at last; THE ISLAND

[RobertScorpio]

Tonight we finally saw the movie; The Island.

Maybe its because of some natural bias against anything Bey does, but I liked this movie. It was better than the bad reviews it got when it came out. Sure, the car chases were a bit too much, but for a scifi film I liked it better than..

Minority Report
War of the Words REMAKE
The Day The Earth Stood Still REMAKE
Transformers 2
Two of the three new Star Wars movies
AI
I Robot
I am Legend
Spiderman 3
Xmen 3
some of the Star trek movies
Matrix 2 and 3

and i could go on...

A great scifi movie? No..it took elements of COMA and THE TRUMAN SHOW, threw in some ROCK chase scenes and..most important..it was entertaining.
This movie got FRIED here on BBS when it came out and..well...it wasn't THAT bad.

I like it

On a scale from 1-10 I give the island a 7+. (if Scarlet Johanson's breasts were scene I would have given it a solid 8)

I truly believe that some people just hate the director. If you haven't seen this movie, you should. Its good..popcorn fun.

Rob
scorpio

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

It wasn't that bad, except they gave away too much in trailers, but then how could they not show action scenes in adverts?

 

[RAMA]

Tonight we finally saw the movie; The Island.

Maybe its because of some natural bias against anything Bey does, but I liked this movie. It was better than the bad reviews it got when it came out. Sure, the car chases were a bit too much, but for a scifi film I liked it better than..

Minority Report
War of the Words REMAKE
The Day The Earth Stood Still REMAKE
Transformers 2
Two of the three new Star Wars movies
AI
I Robot
I am Legend
Spiderman 3
Xmen 3
some of the Star trek movies
Matrix 2 and 3

and i could go on...

A great scifi movie? No..it took elements of COMA and THE TRUMAN SHOW, threw in some ROCK chase scenes and..most important..it was entertaining.
This movie got FRIED here on BBS when it came out and..well...it wasn't THAT bad.

I like it

On a scale from 1-10 I give the island a 7+. (if Scarlet Johanson's breasts were scene I would have given it a solid 8)

I truly believe that some people just hate the director. If you haven't seen this movie, you should. Its good..popcorn fun.

Rob
scorpio

I don't recall it getting bad reviews, it just didn't seem on anyone's radar. I thought it was a very good movie, the first Bay movie I ever liked. However, I would rank almost all those films you mentioned after as better than the Island.

RAMA

 

[davejames]

Yeah I finally rented this last year, expecting the absolute worst... and then discovered it was actually a pretty good scifi/action flick.

It's certainly not the bloated, incoherent mess TF2 and Bad Boys 2 were. Yeah the action at the end gets a bit over the top, but up UNTL then Bay is surprisingly restrained, and the story (unoriginal that it is) is told really well.

Plus I just really dug those two characters.

I think the hatred for this movie is basically just a case of geeks saying "how DARE Michael Bay try to make a serious scifi movie. Let's rip him apart."

 

[RobertScorpio]

Yeah I finally rented this last year, expecting the absolute worst... and then discovered it was actually a pretty good scifi/action flick.

It's certainly not the bloated, incoherent mess TF2 and Bad Boys 2 were. Yeah the action at the end gets a bit over the top, but up UNTL then Bay is surprisingly restrained, and the story (unoriginal that it is) is told really well.

Plus I just really dug those two characters.

I think the hatred for this movie is basically just a case of geeks saying "how DARE Michael Bay try to make a serious scifi movie. Let's rip him apart."

Yep..thats exactly what the dweebs said. it actually got a 40% on rottentomatoes, not as bad as I thought it would have gotten...

For a recent scifi movie, it actually is pretty good. Glad to see that some others out there like it to..whew..im not a kook after all!!!

Rob

 

[Mr Light]

I really liked The Island. I was disappointed it bombed so horribly.

 

[Emher]

My favorite Bay flick. I love that he restrains himself so much for the beginning of it, almost like it's not a Bay film. Definitely would have liked it to do better, but it's kind hard to market properly.

