I’ve been paying more attention to films recently so I think I should try to write more about them. My wife and I originally tried to watch this film a couple of years ago, based on the recommendation of a film aficionado friend of ours. But my wife fell asleep halfway through the film and I didn’t feel dedicated enough to continue watching without her. Recently the same friend remarked that South Korea has been producing quite a few films of high calibre recently and reiterated this recommendation, saying that our film appreciation abilities have probably improved enough by now to properly watch it.
This film has been amazingly successful in Malaysia, receiving not only overwhelmingly positive word of mouth reviews on social networks but also breaking local box office records. I was inclined to ignore this film since I was unimpressed by such local favourites as Tiger Woohoo and Ice Kacang Puppy Love. But after reading this enthusiastic review on The Star Online which comes close to calling it a better film than even Yasmin Ahmad’s Sepet, I felt that I should at least give it a fair shake.
It’s only been a little over a year since the last installment of this series. Previous updates to this list were in 2007 and 2009. Part of the reason is that I’ve been watching many more films recently. I was still surprised by how long it took to get to the five films worthy enough to write one such installment but now all of the movies included were released within about the past two years which is more timely than what I’ve managed in the past. As usual the standard disclaimers apply and spoilers follow.
Back when I started my series of “Favorite Films” posts in 2007, I took extra pains to define what that title meant. It isn’t sufficient for a film to be merely entertaining and likeable. A film must pass that test, I thought, but more than that it must also aspire to be a work of art. Either by conveying a profound meaning or by expanding the vocabulary of cinema through innovation.
However I failed to consider that it might be possible for a film to fail the first test but completely blow the competition out of the water on the second. For this reason, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is in a class of its own. I do not find it entertaining. Yes, it is utterly captivating to watch but it is also so intense that it is too mentally exhausting to be considered entertaining.
If you’re Chinese, you can’t help but be inundated by posts about how innumerable Facebook friends were moved by You Are The Apple of My Eye and how it left them teary-eyed. Clearly it does something right. It’s been a chart-topper in every Chinese-language market it has been released in and made instant stars of its two leads. So my wife was understandably insistent that we watch it, which we did this weekend.
I think it’s won’t be a surprise to readers of this blog that I don’t think very highly of this film. Teen love movies are a well-worn genre after all and unfortunately this film does nothing to break new ground. In fact, all too often director Giddens Ko falls back on familiar, overworn tropes. In fact, he explicitly lampshades it, ‘this is the fat friend, this is the joker friend, this is the plain girl who is the heroine’s constant companion’ because, you know, every teen love movie needs one of each.
One thing that I didn’t like about The Avengers is how the alien invasion at the end is yet another half-assed one without a chance in hell of actually succeeding. As one QT3 poster put it, “How did they expect to conquer Earth with a few hundred guys on flying motorcycles?” Never mind the Avengers, the US military would be more than sufficient to repel the so-called invasion once it had enough time to organize and deploy. And this is with real-world military assets, not the fancy toys SHIELD has. In the interests of one day seeing a halfway competent alien invasion plan put on screen, here is some advice for would-be alien invaders:
So the portal is the only way for your forces to get to Earth. This means that your entire plan hinges on defending that portal and keeping it open. Randomly scattering your advance forces around the arrival area is a terrible idea. Terrorizing unarmed civilians serves no strategic purpose and therefore wastes time and troops. Instead, you need to secure your beachhead. Establish a strong defensive perimeter around the portal and launch assaults only against enemy forces that are intent on seizing control of the portal.
Once your beachhead is secure, you need to identify longer-ranged threats. Yes, the Avengers are a clear and present danger. But their military value is insignificant compared to human weapons launched from way out of visual range which can decimate your entire force in a matter of moments. This means casting a sensor net widely outside of your landing zone and preemptively striking at enemy forces that are a threat, such as that cloaked helicarrier with nuclear-armed fighters.
When invading a hostile populated planet, it is imperative to invade with overwhelming force. The aliens did not employ overwhelming force. Their pathetic weapons appeared limited to visual range only and their largest war machines relied on physically running into objects to cause damage. That is terribly impractical and tactically worthless. Where were the alien equivalents of bombs, artillery and cruise missiles? In fact, given that collateral damage wasn’t a concern for the invaders, why not just saturate the target area with lots and lots munitions before the first soldier even stepped through the portal? If brute force doesn’t work, then you’re not using enough.
For that matter, why are you using an infantry heavy invasion strategy? They’re soft and have limited offensive power. Where are the alien tanks (remember US M1 Abrams tanks have an effective killing range of over 2.5 km, you need to have better performing equivalent tanks) and the alien fighter craft? Leave the infantry at home, at least until you’ve established secure control of a decent chunk of the planet, and bring only the big guns. Use infantry to police the local population only after organized resistance to your conquest have been decimated.
Do not, repeat do not, run your entire command and communications system out of a single base, no matter how powerful and impregnable you think it is. If destroying your mothership shuts down your entire invasion force, then you’re doing it wrong. Always have back up command posts. In any case, deployed units that are cut off must be able to function autonomously based on last received orders and reports until the command hierarchy can be re-established.
Defend your high-value assets, such as motherships, in depth. Employ screening elements so that enemy forces must go through them to reach your mothership. If your mothership lacks even basic defensive mechanisms that allow it to detect and intercept incoming hostile projectiles, well, you really should build some in before kicking off the invasion.
If your enemy has nukes and you do not possess weapons of at least equivalent potency, I’m sorry but you lose. If you do not possess a technological edge over the enemy planet, then you shouldn’t be invading in the first place. In fact, you should be prepared to be invaded instead. And if they have nukes and you don’t and their nukes can kill anything and everything you have, believe me, you do not possess a technological edge no matter how scary you think your flying worms are.
Hopefully with the help of these handy tips future alien invaders will give a better go of it so that our heroes can finally have some serious enemies to fight.
About four years ago, I wrote about this being the golden age of superhero films. I can now say with confidence that the golden age has reached its zenith with The Avengers. Yes, other films like Christopher Nolan’s Batman series and Watchmen have shown that superhero films don’t necessarily have to be mere action movies, they can aspire to be something more. But it’s obvious that with modern film-making techniques that allow anything at all that we can imagine to be put onscreen, action films and the superhero genre are a match made in heaven. And as Davin Arul of The Star has commented, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect superhero action film that this.
