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Author Topic: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies  (Read 137797 times)

ed boy

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #210 on: August 08, 2012, 06:53:32 am »

Jokes aside, how many of these little things actually ruined the movies for you?
For me it was the start of inglorius bastards where it. Claimed to be based on a true story. I thought it was just amplified for drama until they shredded Hitler.
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Kagus

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #211 on: August 08, 2012, 07:06:29 am »

The Fourth Kind.  Okay, I suppose it's more than just a nitpick that makes this film dreadful, but I still have my pickin's.

First of all, it tries too hard to make it seem "real", and winds up making all the mistakes they could have easily avoided by doing exactly what they were doing anyways, effectively sabotaging their own attempt at suspending disbelief.

Second, how exactly do they find an Alaskan professor who specializes in a dead language that existed in a place nowhere remotely close to where he's located and works, and not only manages to detect, hear, interpret and then recite back fragments of that dead language from a bad audio recording, despite scientists not having any real clue as to what that language sounded like.  We only have access to the written form, with no real close relatives that we can make an accurate estimate.

Thirdly...  Well, alright.  I suppose having just been "abducted" to some girl's "haunted" apartment for our first date and then having her rip on me the whole time before attempting to convert me to alienism via this really quite bad (not to mention wholly fictional!) movie.

That's the kind of story I really kinda wish I was still blogging for.  The whole setup is just too good.

MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #212 on: August 08, 2012, 07:19:15 am »

Spoiler: The Dark Knight (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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10ebbor10

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #213 on: August 08, 2012, 07:55:13 am »

Note: There's some equation which was solved by some smart scientists and a lot of guessing which suggests that there are about 20 intelligent alien civilazations in the universe.
1) There's still a lot of guessing, making the error-bars quite huge
2) The equation itself actually limits itself to civilisations that we would communicate with via radio (which clearly the Avatar abrogines are not), as well as limiting itself to basically M-Class Planet life (which at least the Avatar world basically is), ignoring all the other possibilities that we could imagine, and doubtless many others that even the SF-community has no concept of.
3) I've never ever seen any use of the Drake Equation suggestion anything like there being a mere 20 alien civilisations in the entire universe.  (Except for the ones where values have been used that suggest none at all, making even our existence unlikely!)  Even "20 in our own galaxy" is a little on the low side.  Wikipedia has Drake's original range of estimate of 1,000 to 100 million in our galaxy.  Although its "worst case of values" scenario does tend drift towards zero (universe-wide), that's an extreme outlier.  (The "Best of the best" scenario" says 180 million in our galaxy, if I read it correctly, but that's also an outlier.)

Life (even (or indeed especially!) of the restrictive type the Drake Equation predicts) wouldn't necessarily be evenly distributed, in the Universe (or Galaxy).  Stars are clumped (in galaxies, when considering the universal scale!), and interstellar conditions vary across any given area in so many other ways.  When considering (say) Alpha Centauri as a potential contemporary co-evolver of life, consider that it is a star(-system) of very similar age to ours ('only' 250 million years adrift, out of a few billion or so total life), and probably from the same star-birthing grounds (with the same intermix of basic elements from which to build planets and the chemical processes upon them), in an area of the galaxy that has certainly been free of catastrophic radiation surges from a nearby supernova, at any critical point in our (pre-)history, and even (possibly!) whether it had been subject to the same hail of intragalactic panspermia-propagating interstellar space-debris (if that's got anything to do with how life arises).  Being close to us means that it's got several good chances of having the same sort of pre-biological conditions and (if not panspermia-induced) elements to kick off with whatever form of abiogenesis might have arisen.

OTOH, the whole Centauri system is a lot more complicated than ours, but with it being an "AB-C" system (Alpha Centauris 'A' and 'B' being binary, with 'C'/Proxima also being relatively close), so whether a suitably life-supporting rocky planet is even more doubtful than the possibility of such a planet having accreted.

Which is not to say it might not be possible, and life on binary-orbiting planets is frequently seen in fiction (everything from Tatooine, of Star Wars fame (a hand-waved, 'this is an exotic planet (of entirely one biome!)' filmic shortcut, at least in its original conception and prior to any retroactive attempts to justify) to the Helliconia series (by Brian Aldiss, who actively employed the vagaries of having a planet in a long-period binary-system as a major story-arc plot-point, essentially, and in an attempt to run with a viable setting for this largely non-terrestrial storyline), and some fiction gets these things right, even before the science is willing to stand up and counted on the same point.  OTO(O!)H, there's a lot more rubbish (or bad misses) out there than that which is accurately prophetic of yet-to-be-confirmed scientific realities. ;)


(i.e. I get your point about Avatar's planet, but you can't just point at Drake and use that to discredit its existence.)
I can't discredit the it's existence of qnything. I can just point out the improbability of the whole thing.
I can point the impossibility of the ship though.

