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There are many ideas being presented here, particularly the revelation that Earth is simply using its trooper resources as cannon-fodder to maintain an endless state of war, thus conflict, thus the use of an increasingly autocratic military-controlled government; though this strategy is suggested as a losing one in the first film, continuing it may nevertheless be seen as anti-military satire. No war was won in the first film; Earth forces merely earned a breakthrough insight into Klendathu tactics and organization; the ending of that film is clearly pro-government propaganda presented as an Earth triumph. Earth weapons actually DO seem to be more destructive to the Klendathu in 'Marauder', forcing the enemy to adapt by producing exploding soldiers. The war appears to be fought on only a few localized planets and planetary systems, suggesting it is hardly the existential conflict Earth forces claim it to be. Somehow I don't think this film series was meant to be a realistic military film series, nor do I think it was meant to be taken as seriously as you somehow seem to have taken it. To be fair, the third film suffers from a low budget, and visual effects of its day that are simply not comparable to the first film in its day.
Not so fictional. This happens all over the world in countries where an authoritarian or totalitarian regime has taken over. In the United States extreme-right-wing politicians are presently speaking about what crimes they would consider 'treason', in order to seek the death penalty against perceived domestic enemies. In Iran and Turkey, speaking out against the current government merits beatings, imprisonment, and whatever else these governments think they can get away with, including assassination and extrajudicial murder. Robert Heinlein's original premise was that in the absence of a unifying force from the left, a unifying force from the right would seize power globally the way the Nazi party did in pre-WWII Germany, suspending individual rights under the pretext of an 'emergency' and then dispensing political power as a transactional meritocracy. We have seen how former President Donald Trump demanded absolute loyalty from his supporters, as a transactional act with appointments and promotions as the return. This is identical to the meritocratic world presented in 'Starship Troopers'. 'Thoughtcrime', the act of forming or carrying thoughts that are opposed to the doctrine of the party in power, is a key plot point of Orwell's '1984', and the ability of governments to legislate what their people may or may not think, is commonly considered at odds with any form of democracy.
The premises for this film are difficult to reason out because they are contradictory. We are told humanity faces fatally declining population, yet the real crisis seems to be depletion of resources, namely food, that are stressing human populations. Large, seemingly nomadic populations of the unemployed and disenfranchised engage in acts of social protest over the proliferation of robotic labour, yet seem well-fed, clothed, and able to support an entertainment industry that coddles their persecution complex by destroying obsolete robots before their eyes that nobody wants anymore, anyways. A mere two thousand years later humanity is extinct, apparently having failed to survive a global glaciation, ostensibly brought on by precipitous, sudden climate change. Whether the acceptance of intelligent robots into human society caused a plunge in human birthrates, or an environmental catastrophe destroyed humanity's eco-niche on Earth, or if present-day humans simply lost the will to live and reproduce, is not stated. We merely have the say-so of a group of apparently intelligent machine-beings who, like ourselves (the audience), assume they are the descendants of early human-engineered AI; Yet, their own records are fragmentary and they therefore cannot verify this, nor do they wish to entertain the possibility that perhaps they themselves are the real descendants of humanity, having evolved during the glaciation and ultimately replaced the earlier model. Is AI a parable about unconditional love as computer programming, or is it a forecast of the next stage of human evolution, beginning with the catalyst of emotional robots? It seems safe, eons later,
to consider Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals, and perhaps even earlier hominids to be our ancestors, but I'm pretty sure none of us really wants them around, nor would they have much of a place in our present society. Clearly these questions have no definitive answers, which is kind of how Kubrick worked.
Louis is an anarchist who despises the government bodies that help and fund both parties. His actions may seem irresponsible and unduly emotional, but it fits his character and expands the obvious conflicts between Papa and his children (Remember how Papa upbraids them both in the presence of Avner). The plot device, however, is pure Spielbergian fantasy, in order to create a scene where both parties express their wishes.
