Minor spoilers in the pros and cons below, nothing significant to the story.
Pros:
Gort is completely awesome. Steals every scene he's in. Matrix fans will likely smile when they see what he's made of (not revealed until the third act).
Keanu Reeves is pitch perfect for this interpretation of Klaatu. Except for Gort, he darn near carries the film.
CGI and practical f/x are for the most part pretty good.
It's not overly preachy with the environmental crap.
Pacing is great, it's not wall to wall action, it's more about tension and suspense, but you'll never get bored watching. 110 minutes seemed to fly by for me.
John Cleese. Nuff said.
There's a scene which prominently features a Windows Bumptop (I still maintain that the beta incarnation is impractical for any business application).
Wolverine trailer was great.
Cons:
You will want to slap that kid within 30 seconds. A spoiled brat who's insolence is solely attributed to the overused broken home excuse. Plus he plays Wow, so he's fail from the moment he appears on screen.
Sadly, WoW gets a good 30 seconds of screen time, some of it full frame(ish).
Much of the story only works if everyone in the movie is an idiot. Why do people in movies always behave as if they've never been to the movies, watched TV, listened to the radio, or read any fiction? Haven't these people seen ET or Star Trek? Do the names Wells and Gibson mean anything to them? In the forties and fifties when this was all new territory, you can almost buy that someone is stupid enough to fire a gun at an alien, but NOW? whiskey tango foxtrot
Way too many changes to the plot, changes that either didn't work or were unnecessary. If you're going to futz with the plot, make sure you're doing something logical or leave it alone. Hong's cameo is utterly pointless for instance, and there's one totally random and weird scene somewhere in the midsection which I have yet to figure out.
The score is forgettable, the cinematography nothing special. That tracking shot of the two motorcycles in the T4 trailer is more impressive than any shot in this film. More importantly though, the director is quite obviously inexperienced.
With the changes to the story, Kathy Bates' character's actions and dialogue make no sense.
There's a line missing from the script.....
It's easily not as good as the original. On its own, its mediocre at best. I'll never understand why they keep remaking good films into bad ones when there are so many bad films that could be remade into good ones.
Seen Both trailers earlier *THumbs UP*
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