Eagle Eye: dumbshit pie (spoilers ahead)
I like Science Fiction. I like flim. Why can't Hollywood make a decent SF movie anymore? I left this movie feeling very angry- feeling like I've just been pandered to by someone creating films for the mentally retarded.
I can just imagine the writer giving the pitch:
"So, there's this explosive crystal see and the mom is wearing it around her neck- it looks like a diamond pendant but actually it's got enough firepower to blow up a football stadium ... and the A.I. in the pentagon has arranged for the mom's son - Timmy and his band camp - to play the national anthem during the State of the Union. When the High F is reached the harmonic resonance frequency will detonate the diamond pendant blowing up the president.
Oh and there will be an AI like HAL - only all shiny and shit."
Who gives something like this a green light? I almost walked out after the lady fell in a pool of "liquid nitrogen" and emerged as if she'd just swum a few laps.
The AI was very flashy. In fact the computer screens it runs on looked to have been created in Adobe Flash by a Learning Annex drop-out.
This was the crappiest in a long line of crappy SF movies coming out of Hollywood. Are they really writing for dumb, dumb people or are there other forces at work?
Along with the stockmarket crash - we could use a Hollywood crash. For film makers to make do with 10% of the budget. So for Science Fiction, good writing and acting are relied on. Hire real Scientists and Science Fiction authors. Get Margaret Atwood, John Varley, Vernor Vinge, Neal Stephenson.
Get those people to make your movies - and give the viewers credit that they don't come to movies for unbelievable car explosions and fake computer jargon.
I can just imagine the writer giving the pitch:
"So, there's this explosive crystal see and the mom is wearing it around her neck- it looks like a diamond pendant but actually it's got enough firepower to blow up a football stadium ... and the A.I. in the pentagon has arranged for the mom's son - Timmy and his band camp - to play the national anthem during the State of the Union. When the High F is reached the harmonic resonance frequency will detonate the diamond pendant blowing up the president.
Oh and there will be an AI like HAL - only all shiny and shit."
Who gives something like this a green light? I almost walked out after the lady fell in a pool of "liquid nitrogen" and emerged as if she'd just swum a few laps.
The AI was very flashy. In fact the computer screens it runs on looked to have been created in Adobe Flash by a Learning Annex drop-out.
This was the crappiest in a long line of crappy SF movies coming out of Hollywood. Are they really writing for dumb, dumb people or are there other forces at work?
Along with the stockmarket crash - we could use a Hollywood crash. For film makers to make do with 10% of the budget. So for Science Fiction, good writing and acting are relied on. Hire real Scientists and Science Fiction authors. Get Margaret Atwood, John Varley, Vernor Vinge, Neal Stephenson.
Get those people to make your movies - and give the viewers credit that they don't come to movies for unbelievable car explosions and fake computer jargon.
22 Comments
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
Ebert agrees with me http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080925/REVIEWS/809250304/1023
Farhad2000Frankly any new Sci Fi is shit Sci Fi, I have recovered my love for the genre by delving back into time to watch Stalker, Mirrors Edge, Eolomea, Journey to The Far Side of the Sun and others.
As you can see from my list am rapidly running out of good movies.
gwiz665My sycophantic tendencies agrees with you as well, but I haven't seen it and probably won't with these reviews.
Thylani will now avoid this.
SarzyIt was definitely a "check your brain at the door" type of film, but I actually enjoyed it. I think the problem is that many people are critiquing it like it's a sci-fi film, which it really is not. It's just a thriller / action movie that happens to have a dumb sci-fi concept as its MacGuffin. I think the key to enjoying this movie is not to overthink it (or really, to think about it at all) -- just sit back and enjoy the ride. Don't get me wrong, it's far from a great film, but it's entertaining in its own way.
Also, I thought the State of the Union sequence was one of the better parts in the movie, but then I'm a pretty big Hitchcock fan and that scene was overtly Hitcockian (ie. very close to being outright theft).
thinker247But did they at least use some GUI interfaces in Visual Basic? I can't imagine blowing up a diamond with high resonance pitch coming from a marching band without at least some sort of GUI to back it up on a software hard drive somewhere.
Michael Bay rules!
kronosposeidonSarzy is the Butters of VideoSift.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
Butters, you can't even argue that it was a good action movie. The plot was holier than my undies. Absolutely no character development. You know what was a good action movie? James Bond: Casino Royale. This was a shitty video game sprung to life.
I think that might be the problem, video games are influencing movies to such an extent that they are merging. I would probably play Eagle Eye as a video game, but I wouldn't pay (again) to stand over someone's shoulder and watch them play it.
Sarzy>> ^kronosposeidon:
Sarzy is the Butters of VideoSift.
Hahaha, it's true, and I was actually thinking the same thing. My reaction to Crystal Skull was pretty much identical to Butters'.
