As any number of reviewers are wont to point out, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers was an allegory for the creeping conservatism of the Eisenhower years. The story of seemingly normal people being replaced by emotionless alien pod-people IS a great analogy for the way conservative thought processes seem to suck the life out of otherwise healthy individuals.*
So it's probably no surprise that every few decades, as our politics swerve to the conservative side, someone feels the need to trot this story out again. (It's funny… I distinctly remember the 80's remake of Invasion—the one with Donald Sutherland, for those not inclined to click the link—as being Reagan era. But according to IMDB, it came out in '78, during the Carter administration. Maybe the backsliding into that Reagan mindset had already begun and that's why it seems so much a part of that time period.) Then again, I just discovered the Abel Ferrara version from '93, so maybe my whole "conservative politics" angle is all just so much noise.
Whatever the case, the latest version to hit theatres, with the significantly reduced title of Invasion, turned out to be a laughable waste of time. Acknowledging that I wasn't expecting much to begin with doesn't make the fact that I literally laughed out loud several times any less telling.
The first time I laughed inappropriately came about 45 minutes into the movie, when Kidman's and Craig's characters are discussing this strange tissue she'd found with Craig's lab tech friend (played by Jeffrey Wright). He describes the unusual qualities of the tissue then, out of the blue, drops this little gem… he tells them that he's got a friend working at a nearby base, and that they've been investigating this stuff as well. And the conclusion that they've come to is that it must be some kind of alien virus that's come to earth to take over the planet. (Or words to that effect—I'm paraphrasing, of course.) He might as well have said "you've all seen the other movies, so there's no sense us wasting time figuring out what's going on here, right?" I mean, let's face it, when faced with an apparently alien thing invading human cells, Occam's Razor says that it MUST be aliens intent on invading, right?
Unfortunate storytelling shorthand choices aside, bigger problems were soon apparent. Shortly before the movie's release, it became common knowledge that the Wachowski Brothers (of Matrix fame, of course) had been brought on board to punch up the ending of the film. The producer (Joel Silver) was quick to point out that this did not mean they'd lost faith in their director, but that they just wanted to ensure they had an ending that meshed with their vision for the movie.
The problem here is two-fold… up until the point the Wachowski's come on board, this has been a pretty straight-forward horror/thriller, with some political overtones. But when the Wachowski's step in, we're suddenly in full-on action movie territory. Which leads to the second problem… the Wachowski Brothers have a VERY distinct directing style. So much so, you'd think they could trademark it or copyright it or something. It's so distinctive that the moment they switch directors is visibly apparent on screen. It's not just that the action suddenly ramps up but that their directing style is so distinctive that I don't think you could have made the movie look more different from everything that had proceeded if you'd changed actors and shot it all in 3D. Politics, horror, creepiness and fear are all brushed away so we can have us a patented Wachowski car chase. (And one that's structured like a videogame level, to boot. Not only do they have to outrun the Invaded, but they need to race to the top of a parking garage so the military helicopter that's carrying our apparently—and quite suddenly—high ranking lab tech, can sweep them away to safety.)
And then there's the ending (so this would be the time for that SPOILER ALERT message, right?). I can't imagine a more pat, "let's make it all better" ending than what we got. Between the discovery of the immunity serum, and the fact that the virus left everyone who was infected with amnesia, it was the ultimate cop-out. And attempts to question whether the aliens may have been right in their argument that they're making the world a better place, ring fulsomely false when faced with everything that's gone before. If you want to try and play that card, (as it appeared they were setting us up for, with the Russian's talk of how we're all animals, and the news reports of peace breaking out all over the world as the virus spreads) then you've gotta commit to it and make us ask that same question. Maybe the questions were there in the movie's original ending. But what we got here was a lame attempt to tie up all the knots left hanging after our uber-macho car chase finale.
An utter waste of time, I walked out of the theater wanting to go home and rent ALL the previous versions of this movie, just to cleanse my mental palette, as it were.
*I've actually witnessed this "conservative body snatching." Several years ago, I had neighbors living in one of the downstairs apartments at our complex, and we used to frequently hang out with them. He had a kind of old-school biker vibe, and she lived in jeans and t-shirts. They had a couple of kids, but had never gotten married… they didn't see the point.
One day she came home and she'd "found god". She gave away all her jeans and t-shirts and wore only skirts and loose blouses from that day forward. (Apparently, jeans weren't proper attire for a Christian woman.) Her language, while not previously heavily peppered with curse words, was suddenly sanitized. And, shortly after her conversion, they were talking about the need to get married. (Well, truth be told, she was doing the talking while he was just nodding acquiescence.) The scariest part was that any opinions she now had seemed to be filtered through her pastor's mind first. She'd constantly start sentences with "Reverend Jack says..." and when pressed on a subject—such as when she complained about a ballet troupe and we asked what was wrong with ballet—she'd simply reply "just ask Reverend Jack!" or "you should here what Reverend Jack has to say about that!". Sadly, it wasn't long before we stopped spending time with them, as we lost any common ground for friendship.
