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"Red Planet": Stay Here
I can sum the movie up in one sentence: It's worse than both Mission to Mars and Waterworld.
Skip the wrong-headed science. Forget the problems with the dialogue. Let's just concentrate on the most simple thing you expect from a movie: a coherent story.
We start the movie off with a voiceover: The earth is dying, we've trashed it, and now we can't fix it. So, we it's decided that we'll start terraforming Mars, by bombarding it with genetically tailored algae, etc. The algae start to disappear, and we have to send people to Mars now to find out why the algae have disappeared.
It's a fairly standard plot, not a bad start at all -- but at no point do we get any idea of who the characters are. For the rest of this movie, we're kept in the dark: no character is explored in any detail, characters are inexplicably offended and say weird statements which have little or no rational value to them. No scene ever gets to the meat of who these people are, why anyone might be doing what they're doing, or even some clue as to the dynamics which connect them. It's nearly a half-hour into the movie before we even start to know what kind of person Val Kilmer's character is -- and he's the star of the show! By the end, it's hard to like, dislike or even much care about these characters. No sympathy, no tension, no nothing. It's banality at its extreme.
Even the discovery by one of the characters that he's dying from the stress of the emergency evac to Mars is anti-climatic. It's definitely not interesting. Certainly not scary, frightening, or even a tear jerker.
To get some emotion into this scene, I guess the director though he'd put in some scenes in flashback shown not more than 5 minutes ago -- except the flashbacks are longer than the original. In fact, the flashbacks are actually critical to the plot -- but this jerk of a director doesn't mention these scenes until just before they're needed. No sense of poignancy, no sense of grace, no building. The director just drops this "Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention ..." scene as the guy's doing something meant to be meaningful. Truthfully, it ruins what could be an interesting point about philosophy and science at this point, by practically shoving the moment in the viewer's face and telling him what he/she should get out of it.
At this point his fellow characters leave him to die. No problem, his injury might kill them. But those rotten jerks all say, "OK," and start walking. I mean, a moment of pause or at least a few seconds of "Well, we could do this," and then a few minutes to say goodbye to this guy they've been living with for six months would be nice. But no dice, it's hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to save our own rears we go.
The rest of the movie has similar, stilted moments when the characters just don't act ... well, like humans. People start fighting without any reason, people go insane without any reason, characters fall in love without knowing one another (oh, yeah -- the director forgot something again. Another flashback to justify that scenario). People see other people die, and no one's even slightly moved by it.
Lots more happens -- but none of it makes sense. Every bit is just a strange mess of half-created emotions, special effects that, while cool, aren't very coherent, characters flat as cardboard, situations so artificial they are still wrapped in plastic, and a really, really wasted set of decent actors.
Now for the usual bad science rant. OK, I know the actual science of physics has only been around for around 50-75 years, but it's pretty well documented; and you can get an excellent primer from many, many books, and see it used properly in a story in many science fiction novels. Gravity, mass and velocity aren't magic -- so you can't make them suddenly appear, disappear, or become less or greater then they were originally. Same goes for the biology of humans, biology of algae, and how life could and might appear in the universe. Same with pyrotechnics, meteorology, ballistics (although they didn't try the "turn left when you get to the planet" maneuver that Mission To Mars did -- Small blessings!), electronics and telecommunications. Simplify, fine. But make major mistakes, center your plot on things that couldn't possibly work, and then it's just embarrassing and sloppy.
The usual dazzling special effects and panoramic vistas -- including a well-modeled animated robot -- at least give some visual pleasure to the whole thing, and the dialogue is at least not so stiff you could use it as shingles.
But overall, if you have to miss one movie this year, make it this one.
Right. That was no nematode, that was my ex-wife! It looked more like an arthropod than a nematode, or I'm an allotherian.
None of the astronaut food that i've ever seen looks like it would be any good to ferment. you would have to save up alot of mushed peas before you could get a whole litre of alcohol. and where did they get the yeast? you would think it would have been easier to sneak a couple bottles onboard. and what kind of alcohol comes out of a still coloured yellow anyway. I wouldn't drink it. And even if the mission commander chose to look the other way, I doubt she would let the entire crew get 'faced at once. .^
^.
I am large, I contain multitudes."
-Walt Whitman
Furry cows moo and decompress.
That's pretty though-provoking, but I don't think that Star Wars would get as soundly thrashed as the current round of sci-fi nasties.
Aside from providing us with some actual character, plot, and theme, a story must remain internally consistent in order for us (or for me, anyway) to suspend disbelief.
By incorporating situations that are known to current physics and whose solutions are known (or at least obvious), Red Planet incorporates some of reality into its own storyline. By muffing the physics, or by having its characters and organizations make mistakes that ordinary geeks can see through, or by lacking any sort of motivation for the crisis-of-the-minute, RP sabotages the disbelief of its own audience. More importantly, the story isn't good enough to offset the egregious errors in the physics. When the physics is lousy, and the story sucks, and the acting is terrible, there's not much left except some cool eye-candy. SW billed itself as a fairy tale ("A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...") and hence had much more latitude with the magic spacedrives and gravity generators and such. That series also seems to remain consistent within its own set of rules (which, admittedly, it can make up as it goes!). More importantly, the first three movies actually had good stories to tell. The stories and characters were interesting in their own right, if a bit stereotyped, and the plots were focused and made a bit of sense. That's why SW didn't suck.
Criticising these things is just oh-so-smart intellectual masturbation.
/., it's intellectual group masturbation, and is one of the large dangers with huge crowds of geeks (most being male, single, and smart)
No, this is
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+&x
DRY LAND IS NOT A MYTH! I'VE SEEN IT! Kevin Costner, Waterworld; I don't know what all the fuss was about, I saw that movie seven times, it ruled!!
actually, I've seen enough of it for my satisfaction, and I think plenty to get the jist of the movie. The references were not all that subtle;)
Frankly, I didn't know it was a Tim Burton movie when I went in (I'm forgetful to check things like that, though I should). Maybe that's why I didn't like it -- I thought the Hudsucker Proxy sucked too, despite the very sexy Jennifer Jason Leigh and cool-actor Paul Newman (he was in that, right?).
I just didn't think it was *funny* -- humor being very personal of course. Just like I thought the 2nd Austin Powers movie was nowhere near as funny as the first, though it had a few moments. MiniMe made me laugh, and Scott Evil is hilarious, Fat Bastard is amazingly gross, and the simple fact of being a sequel allowed certain James Bond jokes to be done. It still didn't grab me.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Bad movies have problems in at least one, but usually more than one of these areas. I think that criticizing the science in a sci-fi movie may often simply be an easy way to point out the movie's lack of integrity. If one had the time to sit down and write a long analysis and critique of, say, the character development and interaction (or lack thereof), one could demonstrate that a movie was equally weak in those areas; however, on /., simply pointing out gaping flaws in the science is a shorthand for "if they got this wrong, what are the chances they got *anything* right?"
Red Planet is a bit too new, but search the web for reviews of Mission to Mars, and you'll find plenty like this one: "director Brian De Palma has reached a new nadir", "Ineptly directed, badly acted, and scripted with an eye towards stupidity and incoherence, the film is worthwhile only to those who are in desperate need of a nap. And, as is often the case when a big budget, high profile motion picture self-destructs, this one does so in spectacular fashion." Now that reviewer is my kinda guy! :)
As for Battlestar Galactica, well, perhaps we do come from totally different universes...
"Hey, I liked Willow!" -- Crow T. Robot
Personally, I didn't much care for Willow. I really hated Mission to Mars. I had a feeling it was going to be a bad movie (when I saw the `face' in one of the previews). I only went b/c my friend wanted to go. I thought, "well, at least I can watch his reaction". It was an enjoyable experience for me.
However, unlike the critic, I liked this movie, Red Planet. I can't deny the fact that the characters were just a little too indifferent to the distress of their comrades. Also, and I would've thought this were a no-brainer, if you're gonna have a little droid thingie, that's cool but *don't* have it programmed for things like "search and destroy" when the only targets on the target planet will be friendlies!
In spite of these things, I liked it anyway. I think I liked it mostly b/c Val and Carrie are cool.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
First of all, let me say that I like well-made, coherent, and deeply meaningful movies as much as any stiff-necked critic.
We run into a problem, however when we apply the same standard to all movies. For example, if I were to watch The Matrix and expect American Beauty I would be sorely disappointed. And I would miss the enjoyment of a great movie.
The difference, and I think most people apply this to some extent, is that I go into different movies with different expectations. I enjoyed Waterworld --Believe it or not! But I went to the movie (granted, I payed $1.50 at a late-run theatre) with knowledge that the movie was considered a bomb. However, I expected a little half-assed fantasy and some nifty special effects. I got just what I expected, plus the bonus of seeing Costner drink his own urine...
Anyway, the point is that you can enojoy a much broader range of movies if you go into each one with appropriate expectations.
I found the info on the Canadian group that is helping set up film societies -- if you're looking for great independent and foreign films, give them a call!
"The Film Circuit: A division of the Toronto International Film Festival Group, a charitable, cultural and educational organization devoted to celebrating excellence in film and the moving image. The Film Circuit is generously sponsored by: Alliance Atlantis, Cineplex Odeon, Famous Players Canada, Telefilm Canada, and the Ontario Film Development Corporation."
Now, in Vernon, what we have is a small collection of people (perhaps a dozen) who are organizers for the incoming film shows. Each show is being held on Mondays (sometimes with a second showing on Wednesday) at the local six-plex Famous Players. Tickets are six bucks a pop. Shows are packing the seats to overflowing.
The also maintain a collection of videos at the local Art Gallery. There are a couple hundred videos there, for rent for a couple of bucks.
I know that Cineplex Odeon is in dire financial straits. I'll bet that you can get them to sponsor the showings pretty darn easy, given the floods of people the shows are attracting -- although, on the other hand, it may be a year before word of mouth really makes them popular.
Anyway, *have a go at it!* You've got nothing to lose, and a *lot* to gain!
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I am so disappointed to see yet another movie about Mars reduced to a poorly-written action flick. Maybe this is what it takes to get the concept into the general public's collective consciousness. But still, so many people think that humanity has no imperitave to spread out from our world to others. Shitty movies like this can't help change ideas like that.
For me, my attitude changed once I read the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. It was one of the first set of books I had read that made me believe that we really do have a future in space, and that despite the scoffing of politicians, the reality of things is that this future can begin immediately.
Anyone who is depressed by this latest batch of Martian science fiction would be well-advised to look at these books for a pick-me-up.
From Tom Sizemore's character:
"I'm a biologist. A coder, I put together the G's, the T's, the A's, the P's". (Its actually GTAC C, buddy, C, or GUAC if we are talking RNA).
