Moontrap Review

[Mountain_King]

http://sfdebris.com/videos/films/moontrap.php

I don't know if anyone else but me has watched this review. That's alright, because I was the one that requested it! I thought it would be good fodder for Chuck to get his teeth into! It's problem is it's good, solid, B-Movie crap. The sort of bad film you can actually enjoy. Sort of Enterprise season 4 entertainingly bad opposed to having to sit through A Night in Sickbay.

Anyway the reason I've joined the forum and am posting this is, at long last, I've been able get hold of a copy of the sequel Target Earth ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3705822/?ref_=nv_sr_1 ) and if you have a look on the IMDB page you'll see just how bad this one actually is. 2.6 out of 10 is being generous.

While I'd happily subject Chuck to something like Screamers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamers_(1995_film) ), Time Guardian ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Guardian ) , or even, god help him, Galactica 1980 (I'm not even going to link to that...) I won't inflict this nightmare upon him.

The acting is atrocious, the script should have been destroyed before it was inflicted upon the world, the camera work and direction look like they were done by a first year college student... It is, in no uncertain terms, horrendous. A confusing mess that should never see the light of day.

In the 80's + 90's we had straight to video releases, in the 2000's we had straight to DVD. Now we have straight to download and as the media has become cheaper so has the quality. I've seen fan films better produced! If the review did make you curious then by all means get the original but please don't even think about watching the sequel!

[SlackerinDeNile]

Are you attempting some kind of reverse psychology on us and\or Chuck here?

I too have seen the Moontrap review and I thought it was a fun film, it's stupid as hell but it's quite campy and entertaining.

[The Romulan Republic]

Am I the only one who thinks that Moontrap (despite nearly all my knowledge of the film coming from the SFDebris review) sounds like a movie that's ripe for a remake?

In any case, this review will always stick in my mind because it had one of my favourite lines in any of the reviews, that being the riff on JFK:

"We choose to bone on the Moon, not because we are easy, but because we are hard!"

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Am I the only one who thinks that Moontrap (despite nearly all my knowledge of the film coming from the SFDebris review) sounds like a movie that's ripe for a remake?

In any case, this review will always stick in my mind because it had one of my favourite lines in any of the reviews, that being the riff on JFK:

"We choose to bone on the Moon, not because we are easy, but because we are hard!"

No you are not. I would love to see it remade, because I think the concept could actually be executed much better.

[The Romulan Republic]

Question would be, would you do it as a serious film or a cheesy action movie/parody? From how Chuck describes Moontrap, it sounds like part of its problem is that it falls in a grey area in-between the two types of film.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I would lean towards a serious film. The hook is...well, it's amazing.

There's a building on the moon. An artificial structure. Outside of it are >>human<< skulls. I've seen ancient astronauts done before. I've never seen ancient astronauts from EARTH before.

Also, it would be nice to see a bit more focus/effort on the mystery of this prehistoric human civilization that was so advanced they figured out space travel. Put some anthropological effort into it.

[Madner Kami]

I would lean towards a serious film. The hook is...well, it's amazing.

There's a building on the moon. An artificial structure. Outside of it are >>human<< skulls. I've seen ancient astronauts done before. I've never seen ancient astronauts from EARTH before.

Also, it would be nice to see a bit more focus/effort on the mystery of this prehistoric human civilization that was so advanced they figured out space travel. Put some anthropological effort into it.

I'd rather wonder about how there could be skulls, instead of frozen dry-meat corpses, given that there's essentially only a vacuum on the moon.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Given that the football-bots use human tissue in their tech, maybe they were stripped for useful tissues?

[The Romulan Republic]

I would lean towards a serious film. The hook is...well, it's amazing.

There's a building on the moon. An artificial structure. Outside of it are >>human<< skulls. I've seen ancient astronauts done before. I've never seen ancient astronauts from EARTH before.

Agreed, though I'm fairly sure I've seen ancient Earth astronauts somewhere or other. Some of the more outlandish Atlantis stories, maybe.

Also, it would be nice to see a bit more focus/effort on the mystery of this prehistoric human civilization that was so advanced they figured out space travel. Put some anthropological effort into it.

The thing is, there are several hundred thousand years of pre-civilization humanity. Many times the span in which "civilized" humanity has existed. Now, a palaeontologist might know better, but for the average member of the public, it probably wouldn't strain suspension of disbelief too much to say that somewhere in that vast time span, there was someone who figured out advanced technology, then got hit by some apocalypse that left no traces behind.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Yeah, but it's more interesting if there's some trace they left behind. Maybe it can explain a current mystery. Do some retro-mythologizing. Or just...well, give a better sense of the culture and civilization that once was. I'm not saying we need an exposition or infodump, but I'd like some tempting hints at this space-travelling civilization that went before.

Also, just...I find it dubious that this super-advanced pre-historic civilization would be white, when most of the human population were still pretty concentrated in Africa way back when.