So it's probably no surprise that every few decades, as our politics swerve to the conservative side, someone feels the need to trot this story out again. (It's funny… I distinctly remember the 80's remake of Invasion—the one with Donald Sutherland, for those not inclined to click the link—as being Reagan era. But according to IMDB, it came out in '78, during the Carter administration. Maybe the backsliding into that Reagan mindset had already begun and that's why it seems so much a part of that time period.) Then again, I just discovered the Abel Ferrara version from '93, so maybe my whole "conservative politics" angle is all just so much noise.
Whatever the case, the latest version to hit theatres, with the significantly reduced title of Invasion, turned out to be a laughable waste of time. Acknowledging that I wasn't expecting much to begin with doesn't make the fact that I literally laughed out loud several times any less telling.
The first time I laughed inappropriately came about 45 minutes into the movie, when Kidman's and Craig's characters are discussing this strange tissue she'd found with Craig's lab tech friend (played by Jeffrey Wright). He describes the unusual qualities of the tissue then, out of the blue, drops this little gem… he tells them that he's got a friend working at a nearby base, and that they've been investigating this stuff as well. And the conclusion that they've come to is that it must be some kind of alien virus that's come to earth to take over the planet. (Or words to that effect—I'm paraphrasing, of course.) He might as well have said "you've all seen the other movies, so there's no sense us wasting time figuring out what's going on here, right?" I mean, let's face it, when faced with an apparently alien thing invading human cells, Occam's Razor says that it MUST be aliens intent on invading, right?
Unfortunate storytelling shorthand choices aside, bigger problems were soon apparent. Shortly before the movie's release, it became common knowledge that the Wachowski Brothers (of Matrix fame, of course) had been brought on board to punch up the ending of the film. The producer (Joel Silver) was quick to point out that this did not mean they'd lost faith in their director, but that they just wanted to ensure they had an ending that meshed with their vision for the movie.
The problem here is two-fold… up until the point the Wachowski's come on board, this has been a pretty straight-forward horror/thriller, with some political overtones. But when the Wachowski's step in, we're suddenly in full-on action movie territory. Which leads to the second problem… the Wachowski Brothers have a VERY distinct directing style. So much so, you'd think they could trademark it or copyright it or something. It's so distinctive that the moment they switch directors is visibly apparent on screen. It's not just that the action suddenly ramps up but that their directing style is so distinctive that I don't think you could have made the movie look more different from everything that had proceeded if you'd changed actors and shot it all in 3D. Politics, horror, creepiness and fear are all brushed away so we can have us a patented Wachowski car chase. (And one that's structured like a videogame level, to boot. Not only do they have to outrun the Invaded, but they need to race to the top of a parking garage so the military helicopter that's carrying our apparently—and quite suddenly—high ranking lab tech, can sweep them away to safety.)
And then there's the ending (so this would be the time for that SPOILER ALERT message, right?). I can't imagine a more pat, "let's make it all better" ending than what we got. Between the discovery of the immunity serum, and the fact that the virus left everyone who was infected with amnesia, it was the ultimate cop-out. And attempts to question whether the aliens may have been right in their argument that they're making the world a better place, ring fulsomely false when faced with everything that's gone before. If you want to try and play that card, (as it appeared they were setting us up for, with the Russian's talk of how we're all animals, and the news reports of peace breaking out all over the world as the virus spreads) then you've gotta commit to it and make us ask that same question. Maybe the questions were there in the movie's original ending. But what we got here was a lame attempt to tie up all the knots left hanging after our uber-macho car chase finale.
An utter waste of time, I walked out of the theater wanting to go home and rent ALL the previous versions of this movie, just to cleanse my mental palette, as it were.
*I've actually witnessed this "conservative body snatching." Several years ago, I had neighbors living in one of the downstairs apartments at our complex, and we used to frequently hang out with them. He had a kind of old-school biker vibe, and she lived in jeans and t-shirts. They had a couple of kids, but had never gotten married… they didn't see the point.
One day she came home and she'd "found god". She gave away all her jeans and t-shirts and wore only skirts and loose blouses from that day forward. (Apparently, jeans weren't proper attire for a Christian woman.) Her language, while not previously heavily peppered with curse words, was suddenly sanitized. And, shortly after her conversion, they were talking about the need to get married. (Well, truth be told, she was doing the talking while he was just nodding acquiescence.) The scariest part was that any opinions she now had seemed to be filtered through her pastor's mind first. She'd constantly start sentences with "Reverend Jack says..." and when pressed on a subject—such as when she complained about a ballet troupe and we asked what was wrong with ballet—she'd simply reply "just ask Reverend Jack!" or "you should here what Reverend Jack has to say about that!". Sadly, it wasn't long before we stopped spending time with them, as we lost any common ground for friendship.
Comments
How's the revisiting of the older versions going?
So far, all I've managed is to add them to my Netflix queue. But the intention's there. And we all know about good intentions, right?