Another gaff: Measurements show the oxygen all gone, but when they land, they are mysteriously able to breath (I also saw the same plot device on Amazon Women on the Moon, great flick, especially the part with the missing heart). See, the probes they sent, before they mysteriously failed, showed decreasing levels of O2. They scientists just assumed that Mars had no breathable atmosphere as opposed to looking a spectroscopy through a telescope, kinda like how we do it now.
The bug gaffe: there's these bugs right, and only instead of consuming oxygen, they make it. Well, you're kinda on the wrong end of the energy curve there. Where do they get all the energy to split CO2 into O2? I know, they have little fusion reactors in them!
The warbot gaffe: who's bright fucking idea was it to take a terminator warbot on the mission?
The interchangeability of parts gaffe: aforementioned warbot has a nuclear power cell the size of a soda can they, miracles of miracles, just happens to be compatible with a Russian lander from 50 years ago which has ran out of power. There are several other instances of similar parts compability (radios for example).
The artificial gravity gaffe: I guess it works kinda like it did in Armageddon. If we had a way of making artificial gravity, we could build O'Neil colonies and screw the earth and screw mars.
Sorry, but if you listen in one of the scenes right after they get out of the landing pod, the computer explicitly says, "External oxygen detectors offline"(or something to that effect), so their suits couldn't tell them there was oxygen. As to the review, maybe the author should try watching the movie, instead of getting up every 5 mins to go to the bathrom or get another pop. It sounds like he didn't even try watching it, maybe he was too busy taking notes about what he thought he was seeing.
Dodger_
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
The reason I am suspicious of critics, and dislike a certain type of film criticism (intellectual type) has been motivated by a certain film critic I used to read in my Sunday paper.
She is called Anne Bilson, and writes in the Sunday Telegraph here in the UK. An example of her film criticism occured when 'Top Gun' was shown here in the UK a few months ago. She said that the film was an extended metaphor for Homosexuality. The relationship between Val Kilmner and Tom Cruise was clearly homosexual, she said. Tom Cruise's girlfriend is trying to keep him thouroughly heterosexual. But in the end, he goes the gay way "You can ride my tail anytime" says Kilmner. "No, you can ride mine" replies Cruise. I think she got this from a Tarantino skit, but she was serious. And all her film reviews are like that.
She just can't help inserting her own feminist opinions into the review. Anyway, I don't read her anymore, because that kind of criticism spoils the film and puts idiotic ideas in ones head.
My method is to approach each film as though I am a child. It usually leads to greater enjoyment. I only engage in some sort of intellectual analysis after I have seen it, and only if it was interesting enough to promote such thinking. (the Matrix might be a good example of this - it has some very interesting ideas).
As for BG, well, all I can say is that you must be a Silon if you don't appreciate its genius ;-)
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
As with the eternal hacker v. cracker argument, the fact that most of the population gets it wrong doesn't mean we should just accept this as The Way Things Have to Be.
Honestly, scientific accuracy (or any sort of realism in story telling) is orthogonal to having a good story. To the average moviegoer, the only thing that matters is that there be a story they like. Well, sure, if you don't know the difference between good science and bad science, then it's easy to accept inaccuracies; but some of us who *do* know bad science when they see it wouldn't mind, once in a while, having a movie that has a good story that doesn't fall apart when you aim a telescope at it. And why should we settle for less?
For lifting big things into orbit, and for living in them for a long time, the Russians developed the best tech. However, if you are looking for something to work first-time, you have to remember that they crashed and just plain blew up a lot along the way. I admire their dedication and sacrifice, but, IMO, there's enough history to justify the comments.
And it also had Carrie-Anne Moss in a nice tight t-shirt most of the movie, and even nude at the start :)
And even if the oxygen detecters were gone, the pressure should have been detectable. They were wearing pressure suits for goodness sake - any such decent suit should be able to detect external pressure!
Well, there was actually a fair amount in addition to the ones you mention. Also on the suits, I saw IBM, GM, and Nokia. All the displays on the ship were labled AMX, which is a company that makes controllers for AV gear, (for conference facilities, etc. see www.panja.com).
-- Don't call me "Sir," I increase entropy for a living!
Absolutely. Divirging into games for a moment, IMHO it was realism that ruined Frontier and First Encounters - Elite was much better for ignoring the laws of physics in favour of conceptually simple but challenging combat.
Fictional films should be based on stories, not on documentaries - I can't imagine many people go to the cinema to learn anything these days.
Was won by Herr Einstein, which suggests he must have studied it. Britannica.com sez "Physics, in its modern sense, was founded in the mid-19th century as a synthesis of several older sciences--namely, those of mechanics, optics, acoustics, electricity, magnetism, heat, and the physical properties of matter." God I hope Doonesbury was kidding.
I bragged about my Karma at a job interview but I didn't get the job.
The incompetence of movies of this kind merely reflects the limited ability and intellect of their creators, and the mass market which consumes them. These movies aren't unpretentious - they're actually hugely pretentious failures. With Mission to Mars, for example, it's clear that Brian de Palma was trying, decades after it had already been done, to copy the effects and feel of movies like 2001.
As for Star Wars, I think you're again demonstrating your lack of discrimination if you can't tell that Star Wars was really good cinema, especially compared to, say, Battlestar Galactica which came out shortly thereafter, IIRC. If /. had existed then, I suspect the majority would have liked Star Wars, much as they like The Matrix today, while BG would have received the panning it deserved.
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
LOL!
=1000101
I gotta distinctly disagree. I went, worried that the whole movie would be "Robot kills all"..
:)
It wasnt that. Sure, it wasnt a character-driven movie, but hey, this isnt Dangerous Liaisons.
This was a great vehicle to show off Carrie-Ann's GORGEOUS body (SOooo close to seeing what we want), alot of action, and a GREAT set of special effects.
As to the 'sympathy' level of the astronauts, BULL. You are being spoonfed too many movie astronauts. They have a mission to accomplish, and are generally military men. They analyze the situation, and act.
This was a pretty good movie in my opinion. It sounds like you had unrealistic expectations for an action movie to be a drama.
When is the last good action movie with a SOLID plot and character development? T2? Even that had its problems..
Maybe the Matrix, but that is the hand of god, blessing the silver screen, and truly, one of a kind.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
P is also the phosphate in the DNA/RNA "backbone".
You are aware that Mars Attacks was a comedy, right timothy? It was supposed to be sort of hokey and rely on cliches from other sci-fi movies. It really fit the Tim Burton mold - if you like his movies, you liked Mars Attacks. OK, I wouldn't have seen it in the theater (and didn't, in fact) but it was OK on video.
I have no such excuses for Battlefield Earth, but on the other hand I could tell it was lousy from the previews and didn't go see it 'cause I don't want to encourage L. Ron Hubbard :)
...ethereal, not-so-patiently waiting for the new Dune movie on Sci-Fi in December...
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
In fact, I think that if the old Star Wars movies were first released today, we'd trash them, too. Even worse, look at how far Star Trek has drifted from the real of reality. Babylon 5's attempts to maintain at least a little realism wouldn't make it through here, either.
Instead, we're so imbued with certain stereotypes that we even let The Phantom Menace's "midiclorians" - the "tiny organism that inhabit every cell in your body and channel the Force" - slip by with little complaint.
So here we are, trying to get people to try and accept a new operating system - even thought it isn't perfect - but meanwhile, we can't accept a few flaws in our movies. I'm not really trying to defend movies abusing the laws of physics, I'm just trying to point out some more of our trademark Slashdot hypocrisy that turns up every few weeks.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
Thanks for the advice. I'll go check out "The Grinch" instead.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
I guess that since I enjoy most movies, I'm either stupid and ignorant, or I'm simply not part of the /. community.
Flame me all you want, but at least my panties aren't in a bunch...
I enjoyed the film, but that scene pissed me off. Given their situation, the fact that it looked like they were going die of thirst, they would have saved their piss. At the very least, their suits would have recycled it. into drinking water. When you're on a dry planet with no other source of water, you can't afford to be squeemish.
Yeah, thin white tank-tops have been standard issue for females in space since Ellen Ripley - a trend I do not wish to discourage. Frankly NASA's TV broadcasts would become more popular if they'd adopt it.
...or Mission To Mars, which had people audibly snickering when I saw it. At least, for the most part, these people behaved as if they possessed an IQ closer to a scientist than a Hollywood Screenwriter.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I wasn't taught anything about homosexuality in school -- and yet I still came to the realization that I am in fact gay. It took 10 years of self-torment before I realized this. IF the schools that I went to had awareness programs, then I wouldn't have had to go through that (I would have figured things out MUCH earlier). I was brought up as a Christian, went to Church every Sunday and prayed to God each night. From the age of 11 on, a GREAT number of those prayers concerned my sexual orientation. I REALLY didn?t want to be gay, and I thought that it was unfair that I had been attracted to the same sex since at least the age of 7. NOBODY MADE ME GAY. It was not a choice that I made. If I had a choice, I most certainly would have chosen a heterosexual orientation. It is utterly stupid to think that any intelligent person (I am a graduate student with an IQ of 136) would CHOOSE to be part of a misunderstood, persecuted and even hated class. Why would anyone want to risk their life to have FEWER civil rights than everyone else? Where do you get your ?facts?? ?Virtually 100% of youth who "turn gay" do so after having been taught about it in public (government) schools? This statement is both factually false and logically incoherent. FACT: 5-7% of the US adult male population is gay (conservative figure). FACT: Historians have estimated that 5-7% of the adult male population was homosexual during Classical times in Greece (they took a partner, not a wife). FACT: The ancient Greeks ENCOURAGED young men to have sex with one another so that young girls could be married as virgins. FACT: Almost all Greek men stopped having ?homosexual? contact after marriage. So this proves that there is no link between ?learning? and orientation. Otherwise, there would have been a far larger percentage of homosexuals in ancient Greece than in the present-day West. In other words; It was OK to be gay in ancient Greece and yet 93-95% of all young men turned out to be straight. And yet, it is NOT OK to be gay in the West and the percentages are the same. None of us CHOOSE our orientation (if such a choice existed, I would not be writing this because I would be straight) ? we are pre-wired to be oriented straight or gay (or some combination thereof) during embryonic development and VERY early childhood (or so the American Medical Association says ? but what do they know, they?re only a bunch of doctors and scientists!). Twin studies have proven this ? If one separated at birth identical twin is gay, then there is a 50% chance that the other twin is also gay, just a 25% chance that a non-twin brother is gay and a mere 5-7% chance that a random friend is gay. So the greater the number of shared genes, the higher the probability that another person has the same sexual orientation. Further, these probabilities stay the same regardless of environmental factors and upbringing. Therefore, the lost 50% of the probability indicated above CANNOT be attributed to anything that the affected person thinks, believes or consciously wants (it is probably due to random differences in how the brain organizes itself during development ? genes can only define fractal patterns for brain organization, not an exact blueprint). So go ahead and trust your Scriptures. I?ll continue to trust the cold hard facts of science over a document that says that the planet is only 6000 years old ? ludicrous nonsense.
