Sounds like I'm going to have to check it out (notwithstanding my being only moderately impressed by AQP1). *Something* was always going to be the first real cultural phenom/big 'back to something like normality' film hit, and AQP2's character-driven, western/horror/thriller/sci-fi mash-up - one indebted to Ford, Hitch, Spielberg, Coens - might be the best we could ever hope for in that capacity.
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Here's what my makeshift family and I did:
We watched A Quiet Place(1), which we had never seen...on streaming the night before we went to our local movie theater to see A Quiet Place 2. This put us in the odd position of feeling like we were watching ONE movie. After a great flashback, AQP 2 picks up exactly where 1 left off. They better move fast on 3...those kids are growing up.
My take...MINOR SPOILERS.
As with Aliens and The Empire Strikes Back, because of the comparatively low budget of the first one and its huge success, the second one is much BIGGER -- bigger budget, more money on the screen. In this case...we see a lot more of those monsters, and a lot more monsters.
The original kept the monsters largely out of view for much of the movie(see: Jaws, Alien...Psycho), but the studio evidently feels we'll get more bang for the buck with "More is less."
One studies the monsters and sees a mash up of: the Alien; Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" raptors(I'd say that's the biggest influence with the hunt-and-hide suspense), Venom(head and horrific teeth -- also seen in the original "Creepshow," those teeth) . And in both movies I was amused that these blind monsters with their super-hearing can be harmed the same way the Martians went down in the comedy "Mars Attacks."
Oh, well. Everything old is new again. And the "silence required" motif remains quite unique. Though they get to talk a lot more this time -- I expect the studio felt the original was too "silent and arty."
CONT
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Note in passing: Sitting through AQP and watching the monsters chase everybody, I harkened back to my childhood, where LA TV movie packages like "Strange Tales of Science Fiction" and "Chilller" doled out nothing BUT monsters on a weekly(Saturday )basis. Your giant ants. Your giant dinosaurs. Your "IT the Terror Beyond Space' human sized monster on the blood-thirsty prowl. Not to mention the 1951 "Thing," which got a cult classic 1982 remake that was NOT for kids.
And here I am decades later watching a monster movie. Plenty of adults in the theater.
They talk of "putting away childish things" but I think the movies have done the reverse today: they've retooled our childish things as "adult thrillers for the whole family."
Plus: Psycho may be a shocker and a horror movie and (at the time) "the sickest movie ever made" But Hitchcock knew that at heart, it was a monster movie. Mrs. Bates was the monster.
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swanstep (2615)
3 years ago
And in both movies I was amused that these blind monsters with their super-hearing can be harmed the same way the Martians went down in the comedy "Mars Attacks."
Haw haw. Yes, it is one of those slightly silly sci-fi tropes that keeps recurring. See also, aliens invading a mostly-water planet like Earth to whom water turns out to be fatal. Obviously the forerunner of all these 'aliens-ain't-so-smart'/'your evil plan has a fatal flaw' story ideas is HG Wells' War of the Worlds idea that alien immune systems might not handle well the (objectively horrifying!) soup of viruses, bacteria, fungi in which all earthly creatures live. [Note that there are signs in Wells's novel that he intended his novel to be an allegory of colonialism and imperialism and how such ambitions fail and should fail, but in the real world, for the most part Europeans colonizers and imperialists brought diseases with them that decimated native population around the world (so it's as if the Martians arrived with all their weapons but also much stronger immune systems and their own diseases that then inadvertently do most of the Martians' genocidal work for them).]
Wells' idea is a better one than most of the subsequent sci-fi 'fatal flaws' I think because it would be so hard for a planetary-invader to anticipate in any specific way all the microbiome-based problems they might encounter or cause, whereas more generic, macro-level flaws like water or sound are completely anticipatable, hence a little dumb if the aliens make them. In a certain mood I find myself doing a Maxwell Smart, "Missed by *that* much...." in response in all such cases.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
SPOILERS:
And in both movies I was amused that these blind monsters with their super-hearing can be harmed the same way the Martians went down in the comedy "Mars Attacks."
Haw haw. Yes, it is one of those slightly silly sci-fi tropes that keeps recurring.
