Leon_Chang_2000

Having just watched Alien for the first time, I cannot give it more than a 6/10. The film was mediocre at best. It began slowly, and honestly, never really picked up; in fact, I almost decided to stop the movie and go do something else since it was quite boring.

Let me explain a bit further. The characters are weak, showing no development and very little likability. Thus, I had no care for them throughout the film and so they provided little incentive for me to keep watching. If anything, the pure annoyance at the characters' decisions made me want to turn off the movie even more.

Furthermore, the plot was very straightforward and could not stand by itself. If you think for a moment about what would happen in a film named "Alien", chances are you are spot on.

Because of this, I have a feeling that this movie must have stood on the laurels of its visuals and its novelty during the era. For contemporary viewers, these no longer hold much weight, and so the movie crumbles. As an analogy, I believe that similar remarks will be made about movies like James Cameron's Avatar in a few decades.

To summarize, this is not a film that has withstood the test of time.

While the premise of this film leaves much room for hilarity, as shown by the promising trailer, it was unable to capitalize on this due to what feels like a lackluster effort on the part of the writers. There are many tell-tale indications of this, such as in the inconsistency of the characters. Palpable tension is generated between characters without any warning, and then it is forgotten by the next scene.

Another glaring issue was the pacing of the story. If you saw the trailer, you would think it centered around this bank robbery by two normal guys. However, this is only one small piece of the movie. The opening was simultaneously slow and somewhat insufficient, then everything sped up tremendously, and then the latter half of the film was dragged out to fill up the remaining time needed for the movie to be taken seriously.

In all, I would rate this film a 6.5/10 since it was still entertaining and done by clearly talented actors. However, note that this is far from their best work, probably because the actors were confused about who their characters were.

Do you know why books like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code were so successful? The main characters in these adventure novels were much like the main characters of National Treasure: they were geniuses. However, even for the main character of Dan Brown's famous novel, it still took numerous pages to put together even one clue. See, the point is that Brown's book was realistic and life-like. National Treasure, however, seems to lack that quality while trying to do so many things in a short amount of time. For example, the movie tries to build on the characters and their histories, then the current issues, and then suddenly I was taken by surprise by the almost trivial love story that the director tried to stick in there. I mean, it's understandable that the movie has a time limit, but that just means that the story has to be made to fit the limit (or vice versa, if possible). For example, if Titanic had been made to be only half its length, the length of a normal film, none of the connections would've been made and the movie would definitely not have been so popular.

Away from the bad, however, the story was enticing and well thought out. The acting was also nice, though that's to be expected from top-notch actors like Nicholas Cage. The potential could have allowed this movie to be at least in IMDb's top 250, but I as the audience just didn't feel that bond to the movie as I felt in masterpieces like The Shawshank Redemption or Gladiator.

Overall, the movie may or may not be what you expect, and though it's definitely not on the same par as movies such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, it's worth seeing. I give it a 6/10 because it's still better than the average movie in today's culture.