...then everyone would be heaping on it. And yet here we have yet another piece of shit from corporate, fake, brain-cell impoverished Hollywood, featuring the usual array of bad actors...It's weird reading some of the earlier posts actually defending the idea of dumbing down movies - didn't any of Jello's speech the other day tweak any neurons out there? -s- find: God: No such file or directory
Actually, the Sojourner robot DID have a cheap
:-)
Motorola radio modem for comms to the larger
lander - that was a big part of NASA's "smaller,
cheaper, faster" thing...re-use of standard parts.
However, I agree with all your other points.
Some others...
* What is the probability of the Hab module, the
Sojourner and the Russian sample return mission
all being within convenient walking distance of
the crashed mars transfer craft?
* Why the heck would you program AMEE with
techniques for killing humans? She can sense
your detailed anatomy - and has been programmed
with complex strategies of geurilla warfare
but nobody taught her "Killing Crew == Bad" ?
* But by far the worst gaffe is the lack of
spectroscopy. Why didn't they know the
up-to-the-minute distribution of O2 in the
martian atmosphere?
* Why would an unmanned Russian probe have
a voice synthesiser and a cute control panel
on it? (I liked the bear in the spacesuit
though!)
Well, for all that, there are worse ways to
spend $4 and a couple of hours - the popcorn
was *great*. Picking holes in the movie is
an entertainment in it's own right.
www.sjbaker.org
What is a reviewer supposed to say?
I'm not asking for miracles. Subjective opinion and point-by-point analysis are not only valid, they're often very useful to the movie watcher. What's totally worthless is an overall recommendation to not go and see it yourself, even if it's in the general subject area that you'd normally enjoy.
On the other hand, maybe one should examine the premise behind your question entirely. Perhaps we've been deluded into thinking that reviews do actually serve a useful purpose, on balance. Maybe the benefit is not so clearcut, maybe analysis without assessment should be the goal. It's academic though, because today's reviewers would not tolerate the suggestion that their personal emotional response is of no interest to anyone else.
I think I'll vote for diversity and support the existence of even the most extreme of reviews as general input. It's worth noting though that the only reason why the film industry does frequently produce masterpieces despite them not being box-office hits is because critics are generally ignored by everyone with a mind of their own. If it weren't so, the studios simply couldn't afford to produce the films, since nobody would go and see them after the first negative review.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Oh yeah...and
* What destroyed the Hab module (we never
found out). "Nematodes"?
* How come they didn't check telemetry
from the Hab module earlier?
www.sjbaker.org
When I saw ads for the movie "Red Planet" I hoped it was a movie-ization of the Heinlein book of the same name. You know the one -- a progenitor of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" with Boy Scouts and lots of guns.
Heinlein's science may not always have been plausible, but at least it was almost always internally consistent. (And for those of you who don't know how to read: no, "Starship Troopers" the movie was nothing like "Starship Troopers" the book; the book was squared away.)
I sure as hell wish some of those old Heinlein books would be made into movies. I'd also like to see R. A. Lafferty's "The Reefs of Space" and A. E. Van Vogt's "Voyage of the Space Beagle" on screen.
Wait! I forgot! Gene Rodenberry stole "Space Beagle," lobotomized it, and turned it into a half-assed TV show called "Star Dreck" or something.
You know, literacy is a curse, especially if you like science fiction. I have yet to see a TV or movie SF plot that wasn't done to death in novel form before WW II.
There is a whole Galaxy (and Analog and F&SF) full of good science fiction books out there waiting to be made into thoughtful, dramatic movies, but we get George Lucas and similar crud instead.
And no, it's not "sci-fi." Call it "science fiction" if you know what you're talking about and you're not TV-moronized since birth.
- Robin Miller
"science fiction fan since 1959"
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"Rock over London... Rock on Chicago..." -Wesley Willis
Heinlein is a master writer and I am a big fan of his. In fact, I consider Starship Troopers to be one of his best novels, what for all the interesting view it presents about society in the future. However, the movie really did not do justice to the novel. In fact, it took all the best points of the novel and trivialized them, turning the film into yet another Sci-fi Action flick.
It is for just this reason that I never wish to see a movie adaptation of Heinlein's master work, and possibly most famous, A Stranger in a Strange Land. IIRC, there have been talks about it, but this is such a great novel that I'd hate to see the movie industry trivialize it by butchering the book into some kind of mass intertainment pice of crap.
But enough of my ranting. This is jsut my $.02.
--------------------------------------
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
It wouldn't be very hard for someone on Earth to figure this out with some spectroscopy. A spectroscope is very simple. You can get a real cheap one for like $10. Anyone on earth with access to a good one could have been tracking the build up of oxygen. One doesn't need a "external oxygen detector."
I actually didn't see the movie, but I have been frustrated by such things in the past. Like this one movie where a creature had like "30% human DNA and 70% gecko DNA" which is of course crap because neither humans nor reptiles have DNA that unique. If they simply hadn't mentioned how they know the monster was composed as such it wouldn't be so bad.
That's exactly why I usually don't listen to critics. I generally read reviews only to get more information about what the movie is about or to see more clips of the movie before I actually decide to see it. Also while a reviewer saying a movie is crap may not influence me...a reviewer saying a movie is excellent will likely influence me more to see it.
I liked Mars Attacks! though it is a bit weak.
I really disliked the Matrix (thought it had no plot just a bunch of mindless action and one cool quote "free your mind") and didn't understand why everyone else thought it was brilliant?!? I really was surprised to hear people comparing the Matrix to Blade Runner which IMHO is the best sci-fi drama out there (2001: A Space Odyssey is a close 2nd).
I haven't seen Red Planet but intend to since I like the way it looks and hey Roger Ebert gave it 3 out of 4 stars.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
this country has the cultural taste of well... george w. bush. well most of the country anyway.
bah. start over
In fact, all this review gave me was the already well published movie critic's view, plus the "usual" science complaints.... not worth the pixels it's printed on.
IMO, the movie was fun and the tech details are about as good as it gets from Hollywood. It got more than enough right to be a pleasant change from the usual warp drive and screaming, swooping fighers SF settings. If you like science fiction, and can live with its admittedly low standard of character development, ignore the reviewer and see this movie.
I don't believe 'P' is one of the bases used in DNA (CGAT), but it may be used in RNA.
actually i think the P refers to the phosphate backbone..
It had great potential - what a f***ing waste. I still liked the atmosphere, though.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Before I say whether or not I agree with the review of the film, I'd just like to say this to everyone who has commented with something to the effect of, "It's an action/sci-fi movie, don't expect it to actually be good. Live with it." This is about the piss poorest attitude I've heard in a while (well, outside of Florida :) If we expect less, we'll keep getting less.
Let's see when was the last time I saw a sci-fi movie with good characterization, a good plot, a cohesive story, and that was directed well? I think the last one was the Iron Giant. GREAT movie, but it tanked at the box office. We HAVE to support better movies better.
Now, on to Red Planet. This was NOT a good movie. The rocot cat thing was the best part of the movie but, oddly enough didn't play a very integral role in the film, and had its own problems as well. I would rather have seen a short CG animation of the robot (AMEE) being put through its paces than this piece of drek. Let's see, where do I start... There was NO characterization. The reviewer is correct in stating that the audience can't care about the fate of the characters, because we are never truly shown what they are. About twenty minutes into the film I turned to my wife to ask if it was directed by a music video director. The reason I asked was that the pacing was horrible. It was extremely choppy. The story, while having an interesting opening premise, was terrible. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but the idea that NASA would have done NO research before sending humans out to "check on the situation on Mars" is ludicrous. They weren't being sent to find out what happened to the algea, they were being sent to find out why the oxygen was depleted. Which means that somehow we knew that it was depleted, when in fact it wasn't. When the crew arrives, they don't do any sort of atmospheric analysis. Even if they were dispatched to look into the disappearance of the algae, they should have known about the insects due to the knowledge that the algae was disappearing. The ship had no warning at all about the "solar flare" that crippled it. At the very least, the onboard systems should have seen the anomaly. (This is a pet peave of mine) The computer engaged in niceties. I HATE that. I hate the wasted processor cycles that Windows has now with the silly animations of files flying from one folder to another now, I certainly don't want a computer that my life depends on wasting CPU cycles telling me "Thank You" and "Your Welcome." The robot. Ahhhhh, the robot. There is NO WAY IN HELL that the military would lend a, for all intents and purposes, civilian organization a piece of hardware, have the time to reprogram it for a scientific mission and LEAVE THE MILITARY PROGRAM INTACT AT ALL!!! Not to mention the fact that it was a crappy design in the first place to be so easily knocked off of mission by a shock impact. No remote kill switch. Inefficient military tactics (WHY would the military program it to slowly kill a group of the enemy one by one)? Again, AMEE was not a pivotal character in the movie. In fact, none of the characters were. I don't think I've ever seen a movie so filled with such unimportant characters and events. It seemed that nothing that happened was, I don't know, big enough. Lots of little things happened (too many, in my opinion), but if you had removed any of them (at least after the crash), it would not have altered the "story" much at all. AMEE, the guy dying of internal bleeding, the guy being thrown off the cliff, the ice storm, none of it really mattered. In addition, none of the (surviving) characters were in any way altered by the end of the film. I could go on with scientific faults (many others have already done so), but they all seem to pale in comparison with the truly awful writing and directing. In the end, this movie looked good visually, and the sound was pretty good, but we deserve more than that. It's about time to send a message to Hollywood that we won't put up with this crap anymore.
FWIW, I don't think this was as bad as Mission to Mars and was MUCH better than Supernova, but then, some crap doesn't stick as bad as other crap, but it's still crap.
But then, maybe all my experiences are a little skewed because I come from a small Arkansas town with a largley uneducated population. In fact, we just got a theatre in town a few years ago, where some of the most popular movies have been things like MI:2 and Battlefield Earth. But then maybe that's because we only have 4 screens and we have to drive 45 min. to get to a good theater. In all though, I think that the reason Hollywood keeps putting out the mindless drivel that they do is because the majority of the population wishes for a movie that is emotionally shallow and for the most part visually entertaining. Historically, that kind of stuff sells better than the indie films.
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If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
Thanks for the review...I'll be avoiding this one (I'm STILL pissed about M2M. It will be on MST4K). Waterworld was pretty good though. I think people expected way too much and didn't get it and they feel burned. The same thing happened to SW Episode 1.
Note to self, NEVER take movie advice from somebody who actually admits to going to see BOTH Battlefield Earth AND Waterworld...
