Fuck GI Joe, this is the real movie you all should be watching. I just came back from it and it was great. Really strange and unusual, but at the same time had some pretty traditional documentary and action elements.
It’s roughly based on this short film that the director did years ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlgtbEdqVsk
An interesting trailer can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6PDlMggROA
Go see it now and forever save yourself from the horrors that is GI Joe.
I saw it yesterday and wasn’t that impressed. I didn’t like how they made it like a reality show having all the people give their personal opinions and stuff. That’s for reality shows…not a a movie.
I also didn’t like how it ended either. I mean the alien did promise to come back for him in three years, but I would have liked to see a scene where it actually happened, instead of leaving it to the viewers to decide.
It wasn’t supposed to be a reality show. It was supposed to be a documentary on the main character’s experience with the project.
As for your other comment not every movie can wrap up in a nice little package ready for you to eat up. You have to use your brain sometimes with movies, as surprising as that is.
I haven’t seen it yet, but my friend went yesterday and said that most of the characters weren’t likable except for one of the aliens, haha. Is that true?
That entirely depends on your personal preferences/tastes for personalities in movies and stories. A lot of them were pretty ruthless. In fact, all of them were in a way. The characters, likeable or not, do their job by keeping your attention. That seems more important to me than making an instantly likeable character, and even then that self-propelling interest and story-agitation that the characters do tends to form some sort of attachment with the viewer.
I noticed an undertone of racism in this movie where they would have subtitles for most of the black people even though they were speaking English with no problem.
I haven’t seen the movie, yet, but I heard it’s ABOUT racism. So… yeah. Actually, I think I’ll see it today!
EDIT: I just saw it. I highly recommend it. It’s the best film I’ve seen all year.
The point of the movie, I’d argue, is how ugly humanity can get. Even Wikus, the main character, gleefully burns alien egg sacs, leaves his “friend” behind so that he can cure himself. Even so, I’d argue that the two main characters, Wikus and Christopher Johnson (the alien) end up being very sympathetic… even pitiable. Mr. Johnson is a hero throughout, because of circumstances make him a hero. Wikus is… err… to use D&D terminology… a LN who turns into a LG by the end.
Sorry about the double post. I thought it was important in the context of the thread, though.
To quote another movie:
God didn’t make the world this way. We did.
Sin = Ayn Rand?
I want to see this movie, but not as much as 500 Days of Summer. I’ll probably get around to it, in a while.
Judging by it’s popularity you should have plenty of time to catch it in theatres.
And I’m pretty surprised by the lackluster response to this movie here. I figured RPG nerds would gobble up excellent Science Fiction!! :ah-ha!:
I’m going to see it tomorrow.
I’m not. Not only is this a blatantly obvious sci-fi analogy to Apartheid (it even takes place in South Africa!) but I already found out the story, and it seems just a cheap body horror (the human character turns into an alien unwillingly and doesn’t change back by the end) and graphic violence movie. NOT my kind of film.
I love excellent science fiction, just not as much as I love Zooey Deschanel. Surely that’s understandable.
Oh no a movie didn’t have a happy ending and actually has underlying meaning that paints our world in shades of grey. 
Edit for content: Saw it today, thought it was neat. A bit more gorey than I expected given that it’s rated 14A here, still quite good though. I enjoyed Wikus’ character progression, he definitely became a sympathetic character by the end of the movie.
Just saw it. It rocked my face off.
It’s the best social commentary flick I’ve seen in a long time. It not only allegorically (and blatantly, in some cases) handled heavy issues like prejudice, class disputes, and humanitarianism, but delivered it in a way that would hold the attention of an easily bored audience. It was thought provoking, entertaining, and I daresay, realistic.
And I so totally want one of those mech suits. :3
Oh no a movie didn’t have a happy ending and actually has underlying meaning that paints our world in shades of grey.
I don’t exactly need happy endings in every movie I see, but I definitely don’t need “the human race sucks” ones. For those, I just check the local news.
And really, do we need a SF allegory to Apartheid?? Is it no longer known or understood well? What’s next, a SF version of The Holocaust?
Considering how myopic people are with history, yes, yes we do. And the human race DOES suck, but the movie didn’t just show how selfish and cruel people can be, but that we can go against our nature and actually do ‘good’ things. Even if we seem totally inept.
This. The movie is not about how people suck. There are actually some good deeds done in the movie.
As I recall, Wilf doesn’t like Watchmen because the superheroes have personality flaws and sometimes fail to do the right thing. Rather than seeing this as a break from the often Marty-Stu perfect heroes with no depth whatsoever, he sees it as depressing. I feel as though he’s after something fundamentally different than offered in this film. There’s nothing wrong with that, and trying to convince him otherwise isn’t going to get much of anywhere.
However, valid though the desire for uplifting entertainment may be, I have to say that unless Puerto Rico is the heroic last stand of journalistic integrity, I very much doubt your local news is about how the human race sucks. I would guess it’s more about athletic contract negotiations and celebrity romances, maybe getting as dark and gritty as saying that if one drinks a herculean volume from plastic bottles, one is slightly more likely to get cancer, or that radon buildup in one’s home is unhealthy.