Monsters: An Opinion

I just watched a very interesting film, Monsters, by a certain Gareth Edwards. What a surprise of a movie! First lets examine the film's premise as described in imdb.

"Six years after Earth has suffered an alien invasion a cynical journalist agrees to escort a shaken American tourist through an infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the US border."

What do you expect judging form the name, the premise and the poster? I was expecting something along the lines of Cloverfield or District 9. I expected big CGI monsters and action scenes. That is absolutely not what I got, and this is a good thing, a very good thing. And for the record I have nothing against the two aforementioned films, I enjoyed both quite a bit and recommend them on their own merits.

Monsters is a slow paced film about a journalist and a rich girl that have to get back to the USA from Mexico. But it turns out that the north of Mexico is infested with Aliens that look like giant cephalopods. I will not reveal more of the plot as I do not find it necessary for my current purpose. All I want to do is applaud this film for using science fiction in a movie in a radically different way than is the norm. That is it isn’t an action film, and its barely a horror film.

The best way I could describe it is as realistic Science Fiction, realistic and low key. It takes a concept that we expect to involve exhilarating action scenes that show disasters and battles. And yes there is some of this, but very little and the main characters barely take part it in. Instead the film focuses on the personal story of its two main characters, while it reveals the details of the greater plot in the background. This leads to the alien setting feeling a bit causal yet still central to the film. And by doing away with hefty actions sequences that are oh so overdone in the genre, it encourages some genuine thinking from the part of the spectator.

Many science fiction movies offer interesting settings and ideas, yet get bogged down in the spectacle. This was certainly the case in District 9. Which starts as an innovative and intriguing film but ends as a very good but standard action sci-fi romp. Monsters manages to keep the sense of innovation an intrigue of the first half of District 9 throughout.

I have talked a lot about the execution of the film, but the content is also of interest. The way it deals with the alien "invaders" is very naturalistic and it is not overly in your face about it. It slowly paints a picture of the state of the world and is very subtle in its conclusion. It manages to transmit its message and setting effectively without heavy-handed exposition form the part of the characters.

I have come to hate the way that big budget movies have become so vacuous in their use of CGI and special effects. It is clear that for many in the industry special FX are no longer a vehicle for a great story, as they were in films like Jurassic Park, but have become an end in themselves. Monsters is the antithesis to this, it features some great special effects, mainly in the backdrops. Showing an excellent vision of towns overtaken by nature and in the monsters themselves. But it never goes for the cool factor. These FX are used because they are needed, not in gratuitous 15 minutes long chase sequences.

A lot of people will hate this film for all the reasons that I like it. I imagine that many raged as they spent their money in the cinemas expecting a thrilling monster movie but instead got a subtle and naturalistic take on a science fiction staple. All I can say is that if you like science fiction not because of the spaceships, guns and super soldiers but because of the interesting ideas about how people would react to hypothetical situations then this film just might be for you.


P.S: In some ways this film reminded me of the video game Half Life 2, but with a lesser focus on action. It is similar to the game in that it drops you in a setting and doesn’t rely on exposition to tell its story, instead it trust you to be smart and put the pieces together from what is shown on the screen. This end up being a much more rewarding experience. The atmosphere is also similar in ways, the film is not as all out apocalyptic as Half Life 2, but has a similar feel.

Green zone, Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

To whom it may concern,

I just watched Green Zone, the new film by Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon. Im not a huge fan of the Bourne films, I don't mind them but I don't love them, nevertheless I was actually quite exited about Green Zone. Lately I've watched quite a few films about the Iraq war and western involvement in the Middle East; Syriana, Body of Lies, The Hurt Locker and In the loop stand out. I thought Green Zone would be a good addition to this growing collection of films, particularly because its based on a great non fiction book: Imperial Life in the Emerald City. Ultimately the film is not a bad one, but it fails to deliver when one considers the source of inspiration.

The book is a thorough work of investigative journalism which explores many facets of what happened after the Americans rode into Iraq. The focus is on the CPA (Coalition provisional Authority) and how in their isolation inside the green zone, a bubble of american culture inside Baghdad, they manage to make worse and worse decisions about the rebuilding of Iraq as a liberal democracy. It shows just how utterly incompetent and out of touch with the world the people in charge where starting with Bush and continuing all the way down the ladder. It also shows how incompetence was perpetuated because the Bush administration valued loyalty over competence, instead of sending Middle East experts who spoke arabic they would send republicans that hanged portraits of W. in their offices, who in turn chose young and inexperienced assistants who would not question their judgement.

As a work of journalism it is not obvious how one could go about doing a movie about it. Had I been given the task I would have tried to tell a story about a reasonable guy that has to deal with the absurdities of the american occupation in Iraq as he tries to do some good in the country. It would probably be some guy that speaks arabic and is in touch with the locals, it could even be an educated Iraqi who is delighted by the prospect of democracy and freedom in his country and that tries to help the Americans do the right decisions only to be faced by ignorant idealists who have no idea of what they are doing but are nonetheless convinced that they are right. In this way the film could have been either a political satire (In the Loop) or a genuine drama (Syriana), or even better a mix of both. This I think would have been very much in tune with the book, many of the real stories within the book could be translated into the big screen. For example they could have shown the absurd plans of many CPA staffers who instead of focusing on providing enough power and drinking water thought about introducing plastic surgery for children suffering from facial deformities, no doubt a noble cause, but rather irrelevant when you consider that children may not be having enough to eat or may be being downright killed by insurgents.

Of course I knew that the film would be nothing like this, this is the director and actor of the Bourne trilogy we are talking about. I knew it would an action thriller with fancy camera work and action scenes choreographed to be more realistic that reality itself. Yet I still thought that the film would have some resemblance to the book it claims to be inspired from, this is not the case. I don't even know why the film is called Green Zone because we don't actually see that much of it. Most of the film takes place outside the Green Zone and not much time is given to seeing the excess and decadence that reigned there. All we get is a scene where you see a swimming pool and all the staffer drinking beer with a mentioned of KFC and dominoes pizza. I can understand why you would want to make an action thriller, but I can't understand why they would call it Green Zone and not delve into what the Green Zone was about for more than a minute of two.

The thing is the film is not bad, I enjoyed the plot about finding the truth about the weapons of mass destruction and the intelligence that justified the war, all of which was a lie. I do have to say that the way they treat it is a bit ludicrous, many suspected that there were no WMD even before war was declared, the film makes it look as though its a big shock, which it really wasn't.

Had the film not been "inspired" by Imperial Life in the Emerald City I may have been impressed. It major success is the depiction of the Iraqi baathist general, and the how the Americans dealt with the army. Its a morally ambiguous film, which is always a good thing. It also doesn't commit the sin of excessive action sequences which is so common now a days. The problem is that because a film has already been made about the book I doubt that they will ever make one that could really do it justice. Then again they will certainly make many films about Iraq in the future, once it becomes less controversial, and no doubt many will be influenced by this great work of journalism.

With this I depart, for whomever reads this and has somehow managed to carry on until the end; I thank you and hope you managed to get something out of it. at least buy the book and read it. It really is quite illuminating, I never suspected how incompetent those that have power can be, at least not the Americans. I thought that the American government would be efficient but malicious, hence the Iraq war. what this book has shown me is that the Bush administration was a mess and that most of its players where incompetent and deluded. I now remember a passage from the book. The author reports on some pamphlets or graffiti that were around the green zone that said something like "President Bush, Haw Rah is NOT a foreign policy" to me that pretty much sums up what the Bush administration did in the middle east, haw rah!