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Danitsu
Minister of the Sacraments of Jabootu
40 Posts |
 Posted - 03/17/2007 : 5:35:05 PM
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A noble spirit embiggens the smallest of men...
"If you get served and serve them back...Then IT'S ON!!!" |
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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
Posted - 03/17/2007 : 8:53:45 PM
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BTW, most of the problems inherent in ID4 seem to be mostly lapses in logic than actual violations of hard science, which really was the inspiration for this thread.
You could just as easily find numerous logical errors in Aliens. For instance, the colonial marines' inexplicable decision to deploy their entire platoon and not leave any reserves back aboard the ship. No logistical support, no triosh, no chain in command. What if the marines down on the planet are stranded, their means of communication cut off, or their landing craft destroyed (all of which -- surprise! ends up happening). Or what if the ship malfunctions, or comes under attack by another ship? Now of course we know the reason why. No stranded marines = no movie. So James Cameron just does what he always does: he throws logic out the window. Problem solved.
There's the also the enormous collapse in logic when the marines "locate" the colonists in the processing station. They see the colonists' PDTs readout, but it never dawns on the marines that the PDTs signals aren't moving. Did they think it was naptime in Romper Room? Then the decision to send the marines into close quarters combat after their observation of the colony complex confirmed the aliens had "concentrated acid for blood". Should it have been so surprising, then, when the arterial spray from the wounded aliens ends up wounded and/or killing their own?
And why, after discovering facing-hugging aliens at the colony lab (thus confirming another one of Ripley's warnings) do the marines insist on proceeding into the nest without head protection gear? You can't blame everything on Lieutenant Gorman. But, yeah, hey, at least Hicks remembers to bring his shotgun. You know, um, in case, they happen to wander into any fusion reactors. (Oh, wait, they didn't realize it was a fusion reactor when they walked in. They assumed the processing station ran on ethanol! That explains it!)
Then, once again, having confirmed the presence of the alien's nest, the peculiar decision to send in ALL deployed marines into the nest. Hasn't James Cameron ever heard of "taking point"? Oh, but wait, you see, if the marines had simply sent in scouts to scope out the colony before reporting back to the others (a time-honored military practice, I think, possibly dating back to the time of, I don't know, the Canaanites) then the marines wouldn't have been caught in a pincer move when the aliens attacked. Instead, Cameron has them charge in as a bunch. With no weapons. Again, you can't blame all this Gorman. After all, he didn't write the script.
And why if Bishop is the one guy who has the best chance of coming out alive in an encounter with the aliens is he instead the one guy they consistently insist should stay behind?
My point is not to insinuate that ID4 and Aliens occupy the same plane of existence. My point really is to say, yeah, ID4 took the low road in a number of ways, but c'mon, cut the writers some slack. Every movie has to be contrived as some level, sci-fi movies in particular, or there would be no movie. |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 03/17/2007 : 9:32:42 PM
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Oh man, the thing about the guns in the fusion reactors is a pet peeve for me. If those idiots represent the best and brightest it really IS "Game over, man!!" And even if the grunts are too damn dumb to realize why they should not be using standard rounds, and even if they hate Gorman, think he's incompetent and want to frag him, an order is an order and a court-martial is a court-martial. What do they think is going to happen if they get out of that in one piece after flagrantly disobeying orders?? I wanted every single human in that movie to die, and that includes Newt and Ripley.
"Meeting you makes me want to be a real noodle cook"
--Tampopo |
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 03/18/2007 : 3:43:45 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Sardu
Oh man, the thing about the guns in the fusion reactors is a pet peeve for me. If those idiots represent the best and brightest it really IS "Game over, man!!" And even if the grunts are too damn dumb to realize why they should not be using standard rounds, and even if they hate Gorman, think he's incompetent and want to frag him, an order is an order and a court-martial is a court-martial. What do they think is going to happen if they get out of that in one piece after flagrantly disobeying orders??
Yeah, and that dumb female (No not HER, the OTHER dumb female) "marine" immediatly hands out the forbidden ammo after being told NOT to use them. Now what does she do after the survivers get back? Why blame GORMAN for the disaster, of course!
Freakin' morons.
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
Edited by - Greenhornet on 03/18/2007 3:45:45 PM |
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Flangepart
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
2329 Posts |
Posted - 03/19/2007 : 3:14:25 PM
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ALIENS.
Liked it at first. Then i made the mistake...of thinking about it.
Scouts? We don need no stinkin'...Yeah, i got problims with the internal logic of this flick.
No guards around the only way off that rock? No even a motion sensor? Yeesh! All terrain mini bots...the REAL Marines are workin' on those now! Come on! USE that deep space level tech!
Am i asking too much for someone to write a more thought out movie?....okey, that was retorical...
Marvin the Paranoid Android to Buzz Lightyear "Too infinity and beyond-i've been there, its rubbish!"