Well, they are the creations of the 'Visitor' mythos, whether you adhere to such things or no. You'd probably move like you were made of Plasticine, after whizzing around Venus a few times with some scared Swabbos and an annoying kid. Sorry. 'Alien' came out two years later, and 'Close Encounters' clearly isn't that kind of film.
Well, your opinions are held by nearly nobody, so it's pointless to say it's overrated. The film is praised even more today than 40 years ago, and represents its period in the development of the Director probably better than almost all Spielberg films since. The effects are still impressive today, and better-utilized than 'Star Wars', which, in 1977, pushed film effects to their limits. Your being 'bored to tears' by the relentless, pounding pace of action of this film says more about your attention span than it does about this film- or are we confusing this with '2001: A Space Odyssey' now'? Because that was quite a different film, and didn't benefit from a John Williams score. In 1977 Spielberg was still riding high on the success of the more down-to-earth 'Jaws', a totally realistic genre film about a rampaging 20-foot long killer fish feasting on quaint maritimers and their kids. The rubber shark looked so bad footage of it was edited down to the point of a metaphor, a fin accompanied by Williams' deathless ostenato figure (once again, the Williams score). Yet Spielberg decided to do his 'Great Sci-Fi' film, an hommage to films he grew up with, like 'The Day The Earth Stood Still', and 'This Island Earth' (had to throw that one in). The film, with its barely-up-to-the-struggle Everyman, this time squaring off against a giant shadow cruelly projecting itself over the countryside outside Muncie, Indiana, scooping up annoying kids as it goes, was a critical and financial success, and I bet if you ask the director, it's STILL on his resume. Definitely not one of his worst movies, that honor belongs to '1941', the film that turned World War II into a screwball comedy... just don't confuse that comedy about WWII with all the hundreds of other films that belong to this genre... they're all in black-and-white, so they're easy to differentiate... unless you're color-blind. It's not wrong to dislike a movie. But that doesn't mean there's something wrong with it.
Women had such hairstyles in the 60s and 70s, believe it or not; go ahead and Google it. They took about half a can of hairspray each morning and look a hell of a lot more complicated than they actually are. Women prided themselves on these hairdos, and often skipped washing for several days so they didn't have to start from square one. Is it any wonder dandruff-control shampoos came into their own then? My own mother had a similar hairstyle during that period, and every afternoon when I came home from school I could smell aerosol and lacquer coming from the Master bedroom. The good news is she's not gone long, by her time. By ours, well.... sorry.
As the director seems to be re-litigating and re-litigating his own parents' breakup it's difficult to say. Roy was damaged from the start, which was probably why the aliens picked him. Does that make him a bad father? Depends on whether or not the aliens finally figure out Relativity, or devise a similarly sentimental attitude to parenting as Homo Sapiens on planet Earth. Is Terri Garr supposed to be a bad wife? Probably not, but in a scared child's mind such mothers bear at least a part share in the breakup of their marriages. Is this fair? Ask the director.
It's a form of communication. Lacombe uses it in a last-ditch effort to personally communicate with an extraterrestrial. In the end , the alien simply repeats the gestures and imitates (horribly) Lacombe's hopeful smile. Was it communication? Maybe, sorta. You decide. Sorry.
We don't know the motivations of Spielberg's Visitors. They may be childlike, lacking an understanding of our silly, fragile little civilization; they may be benevolent, wishing only to awaken some of Earth's citizens as to the real nature of outer space; or they may be just curious (what is that row of funny, mail-box shaped things? Let's see how they stand up to a little stress test). We are to infer, from the 'return' of Flight 19 and the people aboard the SS Cotopaxi, that these people might otherwise have perished were they not plucked up by our friendly Paclid-esque aliens. We don't know. The screenplay just wasn't developed that far. This we do know. Sorry.
