(no subject)

[evening_tsar]

Don Siegal’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a masterpiece, and Phillip Kaufman’s 1978 remake was even better. This is very much a minority opinion, and goes to show that, if such things exist, I am not a Body Snatcher purist. Which is good, because you don’t need to be a Body Snatcher purist to think David KajGanich and Oliver Hirschbiegel’s take on it stinks. The Invasion doesn’t just lack the subtlety and slow build of its predecessors, it completely perverts the message. In the Siegal and Kaufman films, emotions – love and compassion and things like that – were what made us human, and what the aliens were trying to snatch away. In The Invasion, it is violence and war, and the worst things the aliens try to do are apparently to sign international peace treaties. Oh the horror! Perhaps it’s meant as a criticism of humanity that we’re identifiable by our very worst traits, but I can’t help noticing that there’s nothing the aliens do that isn’t regularly called for by peace-loving people (particularly of the left wing variety). An end to nuclear proliferation? An end to the US occupation of Iraq? Formal peace in Korea? The release of Chinese political prisoners? They even line-people up to get flu vaccinations! The horror! It’ll play like cat-nip to conspiracy theorists, who seem to see any effort to improve the world as an intolerable infringement on their freedoms. It’s a view of humanity so cynical, one can’t help hoping the aliens win.