Olympus Has Fallen

D

David W. Richardson

Chapelgrove Films
Oh puhhh-LEEEZZZZ!

Okay, it was fun to watch. Lots of action, lots of great FX. But come ON! The storyline was awful! Bad plot development and logic holes you could fly a C-47 through! How do people in Hollywood get paid so much money to write such awful scripts???
 
I watched it as well and my first thought was..... How do I get that hour and a half of my life back. A TOTAL POS movie....
 
Damn, why did you have to remind me of that film? I hoped to forget I ever saw it. Maybe the worst crap I've seen. US propaganda bullshit at it's worst.
 
Well now let's be honest -- a great many movies are chock full of propaganda. That''s not my problem with it.

The problems are numerous. Characters are introduced and setup to be integral to the central conflict, and then become nothing at all. Conflicts that make no sense, and the responses to them make even less sense. An absolute lack of logic on the part of the main characters and the decisions they make.

I could go into excruciating detail, but not without spoilers. Sorry to remind you about the existence of this movie. My bad. :-)
 
I just saw it last week on Bluray. It seemed fairly typical as far as a hostage/takeover film and sole hero shoot em up films go.

The one thing that was GLARINGLY horrific was the VFX. Everything about them screamed B movie despite having a $70 million budget. From the first shots of the cars driving through the woods to the C130 to the White House and on and on and on. It really was surprisingly fake looking in many scenes.

Considering it was a similar premise to White House Down, (in that fine tradition of concurrent identical movies) is it possible that Olympus was rushed to completion to beat White House Down to the box office?
 
David W. Richardson said:
lots of great FX.
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Have we watched the same movie? From what I recall, it was pretty bad in that department.

Ryan Farnes said:
The one thing that was GLARINGLY horrific was the VFX. [..] It really was surprisingly fake looking in many scenes.
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Totally agree. Many users here could have done some better VFX. Worst: The american flag that falls after the white house has been attacked, with that Titanic pinky sky in background.
 
Wow...I was going to buy this the other day... Thank you all. :)

How was "White House Down" in comparison?
 
Ryan Farnes said:
Telling the studio you have Morgan Freeman, Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart on board. :D
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I have no idea why Morgan Freeman even wasted his time on this. His character was a total wimp, constantly caved to the terrorists, and made nothing but bad and illogical decisions. No arc at all. They must've thrown a lot of money at him.
 
Boy, a lot of you must be pretty high ranking White House officials (maybe even an ex president or two) ;)

Lets look at the storyline. It's not completely illogical. Everything proposed in the movie is doable with the right tools and time.

I personally enjoyed this movie quite a lot. I'm a fan of P.O.T.U.S films, and I like a bit of bloodshed!

Note: Just to clarify, I am not saying this movie is perfect. When the Washington Monument collapses, it sure and hell looks like they modelled it off 9/11.
 
TimB said:
Boy, a lot of you must be pretty high ranking White House officials (maybe even an ex president or two) ;)

Lets look at the storyline. It's not completely illogical. Everything proposed in the movie is doable with the right tools and time.

I personally enjoyed this movie quite a lot. I'm a fan of P.O.T.U.S films, and I like a bit of bloodshed!
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Okay, I'm sorry. Going to have to disagree here. **** SPOILER WARNING ****

Let's just pick a few random things.

Opening scene. Presidential motorcade crossing a bridge at night. Something falls on the windshield of the lead car, causing a wreck that kills the First Lady. Now -- what was it that fell on the windshield and caused the wreck? We don't know, and nobody ever says. Since this incident leads to the conflict between the President and his main Secret Service guy, it's kind of important to know. Bad writing.

Okay. North Korean terrorists have taken over the White House. Killed pretty much everyone inside. The President and his staff are in the bunker deep below the White House -- locked in. But one of the President's 'trusted staff' is actually on the side of the terrorists. Their whole plan was to get the President into the bunker, under their control.

First they claim that what they want is a total withdrawal of US forces from the Korean DMZ and the withdrawal of the seventh fleet. They tell this to Morgan Freeman, who is now acting President. (He's outside the White House, of course.) Now mind you, both he and the President deliver the obligatory "the United States doesn't negotiate with terrorists" rhetoric. But then Morgan Freeman just gives the terrorists whatever they ask for. He orders the withdrawal of the fleet and all US forces from the DMZ -- knowing full well it means the massacre and enslavement of millions of South Koreans. Why? The terrorists in the bunker have no power. Sure, they may kill the President and half a dozen of his staff who are trapped down there, and that would be tragic -- but these people aren't irreplaceable. And once the terrorists have killed them, they have no more leverage. So you let millions of Koreans die to save 6 Americans? That makes no sense. Bad writing.

Now Morgan doesn't know this, but the terrorists are just biding time while they work on their REAL objective. Apparently there's a top secret computer system that figures into the plot. It's intended to be used if a nuclear missile is accidentally launched at another country and cannot be recalled. This computer, when the 3 proper codes are entered, then detonates the missile's nuclear warhead 'safely away' from the target. To activate this computer requires 3 codes be entered -- each code is carried by a single person, so no one person can activate the computer. All 3 people who have the codes are, of course, sitting in the bunker right now. The terrorists' plan is to torture these people, get their codes, activate the computer, and detonate the nuclear warheads while they are still in their silos all over America.

Now let's think about this. First, if you've got a missile in the air, there are much better ways to bring it down safely than DETONATING THE NUCLEAR WARHEAD! Maybe just have your computer shut down the missile's engine? How hard is that? Secondly, if the missile is beyond the control of your regular targeting and control systems, then why would this computer have any better luck communicating with it? Bad writing.

But next, someone asks why they don't just change the passwords for this computer, now that the current passwords are compromised. They are told that the system was designed so that the passwords CAN'T be change. HUH??? Why on EARTH would that be the case??? The passwords to LAUNCH the missiles are changed instantly in this kind of scenario. There is NO good reason why the passwords for this computer wouldn't be handled the exact same way. BAD writing!

Now a pet peeve of mine. You have a computer that's going to detonate nuclear warheads once the passwords are entered. You enter the passwords. Why does it then start a 5 minute countdown??? What if that errant missile was less than 5 minutes from its target? What plausible reason is there for the computer to not detonate the warhead IMMEDIATELY? Lazy writing.

Okay, bad guys defeated. Good guy trying to figure out how to stop the computer before it detonates the warheads. (Thank God for that 5 minute delay, eh?) Here's my thought -- IT'S A COMPUTER! SHOOT IT! Or pull the power plug, at least. Like there wouldn't be a million fail-safe protocols in place to stop this thing. Yeah, right. Bad writing.

Another little bit of funny. Gerard Butler is pretty much the only person alive inside the White House (except for the people in the bunker). He tells the guys outside not to come in because all of the doors and windows are rigged with explosives. I'm thinking, "SO???? Throw a rock through the window, set off the bomb, then march in through the big HOLE. How hard is that???

Bad bad bad writing. And don't even get me started on the President's son!
 
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