Enemy Mine / YMMV - TV Tropes

Award Snub: Roger Ebert and other critics felt Louis Gossett Jr. deserved an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, having to act convincingly under a crapton of prosthetic makeup. In addition, the film's visual effects, makeup effects that helped create the Drac race, and screenplay writing did not get nominations either.
Awesome Music: One of Maurice Jarre's best.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Chapter 15 of the novella has a lengthy exchange between Davidge and Zammis where the latter, at barely a year old, starts discussing philosophy in a very heady and wordy manner that leaves Davidge flummoxed. It's especially odd since Zammis couldn't have learned the concepts and vocabulary from anyone other than his Uncle, and the whole exchange seems like a complicated setup for a "Descartes before the horse" dad joke. After this, Zammis never displays such ludicrously advanced intellect in the story again.
Fashion-Victim Villain: The Dracs wear flimsy robes that look like they were made out of black trash bags. The cheapness and weirdness of their costumes is only further contrasted with the elaborate make-up and prosthetic required to wear by their actors.
Fridge Brilliance: Fyrene VI is in the middle of an Asteroid Thicket, which is why there's so many meteor strikes. It's also why it would make an excellent mining outpost, since those meteors would have tons of rare metals.
Ho Yay: Although Dracs are an asexual race, it's hard to keep yourself from the idea that Davidge and Jerry are gradually beginning to look like a loving couple with typical gender roles and family debate. Lord, later they even have a child. Hilariously lampshaded when Davidge learns of Jerry's pregnancy:
"But how did you— who did...? *Beat* Well, don't look at me!"
Retroactive Recognition: Rook was Zammis.
Special Effect Failure:
- Despite Industrial Light & Magic's involvement with the film, the visual effects are a mixed bag. While some of the models and the matte painting effects are decent for mid-1980s standards, others look really atrocious and far from the quality ILM is usually known for. Part of these issues stems from the film's Troubled Production and budget issues.
- The crash landing on Fyrine IV is very clearly accomplished by miniatures with a very shallow Depth of Field exposing them for what they really are.
- The dogfight suffers from some very shoddy optical compositing with some of the ship explosions appearing transparent over the background.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Upon being found by military, Davidge is taken for a pro-Drac turncoat by higher ops. This is never brought up again, as his superiors seem to instantly forget about it. The very next scene has Davidge stealing a ship, while damaging a military installation, which also does not result in any consequences. All of this could have been used as another layer of the anti-prejudice and anti-war message the story is clearly about, with Davidge arguing (or defending) his stance that the Dracs shouldn't be humanity's enemy, nor should Earth's military tolerate what the Scavengers are doing. But instead, we've got a prolonged sequence in an "enemy mine", which then directly cuts to being rescued by fellow human pilots (who are not at all upset with Davidge). Finally, he's permitted to visit the frigging Drac homeworld. The guy seems to have some serious Hero Insurance.
Ugly Cute: Zammis. Dracs are somewhat scary-looking by human standards, but his innocence and naivete make him totally adorable. Davidge describes him as "an ugly little cuss", but warmly admits he isn't much worse than some of the baby pictures he used to see in the mess hall.
Unintentional Period Piece: For being a movie set in the end of the 21st century, there is something that in real life would be outdated by a century, as Davidge mentions in the football scene the Houston Oilers, which moved to Nashville in 1997 and two years later got their current name of Tennessee Titans, while Houston in turn is home of the Texans since 2002.
Values Resonance: The film's anti-war and anti-racism themes are just as relevant now as they were in 1985.
Viewers Are Morons: The movie was apparently forced to include a subplot about their enemies operating a mine, on the basis that people wouldn't understand the title could be rephrased as "My Enemy", and would want to know where the mine was.
Visual Effects of Awesome: All over the place, from the shots of outer space, to the very convincing alien world of Fyrine IV, to the excellent Drac makeup effects by Chris Walas that nicely averted Rubber-Forehead Aliens and made Lou Gossett Jr. and the other actors completely unrecognizable underneath them.

YMMV / Enemy Mine

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