D9 WITH SPOILERS

SPOILERS!!!!!

I guess that's my failing, cause unless a movie really moves me, I don't feel like taking the time usually to discuss it.

What happened in this movie didn't seem surprising to me. The main character was an asshole to begin with, and though he changed, imo he only changed due to necessity not because of any morality enlightenment. He needed an alien ally to resolve his own physical problem, and that was why he befriended Christopher, if you can call it that. I didn't see him becoming all concerned for them, in fact when he hit Christopher upside the head with the butt of his gun, and took off with the alien youth, that only served to confirm my feelings in that regard. Yea, he protected Christopher in the end, but by then I think he realized what his fate was and chose to go with those who would be his allies in the future. Again, nothing altruistic.

I guess I expected and hoped for more, again my failing. Imo, it didn't deliver.

I didn't read any of the spoilers about the movie, so when we went in and watched it, we were pretty much surprised about the details. While we expected the general morality issues, they were still done well enough that they weren't too trite.

For one thing, we didn't even know the main character was the main character for a while. We assumed he was just some clueless idiot inadvertently causing problems to help set the matter-of-fact discriminatory tone of the film.

One of the guys with us is from a family of film critic types, so we all sat in my truck bed after the show and talked about it. The major issue discussed was obvious - the allusions to South African apartheid.

I disagree. Sure, he attacked him out of frustration and selfishness. When he decided to protect him, it didn't look to me like he was only doing it so he'd have future allies. It looked more like he was expecting to die and resigned himself to that, so decided at that moment to do the humane thing and help the innocents. Did anyone else notice that "dead man walking" look on his face in the numerous closeups in the last fight?

But if he knew he was changing into one of them, why would he think he was dying?

Because the odds were looking pretty damn good that the military guys from MNU were going to kill him or capture him and dissect him. When he told Christopher to make it to his son and get to the ship, to me, he knew he was going to die. He didn't want to suffer through it all and give his life up for Chris and his son (the aliens basically) all for nothing. It had already progressed beyond turning into 'one of them' - it was doing the right thing so his death had meaning.

I hate you all :P I think I'll just stay clear since the whole discussion is heading towards spoilers now - god dammit I read to much even avoiding the ones that said spoilers

Maybe I'm too cynical in this case.

Den's reason for not enjoying it is why I liked it. I didn't want a good guy versus bad guy same old same old dribble hollywood throws at us. Life doesn't always end happily, people aren't good though some do good things. The corporate asshat does one good deed at the very end which would never make up for the harm he did. He did resign to his fate... one way or another, life as he knew it would never be the same.

Before the movie reached theaters... the announcement of a sequel came down the pipe. The flick is fine as is imho.

That isn't why I didn't like it. I don't particularly like when the bad guy wins, but that wasn't my take on this movie anyway. I just thought it was predictable, boring, and having too many exploding bodies.

The second the guy got spatted with that black shit, I expected what happened to him to happen.

I didn't feel the movie was written in a way to allow me to feel much compassion for the aliens, and consequently I didn't. I found it difficult to see them as more than insects, although I did recognize them as being sentient creatures, which did make me feel slightly more for them than a cockroach. I just didn't find myself vested in their welfare much, other than to think if we had only helped them try and fix their ship early on, we might have found a way to get them back to their planet a lot sooner, and everyone would have been better off for it.

So I keep checking this thread because I'm excited for the movie, and want to see what people thought. We're up to 4 or 5 posts now with spoilers in them and at least one really big thing has been ruined in a post without a warning. Maybe I'm being an ass but you can debate the finer details in a spoiler thread?