You've just explained exactly why I think you're making leaps in logic to try to come up with reasons why it's okay.

And there are a lot of people, myself among them, who thought answers were needed.

That's what fanfic it for.

Signs really isn't much different from War of the Worlds in terms of explaining the aliens physiology and motives. It just lacks the exposition at the end that WotW had to really wrap it up.

That's really well put Morgan.

Thanks. Oh, and pardon typos.

Hrm... I'll take the Free Will vs. Determinism concept, then. It's another philosophical concept that a movie is simply poorly suited to addressing.

One thing worth remembering--this invasion was going on all over the world, the globe was quite clearly in a state of panic. Doubtless there were landfalls in desert nations and frozen tundras and all sorts of other locales where water wasn't a big deal. In those places, given the stated hostility of the aliens, people were likely dying or being abducted by the bucketload. So the universe is STILL a completely arbitrary crapshoot.

The question is simply too big for the format, and Signs suffers from overreaching its medium in a fatal fashion.

Can't we all just agree that Signs 2 should be a four hour epic about Mel Gibson being slapped over and over again?

I would pay to see 4 hours of Mel Gibson being slapped set to Entry of the Gladiators. I'm surprised no one has made a youtube video of it ^.^

... By the British.

If you are a Game of Thorns fan this should tide you over:

I understand the argument that you are making, and it is frequently a legitimate argument when someone defends what are perceived as plot holes in a film. However, it is only applicable when someone makes an assertion.

I am not saying that some specific event is the reason for the aliens not wearing space suits. I am saying that there are dozens of possible explanations, none of which are of any significance to the function of the narrative.

You say that you felt it needed to be explained in the film, and that's fair enough as an opinion. I don't know if there would've been a good way to provide that information to the protagonists that wouldn't have felt shoe-horned in. I think the expectation that there should remain no mysteries of motive at the end of a film is a strange one, but oh well.



I don't agree with this at all. All art has to overcome the handicap of being created with purpose, and therefore presenting a deterministic universe in some sense - but this isn't particularly true of film over any other medium. I'm not sure that I can see any reason to ascribe this limitation to movies in any specific way.

A Clockwork Orange, Memento, Minority Report, 12 Monkeys, and Run Lola Run are all examples of excellent films that tangle with free will as a core concept.

(Edit: Or films that tangle excellently with free will, if it pleases the court.)



I don't understand your intent with this observation. One cannot present a case that our universe is governed by a benevolent intelligence by creating a work in which no one suffers. That is demonstrably not the universe that we live in. Indeed, that people suffer is the core platform from which the rest of the narrative is erected.