"Hoody Hoo, i waste 'em with my cross bow!" Bob Herzog- KDOT
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Edited by - Flangepart on 03/19/2007 3:15:32 PM |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 03/19/2007 : 8:56:34 PM
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Ah, "Aliens" was amateurish in it's logic flaws compared to "Starship Troopers".
We're the Mobile Infantry...except we've seem to have forgotten the usefulness and utility of things like...Bradleys.
So we walk everywhere. And we've forgotten the concept of combined arms operations.
So, no artillery support. No tanks. No gunships. Heck, not even mortars. Just a bunch of us running around with shoulder weapons it takes dozens upon dozens of shots to bring an enemy down with.
I hated "Starship Troopers" far, far more than I ever found "Aliens" annoying or flawed. "Aliens" looks like a collaborative work between Clausewitz and Sun Tsu and Machiavelli compared to "Starship Troopers". And I was sick of Verhoeven's schtick by that time too.
"Starship Troopers" was like an alternate reality "Saved by the Bell" where the kids were fed a bunch of semi-fascist government drivel most of their lives and unattractive people like Screech were genetically altered in the womb or euthanized at birth. |
Edited by - Citizen Carrier on 03/19/2007 9:05:04 PM |
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Flangepart
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
2329 Posts |
Posted - 03/20/2007 : 11:28:15 AM
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Ah, yes...STARSHIP POOPERS!
Must agree there, Carrier.
The idiocy of leaving out the power armor...yeah, they say they coulden't do it...but Dark Horse comics showed them up!
Oh, the field day Andrew Borntrager had on this pile of fetid dingos kidneys.
Marvin the Paranoid Android to Buzz Lightyear "Too infinity and beyond-i've been there, its rubbish!"
"Hoody Hoo, i waste 'em with my cross bow!" Bob Herzog- KDOT
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Altair IV
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Japan
110 Posts |
Posted - 03/21/2007 : 09:41:22 AM
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Starship Troopers was horrible, and not just because of the stupidly-depicted fighting. The thing that really makes me angry is the way Paul Verhoeven deliberately set out to make a mockery of Heinlein's masterpiece, simply because he disagreed with the writer's politics (or rather his own interpretation of them). If you've never read [url="http://www.kentaurus.com/troopers.htm"]this great essay[/url] on ST and Verhoeven's desecration of it, I highly recommend that you do so.
I also recommend that you go out and rent the CGI animated follow-up series Roughnecks. While it is ostensibly based on the movie, it really follows the book much more closely in all other aspects (including the use of powered armor). They succeed where Verhoeven failed.
On a slightly different note, The local cable movie channel showed Tremors last night. Now this is an almost textbook example of a good monster movie, but I did notice one minor science mistake when I watched it. Just after killing the first grabboid, the lady scientist tries to figure out what they could be, and she says something like, "There's nothing like them in the fossil record....so...they predate the fossil record. They could be one or two billion years old."
Yegads. First of all, just because something's not in the fossil record doesn't mean it comes from outside of it. The fossil record is far, FAR from complete, you know. And second, up until about 500 million years ago the only life forms evident were microbial in size, and the environment was very different from what we're used to now (free oxygen didn't exist until life put it there, for example). Something like these monsters would've had a really hard time finding prey if they were around that long ago. And she's supposed to be a scientist?
We won't go into how difficult it would've been for these things to go unnoticed for so long, even in the California desert. And let's not even think about the sequels.
Two others that came to me recently, both related. The eyball-exploding depressurization scenes in Outland, and the instant popsiclization from the helmet-removal scene in [url="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/m2mreview.html"]Mission To Mars[/url]. Sure, space is a vacuum, but it's not going to blow you up like a balloon. Nor are you going to lose all of your body heat in seconds. It takes time to freeze, even in sub-zero environments. And to be really accurate, the vacuum of space is not really sub-zero. In fact, space doesn't have any temperature at all, and vacuum is a great insulator. Any object will either slowly gain heat through infrared radiation if it's in sunlight, or lose it, if it's in a shadowed area. You need an atmosphere of some kind if you want to efficiently conduct heat.
Finally, speaking of sudden cooling, I was forced to watch Day After Tomorrow recently. I'm not even going to begin on that one, it was just that ludicrous. |
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RossM
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
427 Posts |
Posted - 03/21/2007 : 09:56:10 AM
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In one of the Dr. Who episodes of the Pirate Planet, written by Douglas Adams, there is a walkway in which the walkway stays still and everything else moves. At one point the Dr. moves and the badguy crashes into the wall. The Doctor turns to the camera and tells us which laws of motion they have just violated. Funny stuff.
rossM |
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The Rev. D.D.
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
203 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2007 : 10:14:20 AM
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I noticed those with Tremors, as well as a lot of the flaws with Starship Troopers.
