The Day the Earth Stood Still is a Bad Movie (a rant)

[Ninja D!]

Yeah. My all time favorite TV series.

Its my favorite Sci-Fi TV show as well :)

I'm partway into season 2 on my second time watching it all the way through. I also have all the movies, including The Lost Tales and Legend of the Rangers and I have Crusade.

[Elemental_Elf]

I'm partway into season 2 on my second time watching it all the way through. I also have all the movies, including The Lost Tales and Legend of the Rangers and I have Crusade.

I have all of those, save Crusade... Never saw it before. I heard it was bad...

Back on topic... I think Keanu played the roll well, even if the roll lacked much quality dialogue (which, sadly, the entire movie is guilty of as well).

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Yeah I have those as well. Not sure how many times through I watched it. Maybe 4, counting the original airing.

Crusade wasn't bad, but the network tried to force JMS to make it something it wasn't intended to be. At first he tried to compromise, but eventually it just made the series end abruptly.

[Ra-Tiel]

Hey I am tired of all the "humanity is violent blah blah". I want a species that is amazed by the fact that humans say hello by shaking hands instead of kicking each others asses like civilized beings.

But it is the truth. Nations spend more money on inventing weaponry to kill their neighbors more efficiently than they spend on their own hospitals. Governments always look for more effective ways to surpress their people and spoonfeed them propaganda instead of educating them and share knowledge and spread science. Humanity is a violent race, all of us rather willing to kill another human over something as little as the color of his skin or the name of his imaginary friend (a.k.a. "religion").

[sql]DROP TABLE humanity[/sql] would have been the only logical solution of the movie. Klaatu becoming "pussy-whipped" at the end totally ruined it for me. Also, it would have been a much better end: humanity destroyed, every last human dead, because we couldn't even get along with each other let alone the world we live on? A much better message than <typical hollywood happy ending type A>. :-/

And as for your desire: how about humanity being overtaken by telepathic parasites that melt with their host? Perhaps these parasites could completely control their hosts' emotional state, but leaving the cognitive functions (memory, logic, etc) to the host? This would allow for a "human" race without all the "anger issues" humanity currently has... ;)

[Nomadic]

Hey I am tired of all the "humanity is violent blah blah". I want a species that is amazed by the fact that humans say hello by shaking hands instead of kicking each others asses like civilized beings.

But it is the truth. Nations spend more money on inventing weaponry to kill their neighbors more efficiently than they spend on their own hospitals. Governments always look for more effective ways to surpress their people and spoonfeed them propaganda instead of educating them and share knowledge and spread science. Humanity is a violent race, all of us rather willing to kill another human over something as little as the color of his skin or the name of his imaginary friend (a.k.a. "religion").

[sql]DROP TABLE humanity[/sql] would have been the only logical solution of the movie. Klaatu becoming "pussy-whipped" at the end totally ruined it for me. Also, it would have been a much better end: humanity destroyed, every last human dead, because we couldn't even get along with each other let alone the world we live on? A much better message than <typical hollywood happy ending type A>. :-/

And as for your desire: how about humanity being overtaken by telepathic parasites that melt with their host? Perhaps these parasites could completely control their hosts' emotional state, but leaving the cognitive functions (memory, logic, etc) to the host? This would allow for a "human" race without all the "anger issues" humanity currently has... ;)

Perception of violence is subjective. To a warmongering race of aliens we would probably look like a group of wimps.

"What do you mean you put your criminals in rooms and take care of them? That's silly, you're supposed to just execute them on the spot, less mouths to feed."

[Ra-Tiel]

Perception of violence is subjective. To a warmongering race of aliens we would probably look like a group of wimps.

"What do you mean you put your criminals in rooms and take care of them? That's silly, you're supposed to just execute them on the spot, less mouths to feed."

That may be true. But I don't suppose a "warmongering race of aliens" would be considered "highly civilized" either. :P

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Perception of "civilized" is also subjective. Uncivilized is a term we apply to those whose customers values we deem inferior or less developed than those of another point of reference (usually our own).

[Ninja D!]

I'm partway into season 2 on my second time watching it all the way through. I also have all the movies, including The Lost Tales and Legend of the Rangers and I have Crusade.

I have all of those, save Crusade... Never saw it before. I heard it was bad...

I won't complain too much about it being canceled. It certainly wouldn't of had a wide audience. Also, it was too much like Star Trek for my tastes in a Babylon 5 show...but it wasn't bad. I enjoyed it for what it was.

