Triffids

Alight in the last week of 2009 the BBC broadcast its remake of a classic novel adaptation, and with that phrase fear was born. It was a remake of Day of the Triffids, a harmless little story with a strong environmental message about how disrespecting nature will be mankind's downfall. Let's face facts; it wasn't good, putting it nicely. It was, in fact, bloody awful. At the time it was corny, now it's just plain ludicrous.

Here's a review I posed on SFX.co.uk in response to their blog article:-

It threw every kind of disaster there was into the mix, mass panic, chaos, the planet blinded, plane crashes, selfish people, murder and then included, as an after thought, the Triffids. As impressive as multiple Armageddon is it made no sense. It was like watching a badly made 70's disaster movie, that had gotten mistakenly edited with three others and given modern effects on a budget of three pound fifty, a mars bar and some lint found down the back of the BBC couch.

Now I admit I never had a chance to watch the original adaptation, and I'm too busy with Lensman at the moment to open the book but I'm sure at least one of these elements could have been dropped. Giving more time to the Triffids and maybe the characters. Giving us something to care about, or indeed accept. That was another problem.

I can suspend my disbelief that there is a poisonous, man eating, plant that can shoot a stinger out that kills and drags the victim to the root core. Now I can also buy into the idea that electricity stuns it. My problem comes when it can "walk", hunt and even communicate with other plants and then saying it was all thanks to genetic engineering. Nope, sorry, not accepting that.

Then, as if just to make us not care in slightest about the "sighted people", every group of them can't give a crap about the MAN EATING PLANTS and are far too busy acting like total prats!

I shouldn't have been surprised. I mean we had evidence everyone in this world were idiots in the first two minutes. First we have the Greenpeace activist who knows that Triffids are alive but somehow doesn't know that they are going to eat him! How about the solar flare or whatever, did no one stop and think? No seriously, how the flying hell did no one worry about it. First of all it would knock our satellite communication network into a cocked hat. Second I don't care how much better for the environment triffoil was. There are great gaping holes and weak points in the Ozone layer that a solar flair would cut through like a knife through hot butter and we'd get roasted.

Finally as if that wasn't enough a Solar emission on this scale could only mean one thing, that our sun was becoming unstable.
Nothing to worry about? The freaking SUN is going to collapse, turning this world into an ice ball and people were having a party?

I've gone on for too long but the Triffids remake was, I'm sorry to say, a disappointment.