 

[RobertScorpio]

My favorite Bay flick. I love that he restrains himself so much for the beginning of it, almost like it's not a Bay film. Definitely would have liked it to do better, but it's kind hard to market properly.

Agreed..I can barely rememeber this movies trailers or PR. I think the studio was probably upset it WASNT the typical Bay movie...and didn't know how to handle it..

Oh, and if they ever make a movie, real soon, about Gordon Ramsey? McGreggor, the 6 Lincoln echo version, looked just like a younger gordon!!

Rob

 

[Worf2DS9]

I also really like The Island. I really like the story, the look of the film, and thought MacGregor & Johansson were really good -- and ScarJo has never looked better. The supporting cast was really good too, like Sean Bean, Steve Buscemi, Djimon Hounsu, and "Neelix".

Still not sure why here in Canada the English audio is only in 2.0 while the French gets the 5.1 treatment, but it still sounds pretty awesome too.

 

[clint g]

Yep, I also enjoyed the movie. That being siad though, I would have REALLY preferred it if the movie didn't take the turn into action territory in the second half. It sort of felt as if the movie wasn't sure what it wanted to be

 

[Admiral_Young]

A favorite movie of mine...underrated. NEELIX appearance as one of the Islanders.

 

[payndz201]

The biggest problem I had with it when it came out was that the trailers had blown every aspect of the mystery (hey, guess what? THEY'RE CLONES! BEING GROWN FOR REPLACEMENT ORGANS!), so the first 40 minutes or so was a trudge while we waited for Ewan to catch up with the publicity material. Then there was the big chase that recycled a lot of the big Bad Boys 2 chase (only with jetbikes instead of a Ferrari), the shameless product placement (why would they be trying to sell Xboxes to clones?), the inexplicable "I guess Jesus loves you" get-out from an impossible situation... oh, and the ever so minor fact that the entire thing was a ripoff of Parts: The Clonus Horror, just with bigger explosions and no Peter Graves. The subsequent lawsuit by that film's producers was settled out of court for $1m+, which is Hollywood shorthand for "you got us, here's money, just keep quiet and don't embarrass us any more."

It's not Bay's worst movie (that would be Pearl Harbor, which not even Revenge Of The Fallen could out-suck) but it's definitely in the bottom half of his oeuvre.

 

[Goji]

"The Island" has always kind of cheesed me off, because of its somewhat infamous similarity to the low budget film "Clonus". The latter developed a strong cult following after it was featured on MST3K, mostly because (unlike most of the films chosen for that show) it didn't suck. It was just crippled by a lack of a budget.

So it came as something of a sad irony to see the same story used for an ultra-budgeted blockbuster, only to have it end up sucking a whole lot worse than the "original", thanks to ridiculously over the top action sequences and apparently invulnerable main characters.

I still like the idea behind both films. I have since I first saw "Clonus" on MST in 1998. I think it could make for a terrific science fiction film. Unfortunately, we have only two very mediocre movies to show for it so far. One of them has an excuse. The other really doesn't.

 

[Bisz]

I love The Island.

In fact, I may go watch it right now.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I love The Island.

In fact, I may go watch it right now.

agreed...and again, is it classic? Maybe not..but is entertaining? it is...and for me, at my age, and with kids watching movies with me, that is more important. my five year old kept asking me, all through the movie, can they clone? Could this happen? ect ect ect..isn't that what we want our kids to do? THINK? Because the only thing he got out of NEMESIS was a nap!

Rob

 

[BigFoot]

^ WTF???

 

[DestinyCaptain]

I really like this movie. I think it's extremely underated. My main complaint is that it could have easily been two movies. I wish they'd have stopped after Lincoln takes over for his sponsor. A whole second film about them going back to get the others out would have been a nifty follow up. Anywho....how about those Wasps? Anyone know where to find specks or pics of them?

 

[Bisz]

^ WTF???

What he said made sense to me...

 

[RobertScorpio]

^ WTF???

What he said made sense to me...

Maybe he fell asleep reading it..

Rob

 

[Chaos Descending]

What I found interesting is that with a small amount of re-writing, The Island could work as a modern version of Logan's Run.

I do think it was better than most give it credit for.