surprises....surprises...my attempt to be a movie reviewer...

I just went out with my friends....telling her stuffs...let off some steams.... been a bit stress lately with friendship....with the way things are going....about how us "the hurt" bunch...deal and coping with the situation differently....each has their own defense mechanism to protect them from hurting.... some chose to be not right at the head, some chose to be arrogant and look down on people, some chose to self destruct, i guess for myself i chose the self sabotaging method.....bla bla bla...since this is my blog...i think i deserve to be narcissistic a bit and talk about me before jumping to the movie review...so please just bear with my ME ME ME and all about ME nonsense....
So in order to not get too emotionally depressed...and focusing on doing something fun..we decided to watch a movie....I've read a review about the War of the Worlds Goliath movie, however i have no idea about the movie being local...told my friend it is a steam punk movie taking place in New York 1914..right before the world war  where the military fight with the martians...well talking about alien and New York...it's a bit cliche....
the opening scene took place at Leeds...some location in England...where the 10 year old hero's parents were wiped out by the martians...he was lucky enough to survive because the martians was killed by the germs...quite funny to think that later, instead of focusing on creating bio weapon in preparation to defeat the martians in the near future...the human chose to put more emphasize on machinery...
Although the environment is very well done, and the mechas look really astounding....but the characters...look so much American..it reminds me of GI JOE cartoon....well, I did have an expectation that the characters should be real, at least at the same par as any steam punk movie...maybe if they have a bigger budget....it can be worked out...
So 14 years later, the 10 year old boy become a captain for the crew named Goliath...under the ARES umbrella..it is sort of like a military organization against the aliens consisting of the top military officers all over the world. Goliath has 5 members,they are the captain himself as an English man,a rich canadian girl who's father owns two railways link, a black New Yorker who love his family so much, an Irish man whose brother fighting to free Ireland from England colonization and a Bugis prince from Malaya named Raja Iskandar Shah..my mouth practically gaping when his name was mentioned...and my thought was "wow, so in 1914, there is a Malay muslim royalty whom are able to climb the ladder, Oxford educated, quoting Shakespears, drinking coffee instead of beers at the pub and perform his prayer" haha....in real life....there is a fat chance it's happening...to make matter more interesting...the leader of ARES is a General from Russia named Kushnirov..and the America Secretary of War Teddy Roosevelt with help of the military scientist Nikolai Tesla....it's ironic to think that the organisation based in New York, is run by the Russian General...
There are some memorable scenes in this movie which some people might find them as a bit sensitive or stereotyping..but I think, it adds some spices to the movie......for example, when the German army provoked Teddy Roosevelt about the American being lame..the German army boasted about the fact the German manage to make the Europe crumbling down and America will be next on the list....Teddy Roosevelt lost his cool and actually involved in a bar fight....because of silly things....the brawl was stopped by the General informing the armies that Frank Ferdinanz was murdered in Sarajevo hence the World War One erupted...so the armies under ARES were asked to return to their own countries to serve....Eric the hero a.k.a the Goliath  captain persuade the armies to stay in ARES instead of going back, because the aliens will attack them sooner, when one of the armies from Japan said "but if we don't follow order, we will be a traitor and it has become a treason" Eric reply by saying "despite the fact we come from different places, we are human, instead of fighting and killing each other. We should focus on defending ourselves from the martian, because if we don't we will regret it when we watch someone we love dearly is murdered in front of our eyes, and we did nothing to stop it"...his speech inspired the armies to stay and ignore the order to join the world war...
there is also a scene when Patrick, one of the Irish armies inside the Goliath crew, asked Raja Iskandar Shah "Don't you hate England, they stole your land and make it theirs...you already live in a palace when they still living in a cave.how can you accept order from them?" (Patrick's is a double agent, he worked as a spy for his brother in IRA. some kind of militia to fight for Ireland independence. However, he came to his sense later when he realized that the martian is a greater enemy towards human kind compare to England)...calmly Raja Iskandar Shah replied by quoting Shakespeare "When there's darkness, there's ignorance" I can only assume, it actually meant if you tend to focus on darkness (symbolizes the hate, the negative feelings, the bad things), we will fail to see the bigger picture of what is more important...
One day, when they were doing the combat training, they were ambushed by the aliens, so the war against the alien began....it's interesting to see that they named their machinery and mechas with the name of the Greek mythological creatures....fight after fight after fight...and you will have a chance to see the Malay prince stab the alien with a keris....then again...at this moment,,,I started saying...."this....I never see before"...an army with a full suit keeping a keris as a weapon...i thought the heat ray was hip...i never thought in the era of steam punk, people still keep a keris inside their military suit....never cross my mind...
the movie ends with the Russian General, after losing his son in the battle decided to crash the martian spacecraft with their hydraulic Zeppelin named Leviathan....therefore winning the battle against the Martian...so it's safe to say...in this movie, the Russian saved New York....how twisted is that????
As a conclusion, it's a good movie, but they should focus more on the development of the characters...but not too bad....compared to the other Malaysia product so far...it's a good thing for tripod to dare doing the extreme....it's a good thing to joint venture with some big names...and come out with something cool...it's the next best thing for Malaysia animation industry after Upin and Ipin....