Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 06/15/2008 7:23:25 AM PDT by rbg81
For a movie called "The Happening" not much happens.
M. Night Shyamalan effectively delivers the usual broody air of foreboding that has been a trademark of his hits ("The Sixth Sense" and "Signs") and misses ("Lady in the Water" and "Unbreakable").
And this fear-mongering story of an airborne toxin that causes victims to snuff themselves in nasty ways shoving hairpins into their throats, hurling themselves en masse off a high rise, the like induces plenty of seat-squirming. The shock value wears off quickly, though, and writer-director Shyamalan strands us (along with Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel) in an ultimately boring cautionary tale with an infantile eco-message.
(Excerpt) Read more at movies.yahoo.com ...
There was some of this during the 40s-80s, as a result of the possibility of nuclear war. But at least that was plausible.
Thoughts?
Yes, we had “I am Legend” last year.
Seemed to crop up after “Inconvenient Truth”
1) Remakes;
2) Action films featuring lots of fireballs, kick-fighting and high body counts;
3) Movies that glom onto the latest left-wing political fads.
IMO.
I had the wrong idea about the movie. Having several times seen the commercial advertising the movie, but with the audio muted as with most commercials, I had thought the film was about people who couldn’t die.
The virus idea sounds less interesting.
I saw the Happening yesterday. It falls into this category. The tag line for the movie was, "We've Sensed It. We've Seen The Signs. Now... It's Happening." The working title was "Green Planet." I should have done more research before seeing it.
Nothing wrong with 2).
M. Night Shyamalan had a great hit movie with “The Sixth Sense” and has been working his way down ever since.
:)
The only thing I thought about during this film was “why do I keep on seeing the boom mic in every shot???”
The trailers for “The Happening” were interesting, but I think you’ve just saved me a few bucks.
There’s a show that they keep running on either the History channel or Discovery (I don’t remember which one) about what the earth will be like once the humans are gone. I have the good sense not to watch the hopeful propaganda of the green kooks, and I recognize these shows as such.
I find it almost as annoying as the Dinosaur and Neanderthal shows on Discovery that present us with how the dinosaurs and neanderthals looked and acted (in brilliantly bad CGI) when they were on this planet. How in the world do “scientists” come up with this stuff when all they have at most are a pile of bones.
In "The Omega Man" (Charleton Heston), the trigger was biological warfare. The most recent "I Am Legend" (Will Smith), the trigger was a mutating virus that originally cured cancer. In "The Last Man on Earth", it was a mysterious world-wide plague.
What was the trigger in the book?
Yeah, I’ve seen that one. Can’t remember the name either.
I had thought the film was about people who couldn’t die.
That was the third version of “I Am Legend”. Vincent Price [I believe] starred in the first. Charlton Heston in the second [”Omega Man”].
“The Day the Earth Stood Still,” was not an extinction movie—unless you’re referring to the little know “The Day the Earth Caught Fire”.
Unbreakable is not a miss IMO, at the box office it might have been but it is one of his more well done and thoughtful movies, especially compared to the tripe he has put out lately.
I was actually looking forward to seeing it; until now. Thanks for the heads-up. I wont be wasting any of my $ on this.
The premise of the “I am Legends” movies, the “Omega Man”, with Charlton Heston, was the most plausible (plague due to Biowarfare). The Will Smith one had a similar premise (mutating, human created virus), but I don’t buy that the victims would morph into superhuman vampires. The first one (with Vincent Price) was the closest to the Matheson novel and (IMHO) was the best of the three. Basically, in that one, there is a virus that turns people into vampires. The root cause of the plague (natural or artificial) is never discussed.
You may want to copyright it. It's good stuff.
In the original Matheson story, the trigger was a bacterial pandemic that killed most people but turned some into vampires. The Vincent Price movie “The Last Man on Earth” had a lot of differences from the novel, but was still the most faithful of the movies to the original story.
Hey, the flick is on solid scientific ground; from springerlink.com:
[D. E. Lincoln1
(1) Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina, 29208 Columbia, SC, USA
Abstract The carbon/nutrient ratio of plants has been hypothesized to be a significant regulator of plant susceptibility of leaf-eating insects. As rising atmospheric carbon dioxide stimulates photosynthesis, host plant carbon supply is increased and the accompanying higher levels of carbohydrates, especially starch, apparently dilute the protein content of the leaf. When host plant nitrogen supply is limited, plant responses include increased carbohydrate accumulation, reduced leaf protein content, but also increased carbon-based defensive chemicals. No change, however, has been observed in the concentration of leaf defensive allelochemicals with elevated carbon dioxide during host plant growth. Insect responses to carbon-fertilized leaves include increased consumption with little change in growth, or alternatively, little change in consumption with decreased growth, as well as enhanced leaf digestibility, reduced nitrogen use efficiency, and reduced fecundity. The effects of plant carbon and nutrient supply on herbivores appear to result, at least in part, from independent processes affecting secondary metabolism.]
According to this theory, instead of people going mad and suicidal, insects will begin to shrink and quit multiplying until there won’t be enough grasshoppers, gnats, dragonflies, etc. to keep the frogs alive and we all know what happens when all the frogs die.
Ping
You can always watch it online.
I just did this morning after bumping into this thread.
Yup - Environmental Chic
"On The Beach"
Well, the core conceit of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is that an alien robotic police force ("Klaatu barada nikto!") might interpret humankind's militarizing space as a hostile act and reflexively annihilate us. But you're right - it would be quite a stretch calling it an "extinction movie."
However, "The Day the Earth Caught Fire" is only slightly closer to belonging in the genre, inasmuch as it was about the threat that Earth might overheat due to its axis being shifted by Soviet/U.S. nuclear testing (hey: Do you think that's maybe where Al Gore got the idea?). However, the extinction never materializes, the worst we see is some bizarre weather, and by the movie's conclusion, the world waits with bated breath to see if the countermeasures they've taken (more A-bombs, to restabilize the Earth's axis, combined with a worldwide ban on SUV's - heh-heh!) are effective.
I propose that, to be classified as an "extinction" storyline, the movie (or novel) must portray a) some global catastrophe, with most humans dying; b) at least one "normal" survivor; and c) some "abnormal" survivors against whom the "normal" survivor(s) is/are pitted.
Regards,
Hope it’s just a passing craze; like Disco…
I guess when I watched TDTECF, I assumed that the Earth kept heading into the Sun. Of course, I think I was saw it back in the 70s, so my memory isn’t perfect.
Another distinction is that, in the past, most of the movies were apocalyptic in nature. Yes, some sort of apocalypse did take place, but (by the end of the movie) the human survivors were typically back on a path to recovery. That path might have been tenuous, but at least they ended on a hopeful note. With extinction movies, there is no hope. In addition, the underlying premise of these movies is that the human race deserves its fate, nominally for its “crimes” against the environment. In the past, a movie that showed total extinction would have been a downer and was extremely rare (”On the Beach” was one example).
Extinction chic media will become more fashionable because, according to the Left, people are the problem & we have it coming.
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