rab - 10 July 2009 09:34 PM
GAD - 10 July 2009 04:07 AM
The river bed scene made the movie, the movie could of ended there, but the final scene still made sense in context.
Then I must be a little dense. Would you mind explaining it to me? Where to hell did they take the children? Who were these whisperers and why did they care? And why go through all the trouble of the time capsule bullshit when they could have snatched the kids with the technological powers they had?
Silly premise. But the special effects were awesome!
Overall, I liked the movie, for its special effects and as something different to watch. I did like how the numbers were worked into the storyline. (There were some things that I found distasteful, and for them, see the bottom portion of my post.)
Mr. Rab: I think that Mr. GAD meant that the river bed scene could have made for a decent ending. The scenes after it, and the final scene just add more info to the story.
As for your other questions:
1. The children were taken to another planet to begin life anew. The multitude of spaceships leads me to conclude that there are plenty of other creatures deposited on Neo-Earth. (Including other humans.)
2. The ‘whisperers’ were a spooky race of aliens, who for some reason saw what our sun would do, and wanted to salvage what they could of Earth’s life. (They probably saw us as primitive, and wanted to ‘save’ us from an untimely destruction, much as we would expect from an episode of Star Trek.)
3. The time capsule thing was just a plot byproduct to add tension to the story. One would have to conclude that the aliens were probably ‘broadcasting’ their spooky ‘signal’ to many people, all over the world, in the hopes of reaching some of the population. It seemed that the only people whose minds were receptive to the signals were those individuals who were able to become ‘attuned.’ I think the whole deal with this was to ‘filter’ out amongst us who would be worthy of saving.
4. Why did the aliens ride in a brown car in that scene, by Nicholas Cage’s house, if they have access to spaceships?—I think that scene was stupid. Just put into the movie to add pointless tension. It would have been better to have the ‘main’ alien we saw during the movie gain the attention of the Nich Cage’s son, and then walk behind a tree and ‘disappear’ from view. (A car with three grown-looking men in it, who are beckoning a young boy to come over to them is just icky.)
One of the things that I found distasteful in this movie was the apparent Christian overtone. The benevolent ‘aliens,’ who seem to be powerless to stop the devastating solar event, are nonetheless going to attempt to ‘save’ some of us.
This gave the movie, a resemblance to the fictional apocalypse and rapture that so many of our nutty fellow citizens believe will really occur. The solar event was the ‘apocalypse,’ and the notion that only the special few who could ‘hear the warning’ was the rapture.
The funny thing is that these aliens, who are capable of interstellar space travel, somehow cannot seem to give a clear warning to us. The movie began with us having only 50 yrs left on the ‘clock’ so to speak. But the ONLY messages of incoming peril that the world receives are the cryptic warnings—that only a few can hear. And, if no one seems to fricking understand the message, then what fricking good is it!
I may as well tell you that, “Exactly one year from now, to the minute, I am going to tickle you.” Only, I will transmit the warning to you via morse code, as blown on by a dog whistle. (A dog whistle is a device for making a shrill noise that is completely inaudible to humans.) When you are tickled a year from now and are weirded out by it, I can then say that you had plenty of warning. Another example of this would be how the Earth is taken care of in the novel, “The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
The very end of the movie was reminiscent of the garden of eden mythos. What is also insulting it that the aliens drop the kids off, and apparently leave them to fend for themselves. Whether the aliens extended the natural lifespan of the children or gave them any knowledge of survival is just speculation, as we cannot know for sure. What we do know, is that the children are released into the wild wearing nothing but robes. They aren’t even given tools or a shelter.
Aren’t the aliens wonderful? (not)