DNA has these 4 bases GCAT RNA contains GCA and U P is shorthand for Proline, an amino acid
..........FULL STOP.
Try "Event Horizon"
-Josh
Excellent mis-use of the english language there. And so apt. Oh, how I chortled. Can you get anti-climatic control for your car?
Ben^3
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
I though Event Horizon was horrible... it had a really cool premise and good atmosphere, but three-quarters into it it just got completely gross and incoherent.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
they're all Fantasy. Heck, even David Brin will admit it, although he can at least be fairly technically accurate.
Now if we could get Brian Stableford to do a good science background on a movie, and throw in a good dialogue/human writer, maybe I'll revise my opinion, but it sounds like more of the same.
Will in Seattle
. In the middle of the movie, they went "whoa! we have no more money" and hauled in a cheap-ass director to finish up what the first guy began (sorry, don't recall names) - and so the whole business with the pyrotechnics and the ship blows chunks.
Right, and you know, they shoot movies in order, shot for shot....
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
At least the producers of Battlefield Earth had an excuse -- they're $cientologists.
Technical errors which are too glaring to ignore:
The direction and screenplay sucked, sucked, sucked, and it didn't even swallow. Wooden characters; gratuitous ham-handed sex; subplots that are introduced and forgotten in seconds; dumb, stereotyped, dumbass dialog; inexplicable choices for the crew (come on, are these really the best and brightest? Or did NASA just wander down to the nearest pool hall and pick up a few buffoons to head to Mars?); horrible flashbacks; random inexplicable crises; and feeble attempts at heroics are just a few of the more egregious problems with the directing.
Yuck.
My friends and I snuck into "Best of Show" immediately afterward. Much better movie (albeit with no special effects)! We laughed our asses off.
Actually, it has been estimated to get all of Mars with breathable atmosphere of sufficient pressure to enable to walking aournd without a pressure suit, that it would, in fact, take over a thousand years. However, several schemes have been proposed that would raise the over all atmospheric pressure only somewhat, but would raise the atmospheric pressure in some of the deeper canyons to a level sufficient that a human could walk around with just an oxygen mask. Such proposals estimate that it would "only" take 1-2 hundred years to accomplich something like that. Just some food for thought. I haven't seen the movie, and it sounds like they don't take any of this into account, but there is some intersting science on terraforming out there. It doesn't make it like earth, but it does make it "liveable".
"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking." -Mark Twain
I dissagree with your comment about astronauts being "generally millitary men." The days where space and the millitary went hand in hand are pretty much long gone (thank god). Today's astronaut need not be a millitary monkey as they were in the early days of the space program. Now they are mainly composed of scientist, only the pilot usually being of millitary (test pilot) training.
admit defeat, live in decline, be the victim of our own design
The Matrix was a Kung Fu movie, with the sci fi angle thrown in to make it more interesting, and allow for better wardrobe and those cool cyberpunk sets. Kung Fu movies never have to make excuses.
This is the most insightful thing anyone has said about a movie on Slashdot for a long time.....
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Stephen C. VanDahm
I took a great class while an undergrad at USC: CNTV-466, taught by Leonard Maltin (the movie critic guy). The nature of the class is a discussion unto itself, but my point here is Maltin's philosophy of watching movies, which you have hit on the head of the proverbial nail.
Maltin's philosophy is to try to understand what the intentions of a particular movie are, so that it can be reviewed in that context. As you and others have mentioned, most movies are not of the caliber of American Beauty (which we screened a month before opening night, with Anette Benning as the guest!). Yes, comparatively, Mars Attacks! is a pile of mindless drivel -- but as a hokey comedy, I don't think it gets much better. And for me, Waterworld is a decent movie (average plot, nice scenery), if you ignore the whole "smokers" sub-plot as well as the end of the movie, when all of the lame-ass morallity sub-plots come to fruition.
Yes, there are some truly horrible movies out there. These tend to be the ones that fail to live up to their own intentions. (Waterworld, for example: in a world without dirt -- a major plot element and intention of the movie -- how were they growing the tobacco for their cigarettes? Hydroponics? In the dark bowels of the Exxon Valdez? Get rid of the whole "smokers" thing and it isn't so bad...) But summarily judging against a movie because it is not Academy Award(tm) quality is stupid and shortsighted.
Most movie critics are idiots. But after that class, I have respect for what Maltin says -- even if I later disagree with his opinion.
And for the record, I saw Red Planet last night. The shower scene does not live up to my expectations, but there are enough gratuitous "nippy" scenes to keep me happy. The only two "errors" that really stood out in my mind were the DNA code messup (ATGC, not ATGP) and calling the little critters "nematodes" -- they look a lot more like crustaceans or insects, not little worms.
With respect to the above, this movie is much better than Mission to Mars. I would rather have limited, unemotional dialogue (RP) than hokey, overly emotional dialogue (M2M), and the only product placement that I noticed were the technical labels on their space suits (Toshiba and Hughes are the only two I can recall). And the dramatic scene where one person EVA's to rescue the other while tied by umbillicus to the main ship: a nice, happy ending in RP. That one scene in M2M is what pushed me over the edge -- I was willing to forgive its faults until that point, and after that I was looking at my watch, waiting for it to end...
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
You obviously have a lot of misplaced faith in Hollywood.
Weren't you paying attention? Their instrument package was destroyed in the crash.
Free Hans!
Isn't "Felicia's Journey" directed by Canada's own (by way of Armenia and Egypt) Atom Egoyan? Of course, in this day and age, there are lots of movies that are not easy to peg to one country.
BTW, I also highly recommend Egoyan's "Exotica" and "The Sweet Hereafter".
Bit of trivia: His father named him "Atom" in honor of Egypt's first nuclear reactor. How funky is that? So who among you will be the first to name your kid "Linus", "Linux", or better yet, "Kernel"?
Unfortunately, real zero-g fire pretty much goes out right away as, in general, there is no draft to bring fresh reaction products in. The only unintentional fire in a spaceship was the one on Mir, a few years ago, discussed in Linenger's book -- what was burning there was an 'oxygen candle', which of course could supply its own oxygen to the flame.
Of course, the studio just wanted something that looked cool, so we made some assumptions that made reasonable scientific sense and still looked cool -- the fire was usually a surface the moved through the atmosphere, the idea being that the fire would oxidize the fuel as it went; but it didn't just sit in one place and burn.
For the (other) nerds out there, the animation was all done with my own Z animation system and rendered with Pixar's Renderman on our Linux render garden (5 machines doesn't count as a render farm.)
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
That was Pathfinder, yeah. They also used some off-the-shelf radios for rover/base comms. They then spent a few million bucks qualifying the hardware for space use.
However, they didn't run the hardware through the ringer. If we had a strong solar flare it could have wiped out those radios. It was a calculated risk, to save money.
If I see a review of something I look for cues that tell me if the reviewer is on the same page as me or not. In this case the reviewer thought that movies that I thought sucked also sucked, and he leveled criticisms that are my views as well. If he had done the opposite, I would have figured out that he was some subnormal who likes any sci-fi, stupid or not, and I still would of gotten something out of the review. This second, stupid reviewer would of praised the movie, called shower scenes the best part and I would know to go nowhere near the theatre.
I still get something out of the review either way. Yes, I know that this means that I have to approach the review with a modicum of critical thinking myself, but the world can be tough that way. The problem with most mainstream reviewing these days is that too many are afraid to step on the toes of the companies that produce movies or music or books and so we get a ton of "good" reviews or mediocre reviews that hesitate to say something sucks.
Perhaps you should read Kant's "Critique of Judgment" for a some insight into those value judgments that you circularly refute yet engage in yourself.......
Hey, you think your house is cool?
I hate to punch the face of general opinion, but the Matrix just wasn't that good. (IMHO)
./'ers liked it...
The special effects *were* good for the most part, but there were some definite iffy places here and there. (that underwater monster thing for one)
The character development was ok for KR's character but the rest of the cast were instantly forgettable. Why did that guy kill the other guy again? Erm.. oh yes, because he was sick of the real world and of course, that *always* leads to you killing your best and only friends.
The storyline was cliched to an extreme, the virtual world... escape (from it)... human duracels... robotic jellyfish... mysterious men in black suits... huge amounts of weapons... love interest that gets killed... etc etc.
It rates a little higher than Independence Day, and only because of the effects and lack of bad jokes.
I'm really surprised to find that the majority of
PS. On a different note: did anyone else notice that the IMDb (http://us.imdb.com/) had "Rendezvous with Rama" listed as "in production" until about 2 months ago when it suddenly disappeared? Mistaken information or was the plug pulled? Anyone know?
movie is still better than a good drama....Especially now days when the sci fi movies are far and few in between. (At least Jar Jar was no where to be seen)
sog
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Note the UHF modems on the Microrover and Pathfinder.
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
...As a survivor of both Mars Attacks and Battlefield Earth...
Mars Attacks was an awesome movie, you have no idea what you are talking about.
What's wrong with Hudson Hawk? Goddamn, up until The Whole Nine Yards, that was my favorite Bruce Willis movie of all times.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
I get tired of these movies bashing Russians and Russian-made stuff. In this one, Val Kilmer makes a comment about the Russian lander on the surface and questions its trustworthiness, because it's Russian. The same type thing happened in Armaggedon, which bored me to the point I got up and walked out. I don't think this is necessary. In the movie "Contact", the launch craft was made in Japan, as I recall, and no one questioned its trustworthiness. I realize this probably represents common opinion, but Hollywood should give credit where it's due - the Russians were in space before anyone else and make some of the most reliable launch vehicles on the planet. I noticed a Russian-sounding name in the credits - Sergay ******off (can't remember the rest)- who worked on the scale models. Wonder what he thought about the Russian references...
In the Matrix she brings Neo back to life by telling him she loves him. She saves Val Kilmer, who should have been long dead from hypoxia, by giving him a thump on the chest. I think this woman is a supernatural force to be reckoned with.
Correct!!! P is not a standard base in DNA or RNA sequencing. In fact, in molecular biology and biochemistry circles, P stands for Proline, an amino acid. Proline is part of proteins, not DNA.
"Me fail English, that's unpossible." --Ralphie
The point of a review is to provide the reader with enough information to form an opinion about the movie. A reviewer should be intelligent and creative enough to describe what qualities in the movie might appeal to somebody else instead of just harping on why he hated it. Pay careful attention to great reviewers - though they tell you why they did (or didn't) like a movie, they'll also tell you what was good about it.
What should the reviewer say? How about (summarized), "If you're looking for deep character studies, this isn't the movie for you. If you're looking for miltary figures stalking through lush SFX scenery and don't care too much about the accuracy of the physics, this could be a movie for you."