Unobtanium sells for 20 million/kilo. The ISV has a cargo capacity of 350,000 kg -20.000(Crew and such). Assuming that another 20,000 is lost for the weight of the packaging  we get a payload of 300,000 kg
300,000 kg * 20 million =6* 10 12 dollar a year. That's quite a lot actually.

Now we know that the propulsion system is Laser to AC, antimatter to slow down, then antimatter to arcelerate Laser to slow down.
Now assuming the hydrogen can be gathered for free and both the laser and antimatter are 100% efficient. That means the energy used for the entire voyage is equal to 3 times the energy the energy for single arceleration. (Full cost for the arceleration, half for dearcelerating, Half for rearcelerating, Full for stopping on Earth).

Assuming that the energy price is a little inflated, I'm not making any idiot errors, and 1 dollar equals 1 euro. This means that we have an energy budget of maximum (6*1012/3/0.2*Kwh= 1*1013 Kwh = 1016 W/hour=1016*3600= 36*1018 Joules)

Now the formula for kinetic energy =M*v2/2
72*1018=m*(299,792,458)2 
Meaning that we have enough cash to move 801 kg of matter to Alpha Centauri. If I haven't miscalculated or something.
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Starver

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #214 on: August 08, 2012, 08:59:43 am »

Decided to make a non-spoiler (except where I might exceptionally decide to put them in) summary of various intermediate messages, rather than go all necrotic over old posts.  (Already seen a response re: Drake Equation which said much the same as some of my points.)

Re: Dark Knight "phone-tower mobile internet connection" thing - the device looked very much like a 'mere' Wireless LAN device that I often use.  Which means either that it wouldn't actually have the same range, or with a suitably precompiled list of preferred wireless gateways (and their assorted passwords, which I wouldn't put it past the villains of the moment to have) and a sympathetic OS/client program (which is, after all, just making a large series of individually small on-line interactions), it could actually use the wireless access points 'leaking' from the various businesses and public/semi-public access points all across the city.

Another Re: Dark Knight, Bane is different in the movie to the various representations I've seen from other media.  But then so is so-and-so's father (seems pretty normal and not impossibly preserved for his age).  I'd treat all that as a reinterpretation of characters.  The same names, largely the same type of person, but ultimately not as "supernatural" or "superscienced" and more real-life (as a contrast to some of the stuff with the bomb...  and there's no real explanation as to how a certain person ever got to go to a certain café, by the end.

Ah, actually, someone else mentions this, a few posts further on from the point that inspired me to write this section...

And the core-thing exploding: However difficult it would be to get it to do so, or strange that it would be possible, remember that in-universe there was just one person capable of setting it up to do so (and of defusing it).  Basically a physics-trained 'hacker' who had found some new trick (of an unexplained type), probably as a hypothetical "what if" that he didn't realise would excite the bad guys (and dismay the good guys) as much as it did.  Whatever, it was a trick unanticipated, until that point, by Bruce and his tech team.  He'd been sure it had been a safe thing to make that could never be weaponised, and pulled the plug once he realised it could be.  Still a bit of a jump, but given the handwavium already employed in getting Waynetech stuff to work, a little finger-wiggling to subvert it to another end isn't too much of an ask.

Blake and the bus: Shows how he's going to Try To Do The Right Thing, even against all the people who Don't Want To Let Him.
Bane's voice: Yes, a common complaint, I hear.  Behind the distortion was some quite clever characterisation and intermix of accents, apparently, but it got lost quite a bit.


Shawshank Redemption question: Blu-tac? ;)


Back to Avatar, and the "things going at 0.7c", c.f. relativistic baseballs.  (Faster, but for smaller mass.)


On to the Matrix Trilogy, and my basic complaint about them.  It alll ends wrong.  "It's Matrixes [/Matrices] all the way out" would be a good summary of what I think should have been the revelation.  L1: green-code Matrix, L2: firey Matrix; L3+: ???  But as the Trilogy doesn't go in that direction (despite heavy hints that it might), I'm not spoiling anything by putting this in plain text...  However, it would explain (or by-pass) some other people's niggles about Matrix logic.

Similarly with the Terminator set: It's arguable that there's consistent time-loops exhibited in the movies (but the information transported is not always reliable/factual).  A lot could have been done with that premise, but they go the cheap way round of "changing the future via the past".  Done too much.




Here's a new niggle (for a film I've not yet seen mentioned): Can someone tell me how some of the guests for the ceremony at the end of Snowhaite And The Huntsman got there?  At least two should not have been so ambulatory.




And here's one actual message to quote, without caring how in or out of context I'm taking it:
I think you might be thinking a little too hard about this.

