The Day the Movies Died
- Thread starter Vivek
- Start date
Actually we still had good movies after Top Gun - there were still different formats - ID4 is what really ended movies.
Colin Droidmilk
Sr Member
Just what exactly IS ID4? When I first saw it I thought it was a mess. The most disastrous cocking-up of tone I'd ever seen in a film ( Will Smith's carefree, laughing wisecracking in the face of human extinction etc.). Watching it again, the GF and I thought that maybe it was all an incredibly nuanced, subtle satire on the bland complacency of Hollywood or something. But actually it could only be seen that way if it had been a response to all the Hollywood schlock that came after it. So I guess it's just a mess, right?
Shade88
Sr Member
I see what you did there.
cayman shen
Master Member
Yup, a straight up mess. It's fun, but deeply, deeply stupid. Basically it's just one scene after another trying to tug at your most obvious emotions. The emotional manipulation is about as subtle as those aliens blowing up the city.
Colin Droidmilk
Sr Member
Funny that, cos when I first sat through ID4, my whole being was crying out for Spielberg to take over (had the same feeling watching Titanic - another tone-mess) but Spielberg's alien invasion movie turned out just as bad, if not worse. At least characters died in ID 4; Spiel had to resurrect his killed character (presumably reasoning the audience wouldn't be able to deal with their 'grief'!), thus completing the sense the film already had of the main characters being utterly insulated from danger throughout the whole proceedings.
bwayne64
Master Member
Yea the scene with Will Smith. His supposed "best friend in the world" has just been killed. After his fight with the alien, he quips, "Now that's what I call a close encounter". This was just a few minutes after his "friends" death. That one scene ruined it for me. I still love all the effects. Just wish they were in a different movie.
well...heres my 2 cents, (which is worth less than a penny)... i agree with everything so far (even though i like Titanic) but there are so many films that have lowered the bar in movie making....Ishtar, Howard the Duck, Rambo 3, Godzilla, 2012, etc etc etc... the list goes on and on.......but i am a firm believer that the success of JAWS forever altered Hollywood..(because lets face it the story itself is pretty dumb, a shark terrorizes a "town') .the idiots upstairs who control production failed to see that the film was an extremely well made adventure film and it is hard to re-create success, ie. Jaws 2-4? Now a film lives and dies on opening weekend. few films can stand up to that pressure. and We as film goers suffer for it. Yes, good films do get made but there are is a lot more s__t than gold, as we all know.
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It looks like the writers saw how popular war of the worlds was so they modified the aliens from the book and then threw in the city sized ships from the V 80s series/mini-series, then tossed in some top gun and Jeff Goldblum since he's just fun to watch.
ID4 was written in a month by Devlin and Emmerich. It's the first true effects only driven film. There was no story, no characters you deeply cared about or even cared about a little. The first lady becomes best friends with Will Smith's stripper girlfriend - and worse, they discover they have a lot in common?!? Wha? They download an apple program into alien technology and it's compatible??! Say what?! There's wayyy too many holes and sinks to list them all - but basically people were paying to just watch spaceships blow up stuff. You can't watch that film and not see relationship to Transformers, The Prequels and yes, even the last Indy film. It's set piece after set piece of CG and Pyro - nothing more. Disaster films are nothing new and lots followed, but in the early days of Hollywood they would pepper some story through these films, largely in part because these movies came from successful novels. If you watch The Poseidon Adventure - the Gene Hackman version - there are emotional moments that work as well as backstory to the characters - that was abolished in the modern age. Studios realized they no longer needed to work that hard on characters, just show stuff blowing up. I heard that while they were testing out the new Silicon Graphics machines to do all the work on ID4 that Lucas stopped by to see what the film was about. The wireframe and low render shots of the ships were being worked on and after he saw this he realized he didn't need to make new movies he could just go back and "fix" his old ones - thus, the Special Editions were born.
ID4 continues to play a heavy part in the movies we see today - or at least the big budget ones. go back and look at the movies we had before 1996 and then after - things changed in a big way.
ID4 continues to play a heavy part in the movies we see today - or at least the big budget ones. go back and look at the movies we had before 1996 and then after - things changed in a big way.
ghostryder
Legendary Member
I'll never forget the scene in Devlin and Emmerich's Godzilla which had 'zilla CHASING HELICOPTERS through the canyons of the city. I'm no rocket surgeon, but why didn't the helos just, oh, I dunno, PULL UP...
So f'in stupid.
So f'in stupid.
They didn't because that would have made sense.
People give Michael Bay crap because of his films - which are terrible, but if you ask me Devlin and Emmerich or even just Emmerich now, their films are even worse. I loved how in Godzilla everytime Godzilla showed up it would just start raining for no reason - well.... we all know the reason is because night and rain cause enough commotion where the cg doesn't have to be perfect.
YouTube - Godzilla Final Wars Godzilla Vs Zilla
mbmcfarland
Sr Member
It's part rocket scientist and part brain surgeon.
Like Buckaroo Banzai.
Like Buckaroo Banzai.
Solo4114
Master Member
This. I have loathed this film since the day I saw it back in 1996. I watched in our college theater with friends, all of whom said "Oh, come on, it's fun!"
And with that, Hollywood ceased to give a s**t.
OldKen
Master Member
Labrynth was awesome. It was a complete dream fantasy movie.
ID4 had no excuses. IMHO one of the worst movies of all time.
TPM is what put the nail in the coffin for new movies. It showed hollywood that as long as you had a "name" or a franchise... you can make a crap ton of money without much more. Throw in some CGI and whizz bang pow effects and sound. And you are gonna make your money back 10 fold.
Use the name spiderman, tons of people will go see it. But something like the Book of Eli? What is that? Firefly? Huh?
Oh look they are Re-remaking spiderman, again people will fill the seats just to see what it is. Re-remaking superman? Sure! People will come out in droves.
And if/when they actually come out with SW episode7... even if the trailer is a picture of a turd on the sidewalk... people will line up around the block just out of morbid curiousity.
But come up with a new concept nowadays? You MAY get a cult following once it hits DVD/BR. But you will have not nearly recouped your production costs. Look at Firefly the movie. No one went to see it. But there are probably hundreds of thousands of people that know the movie by heart.
It's sad really. Hollywood has to do stuff like make Annie for will smiths daughter... instead of making a completely new movie and character with similarities... no lets just call it "Annie" people will go see that!!! :rolleyes Same with Karate Kid... Jackie Chan is a badass... but HE DOESN'T KNOW KARATE!!! :angry
And of course they couldn't name it, THE ART OF KUNG FU or something... they needed a NAME to sell. :rolleyes
I am just tired of all the remakes and rehashing of old great stories. Where are the NEW great stories?
End of rant. :angel
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