I don't care about what Joe-Sixpack-Reviewer thinks of the movie, I care about what I would think of the movie.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
That's the problem with critique in general: unless you know the reviewer, and the relation to his critiques to your own taste, they're as good as worthless. I usually watch movies on TV, and read my TV guide and newspaper reviews of the films to be shown, and since both have a tendency to intellectual, elitist tastes I can read some of their bad reviews as recommendations to me. (After a days work I truely enjoy a simple action movie, especially with simple humour, and I'll be too tired to enjoy a deeply psychological French drama. So even if the former may basically be trash, and the latter have won prizes all over, I'll probably watch the first one.)
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
The truth shall make you fret. (Ankh-Morpork tImes motto)
It would have been ok if they had removed the starting voice over and added some better sound effects. Reminded me of how the first blade runner was compared to the release of the vangelis directors cut.
The special effects *were* good for the most part, but there were some definite iffy places here and there. (that underwater monster thing for one)
/.'ers and the like is the special effects and the slightly (I did say slightly) Gibsonesque quality of the story.
Underwater monster thing? I've racked my brains, even considered re-watching Matrix but sorry, I just don't recall any "underwater monster things" in Matrix.
It's a small point to pick on in your critique of Matrix, but it's hard to take you seriously when it appears you're wandering off into some kind of movie halucination right off the start.
Besides, IMHO at least, the main allure of The Matrix to
ChodaBoy
- The preceding statement is the product of a deranged mind and the sole property of the voices in my head.
"oh crap, these are metric algae, not Imperial-measured algae!"
Tell me again, were we meant to send 100 TONS of algae, or 100 TONNES?
--
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
I liked Mars Attacks. "Do not run! We are you friends!"
On average, a person sites between 4 and 5 unsubstantiated statistics per day.
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
From timothy: "As a survivor of both Mars Attacks and Battlefield Earth, I know how deadly movie trauma can be..." If you suffered "trauma" by seeing Mars Attacks, then you are woefully underqualified to be writing movie reviews. Hell, if you suffered "trauma" by seeing Mars Attacks, then you are woefully underqualified to be tying your own shoelaces. It was an hommage to B-grade sci-fi movies, get it? Oh, and it starred Natalie Portman. Dolt. From RESPAWN: "I'm really not surprised at the awfulness of this movie. In fact, it's exactly what I was predicting. I can't think of a single good movie that was based on a novel by Heinlein." Whatever, Brainiac.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Is the idea that the bacteria produced enough oxygen to envelope Mars entirely. OK - let's pretend that it is possible. Still these bunch of scientists approaching the planet to find the cause of the supposed oxygen depletion never bother to do basic simple spectroscopy to discover this, until they had to take off their helmets to breathe to discover it!
Whoever wrote the script had no idea about how science is done. Scientists are not technical workers who go to Mars to fix an oxygen problem like plumbers turning up in your home to fix a leaky pipe. They are curious people who will go to great lengths to VERIFY that Mars does indeed have no oxygen before embarking on such a trip. And you think they would do something so simple as to point a spectrometer or send probe to get close to it first!
The scriptwriter is an absolute moron.
Damn...50 years from now and we're still surfing the Web?
"I do not avoid women, Mandrake. But I do deny them my essence"
Reasonable science fiction, but weak story telling. The plot is plausible. The special effects are reasonably good for Y2K (but may look hokey in a couple years).
I almost walked out of the theatre when I heard the starting narration. A sign of very bad story telling is have to begin with a lecture. Then came Stamp's hokey philosophizing.
I'm really not surprised at the awfulness of this movie. ...I can't think of a single good movie that was based on a novel by Heinlein. ...Heinlein is a master writer and I am a big fan of his.
How can you claim to be a fan of Heinlein and think this movie is based on his novel? All during the summer we've been warned that the only thing this movie has in common with the novel is the title and the setting of Mars. The movie was in no way based on Heinlein's Red Planet and if you'd actually read the book, you might know that.
Now granted, you do have a point with Starship Troopers and Puppet Masters. Both movies trivialized great classic Sci-Fi stories and turned intelligent writing into typical Mental Pablum sci-fi, hollywood style. I too hope 'they' never attempt to make a movie based on SISL, there is no way hollywood could possibly do it justice. The censors and religious fundamentalists would have the story cut down to one useable page before the script could even be penned.
But seriously, think before making statements like your opening, or at least read the book first.
ChodaBoy
- The preceding statement is the product of a deranged mind and the sole property of the voices in my head.
and that's if you ignore Plato and Aristotle
As you probably should. But Archimedes was a great physicist, often considered the first.
That was a great pun!
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
We can definitively end all debate on this subject by using the Tool of Objective Truth, a.k.a. the Sucks-Rules-O-Meter.
Waterworld: sucks 236, rules/rocks 1255
Mission to Mars: sucks 93, rules/rocks 2280
Mars Attacks: sucks 204, rules/rocks 922
Battlefield Earth: sucks 81, rules/rocks 1624
The Matrix: sucks 1294, rules/rocks 6641
Red Planet: sucks 117, rules/rocks 2847
(Note: the terms "Mission to Mars" and "Red Planet" combined with "rocks" may be yielding hits based on actual Martian lithology, not the movies.)
So there you have it, all of these movies rule more than they suck. I don't much agree with these results, but what can I say? This is hard science we're dealing with here; the TOOT does not lie!
Even NASA says now that anyone who has anything to learn about keeping shit up in space for VERY long periods of time have to learn from the Russians. Their program failed not because it was flawed but because it ran out of money. Damn if anyone else could keep a functioning Mir in orbit for 11 years. The great story I like is the $500K Fisher space pen that NASA commissioned so that astros could writ during an EVA. The Astros showed it to the Russians on Soyuz who whipped out a pencil!
They got a working lander on the moon first, they go a remote piloted lander on the moon first, they got the first 1 and 3 man crews in space and they built the largest launch vehicles. True the program never had the high tech gee-whiz bells-n-whistles of the American program but it did prove its point with comparitively little funding which is just what Americans are demanding of their space program now.
Perhaps you should read Kant's "Critique of Judgment" for a some insight into those value judgments that you circularly refute yet engage in yourself......
That would indeed be a possible counter argument, if it weren't for the fact that I did not refute the reviewer's value judgements about the film. What I said was that his judgements were not of universal relevance. Undoubtedly his judgements are completely valid in so far as he applies them to himself.
The question here is not the validity of the value judgements, but of the scope of their validity.
As for Kant, he was the ultimate universalist, a position which he somehow managed to defend while accepting the impossibility of direct knowledge of hard reality because our only access to it is empirical. Good observation, but questionable and dangerous deduction, in view of where it led his successors through Fichte. If he were alive today my reply to him would be "Fine, just as long as you don't impose your inferred universals on those who beg to differ." Ultimately it leads to absolutism, and coercion at the point of a gun.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
If the next POTUS is GWB then we'll be treated to moooovies about satanic communist child molesting foreigners from another dimension who are stupidly battling Christ's new army for the souls of all the CHIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLDREN !!!!!
What are you, still in junior high school? Don't make enough money to buy a movie ticket? Do you steal software also? The free software movement is great, but it doesn't mean we should all start stealing anything we don't feel like paying for.
--
Ranger Speedbumpp, visual effects supervisor for "Candy Von Dewd and the Girls from Latexploitia", to be released Spring 2001
It's been over ten years since I saw it and I don't remember too much about it, but I remember it was so long that if for nothing else it should get marks for trying so hard.
Does anyone really expect much going into these movies? You know what? 9/10 people find "realistic" space action scenes boring. Just ask Johnny Sixpack what he thought about 2001.
You will never go broke underestimating the intelligence of your audience. Most people go to films like this for the same reason I'm about to spend all day watching football, for action and maybe if I'm lucky, some drama. Not a coherent story. Not for scientific accuracy. And they certainly don't want to think. "Who Wants To Be A Millionare" is popular for the same reason. Zero substance and questions that would make a 3rd grader feel smart.
end communication
I liked it too... a lot actually.
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
I think you meant Mission to Mars. M2M was that other atrocious sci-fi movie that came out recently. Mars Attacks! was a clever comedy by Tim Burton which, although not universally liked, certainly doesn't deserve to be tossed in the "atrociously bad" movie heap.
Man, I read that book when I was 11. It was incredible. The movie was lackluster in comparison, but at least it tossed in some deadly humor. That part where the guy loses his skull in the training mission was hilarious...
Anyway, the book was great. I can still remember how creeped out I felt when it discussed the bugs and how close they came on some of those missions. I'm heading out to buy a new copy to read...
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Let me give you the lowdown
I actually enjoyed to Mission to Mars---it wasn't a triumph of movie making or good writing but it was solid entertainment with really nifty special effects. I've seen Red Planet and it might be added to my short list of Worst Movies Ever Made (Along with the original Dune, Mad City and Battlefield Earth).
Damn sheep....
> I don't believe 'P' is one of the bases used in > DNA (CGAT), but it may be used in RNA.
:-) DNA is made up of "A",
Almost but not quite.
"C", "G" and "T"s, while RNA is made up of "A",
"C", "G" and "U"s.
Are you sure that that article was by Bertrand Russell, rather than Eugene Wigner? (I'd like to know. It didn't seem to have the clarity of expression typical of BR.)
In any event, the author of The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences doesn't seem to have gone to Philosophy of Science 101. He writes:
The argument could be of such abstract nature that it might not be possible to resolve the conflict, in favor of one or of the other theory, by an experiment. Such a situation would put a heavy strain on our faith in our theories and on our belief in the reality of the concepts which we form. It would give us a deep sense of frustration in our search for what I called "the ultimate truth."
Any half-decent introduction to Science would have told him that Science is not a search for "the ultimate truth" -- that dodo is in the realm of philosophy. Furthermore, scientists seek agreement between their models and the behaviour of reality only because that makes their theories useful as opposed to being merely mathematically interesting. The inability to distinguish between two theories is nothing to shed tears about, since scientists know that their models and reality herself are two different things entirely, so there might well be multiple equally effective theoretical representations. One can only approximate to how reality behaves with the models of Science, and they never pretend to represent The Truth. They'll always be subject to revision and replacement by tomorrow's improved versions, and you certainly couldn't throw away The Truth with such impunity if you had it in your hands.
The relationship between theory and reality is very carefully crafted coincidence, nothing more. And that's a very powerful observation, because it means that reality will continue to surprise us forever, so mankind's future is potentially unbounded.
In writing about the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics", the author was merely being mystical. It was a good read, but the sense of wonder doesn't really add anything useful to the discussion, even if he hadn't fallen into the trap of thinking of theory as (tentative) reality.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
...it's a movie, an action movie at that.
I've given up on action movies making too much sense. As a geek (by profession) and a rocket scientist (by degree) I don't mind when a movie doesn't have every little detail correct. I would be ecstatic if I did find a movie that dotted every i and crossed every t.