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While watching the first one and seeing all the back-and-forth about the hearing aid being made...I started to suspect: "Hey, maybe this is going to end up like Mars Attacks, where they blew up the aliens heads using the high pitched yodel 'When I'm calling you" by Slim Whitman. In this more serious version, the heads don't blow up, but the aliens do suffer pain to their ears that "slows them down" on the attack.
Amazing: there IS a connection between Mars Attacks and Van Sant's Psycho of two years later. This: Danny Elfman did the score for Mars Attacks(for Tim Burton, natch) and then adapted(quite well) Bernard Herrman's score for the shot-by-shot Psycho remake. HOWEVER, when Marion sees Mother in the window in the 1998 version, Mother is listening to...wait for it..."When I'm Calling You" by Slim Whitman. Its a callback to Mars Attacks and I recall thinking: "Well...Mr. Van Sant is refusing to take Psycho THAT seriously." Harrumph.
Mars Attacks is one of those "movies that didn't work...but kinda DID." For me at least . A lot of movies work like that for me -- flops like Spielberg's 1941 (which shares with Mars Attacks an attempt to emulate the multi-star Mad Mad World Formula," ) and Paint Your Wagon. The flaws are there but ...something WORKS. In Mars Attacks , I think what worked was watching almost every major star in the movie get KILLED. Including Jack Nicholson in two roles. I also liked Nicholson(as the US President) and Rod Steiger(as a nuke em General) paired together -- two Oscar winning hams on a competitive rampage of line reading comedy.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
See also, aliens invading a mostly-water planet like Earth to whom water turns out to be fatal.
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"Signs," yes?
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Obviously the forerunner of all these 'aliens-ain't-so-smart'/'your evil plan has a fatal flaw' story ideas is HG Wells' War of the Worlds idea that alien immune systems might not handle well the (objectively horrifying!) soup of viruses, bacteria, fungi in which all earthly creatures live.
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Yep. Spielberg's War of Worlds "sounds" in A Quiet Place 1/2 I think in the idea of aliens landing not only without any interest in even fake negotiation(ala the Mars Attacks martians) but simply an animalistic desire to kill, kill, kill...annihilate, annihilate, annihilate (General Steiger's words in Mars Attacks.)
It remains to be seen(with at least one more sequel ahead) if much more explanation will be given to these hunt-and-kill monsters and what they want. (I suppose they are like The Birds too...no reasoning with THEM, and they took over.)
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
[Note that there are signs in Wells's novel that he intended his novel to be an allegory of colonialism and imperialism and how such ambitions fail and should fail, but in the real world, for the most part Europeans colonizers and imperialists brought diseases with them that decimated native population around the world
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A regrettable "two way street."
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(so it's as if the Martians arrived with all their weapons but also much stronger immune systems and their own diseases that then inadvertently do most of the Martians' genocidal work for them).]
Wells' idea is a better one than most of the subsequent sci-fi 'fatal flaws' I think because it would be so hard for a planetary-invader to anticipate in any specific way all the microbiome-based problems they might encounter or cause, ---
Ha. Well, our not-quite-done COVID experience brought all of this closer to home.
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whereas more generic, macro-level flaws like water or sound are completely anticipatable, hence a little dumb if the aliens make them. In a certain mood I find myself doing a Maxwell Smart, "Missed by *that* much...." in response in all such cases.
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Ha. I suppose. Well, these invaders just didn't do their research...
Interesting: whereas the first Quiet Place hit in 2018, the second one was supposed to debut in March 2020...COVID cancelled THAT, and here we are over a year later and now COVID -- is rather a simile to these ear monsters...
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
"Technical narrative kudos" to a A Quiet Place 2: at at least one juncture, writer-director John Krasinski cross-cuts between action suspense sequences at two locations at once, almost "merging" them in the process. Its quite exhilarating.
And I felt a faint distant "link" back to Psycho. THAT movie, too, created a "zone of danger" into which people entered, sometimes getting killed.
But the shocks were fewer (only two murders) , the wait times were longer. And yet for 1960, audiences stayed nice and tense from the shower scene on.
Still...decades later...in A Quiet Place 2.its shock after shock after shock after shock. With the audience staying nice and tense throughout. And often with loud sudden noises-- William Friedkin would understand THAT.
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