I'm disappointed

Rating: 4/10 (12 April 1999)

I just finished to see this movie on TV (I refused to see it on big screen because I heard too many criticisms from friends)... Tonight I told myself "let's give it a chance". I was expecting a super-turbo action, brainless movie. What a disappointment! The effects are great, OK, but there isn't suspense, there aren't strong emotions nor real "heroic action". Maybe Americans skip an heartbeat seeing the White House blown up, but I'm not American. By the way, the "americanocentric" view makes me smile. If Americans would really think this way they couldn't be the most powerful country of the world. From a logical point of view, it's an astonishing piece of junk (yes, it's what I was expecting in this way: brainless). I'm a programmer and the idea of a virus is simply idiotic. If scientists were unable to understand the power source of the captured alien fighter (the chief scientist of Area 51 tells that they were even unable to turn the power on until the alien forces arrived to destroy mankind, and all the ship's instruments started to work!), it's impossible they could understand the logical principles of the computer[s] aboard, nor the programming language to code a virus. Even knowing the computer[s] aboard would not imply knowing the computers aboard the main ships: imagine working on an embedded system built in a Tomcat; knowing it would not mean that you can code a program for, let's say, a mainframe. Anyway, if someone understood everything being a genius monster with an IQ of 938 and a lot of positive imagination, the character of Jeff Goldblum couldn't learn how to code that virus in a matter of hours! ...And what about that hilarious portable Mac "negotiating with host" and "uploading virus"? Well... Let's forget the virus. Could someone explain to me why the fighters piloted by a bunch of non-professionals, overnumbered by technologically superior alien fighters, even without shields, manage to win the 2nd air battle? Probably they would crash the planes simply trying to take off. What about the captured fighter? If it crashed in an accident killing two crew members, how could it fly smoothly? Stop. There are lots of stupid things like these in the movie, but, as I said, I was expecting them. What I wasn't expecting is the complete lack of powerful, heroic action scenes. The air battles are annoying if you don't mind special effects. It sucks.