by Tanada » Thu 06 May 2010, 19:55:39
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dinopello', 'T')hanks for the alternate opinion Tanada. I found it a little hard to watch at times for various reasons having to do with what it said about us humans and our current society. Overall I did like it though. I thought the premise was kind of cool - that humans feel the need to help out this alien culture (seems they had a hive-like hierarchy) and then it just all turns sour. Also interesting was the hyper specialized culture of the aliens that could create the intersteller spaceship but when it's structure was fractured and the leadership lost, the workers regressed to savages. The whole cat-food thing was funny.
None of that bothered me so much, it was the way the lead character was portrayed that drove me bonkers. The guy is a mid level bureaucrat with a beautiful wife and a sadistic conniving Father-in-law who completely manipulates him into doing evil acts thinking he is doing good. He seemed like a nice guy who would be a great dinner guest, but not the kind of person who could survive and succeed in the scenario he was placed in during the movie. I appreciate that not every first contact movie has to be a shoot-em-up but this struck me as a low grade remake of Alien Nation from about 15 or 20 years back, except this time the saucer landed in South Africa instead of in Mojave.
Also the scene's where they exterminated the baby alien nurseries was very disturbing for me to see.