If you want realism take a hike. If you want realism in movies...good luck. In fact go watch "Men of Honor", that's the most realism you'll get in a movie.
Red Planet had stunning visuals and special effects. As has been posted, the robot animation is amazing. I would recommend it as a matinee, but not a full-price action movie necessarily.
Grab your Coke, get your Goobers, sit back, and enjoy the show.
I attribute it to the "Dr. Clayton Forester" syndrome. These poor critics are forced to watch utterly horrible movies on a daily basis by sadistic editors.
Of course they are going to write negative reviews.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
You might want to pick up a copy of Baudrillard's 'Simulacra and Simulation'. 'The Matrix' is part commentary/gloss of the work as well as a Swiftian parody ala early William Gibson.
Do not attempt to read Baudrillard straight through, take his ranting with a grain of salt, and realise he wrote this in 1982.
Usual disclaimers apply.
You don't need "most people." You need about 100 warm bums to fill the seats.
Surely any town of reasonable size (ie. 10K) has a hundred people who are looking for something better.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I was quoting the person who wrote the review.
I guess you didn't get the implied statement. "Red Planet pretends to be scientificaly accurrate. The Matrix does not."
Before I go any further, let me emphasize that I have _not_ seen RED PLANET. But this passage from the review caught my eye:
"It's a fairly standard plot, not a bad start at all--but at no point do we get any idea of who the characters are. For the rest of this movie, we're kept in the dark: no character is explored in any detail, characters are inexplicably offended and say weird statements which have little or no rational value to them. No scene ever gets to the meat of who these people are, why anyone might be doing what they're doing, or even some clue as to the dynamics which connect them. It's nearly a half-hour into the movie before we even start to know what kind of person Val Kilmer's character is--and he's the star of the show! By the end, it's hard to like, dislike or even much care about these characters. No sympathy, no tension, no nothing."
This passage fairly accurately describes the characterization in RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA and in other works by that titan of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke. His plots were often mere skeletons on which to hang descriptions of the strange and wonderful, and his human characters in such stories often were generic stereotypes of astronaut-scientists. (Quick: what memorable differences separate the characters of 2001's Commander Bowman and RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA's Commander Norton?)
Mind you, even on a bad day, the science in Clarke's science fiction was plausible to a degree not likely to be found in RED PLANET--but then, I've long since given up expecting much plausibility from what passes for "sci-fi" in the movies these days. I'll be glad for anything which isn't just a dumb action or horror movie with a futuristic gloss and lots of special effects (qq. v. THE FIFTH ELEMENT, EVENT HORIZON, &c.)
hyacinthus
[OT: Hey great user #!!]
Basically, I enjoyed the movie as a "don't think to hard, sit back and enjoy the special FX" sort of movie, and that was about it. There was some bad science, the occasional correct science (such as the fire extinguisher in zero-G), and a fair amount of action. Not too bad.
But, it was definitely one of those movies that, as you get more distant from it, you realize how empty it was. Like a firework after it's been lit, the flash is gone, the wow is gone, and you're left with just so much hollow shell.
That said, the movie was worth it, but only because we got in with discount tickets so it was $3.00 a head instead of $7.00. W/out the discount tickets, I'd say wait for it to come out on VHS/DVD/Beta/Whatever and rent it from Ballbuster or something.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Program Intellivision!
As to the irrelevancy, well, people like to read reviews of works. I think that your worries trivialize this and while you worry about absolutism your relativistic tendencies could lead to a coercion wherein dialogue or assertions are not permissable.
While Socrates did say that "The one thing that I do know is that I don't know", he was more than happy to open the floor for more blathering about whatever. I leave the scope of value judgments for those that want to engage in the dialogue to decide. You seem to want to preempt that.
I would say that you come off as some overeducated crank who hates critics but your taste in movies leads me to believe otherwise.
"We're the hardest working band in the business, I don't care if we're the best!"-Iggy Pop with the Stooges.
Hey, you think your house is cool?
How about seeing the movie for yourself instead of relying on a single opinion? Or do you agree/follow everything taco and his cronies push on people?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
You call Kubrick cruel? Nobody is but yourself is forcing his films on you. But if you choose to watch them anyway, that is perhaps you find them worth watching.
Granted they are slow, but in movies as in a lot of other things, the patience is often rewarded.
Your point of view does not cover all the facts. You only include those things that you can defend. (at least, that you think you can defend) 2001 was made at a time when man was just getting to the moon. (Neil Rmstrong =July 20th, 1969; 2001 =1968) It was a bold look at the future at a time when the country was buzzing with the wonders of space. Those scenes were slow for a reason..people had never seen it before. You even got the point and didn't realize it: Kubrick took every day activities and showed them to you in a very possible future, and what you get is a breath taking vision. He even made a link to the past with the half way finished space station and the comments on the space food getting better all the time. It wasn't some gross prediction where we have become all knowing and can press a button to have gravity. His thoughts on artificial gravity are used today. When they first built the new spacestation they sent a feed of one of the astronauts jogging exactly as Poole did it in 2001. You have been too overwhelemed by over done space plots, special effects, and new and improved gruesome death scenes. Try thinking when you watch a Kubrick movie, and you might just come away appreciating it. Or go back to listening to your Britney Spears music, that's probably all you can handle anyway.
Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart
- OK, I know the actual science of physics has only been around for around 50-75 years, but it's pretty well documented;
Wow, you're off by almost an order of magnitude on the age of the science of physics -- and that's if you ignore Plato and Aristotle's efforts.You see just as much of her in the Matrix, dummy. Expect for the fact that you... almost... see... the.... edge..... of.... her...... BREAST! Oh my God! Go take a shower or something. Get three freinds together and Porno is a lot more bang for your buck.
Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart
"The list just goes on and on. Kubric is generally terrible at making interesting movies."
*trying really hard to breath*
You really think Kubrick (it has a "K" on the end) is boring, huh? I'll eventually get around to destroying your opinions, but you forgot to include destructions of Kubrick's two best films: Dr. Strangelove and Clockwork Orange (or did those not fit your whole Kubrick is boring philosophy?). Frankly, I have never, once, laughed as hard as I did during Dr. Strangelove. It is absolutely hilarious and brilliant. Kubrick is able to capture the paranoia of an era and show the utter absurdity of the whole thing in around two hours.
Also, if you don't find watching Malcolm McDowell beat someone to death with a giant, ceramic penus interesting, well, I'd question your values. Frankly, Clockwork was great, mainly becuase it was so wierd. The synth recordings of Beetoven and the aforementioned penus just contribute to the singularly odd vision that this film is.
Now, on to your arguments about Kubrick's other works being boring. Both the Killing and "That stupid one with Kurk Douglass " (which was called Paths of Glory, by the way) focus on the absurdity of life, and they both do it in rather fascinating ways. The man strapped to the streacher in Paths and the pointless killing of a race horse in The Killing. Also, the end of The Killing is one of the most amazing and poignant shots every recorded.
The point of his long shots, in all of his films, are to capture the beauty of everyday objects. His lingering camera work (especially in Eyes Wide Shut and Barry Lyndon ("The one about the irish kid who duels his step-father and wounds him in the leg after a half-hour duel sequence") create the effect of being in a painting (watch in Eyes how the shot of the junkie oding on the couch resembles the painting on the wall. see the point?) All of these techniques are meant to present film as art, not just a form of popular entertainment. That's what the point of Kubrick's films are. Not to entertain. Watching his works are an exercise in experiencing what film can be, in the presence of an artist.
"God is Dead"
--Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is Dead"
"God is Dead"
--Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is Dead"
--God
I know the actual science of physics has only been around for around 50-75 years, but it's pretty well documented; and you can get an excellent primer from many, many books, and see it used properly in a story in many science fiction novels. Gravity, mass and velocity aren't magic -- so you can't make them suddenly appear, disappear, or become less or greater then they were originally.
That's funny, I thought that whole field had been around for a lot more than 75 years. I must have been hallucinating about that Newton guy.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Its people like this that make me glad I stopped listening or reading reviews and letting them affect my judgement years ago.
In fact, I've found out that if the 'establishment' says a movie is 'wonderful, must see' its more than likely is crap, and if its 'horrible' its actually a great see.
Red planet is a good movie...its not Gladiator, but its defenitely worth a weekend movie. This is from someone who doesn't have some Journalism or English degree and thinks hes hot shit, and has to diss on everything.
Heres a little fact for SD: Over 3/4ths of movie reviews are strongy negative. Not just 'it could use some improvement' negative, but 'we should push the director of this movie into a oven and set to broil' negative.
The nice thing about that movie is that I get to see a different version of it every time it's on TV. I really don't think I've ssen the same version twice. And the nice thing is that each time we get a little different part of the story. Almost like accidental sequels.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
I think it'll be a classic. It reminded me of "Dark Star" with better special effects. Of course, it'll never replace "Dark Star", but it was a valiant attempt.
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
when John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars comes out, are you people going to get all pissy cause "nasa would never send 'craig from Friday' out into space"? get over yourself and watch the movie. i bet you bitched all the way through Robocop too.
Not for a second did I care about any of these characters. I didn't care whether they lived or died. I take that back. I wanted them to die. Quickly. Watching them on screen was more painful than #40 sandpaper briskly rubbing my nipples (hey, it happens more often than you might think.)
At the start of the movie the narrator says, "This is so and so. He's a hothead. Next to him is so and so. He's the soul of the crew." I can remember being in the fourth grade and having my teacher say, "Don't tell us your character is wise. Show us." Apparently the screenwriters who vomited up this bit of pablum should go speak with Mrs Ritchie, my fourth grade teacher.
Now if there's one thing I loathe in a sci-fi movie, its a robot. If a robot is going to be a central character, its going to suck my ass. And this one rimmed me long and deep. The moment they wheeled that stupid thing out I knew it was going to be awful. And the instant they showed it had a "military mode" you could pretty much tell the thing was going to go apeshit.
Of course, the biggest insult to the moviegoers intelligence was that inspid deux ex machina of oxygen being present on Mars. When Val Kilmer was choking and dying, I though, "Ah! I hope he dies so I can go home," I knew that he was gonna pop off his helmet and breathe. What an insult.
Val Kilmer made me chuckle once or twice. The name of his character was Gallagher. Christ on a bun, why couldn't they have gotten the comedian of the same name to smash up some watermelons. That would have improved this flick more than I can describe.