[brainface]

And as for your desire: how about humanity being overtaken by telepathic parasites that melt with their host? Perhaps these parasites could completely control their hosts' emotional state, but leaving the cognitive functions (memory, logic, etc) to the host? This would allow for a "human" race without all the "anger issues" humanity currently has...

You mean like Invasion? Cuz that was pretty much invasion. :) (or whatever the recentish bodysnatchers remake was.) They were actually... intelligent viruses, not telepathic, but still.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Eh, I thought Day the Earth Stood Still was actually probably slightly better than Invasion. Or at least no worse.

[Ra-Tiel]

Dude, you're luck we don't have a sql bbcode. That could've been CATASTROPHIC.

http://xkcd.com/327/ :P

You mean like Invasion? Cuz that was pretty much invasion. :) (or whatever the recentish bodysnatchers remake was.) They were actually... intelligent viruses, not telepathic, but still.

I've never heard of this "Invasion" thing. :huh:

[brainface]

Invasion: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427392/

It's pretty good. I liked it, but I tend to like all Sci-Fi movies that don't assume I flunked high school physics or something. The other guy watching it thought it was "okay".

[Elemental_Elf]

I have all of those, save Crusade... Never saw it before. I heard it was bad...

I won't complain too much about it being canceled. It certainly wouldn't of had a wide audience. Also, it was too much like Star Trek for my tastes in a Babylon 5 show...but it wasn't bad. I enjoyed it for what it was.
[/quote]

Ironically, this is the direction Stargate is headed in with their new show Stargate Universe... i just hope it doesn't kill the franchise like Crusade did for Babylon.

[Ninja D!]

I have all of those, save Crusade... Never saw it before. I heard it was bad...

I won't complain too much about it being canceled. It certainly wouldn't of had a wide audience. Also, it was too much like Star Trek for my tastes in a Babylon 5 show...but it wasn't bad. I enjoyed it for what it was.

Ironically, this is the direction Stargate is headed in with their new show Stargate Universe... i just hope it doesn't kill the franchise like Crusade did for Babylon.
[/quote]I haven't watched much Atlantis...but to me SG-1 floundered when they left the Goa'Uld. Besides, the B5 franchise isn't really dead. JMS was allowed to make another Lost Tales but turned down the chance because Warner Brothers wasn't going to give him the budget he wanted. Sad because I thought the first one was fantastic, even if it involved just Sheridan and Lockely.

[Elemental_Elf]

I haven't watched much Atlantis...but to me SG-1 floundered when they left the Goa'Uld. Besides, the B5 franchise isn't really dead. JMS was allowed to make another Lost Tales but turned down the chance because Warner Brothers wasn't going to give him the budget he wanted. Sad because I thought the first one was fantastic, even if it involved just Sheridan and Lockely.

SG-1 completely floundered with the Ori... Honestly, the reason it floundered was not because the Ori were bad enemies (who doesn't love fighting the enemies of the ancients?) but that SG-1 attempted to rekindle that sense of desperation and urgency found during the Anubis era. The war escalated far too quickly with too many Ori ships and soldiers in our galaxy. it became a comedy of sorts of 'how best can we slapdash victory from the jaws of defeat?' To make matters worse they introduced a load of new mythology (Arthurian) as well as new struggles within Milky Way geopolitics (Jafa Nation, Lucian Alliance) and all the Ba'als running around. There was just too much going on at one time. IMO, if they had dumped the Ori, and made the last few seasons about how the Galaxy re-aligns in a post-gould era, it would have been very interesting, not to mention fun.  Its not like there would have been a lack of decent adversaries (Ba'al, anti-earth Jafa leaders, the entire Lucian Alliance, etc.). The creators jumped the shark and kept jumping more as seasons 9 & 10 progressed.

As for Atlantis... Well that show is really a gem, post season 1. I haven't seen anything past season 4 (I wait for the DVD box sets, so I can watch them all in 1 go) but it became a much better show than post season 8 SG-1. I really suggest getting into it, especially now that it's ending (and gracefully I might add (unlike SG-1)). :)

EDIT: Almost forgot, I loved the Lost Tales movie, both episodes really captured the old B5 feel and inspired me to go out and buy all 5 seasons on DVD (plus the movie box set). I was really saddened to see JMS deciding not to continue the series, I really wanted to see a Garibaldi episode! :) Maybe WB will be more willing to allocate more funds in the future *crosses fingers*