And Dag, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree because I thought Casino Royale was one of the worst Bond movies ever.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
^ Really worst Bond movie ever? Worse than the one where Peirce Brosnin flips his audi on its roof to ski across the ice while he's shooting? Please.
dotdude"Moonraker" was pretty low too.
gorgonheapIt seems like TV has had some good sci-fi series in the past decade; (Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, to name a few). But really it takes another Kubrick, Hitchcock, or Speilberg. Someone who is a master of their directing element. There just isn't a good Sci-fi director out there right now.
Plus the Sci-fi era of film has ended. Heck in the 70's and 80's there were countless numbers of sci-fi 'B' movies. Out of the many there were a few gems. But now days sci-fi is passe, and the only directors that will take it on are the ones who have producers with deep pockets and an endless supply of crappy scripts.
Here is my prediction for the next crappy sci-fi:
Klingon vs. Wookiee. It's like AVP except more explosions.
SarzyWell, I said one of the worst Bond films ever, not the worst.
My big problem with Casino Royale is that it feels like such a desperate attempt to contemporize Bond, but it loses what made him such a great character in the process. The new Bond just feels like a response to the success of Jason Bourne -- he's essentially James Bourne now. The Brosnan films were probably getting a bit too silly towards the end, but they took it way too far in the other direction. Even the action wasn't very good -- the parkour stuff has been done way better in other films, the fist fights seemed like they were trying way too hard to be gritty, and the big action scene at the end with the sinking building was just as over-the-top as anything in some of the more recent Bond films. And the villain was completely unmemorable -- I guess an interesting villain isn't gritty enough for "new Bond".
MAN Casino Royale makes me angry. Thanks for making me relive painful memories, jerk!
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
I liked Casino Royale because they actually spent a little time developing the characters. By the end I actually cared a bit about Bond and the female lead. Some of the action scenes were a little over the top- but the best scenes had a muted intensity and suspense- like the card game in the casino.
But back to the original subject, THIS is a better SF movie than Eagle Eye and probably had a budget of $500.
my15minutestrailer looked like a ripoff of Enemy of the State or Phone Booth.
just a weak attempt to feed off the paranoia of the information age.
shitty week at the box office. the only one i'd even consider is The Express.
got a laugh from your mention of surviving immersion in liquid nitrogen, though!
rottenseedCan't you see? This is the movie industry's revenge for all of our stealing of their movies.
"Steal my movies, will you? How'd you like to steal THIS pile of shit?!"
blankfistI'm not one of those Bond purists that think Connery is the only Bond, although he is the best. And, I think I exist in the minority of most film snobs because I think George Lazenby was a terribly Bond and OHMSS was one of the worst Bond flicks. Not the worst. No, Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton probably served up the worst of Bond. The new Bond is great.
Sarzy: "desperate attempt to contemporize Bond". Of course it is. Did you not think the Roger Moore Bonds were trying to do the same? Moonraker? Come on. That crap was nothing but 80s garbage and we loved it. When's the last time you've seen a Bond drive an Aston Martin DB5?
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
I'm holding out hope for City of Ember and The Day the Earth Stood Still
I know, I know, Keanu. But don't forget the Matrix - the best SF movie of the last 10 years. (as long as you deny that there were ever any sequels)
AnimalsForCrackers says...Along with the stockmarket crash - we could use a Hollywood crash.
Agree. Speaking of videogames, I'm also of the opinion that a repeat of the 1983 videogame crash would do everyone some good, too. The amount of thrown-together, big-budget garbage out there is astounding. Not to mention other issues like DRM (piracy scapegoating) and the overall state of PC gaming. The only 3 beacons of light left are id, Valve, and Blizzard.
lucky760I'm with Sarzy. I feel fortunate that in the last few years I have been able to convince my brain more and more to avoid the nagging/disbelief I used to suffer through in every such movie for retards.
(E.g., In Ghost Rider why the FUCK do they keep saying he's breaking a world record by jumping 300 yards "from goal post to goal post" when he was also jumping through the end zones???!!! Did those extra yards not count toward the world record???)
I went into Eagle Eye fully expecting endless stupidity and a ridiculous story with Michael Bay explosions to wow the kiddies. While most of it was pretty out there, I was able to enjoy the movie for what it was, a couple hours of simple entertainment, while ignoring what it was not, an intelligently complex tale of ingenious technology and intricately developed characters with a subplot about the duality of man's craving for and fear of technology.
I wouldn't recommend Eagle Eye to anyone with a well developed sense of reality or scrutiny, but I wouldn't call it the worst movie I've ever seen. Hollywood could definitely stand to improve its sewage, but it's hard to expect much better when all the people with the money are only interested in what will "earn" them more of it.
MaxWilderThe basic premise was, "What if somebody could instantly access every piece of wired electronics and use it with precision? They could use it to force people to do their bidding." Everything else was filler, but that basic idea was done very well and kept me watching despite the ridiculous AI room.
It did one thing well, and it was the most important thing in my opinion.
Dignant_Pink says...i have very little to offer this conversation, having not seen this movie or casino royale. however i will state to GorgonHeap that i genuinely enjoyed AVP. definitely not the movie of the year, not even on my top twenty, but definitely good.
i didn't even make it a quarter of the way through AVP 2.
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