Anyways, this movie made Mission to Mars look like 2001. It really did. Do yourself a favor and avoid this movie. As for myself, I'm going to hunt down the director and smash a lamp in his face for the two hours of my life I'll never get back.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
I think we're probably all looking at this problem from the wrong angle. Look at it like this. When you go into a book store it's neatly divided into book types Fiction/Non-fiction/Biography/Reference etc. Most book stores have the Sci-Fi section but if you look at that area closer it's set up with sub-sections (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Sci-Fantasy, and sometimes various horror). All the AD&D books are together as Fantasy, Star-Trek is usually under the Science-Fiction, Star Wars sometimes under Sci-Fi but usually under Science-Fantasy. You get the idea.
The book store keeps all of the harlequin romances, quick sales, junk books and stuff they'd rather not categorize up front where people can get it quick and get out quick. The majority of the shoppers shop here. In to get a mag or cheap romance novel, maybe a present for a friend but not in far enough to need to make sense out of how things are categorized on the shelf, much less how the "sci-fi" books are categorized
See to 99% of the population Lord of the Rings is Sci-Fi along with Chronicles of Narnia and Dungeons and Dragons. That 99% doesn't think about the distinctions between books nor really the distinction between movies. To them it's "I want something to scare me... make me laugh... look cool... with lots of fighting... with hot chics... romantic..." They don't even hear the first word in 'dark-comedy', they just hear 'comedy' and then are disappointed when the movie wasn't funny the way they wanted it to be (cable guy).
To me it appears that critics of Red Planet are guilty of the same thing. This was so not a Sci-Fi movie. Personally it's border line even being a Sci-Fantasy movie. Cool special effects, liked the suits, the ship, the robot, etc. But in the end it didn't rely on the hard science that true Sci-Fi's typically rely on. That's where the problem lies. So many of the movies that we see today are clasified by the media and the people who watch them as 'Sci-fi' when in reality they are 'Sci-Fantasy'. Did Star Wars ever explain how the light saber worked or why Obi-Wan dissappeared like that? Hell No! Why? Cuz it was science fantasy, just enough realism to be believable but enough fantasy to make you forget about realism for awhile.
I personally liked Red Planet, I think it succeeded where Mission to Mars failed. Mission to Mars tried to rely to heavily on the science but would chuck it out the door when necessary just to do something neat. That went beyond what I would call artistic liscense. Red Planet didn't focus on the science, nor did it focus on the people really. By the end of the movie you knew that one dead guy had a granddaughter, the other dead guy was too cocky, another dead guy (the nice guy) wasn't quite so nice (spineless), and that dead guy number four 'the jerk' was probably a pretty good guy after all, taking one for humanity and all. We find that the lead character is more resourceful than given credit for and that the female co doesn't need 'rescuing'. Do we really need to know that Kate came from a long line of Navy, or Burchenal was a drunk, or Robby's wife died two years ago, or that Ted had an abusive father. No because it doesn't really help any with the story line. None of their jobs or skills really even help with the story line, because in the end they are stripped down to only one thing, surviving with their humanity. And that in the end is what this movie is about. Humanity, how easily some of us give up on it all, how those of us who seem to have given up really haven't, how the meek sometimes aren't, all the flaws and accomplishments that we have as a species, right there for people to take a look at if they weren't so damned interested in Carrie-Anne Moss's or the fact that oxygen levels could be easily detected well before reaching the planet.
Truth is movie goers are stupid, even the 'smart' ones.
Personally I've read a lot of science fiction and it just fucking bores me to tears sometimes. You know those 6 pages that you have to skip here and there because the author starts talking about singularities, gravitational forces, and space time. YAWN. You know that 99% of the people would leave the movie theater if that happened and that nice three hour long 200million$ science accurate sci-fi would be considered the 2nd Ishtar."Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
How do Mars Attacks and Battlefield Earth end up in the same sentence, unless it's to contrast the two? MA was an excellent Tim Burton comedy making fun of everything sci-fi while BE was meant seriously, but was just garbage.
Yet another person who thought they were going to see a serious sci-fi movie perhaps? The trailers made it quite clear it was going to be ridiculous. Someone who had no idea who Tim Burton is?
It's an "URBAN LEGEND"! NOT an "Urban Myth"! Who's the REAL idiot?
Normalcy iS Purely relative. The Geek shall inherit the earth-Jesus (re-worded!)
Home-Schooling is Perfect! I was HSed and scoring college level in 8th grade. We DO NOT have "tiny little heads". Liberal @^&$*&^!
Normalcy iS Purely relative. The Geek shall inherit the earth-Jesus (re-worded!)
Just to clarify, the science of physics has been around far longer than 75 years. Einstein's theory of relativity is over 80 years old and I would hardly classify relativity as old physics.
Many of the laws pertaining to gravity and planetary motion where already established by
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
and
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Granted, all the more reason that filmmakers shouldn't be fucking up stuff like this.
I was HSed, and I am very happy! American culture produces "gays" (ruined a good name), with movies like American Beauty! JESUS RULES!!! Liberals eat dirt!
Normalcy iS Purely relative. The Geek shall inherit the earth-Jesus (re-worded!)
As the Filthy Critic might say, I'm tired of being assraped by Hollywood. Sure, there are plenty of examples of older science fiction films and books that got the science wrong, but they were working with what they had at the time. There's just no fucking excuse for movies like M2M and Red Planet to get even the most basic science wrong.
I'm shocked that this movie got the ATGC DNA bases wrong. I've never studied or even read much about biology or genetics, but even I know what the bases are called.
For those of you who think scientific accuracy is "picky": would it have been much of a different movie if the makers had done a bit of basic research? Or if they had asked a high school science class, for that matter?
-Legion
Haven't seen Mission to Mars or Red Planet, yet. But flicks aren't a high priority ATM. When I do see one, the less I know going in usually improves my enjoyment.
Not having seen it, what I did read of the review was that the viewer had high expectations. Sorry, spud, but damn few pictures measure up in that department, get used to it. The last Sci-Fi flick I saw which really nailed it was Bladerunner (Directors Cut) at the Maple Theater (one of those gorgeous old bijous) in Troy, Michigan. Other good flick was Outland, with Sean Connery.
IMHO Hollywood should slow down a bit and run a few of these though the cinemas during the summer, a-la Star Wars trilogy. Even HDTV with surround just doesn't come close to sitting "in the diamond" (center of the theater) through some of these.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I liked waterworld!
Am i wrong? Oh no, I'm going against groupthink, arrrgggghhhh!
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
An incredibly weak story full of scientific impossibilities with pretty special effects. The Matrix has a techno soundtrack so it's a great movie while Red Planet is lame. How qualnt.
cons
1.poor topic
2.bad performance
3.scientificly inaccurate
pro
geek tools (e.g. electronic paper)
I agree that it was worse than M2M .
There were a number of similar attempts, as in Armageddon, to include pointless catchphrases in a sad attempt to bulk up the script and provide cute fodder for trailers and teasers. There was an annoying Terminator 2 style monologue delivered for no particular reason over the intro.
However, on the plus side, the nationalistic propaganda wasn't in evidence, as it was in Mission to Mars. You've just crash-landed on a distant world with nowhere to stay, no way to get home, and you come over a hill to see the equipment from a previous mission. Rather than go see if there might be some oxygen, food, or maybe a rocket booster or two, you stop and pick up your flag and stare at it for a while, killing off your oxygen. That alone makes Mission To Mars worse than Red Planet; let's not even mention the lame ending with the tearful alien.
--- http://foo.ca
If you've read some of the Known Space stories, one of the planets described is Canyon, a low atmosphere planetoid that had a huge gash carved into it during one of the Man-Kzin Wars. The gash was deep enough that the atmosphere bascically sank into it and gave it roughly Earth-level pressure only in the giant canyon, hence the name.
Legends are quasi-historical and are therefore believable to weak minded individuals. Myths involve obviously fanciful stories about Creation and events that relate to Creation. Go ahead, look it up. NOW WHO IS THE REAL IDIOT. Hey, knowledge is Power, maybee you should use it sometime.
Well, duh, if NASA sent the algae, it kinda goes without saying they'd disappear!
(I mean, I'm all for sending people to Mars, but really, couldn't we find a more interesting excuse than "oh crap, these are metric algae, not Imperial-measured algae!" ;-)
An error in word choice does not indicate an error in thought. It is the intent of the written word that counts. You are a Troll, so you intend to start flame wars.
This is coming from the same religion that describes it's anti christ as 'a political figure who will unify the people'. That makes sense, since unifying the people would be horrible for Christianity. Then who would you all have to hate and persecute? Grow a brain, have some free thoughts and not what some book tells you to think. I mean come on! Tell you what, I'll write a book that tells you to kiss my ass, even though you've never met me. Then that can be your religion. Don't worry, I'll still have some of your favorite things from the old religion. I'll give you some group of people that you can hate intolerably so that you have justification in the belief of me, the person who's ass you swear to kiss no matter what. T-H-I-N-K. Use your mind. I know the bible's against it, but even ask a question or two. LIVE your life, go out, and see the world you ignorant ignorant person. Do it for your children if nothing else.
Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart
Matrix had _horrible_ science. I can't offhand think of one thing that made sense scientifically - well, maybe the EMP.
The whole plot hinged around the idea that the evil computer needed humans as big batteries! Firstly, you'd get more energy out of just heaping the people together and burning them as fuel to a heat engine, secondly, all of the chemical energy in the human body (besides that which was there when the computer took over) had to be put in there! That whole ecosystem thing requires external energy to run (that big shiny thing in the sky), and humans aren't even capable of turning that external energy into a usable form. So instead of just burning the bodies and getting maximum energy out of them, it spends generations feeding them to each other, which would dissipate usable energy.
And the whole idea that you can influence a computer program if you just concentrate hard enough is poppycock. Every single thing that the Matrix hinged on was bunk.
And I loved it. Good science in a movie is wonderful. It educates, it gives a sense of consistency, and it satisfies the anal retentives like me. But whether or not a movie is good, to me, depends on three things:
1) can I relate to the characters
2) is there enough internal consistency that I can suspend disbelief
3) is there a build-up and release of dramatic tension
Everything else is gravy.
So tell me whether or not a movie seems to have good science, and tell me whether or not the characters are interesting, but don't tell me that a movie sucks because the screenwriter didn't know of the existence of spectroscopy.
...and go support your local reperatory (sp?) theatre. If you don't have one, start one.
Up here in Canada, the Famous Players chain of big-box cinemas has become a member of an independent releases self-help group. So FP is willing (nay, eager!) to work with community groups to bring single-showing foreign and independent films to the theatre.
It's worth noting that over the past six months, the *only* screens that are jam-packed with viewers have been these indie films. The other week I was in the lineup for twenty minutes to get in -- and saw *not one person* walk in the door to see any other film.
My town has a population of about 40K. Another nearby town (~45m drive away) has a pop. ~20K. Both towns have a film society... so *your* hometown can have one, too, if you get off your duff and organize it!
