Falling Skies

[Iron Maiden]

Anyone seen falling skies, the new sci-fi drama by Speilberg? Just aw it, looks promising, needs to be fleshed out some more but defiantly worth the time to watch. I recomned it. Anyone else see it, and also, opinions?

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Yes I saw it. I had mixed feelings about it. I recorded it and watched it at around 11pm. My biggest complaint was how it abruptly started. So much so, I thought I might have missed the first hour. I'm still not sure, did it start with the main character and his son attempting to salvage food off a side street on the outskirts of the city and a few getting killed by the aliens with the lasers?

I was also somewhat surprised they would have hundreds of people traveling in huge numbers out in the open when the aliens have flying craft everywhere.

Main question is, will the series make it past its first half season? I say it's 30% it will not.

[edit]

Apparently I did start watching it from the beginning.

http://tv.ign.com/articles/117/1177109p1.html

[Iron Maiden]

Yeah, I was caught off guard as well by the beginning, but I guess they did that so as to be able to revisit the psat in flashbacks later on in the story in order to keep up ratings.

Also, about the craft, I think its like the drones from Battle LA to some extent, how they picked up radio signals. In Falling Skies, I guees, from what I gathered from what they said, is that the drones were picking up "groups of 600" and that they were thus splitting into groups of 300, so apperently it just scans thermally for groups of 600 bodies or larger.

I will give it a chance. It started on wobbily ground but it definatly has potential. We will have to see how exactly it flashes out but for now I will continue to watch it.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Yeah, I was caught off guard as well by the beginning, but I guess they did that so as to be able to revisit the psat in flashbacks later on in the story in order to keep up ratings.

Yes, I figured the same thing. And yes, it also reminded me a lot of a cross between Battle LA and the Walking Dead. What I thought was also pretty whacky is the way they somewhat forgave the leader of the criminal band after he came so close to causing everyone to be killed by announcing the location of the car with the 50cal. to the aliens. To me, that's an execution sentence without a second thought, no matter how well he "can kill aliens."

By the way, did you recognize him? He's Major Paul Davis (Colin Cunningham) from SG1. Hardly recognized him under all the scraggly hair.

[Iron Maiden]

I have not seen stargate to be honest, tried watching it but never intrested me much.

Also, its good to see Will Patton in the series, always loved the Postman.

[Baconboy]

Saw the trailer and it just reminded me of Transformers.
And that's what came on before it.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

They've got a nice large budget. . . that never hurts. It may not help, but never hurts.

[Baconboy]

^
*Cough*Transformers 2*Cough*

[Iron Maiden]

Episode last night was good, lots of commercials, but what amount of show there was, about only 40 minute sof, was good. I am very intrested in the concept of the ahrness and more about the aliens. If they tone down the commericals, I will keep watching.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

I rarely watch any broadcast nowadays real time. The commercials completely blow away any immersion you develop in a story. Even fast forwarding through commercials breaks it, but not as bad.

I see Falling Skies as a B-flick level story with a nice fat budget. Too many aspects are overly whacky to me. From John Pope (who had zero concern for the entire band of survivors, to the point of almost getting everyone killed for a gun) being exposed to the group's every meal, to riding loud dirt bikes out in the open during the day, to being able to infiltrate the enemy control zones at will and escaping repeatedly after discovered(do the aliens not have basic heat detection technology?), etc.

Still, it's popcorn & soda entertainment with cool looking aliens.

[Iron Maiden]

I also wathched it skipping through the commercials.

With what you say about the absudities, I think I can come up with an explanation:

I guess they found it beneficial to let Pope cook considering they needed a good cook and needed something for him to do, considering that every person is now very valuable to the cause.

With the dirt bikes, I agree its a little out there, but I guess that teh Aliens are still very scattered and only at key places in the state, so they are not always going to detect the bikes.

Again, with the thermal stuff, the aerial drones apparently only pick up large groups, so I guess small bands can easily come and go without fear of at least thermal detection, they just have to stay quiet.

Or something like that.

[APCs r Evil]

I caught most of the first (Or second, I can't remember...) episode, completely missed the last one. My grasp on the plot is pretty poor, naturally.

What irritates me most is the nagging question of, "Why have the aliens allowed the survivors to survive?" Aside from continuation of the show, I can't think up a good answer to that. If the aliens wanted them dead, they'd be dead. If they wanted them enslaved, doing it at an incredibly slow pace months after the actual invasion is not the way to go about it.

The next irritating thing is the aliens and their seemingly pathetic technology. Why do the walkers (I can't remember what they're called.) react so slowly to the presence of a target? They're AI right? So by the time a human would have identified the walker as a walker, the walker would have already aimed it's weapons, fired, and started scanning for a new target.

And their aircraft, why oh why do they only target large groups of humans? It's a good thing I'm not leading that invasion, every single human sized target would be eliminated.

Then we have the aliens themselves, (Skidders?) I think the first one I saw was in a food distribution center. It stood around waiting to be shot by humans who were tripping all over themselves in fear. If it were any sort of realistic, that alien would have been involved in a firefight with humans who would... probably still trip all over themselves.

Other than that, it seems interesting enough.

Oh, wait. I'm not a fan of the alien weapons, either. Any decent alien is "required" to have directed energy weapons. Projectile weapons are common, everyday things. Boring.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Much like the 80's and 90's slasher movies with the dumb-ass teens who have the situational awareness of a brick, last night's episode is falling into the pitiful territory of wanting to see the protagonists killed.

When they allow Pope to go on the scouting party, I fell over on the side of the fence of not caring about these morons.

Another nagging nit-pick was the editing. Two instances jarringly stood out.

The extreme nit-pick is when the black father goes to speak to the alien. They would cut from a side camera to a frontal shot of him and he would be 4 or 5 feet back from the cage in the side shot and mere inches in the frontal shot. Back and fourth, back and fourth. . . terrible goof.

The other is when Pope takes off after clocking the Asian dude to blow up the aliens hanging under the bridge. The 'mushroom cloud' is freakin' a couple miles off. . .way the hell off in the distance, and he had like 45 seconds, maybe a minute at most to race the dirt bike there (obviously making a heck of a lot of noise), say his lines, tie grenades to the gas can and throw it.

Falling Skies is definitely into the cartoon stage.

[Iron Maiden]

Don't tell me! I missed the last episode, been away a few days with nothing but Babylon 5 to keep me sane. I will watch teh episode today or tomorrow, as I have to finish season 4.

[Red Devil]

Falling Skies is definitely into the cartoon stage.

ala Wile E. Coyote, perhaps? we can only hope