Extraterrestrial intelligence is invariably invoked to explain many unexplained or unexplainable occurrences, but in reality, it is the longest of long shots. The chances that aliens from other planets, or other stars, in the universe, co-exist with our own civilization are so low that they are almost immeasurable. It may be argued that a spacefaring civilization would have little interest in Earth, or as Carl Sagan suggested, that there is simply so much space between stars that, should two civilizations arise simultaneously in the universe, the chances they might actually meet before one disappears (civilizations come and go, you may have heard) is close to zero. Sagan's quote: 'There can be no 'Star Wars'.' This is not to say the chance is actually zero. But as our understanding of the universe slowly grows, the idea of a spacefaring, extraterrestrial race visiting the Earth, interacting with its citizens, and ultimately interceding in events here, may be easily dismissed. Sorry.
The dish is the roasted skin of the Peking Duck, which is usually served as an appetizer course when Peking Duck is served. The skin is typically arranged on a bed of fried chow mein noodles or rice crackers (you can see the dish in the beginning of the scene), along with thin wheat crepes (like Mu Shu Pork), sliced fresh spring onions, and hoisin sauce.
If there was a Vegan plant on Earth somewhere it's more likely it was the crazy preacher, since by his efforts Drumlin was thwarted and Arroway ended up making the journey. But Hadden's motivations were never really fleshed out, and we are left to conclude that he is either the altruist he presents himself as, or he is interested in the subsidiary benefits that Vegan transport technology might have to his empire.
The film uses the video purely for dramatic purposes, and to embolden the characters in the story that have reason to supress or nay-say the event. There would have been radio broadcasts many decades prior to 1936. Perhaps the interval of time between radio and TV was a 'tipping point' prompting the sending back of the message, along with the plans for the IPV.
The fact that he has less chest hair than his co-star is a bit disturbing, but I thought he did okay. Ask Pat Robertson or Billy Graham why they get to spend so much time in the White House; they're not government officials either. As for Mr. McConaughey's performance, I don't think he's taken this film off his resume. On the other hand, 'Sahara'? Hmmm....
Well there weren't many Stuckey's along the way and I didn't see her tuck into a roadside cantina for a brew or a shot of tequila. For what it's worth, she was probably fed a compact diet to reduce the mass in her colon, and probably made poopies before she left. I can go eighteen hours without having to piss and/or defecate, as long as I steer clear of the Beef Vindaloo or the Rosarita refries. So can a lot of people, I imagine. It's not too hard.
Nothing really to speculate. Arroway was simply returned to the same point, in both space AND time, where her journey began. Which is a good thing, really, since eighteen hours later Earth would be in a DIFFERENT spot than it was. By what agency she is returned, we are not sure. Perhaps there was a second wormhole (First rule of government spending, etc.). Perhaps from where she was returned there was resources for a much more efficient return trip, which would explain why it was so much shorter than the outbound one. The real only salient element here, is that this is science fiction. You can make up pretty much whatever you like.
Martin displays the angst of his dwindling species, the angst of a child afraid of being replaced by a 'perfect' android, and the neurotic confidence of a son who knows he's the only child his parents are ever going to have. He's their Golden Child, their Only Ever, and he may even understand that as a person he's a bit of a sh*t. Unfortunately that all makes him very much the product of his parents. David is who David is, because his 'parents' made him that way. The same is true for Martin.
How is physical appearance a problem here? How is a high brow and slick hair anachronistic? We don't know if Fred Astaire's appearance has become retro-fashionable again, just as we don't know if baldness is cured in the future, just like we don't know, in an increasingly robophobic society such as is presented here, that it is a good idea to make a male sex worker android too attractive compared to his human competitors? Sexy is as it always has been: a product of the times, and we just don't know enough about these times to judge accurately. What is definitely presented here is a confident, slick, self-promoting android who is perfectly (as he claims) and indefatiguably able to put his client's money where his mouth is. That really didn't come out right. Or maybe it did. I think you get the idea.
Aaand... guess what, kiddies? It's now the year 2022 and we can't get a rocket full of clothing dummies to our own moon, much less anybody else's.