Recent films:
"East is East" (UK) -- Very funny story of an East Indian immigrant who is trying to raise his family as Pakistani in England... in particular, in marrying off his sons traditionally. They want none of it! A touch dark, a touch funny, a touch painful.
"New Waterford Girl" (Cda) -- Hilarious. Poor Moonie Potter lives at the edge of the earth, somewhere on Cape Breton, in a cramped, bleak little Catholic community. She's a renegade artiste-type, unappreciated and misunderstood. Things turn around when a new neighbour -- refugees from the Bronx, hiding out from the law -- shows up at about the same time she gets a scholarship to an Fine Arts school -- a scholarship her parents won't let her take. Moonie and her new girlfriend hatch a plot to get her out of Cape Breton...
"The Colour of Paradise" (Iran) -- Poignant, tragic story of Mohammed, a blind eight-year old (the actor really is blind), his bitter, widowed father, and his loving grandmother and sisters. Fascinating look into a small Iranian town, and utterly heart-wrenching.
"Felicia's Journey" (UK) -- Bob Hoskins is a meek and mild child-killer. A psychological thriller, and the *only* film I've ever seen that has caused me to curl up in the theatre seat, hands to face and horrified. Hoskins is a brilliant actor. Felicia is an Irish lassy who comes to Britain to find her run-away boyfriend, and hitches a lift from Bob. He insinuates himself into her life, and it's not going to go well for her. Mortifying, absolutely mortifying.
Anyway, point is, every one of the Film Society films I've seen over the past two years has been an order of magnitude better than the shit that is being pumped out of Hollywood.
You owe it to yourself to at least search for or create alternatives.
www.vernonfilmsociety.bc.ca, if you want to poke 'round my local viewing. Do a search for "Princess Theatre Edmonton Alberta Whyte Avenue" or somesuch, and I'm sure you'll come up with a treasure trove of info ('cause Princess Theatre rocks the film world, IMO).
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Considering how Val Kilmer (Gallaghan) was carrying a computer modem from 1975 in his palm. He was using it as a radio to talk to a ship in low orbit. Not only could his voice be perfectly transmitted to the woman in hot clothing (of course, it's a requirement for a space movie), but the woman in hot clothing could talk to him and he would hear her through some freak of nature (there were no speakers).
They didn't even dial up! But they pretended to be tech-savvy. At the beginnning, one asks the other "How many hits did you get on your Webpage?" and then the reply is "Oh, a couple million." First of all, HITS == How Idiots Track Sites.
It was a good movie, without that weird alien in the other Mars movie, but there were a LOT of technical flaws.
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Tonight on Fox: Deadliest Executions Part XVII
"I stopped being analytical about movies ... I was being ripped off by my own intellect." - Jack Cameron
... to ENJOY the darn thing.
By over-analyzing and being super-critical of movies, I was missing the WHOLE point of watching
You can nit-pick ANY movie, but is it really fun? It's like dissecting a joke, to find out what makes it funny.
I mean, at least they tried. The zero-G fire was handled well, and aside from a number of misstatements and silly oversights, everything seemed like it had been done by someone who had passed high school, unlike the vast majority of Hollywood 'science' fiction movies.
What other movie can you think of where the director actually bothered to demonstrate a gravity differential by having the intrepid heroes take a piss? The director got his reaction mass principles basically right, and best of all, the characters actually seemed to think in scientific terms. Having the characters understand that the circumstances they find on Mars are wrong and need serious explaining, and showing them determined to find it out through investigative means is worth a hundred factual errors that might go over the heads of 95% of the American audience.
Nonetheless, a selection of my favorite misstatements and science goof-ups, forthwith:
As I said, though, that's a pretty small list compared to such rancid pieces of science-hating crap as Armaggeddon.
The character development was some what weak, but Carrie Ann Moss did a good job of showing us that she can be a bit more feminine than Trinity, and the shower scene was, as mentioned earlier, pretty much worth the price of admission.
The whole thing felt like a throwback to 1950's science fiction.. some nice morality plays in a setting where the characters have to use science and engineering to solve their problems, and feelings are sublimated under the stress of a high IQ. All of which dooms it to a lousy box office, but I liked it.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
The endless nods to 2001 really drove me nuts. Mysterious happenings on other planet, machines with human-sounding names (and AMEE even had a menacing glowing eye like HAL, or maybe that was meant to call Terminator to mind.)that go bonkers when threatened, and even the foreshadowing shots of the Danger: Vacuum door, that eventually saves Cmdr. Bowman's Life. Oh, and captain named Bowman. How much more heavy handed can you get than that? I was really expecting the computer to say "I'm sorry Kate, I'm afraid I can't do that" at some point. It all proves that the makers of this film know what a good movie making is, and just chose to ignore that knowledge. you can't just borrow plot devices from a great film, paste them together with others from Alien and Blair Witch Project, and end up with a good movie. Even Ms. Moss's shower scene cannot make up for such lameness.
.^
P.S. Why do machines in movies all have glowing eyes? people who do movies have most likely seen alot of cameras before, and probably never one that emits light from the lense. It bugs me every time i see it.
^.
I enjoy all sorts of slow things. I live in Alfred New York which is usually described as out in the middle of nowhere with the nearest Wal-mart being 30 minutes away, and I never hav enough time to do all the things that I want to do. I enjoy reading technical books, I can spend hours discussing movies that people tire after in five minutes. While I'm very far from perfect, I don't get bored that easily.
2001 was a boring movie.
Yes, it was realistic. Space isn't necessarily slow. Pens can float through space at the rate of 1'/minute, BUT THEY DON'T HAVE TO! They can go faster.
Imagine that, realistic physics without ultra slow motion. Take a look at the star-fury battle sequences in Babylon 5 for a decent version of space action with realistic physics.
You see, the problem that kubric fell into with 2001 is that he thought that space automatically made whatever he did interesting. News Flash: everyone has seen stuff float before, it's just been in water rather than air. Floating is not a strange phenomenon that we've never seen before. It's a little new because it's in air rather than water. That doesn't justify a full two minutes on it (or whatever it really was, it felt like 5).
For another instance, people walk slowly in real life. Just visit your nearest nursing home or hospital. The fact that they have velcro on their feet or that you're playing fancy camera tricks doesn't imbue it with 3 minutes worth of newness.
And we've all taken long trips in vehicles where the destination seems like it will never arrive. We didn't need five minutes of approaching the floating corpse with that harsh, annoying beeping going on.
The list just goes on and on. Kubric is generally terrible at making interesting movies. Eyes wide shut. The Killing. The killer's kiss. That stupid one with Kurk Douglass that's basically a ripoff of Sartre's the wall. The one about the irish kid who duels his step-father and wounds him in the leg after a half-hour duel sequence. Spartacus (though that one actually did move pretty quickly for a Kubric movie). There are at least a half-dozen others that I saw of his that bored me so much my mind is blocking them out to protect me. Even Dr. Strangelove, which was undoubtedly one of Kubric's best, was boring during most of it and only punctuated with humor (but the humor was good enough to redeam the movie and make it worth seeing).
2001 is not a testament to the stupidity or lack of intellectualism of the American public, but rather a testament to the savage mental cruelty of Stanly Kubric.
The funny thing about people is they tend to rise and fall to the expectations put upon them, within limits. (In cases where multiple expecations are placed on them and they get to choose, they do seem to generally pick the easier expectations.) This is not to say that peopel of moderate intelligence will become genuises if you expect it of them, but you would be surprised at the number of people who would understand the proof that the square root of two is irrational if you sit them down and force them to pay attention.
I think that the best approach to the intelligence of your audience is the one taken by Shakespeare or The Simpsons. Include all sorts of humor in a coherent fashion. Everyone can laugh at the "low" jokes, most can laugh at the "medium" jokes, and some will laugh at the "high" jokes. And everyone is happy.
Of course, that takes skill.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
But, but, but .... I already missed Battlefield Earth .... does this mean I have to go see it now? (shudder) .... you're evil ...
Actually attributing it to Galileo would probably be more correct. He had pretty good understanding of basic physical concepts.
I am not sure what you call "an actual science", but I would argue that is comes from the Greeks.
Nematodes are not necessarily microscopic. Some are a couple inches long.
IMNSHO, the CGAP thing was pretty stupid. The bases in RNA are CGAU. Uracil rather than thymine.
Physics as we know it today really started with Netwon, who lived from 1642-1727, well more than 50 to 75 years. It was an "actual science."
I can sum the movie up in one sentence: It's worse than both Mission to Mars and Waterworld.
:-)], but it's a rare film that doesn't have some good qualities and some very committed fans.
I can sum the review up in one sentence: it suffers from the usual problem with critics, subjective myopia. Belief in the universality of values seems to be mandatatory for film reviewers, presumably because otherwise it would admit the possibility that their critical judgements are irrelevant to anyone except themselves. Sigh.
The fact of the matter is, watching a movie is a different experience for different people, and no single value judgement applies. One man's charisma is another man's overacting, and one man's scientific accuracy is another man's lack of imagination.
And it gets even worse when the critic somehow manages to synthesize a number of failings into an overall recommendation to avoid the show at all costs. Among other things, that's scientifically inaccurate, because a movie is definitely more than the sum of its parts.
I liked Mission to Mars, Mars Attacks! and Waterworld, all for different reasons (haven't seen B.E. yet) which may or may not match the experience of others. The perfect movie doesn't exist [well, apart from possibly The Matrix
And hey, some people don't like The Matrix. Would we listen to them if their profession happened to be film critic?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I _Liked_ "Mars Attacks!" I mean, it went up against "Independence Day" for the Hugo award that year!
Besides, I think that it's fair that cowboy yodelling could cause one's brain to explode...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Well, that was . . . interesting . . .
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
What I want to know is where these critics are hanging out? I mean, where are these real world people that make so much sense? Most of the people I meet "are inexplicably offended and say weird statements which have little or no rational value to them". Kudos to the director for putting realistic characters in the movie, avoiding the unbelievable and cliche "rational" type that Hollywood usually serves up.
"No sympathy, no tension, no nothing. It's banality at its extreme". Hmmm. sounds like my life. I guess I should get out more.
The difference is, Star Wars never pretended to be "real" -- it was myth, plain and simple. When you're telling a story about real times and places, there's an expected continuity. Everything is taking place in *this* universe, where NBC is a tv network, New York is a city, and g is 9.8 m/s^2. Could you watch The Godfather if they were all Hungarian Jews? Why is it that historical fiction is meticulously researched down to the kind of gut in the violins, but science fiction so routinely and thoroughly brutalizes everything scientific?
What gets me is the stuff that's so simple to get right, and they just don't bother. Is it really so hard to look up "nematode" or "DNA?"
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) this rarely dooms otherwise-good movies -- it usually goes hand in hand with bad characters, bad dialog, and the general badness that seems to permeate most science fiction.