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[Jopax]

One of the older Superman movies, one with a chemical plant on fire. He needs to keep some acid down or shit turns ugly. Then the firemen get their pump broken so he has to fly to a nearby lake, freeze the top solid and bring the giant piece back to the plant.

Question is, why didn't he just freeze the flames? Does he not understand how fire works? Is Superman an idiot?

[Sergius]

One of the older Superman movies, one with a chemical plant on fire. He needs to keep some acid down or shit turns ugly. Then the firemen get their pump broken so he has to fly to a nearby lake, freeze the top solid and bring the giant piece back to the plant.

Question is, why didn't he just freeze the flames? Does he not understand how fire works? Is Superman an idiot?

Also for some reason the frozen lake conveniently turned back into water instead of just crushing everyone underneath.

[Jopax]

Well that can be taken as the heat from the fires melting it, but that would require a bit of time I think.

Also, programming a weather satellite to turn it into a weather control machine.

Because computers man!

[Neonivek]

Also one good reason for Superman not to use Freeze Breath on the huge chemical fire is probably because his super breath is made out of condensed Oxygen.

[Starver]

(Grumble grumnble "504 Gateway Time-out"s...  Writing this elsewhere for pasting in once it works again.)

Been a while since I've seen it, but my interpretation is that Superfreezingbreath applied to the refinery/whatever may not be so easy to make an "area effect" (and perhaps not even locally without risking blowing stuff around that shouldn't really be), and would need a lot of going over various bits while other bits are still out of control.  Get a lake, breath it frozen to your satisfaction (thick enough to lift[1], not so think that it will not notionally melt (yes, a tricky one that) before reaching the target, and let it rain over the entire area at once.  Also means that superbreath does not affect the firefighters (who just get wet, instead) that would get caught in the blast.  Probably not healthy to them.

Nobody's said anything about the runoff of chemicals, bulked up with all that super-provided water, however... Well, probably they either ignore that in the bad old days of the early '80s(?), or they already have a plan at hand to deal with their normal extinguishing water supply.


The satellite thing...  I always imagined that it was actually a Notional Scientific Advisory project and already had that capability under wraps, as well as its public purpose.  But I might be reading(/watching) something into that that wasn't even there in the first place, due to the separation of years since viewing


(Ach, 504s even preventing me previewing my edits properly!)
(edit; In fact I must even have posted it into a 504 situation, leaving it in a mess.  Making it better.)

[1] Although as an extension to "anything Superman wears is nearly as indistructable as himself[1], it is seen that when he grabs a falling helicopter by the skid and stops its fall very rapidly, it does not just shear off.  Strangely, so don't the wings of a jet plane tear off (in the reboot movie) and even the relatively fragile front end just crumples a bit, then the plane is slowly lowered without its back breaking under the unusual load conditions it experiences.

[2] Excepting the occasional damage to Clerk Kent's clothes, of course, caused by substances full of that element 'humorusium'.

[JoshuaFH]

Going back to the Thing, I always assumed that it wasn't like a virus that infected somebody and took over the body, it was an organism that needed to either: devour the victim in secrecy in order to stealthily create a copy, or if it has a comparable biomass can brute force assimilate it, but that creates a monster.

Now why can't it just have a small portion infect an organism's body and take it over, albeit slowly if it's such a superior orgnanism? Well, I also hypothesize that since each cell is it's own living thing, but they work together in a kind of hivemind, the larger the mass, the smarter the organism. Parts that are cut away from the larger mass are still functioning to protect themselves, but now they're cut away from the intelligence and can't figure out what to do.

So while it may be EASILY within the ability of just the few cells found in saliva to take over the organism, those few cells are content to just live coexisting with the organism because they're not smart enough to have ambition for the good of their species as a whole.

There could also be inter-cell politics occurring that simply can't be seen, but that's just throwing a wide net in theoryville.

[Kagus]

Or, y'know, the human immune system might also play a part.  A small number of isolated foreign cells might be dealt with and cleaned up quickly enough, but a full-on invasion from a significant mass of cells would overwhelm what the body is capable of dealing with offhand.

[Starver]

There are (non-movie) single-cell organisms that behave differently according to how many compatriots they can 'detect' (through local concentrations of certain signal chemicals[1]).  At low densities, for example, they're free-floating and "universal singletons", but at higher densities they'll start to deliberately clump and become a slime-mold with different parts of the community (doubtless also mediated by further chemical signal exchanges) forming the different feeding, nutrient transport, structural, reproductive and movement and/or anchoring aspects essential of the larger colony.