And? ;)

(Oh, and here's a second quote...
So has anyone else watched the 'This is How X Should of Ended' cartoons?
...I doubt it.  "Should of" makes no sense.  Please, it's "Should have", or "Should've" if you're contracting it.  But that's non-movie nitpickery.)
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10ebbor10

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #215 on: August 08, 2012, 09:10:07 am »

The point with relativistic things in Avatar is that you can see them coming in space. Since it would be idiot to let the spaceship arrive on a collision course with Earth, it 's probably on a somewhat near miss course. Any changes to that course can be detected, and the ship can be intercepted should it prove dangerous. (We got a laser and we got spaceships.) The plasma that would remain would dissipate on it's own or be deflected by any magnetic fields. At worst we'd get some pretty lights.

But then, everything about that ship is impossible.
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Vattic

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #216 on: August 08, 2012, 02:06:43 pm »

On to the Matrix Trilogy, and my basic complaint about them.  It alll ends wrong.  "It's Matrixes [/Matrices] all the way out" would be a good summary of what I think should have been the revelation.  L1: green-code Matrix, L2: firey Matrix; L3+: ???  But as the Trilogy doesn't go in that direction (despite heavy hints that it might), I'm not spoiling anything by putting this in plain text...  However, it would explain (or by-pass) some other people's niggles about Matrix logic.
I can't find the quote but I swear the Wachowski brothers promised they'd not do this and that they thought it would be cheap.

One other thing about the Matrix:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #217 on: August 08, 2012, 02:19:54 pm »

One other thing about the Matrix:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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RedKing

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #218 on: August 08, 2012, 03:48:20 pm »

One recurrent problem that I have in action movies (and The Dark Knight Rises was guilty of it):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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10ebbor10

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #219 on: August 08, 2012, 04:01:59 pm »

One recurrent problem that I have in action movies (and The Dark Knight Rises was guilty of it):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And when they do use a timebomb, they don't treat it as one. (Ie, the closer the clock gets to zero, the longer it takes to tick.)
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Starver

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #220 on: August 08, 2012, 05:09:45 pm »

I can't find the quote but I swear the Wachowski brothers promised they'd not do [Matrixes, all the way out] and that they thought it would be cheap.
If that's the case, they must have a) originally considered it and written it into the script, and b) forgotten to take all the heavy hints out.  (How else do you explain the end of the.. 2nd...? film with the squid-stopping hand-wave, and then in the third the blindness that isn't..?  To mention just the most obvious two moments, out of several.)  Does TVTropes's have a term equivalent to Chekhov's Replica Firearm/Pacifist Gunsmith?  Whatever you might call them, the films got loads of those...  And none of them even make sense as properly integrated plot-misdirections and red-herrings for the discerning mystery solver to pile through and later see to be 'perfectly honest misconceptions', given the selective view the audience happened to be being given.  They just seem to be thrown in there like an anti-McGuffin that has a lot of apparent significance but means nothing to the plot-drive...

No, I think they were going to do this, and then at a party they attended shortly before it Matrix 3 was wrapped up they got some (possibly) obnoxious so-and-so come up to them and say "I bet I know what it's all about...<insert above idea here>" and they went "oh, nononono...  it's completely not that... you'll be surprised...  erm... no... I couldn't tell you what the denouement is... no, honestly, I couldn't... excuse me, just got to go to the editing suite, there's something I forgot to do...  just a bit of polishing, don't you know... and an emergency script meeting I'd completely forgotten about...".

Quote
One other thing about the Matrix:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
They obviously use the same employment agency as the Empire does for its Star Destroyer gunners in Ep4: "Well, we could shoot at that escape pod, but there's no life forms on it, and so I shall conveniently forget that while there's apparently no such thing as USB thumb-drives that could be conveying information we don't want to escape there's bloomin' ambulatory tin cans that can accomplish the same purpose and more!".  To (slightly) paraphrase and extend the actual scripted line...
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Neonivek

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #221 on: August 08, 2012, 05:30:13 pm »

Yeah about MI2

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Scelly9

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #222 on: August 08, 2012, 06:35:44 pm »

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Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #223 on: August 08, 2012, 06:59:36 pm »

One recurrent problem that I have in action movies (and The Dark Knight Rises was guilty of it):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And when they do use a timebomb, they don't treat it as one. (Ie, the closer the clock gets to zero, the longer it takes to tick.)

Personally, I understood that
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Urist_McDrowner

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #224 on: August 08, 2012, 07:22:04 pm »

Honestly that aspect of Assassins Creed was so stupid that I just imagined that the machine was actually a time reader that needed a DNA match to work.

I was willing to go with it to a point, but the whole "synchronization" stuff really made me wonder. Since taking damage of any kind reduces synchronization, that would imply Altair/Ezio were never, ever injured.

He gets injured in cutscenes all the time. Synchronization lets them get away with "oh wait, I just got whacked in the head seven times by a huge axe wielded by a huge(r) badaxe. Lost a few synchronization there!"
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