Fiasco total: La toma del Área 51

How do you police a joke?

That was what the FBI agent states at the very end of this overly long and drawn out story about a bunch of nerds with nothing better to do but drive into the desert for attention.

If any recent Netflix documentary best describes modern America it is this one. A stupid kid posting an event as a joke gets taken seriously that a group of conspiracy nutjobs, attention seeking influencers and random weird alien obsessed people decide to take seriously and actually attend.

What follows is this kid being out of his depth as he works with a conman who didn't want to put any of his own money into the event, a local business woman who got greedy and alienated (no pun intended) the rest of her town and a modern day mafioso who tried to scam her which she thankfully backed out of.

That's not even taking into account all the media attention it got or the response of the military in dealing with a potential threat on a US military base. It truly was the best example of a trainwreck in this series.

Unfortunately, the filmmaking let's it down with weird editing choices, random animation sequences and splitting it into two parts which hasn't been done in the other trainwreck documentaries for a story that didn't seem to offer much in the end.

Nobody comes out looking good at the end of this and all it did was showcase how easy it is to manipulate a generation of young adults raised on social media with ADHD, brain-rot and no ambition other than to be famous on the internet.

If Netflix wants to keep making these it would be nice if they made one that had serious consequences instead of them all being a playful joke but maybe that's wishful thinking.

Overall, it is a strange story told in a strange way with the actual 'storming' of Area 51 happening in the last ten minutes. It would have been nice to get different interviews from the locals on life after this event and what has been done to prevent it from happening again but with people's dependency on social media only becoming more and more important it's more likely to happen again sooner rather than later.

I loved the story telling of this documentary. The comic book art in between takes, super cool. Loved all the perspectives of those interviewed, from people social media, ex US military and government who were involved.

Thank goodness two episodes were made, so it didn't feel rushed. I felt like they did a similar job to WoodStock 99'.

Although, it did take a whilllleee to get to the actual event and festival. Lots of interviews and people. But you know, fantastic story telling. Battles between those who wanted for festival to happen and those who didn't.

A short review, but as way more captivating than the recent Train wreck documentaries. Great and exciting story telling.

Matty is a legend, a lot of of the followers who wanted to denounce him, were too hard-core like he posted the event and you followed him. You can still go which they did, but there was no reason to be angry with him. It got out of hand obviously he had no credibility. He was just a meme profile poster who got a once in a lifetime opportunity I think age 20, which he handled really well, especially with FBI going to his door.

And yet he still created a performance place and got a little bit of money from all this instead of going today, which is the best outcome

I'm just a supporter of this guy he handled everything so well as for the woman who gained debt and didn't even like him in the first place and a lot of the people of that county didn't like this once in a lifetime moment event I get their concerns were reasonable, especially since they were in the middle of the desert, but the most of the concern should be their own property I think they should've just mind their business. I get what was happening, but they were still a pretty wide area there's going to be crazy people for sure and that's not what they signed up for for living in that location but it wasn't a reoccurring event. It was going to be for two or three days Maybe a week for people who wanted to be really prepared.

And props for the security and government people who did investigate and wanted to make sure that another instant like another place happened wouldn't occur again at that location. It was reasonable and I'm glad that people are thinking and trying to make sure things don't happen again. That doesn't happen often enough.

I now have an answer to the question "Can you make a documentary and only interview morons?"

the answer from Netflix is "yes"

This is a repetitive and meandering mess. Everyone says the same thing several times. The Vice guy was unnecessary and dumb as a stump. There were so many unnecessary interviews, it boggles the mind. Disco Donnie is the creepiest dude ever.

My review jumps all over the place, as this doc does. As dumb as the interview subjects seem, the Director and editor of this are clearly the dumbest people involved.

Just an absolutely unwatchable mess. The internet Historian did a short doc on this with no money, and it's head and shoulders aboce this crap.

Far more interesting than recent Trainwreck episode "Real Project X" (in which many kids showed up to a birthday party and, for some reason, we know about it), this story involves a better variety of testimonies, with higher stakes considering the location, and a fairly intricate backstory where half-baked internet ideas go head-to-head with reality.

Social media dwellers are a parody of themselves at this point, and anyone with a couple decades will immediately roll their eyes at the immature elements of this doc, but it's still a fun study of people with lives that permit ideas like "let's storm a government base because aliens and party" before facing humility.

Not exactly something you do if you have priorities, but still hilarious to watch, like seeing Johnny Knoxville and pals invent idiotic stunts for your amusement. The silliness is balanced out by interviews with town locals, military, and other grown-ups who live in reality. When all the parts mix in the end, not much happens besides some partying, but thankfully it didn't go the other way resulting in tragedy.

I'm not sure it had to be split into 2 episodes. Yet I didn't feel like much time was wasted if viewed as a single film. It's ultimately a familiar lesson: reality wins against absurdist notions from the internet. But rarely do we see it done so uniquely, and at least a few people got a dance party out of it.