(Which may or may not be how us "proper" multicellular creatures got started.  And I'd need to check it up but I suspect that sponges are still in the "either/or" camp and may use this mechanism.  I know they're very good at surviving being blended together (with other sponges) and then getting back into their own respective structures again, afterwards.)


But that's a fact (or nearly so, at least), and nothing to do with movies.  Mov(i!)e along please, nothing to see here.


[1] Which man can deliberately increase/decrease, once he knows about it, to subvert the natural behaviour.

[JoshuaFH]

One thing I feel that was never explained was how when the prequel, when one of the Things died while it was making a clone, and they did the surgery examination of it, those cells that made up that corpse were still, for the most part, were still living 'Thing' cells that should have been able to morph into something else to defend itself, but they never did.

So I also have the hypothesis that to for all the fancy cellular tricks the Thing can pull off, that it need needs to maintain homeostasis in order to maintain any semblance of group plan or order. It also explains why it screams and feels pain instead of just morphing into something else on the fly (it needs to take time to change in order to maintain homeostasis), or why it just doesn't become a giant katamari blob of flesh that just rolls and engulfs, cause it wouldn't be able to maintain homeostasis that way.

/highschoollevelbiology

[Neonivek]

Here is one that just applies to the adult me but not the child me (well ok... 13 year old me also thought this)

Anytime a movie includes a "Let the animal decide"

Ever since I have had a pet I realised how rediculous this is as a concept. There are so many reasons why a pet will "walk towards" someone other then their master that isn't that they like the stranger more. I just can never take it seriously anymore.

The only movie that at least was self-aware enough to realise this was the one with a monkey where the boy got the monkey by holding a lizard for it to eat secretly.

[brainfreez]

whenever i see a movie with aliens and humans fighting each other on a planet , i just want to facepalm .

i think that if we would find another life in space , we would try to examine it and learn new things about the universe , instead of destroying it.
the same goes for aliens if they would find us , i think they would want to make friends and exchange knowledge instead of just slaughtering everyone and destroying the planet.

i guess the movie wouldn't be fun without slaughter or fast action , but it seems unrealistic for me.

[Starver]

Let's extend that.  The humans and the humanoid aliens are on a planet.  Of course, Star Trek retrofitted a reason why most aliens[1] are humanoid, so much so that some are practically identical save for some ear, nose and/or forehead differences.

Sometimes the humanoid aliens need respirators (or don't, when we do).  But mostly we both do without (or, indeed, nonhumanoid aliens do without), or both need them for this current hell-hole but can survive in each other's sealed and controlled environments.  To some extent this can be explained by the planets that both we and the aliens concerned want to use being more likely to be tuned to our mutual survival than not (hence the basic attractiveness), but given the variety of planets there might be that poke one way or another out of the comfort zones of species developed on different home planets you'd think there'd be fewer overlaps!  (The jury is out how dissimilar a home planets could be, environment-wise, and still give recognisable alien life, regardless of absolute body-shape.  Because we've only got a sample of one, right now.  But the more imaginative[2] writers and screenwriters might go for (possibly) chlorine-breathers or other atmospheric requirements/vulnerabilities.)

Personally I think that non-recognition of the other species as a direct and deliberate rival (e.g. the Horta) or even total avoidance (e.g. Jovian natives).  But it's challenging to make such concepts the core of a piece of fiction (and I particularly commend Cohen and Stewart's efforts to the house, should you have a chance to read Wheelers or Heaven (that latter page is a bit short on content, however)).

[1] Excepting the odd interstellar nebula/amoeba thing, or the Horta, and of course the beings of the Q Continuum use humanoid (and almost always human) forms as a convention when dealing with Starfleet) but are one of several incorporeal/trans-dimensional beings encountered, and seem to be quite accommodating in this regard.

[2] Or those trying to emphasise "This is an alien, geddit?!?"

[Loud Whispers]

Or, y'know, the human immune system might also play a part.  A small number of isolated foreign cells might be dealt with and cleaned up quickly enough, but a full-on invasion from a significant mass of cells would overwhelm what the body is capable of dealing with offhand.

This would also explain why in the original and the remake, the people we see (not off screen) get assimilated have sustained major trauma or shock, or in the case of the remake, get brute forced into assimilation.
The remake kinda cares less about the science or the terror though, which is a shame. It kinda wanted to conform to the modern horror template; the heroine is invincible and the body shock alone is supposed to be 2spooky4u.

[Xantalos]

And it was going to be better. Damn studios.

[Scoops Novel]

To nitpick in real life- how much anything about films can be justified.