For the Tremors ones, I figured (a) she's a geologist/seismologist, not a paleontologist, and she's just made an incredible zoological discovery that probably blew her mind, so I'll forgive her for saying something like that, and (b) the giant worms were suddenly awoken by some unexplained phenomena, thus explaining why they hadn't been seen before, like most monster movies. The writers probably couldn't come up with a good, believable reason, or just decided it wasn't important (and in the context of the film, it doesn't matter where they came from really, it only matters that they're here now and trying to eat people--a tradition that goes back to Night of the Living Dead and probably even further.) (This ignores the prequel in the Old West, but that's probably for the best.)
I make no such rationalizations for Starship Troopers, and I don't feel inclined to do so.
Which is the big difference....Tremors is such a great, fun ride of a film that I'm willing to forgive or forget any flaws (the same goes to Jaws and other films of that nature), whereas I feel no need to do so for as big a pile of crap as Starship Troopers.
Of course, part of it is also the fact that what's wrong with Tremors can be hashed out in a couple of sentences, while Starship Troopers....well, look at that essay for a good start on the things wrong with it. And that probably doesn't cover all of it, either.
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I need to see Tremors again. It's been almost two months... |
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Altair IV
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Japan
110 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2007 : 12:33:28 PM
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I'm in full agreement with you about Tremors, DD. It's a well-made movie with only a few minor flaws, and those are easily overlooked because the rest of it is so enjoyable. I normally wouldn't even bring up such a minor point except that that's what this thread is all about.
OTOH, I'd expect a geologist to be MORE familiar with the fossil record than just about anyone outside of a full-fledged paleontologist. Geology and paleontology overlap to a great extent, and the dating of rock strata by their containing fossils (and vice versa) is a major part of any geologist's repertoire. A basic knowledge of Earth's history is mandatory in any case. I remember studying some of this myself (including fossil-hunting field trips) when I took a basic geology course in Uni. So that line was especially grating to me because a geologist, of all people, WOULD know better.
Good point about the grabboids getting "awoken" somehow though. I hadn't really thought of that. Or maybe they just recently found their way free from some more isolated area up in the mountains or something. There was a scene in the movie where they also speculated on them being genetic experiments or from outer space or something as well. As you said, the exact origin of the critter is not really important for a good monster movie, and the makers of this one obviously realized that. I don't remember Tremors 2 delving into the origin either, though my memory is hazy on that one. Does anyone know if the subject was brought up in any of the other sequels?
ST, on the other hand, could really do with a good Jabootuing. It may not be quite bad enough to merit a feature review, but a good thrashing in a forum review would be very cathartic. Hmmm, now that I think of it, I've been wanting to try my hand at a review myself, and ST would certainly be a good one to do. I'm sure it would be fun, though I doubt I'd be as able as some of the experienced reviewers to give it the whipping it deserves, since I don't have either the movie or the military background necessary to really do it justice. |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2007 : 7:12:29 PM
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I've only seen a couple of bits and pieces of Tremors 2, but it does get credit for at least one thing: it gives an explanation for the disappearance for one of the original's leads that's quick, efficient, and believable. If I recall, the gubmint suits go to Earl (Fred Ward) and ask him to help them deal with a new set of Graboids. This isn't verbatim, but it's along the same lines:
Earl: Why don't you ask Val?
Gubmint Suit: We did.
Earl: Let me guess. He said no. Can you blame him? He's got a wife and a nice life now. If I had that, I'd say no, too.
I've seen several sequels (Men In Black 2 in particular) that show a lot less respect for their characters than that.
We're talking about movie science (or factual) blunders, right? Okay. How's about this one? In Back to the Future, Doc tells Marty he can "witness the birth of Christ" by punching in the date 12-25-0000. Someone as obsessed with time as Doc Brown would know that: (1) there was no year 0; it moved straight from 1 B.C. (one year before Christ) to A.D. 1 (First Year Of Our Lord). (2) While it's a Christian tradition to celebrate Christmas on December 25, no one knows the exact date of Christ's birth. (3) The people who drew up the modern calendars made a mistake. Christ's birth was actually around 4 or 5 B.C.
Back to the Future is one of those movies that's good enough for one to overlook its flaws, but for some reason this has always bugged me. |
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brandywine
Diocesan Ecclesiarch of the Sacred Order of Jabootu
56 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2007 : 7:40:11 PM
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I can overlook the first BTTF's flaws but the conceptual basis of the second two are so absurd I have to mentally block out their existence. In fact, I do this with a lot of sequels.
Here's one: On Men in Black Kay says that five hundred years ago everyone thought the earth was flat, which is a myth. |
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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2007 : 11:16:05 PM
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| Sorry, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around, "The Galaxy is on Orion's belt." |
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 03/23/2007 : 5:41:32 PM
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Pick any sci-fi movie that features lasers and you'll clearly see that they are SLOWER than light. Slower than a low velosity BULLET, for that matter!
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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