so that he can survive the "alien's" poison gas. Mel's daughter gets a weird aversion to drinking water, and a compulsive habit of leaving glasses of water all around so that they have a weapon against the alien in their house. Mel's brother is a great bat swinger, but looses a chance at a grand life in the Major's so that he is at home to handle the alien that invades their house.

Now, if all this stuff was God's work, to keep Mel's family alive from the "alien invasion". . . why didn't God just keep the alien from invading Mel's house? One act (don't let the alien invade) vs. four acts -- kill Mel's wife, afflict Mel's son, afflict Mel's daughter, restrict Mel's brother. And Mel could still have his wife.

I mean, the whole "loss of faith" was instigated by (apparently) God's act -- Mel's wife killed.

I would also say, why didn't Mel's brother just beat the alien to death with the baseball bat, without using the water? But the answer to this seems to go back to the idea that maybe they were demons instead of aliens.

All in all, it seems like God screwed Mel and his family royally, with the revelation at the end that, "It was for the better good of his family." If I were Mel, I think I'd be more pissed at God than ever -- "Why didn't you just let a truck run over this alien today, than have a car hit my wife last year?"

Quasqueton

 

[jasper]

could be mel is modern job?

 

[Quasqueton]

Then he failed. Job never complained or "cursed his Lord" (or however it is phrased), and so passed the test. Mel gets quite cranky.

Quasqueton