Virtually everything was wrong with this movie. It was so horribly messed up that I can't give a 'non-spoilers' review, but rather just highlight some of the wonderful problems I had with the movie. These are just the ones I can remember.
Spoilers follow, but nothing critical to your enjoyment (or rather lack thereof) of this movie.
To begin with, the premise of the aliens hitting the earth with an asteroid was a bit sketchy. I mean, that's a heck of a job for bugs to see an asteroid, calculate its orbit, and somehow launch a projectile in order to change its path with enough precision to hit a planet. Sure, earth may seem big to us people, but in, say, the volume of the solar system it is an immensely tiny speck. But, lets suspend disbelief for this. Now, conveniently, this asteroid not only hits the earth, but it hits *land* on a planet where three quarters of its surface is covered in water. Then, to top it off, it hits a MAJOR POPULATED CITY. One in which the main character also conveniently has family. Right. Very likely.
Next, we have the human's approach to the bug planet in their fleet. All the ships bunch together, and they get wiped out as much by the bugs as they do from running into one another from being bunched together. Space is really big folks, spread apart so you don't kill yourselves! Anyway, this, again, is forgivable. Until they do it AGAIN, on their second attack!
Now we get to the actual combat. Why, oh why, did the powers putting together this film decide to abandon the high tech machinery such as cybernetic exoskeletons from the book in favor of simple ground troops? Again, they can be forgiven for this- until they show that they DO have advanced weaponry, and don't use it to effect. They wiped out huge piles of bugs with their air strike, yet they only thought to use the air strike once. They have miniature nuclear warheads that can do massive damage yet they only bring a couple along. With the technology demonstrated in the movie, it would have been possible to annihilate the entire planet without even setting foot on the planet- just drop nuclear bombs from the ships safely in orbit!
This leads up to my favorite part of the movie. There is a scene in which Pretty Young Face # 3 (Denise Richards) must pilot a battlecruiser after stereotypically showing that she's the best hotshot pilot ever. For some reason, they don't notice a giant asteroid bearing down upon them as they are traveling in the opposite direction, and a suspense-filled scene follows in which she barely turns the ship out of the way in time, and saves the day, but not before they loose their only means of warning the earth about this impending disaster.
Sorry, but I have a few problems with this. First, how do you not *notice* an asteroid like that? Second, why do they loose all communications from this collision? You're telling me a vessel like this, which must survive in the vast empty environment that is space doesn't have a redundant set of antennas? Finally, the entire scene is completely impossible. Both the ship and the asteroid are traveling in OPPOSITE directions at interstellar velocities. Even if they were traveling at, say, merely the reentry velocity of a space shuttle, both would be moving at 8 km per SECOND! The asteroid would have flashed past and destroyed whatever part of the ship happened to be in the way- not the heart-stopping, nerve-wrenching slow turn more fitting of a submarine movie.
The only thing in this movie that was vaguely interesting were, at the time, the advanced computer graphics. Now, there's nothing left holding it up. Well, maybe one thing. I suppose there's the shower scene for all the teenagers who aren't old enough to rent porn.
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