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Myrddin_Emrys posted:They did. They said she must have literally just crashed right before they arrived. Nah, the say that after they've been hit by the first wave and are like "what happened to the scout". They're mentioning data as well as a signal (apparently "Mann's data" is more promising) so I think it's both. Either way, the water planet should have been a huge "hmm, maybe later".
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Apr 5, 2015 20:35
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Myrddin_Emrys posted:They did. They said she must have literally just crashed right before they arrived. They said that AFTER things went to poo poo in the planet rather than (correctly) assume that would be the case before going down and wonder how they had X years of data (which would have been impossible).
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Apr 5, 2015 20:35
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It's a plot hole if you care about tactical realism, sure, there's no way 'real life' Brand wouldn't have figured it out before they landed. But in the context of the movie, where everyone makes huge errors because they try to pretend they're emotionless robots with adjustable settings, it makes narrative and emotional sense. Brand can't do her job well until she admits she's really out here to look for Wolf. Cooper can't complete the mission until he's done running away from everyone he's attached to. Romilly doesn't see what's happening with Mann because he survived decades of isolation without going nuts and betraying the mission. The characters in Interstellar constantly make basic tactical errors because they have emotional blind spots. When this happens, they reach out to the robots — much as humanity as a whole depends on the future 'aliens,' who are technological descendants, to save them from the blight. There's a running theme about the interdependence of mankind and technology and how we have to trust our tools. In that way it's a lot like a reverse 2001. General Battuta fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 20:37
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Finally watched it, liked it. One little thing that really stuck with me was the revision of history, it was now "consensus" that the moon landings were a deliberate hoax. Reminded me of the book, "Fallen Angels" by Niven, in which the Green Party finally takes control of the Presidency and Congress, and starts passing environmental laws.... and the first thing they decide is that science is bad for the environment. NASA is dismantled, and it gets to the point where the crowds get whipped up and physicists get hanged from the St. Louis Arch. So when the "moon landing never happened" part came up, after learning the Earth was having environmental problems, the first thing I thought was, "The lefties must be in charge now," not, "They must be in Texas," like I've seen other people in this thread state.
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Apr 5, 2015 20:41
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Kin posted:Nah, the say that after they've been hit by the first wave and are like "what happened to the scout". I think it's a several months journey between Miller's planet and the rest. It isn't shown but they talk about it during the briefing.
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Apr 5, 2015 20:51
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wukkar posted:Why didn't each of the 12 'is this planet good?' explorers just have a batch of embryos with them? Because the equipment to grow the embryos is bulky, and they did just carry what could be stuffed into a ranger shuttle. IIRC the embryo stuff filled up a complete Endurance module.
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Apr 5, 2015 20:54
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CharlesM posted:I think it's a several months journey between Miller's planet and the rest. It isn't shown but they talk about it during the briefing. Yeah, it is mentioned, but as said above it's just a plot hole because the months would still be better than years spent on something they should have known was sketchy.
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Apr 5, 2015 21:04
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It's not a plot hole because movies are works of fiction that operate in part on emotional and narrative logic rather than scrupulous mimesis of the real world.  They can't figure out the time dilation problem because the characters haven't fully confronted the incredible importance and scope of what they're doing. They're not prepared and they have emotional baggage which distorts their logic. In a tactically realistic narrative TARS and CASE would crank through 40000 different mission profiles and present them with a bunch of optimal configurations to choose between. General Battuta fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 21:07
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General Battuta posted:It's not a plot hole because movies are works of fiction that operate in part on emotional and narrative logic rather than scrupulous mimesis of the real world. You can't have intelligent, space exploring characters literally stating a bunch of problems with an action and then going ahead with it, ignoring the logical conclusions of everything they stated (defined by the film itself) all for the sake of driving a certain plot direction without it being anything but poor writing or a plot hole. I liked the film but no matter how enjoyable, I'm not forgiving of dumb poo poo. Kin fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 21:23
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General Battuta posted:It's a plot hole if you care about tactical realism, sure, there's no way 'real life' Brand wouldn't have figured it out before they landed. I like this post.
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Apr 5, 2015 21:27
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You actually can do that because movies aren't realistic. The characters can't see the problem because they are characters in a story who are (as they say, post-water-planet) mentally and emotionally unprepared for what they're doing. They thought they were intelligent and prepared, but they weren't! It's not anything I would write, personally! My instincts lean towards the kind of strict tactical realism you're pushing for. But a lot of stories disagree with us. The scenario of 'intelligence, space exploring characters state a bunch of problems with an action, solve it, and come up with a better plan' is equally unrealistic: in 'realism' the human element of the decision would be minimized and diffused and the strong AI systems aboard would compute a huge number of different mission profiles for the human crew to select between, with varying degrees of contingent risk and safety margin.
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Apr 5, 2015 21:29
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Kin posted:You can't have intelligent, space exploring characters literally stating a bunch of problems with an action and then going ahead with it, ignoring the logical conclusions of everything they stated (defined by the film itself) all for the sake of driving a certain plot direction without it being anything but poor writing or a plot hole. General Battuta gave a really good answer. To push this in a different direction, would you apply this reasoning to, say, a Greek myth? Or Shakespeare? Why or why not? The point of stories isn't really to show you something cool, even though on a surface level that's what we like. And it's not even to present flawed or growing characters, so you can think to yourself "if I were in that situation, here's what I'd do differently," or "they eventually learned lesson X, as have I." That's masturbatory. The story isn't about what you might do. It's about what you've already done. It's a warning and a rebuke: replace "the characters" with "I." "I, an intelligent person, know a bunch of problems with an action, but still go ahead and do it, ignoring the logical conclusions of everything I stated..." Doesn't this describe you in some areas? Maybe even most? It describes me, for sure. And then the rest of the statement: "... all for the sake of driving a plot direction." Now replace "plot" with "ego" or "self/story I identify with." Everything you do is framed by the narrative you tell yourself, about yourself, to yourself, in real time. That running commentary that lets you do stuff like smoke or eat junk food or not budget or not call your mom. And a million other things you "should" or "should not" do. Because in your head, there's a "plot" that says next week you'll do better, or that you're an ABC sort of person (character), which is why you can/can't XYZ. I'll hazard a guess and say that you're getting hung up on scientist/engineer/logical types not acing optimally because you think of yourself as a similar kind of person. And the "flaw" in the story of Interstellar is that it doesn't map to your internal story about what people like you do in situations like that. But the "flaw" you identified in Interstellar is the same one that you encounter all the time in your own life, as you rationalize away all your non-optimal actions with a made up plot you tell yourself. I'm definitely not trying to razz on you, though, because I am the same way. We all are, to an extent. That's the value of stories - they produce reactions that you can examine, and learn from. As a side note, a plot where everyone acts optimally and logically would be some sort of really boring clockwork thing. You'd know the ending from the first page. Or if not, because there's too much info to crunch, it'd be like watching two computers play chess. Not fun, and definitely not able to make you re-evaluate yourself.
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Apr 6, 2015 00:00
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CharlesM posted:I think it's a several months journey between Miller's planet and the rest. It isn't shown but they talk about it during the briefing. And also the water planet was the closest, they would've had to double back if they skipped it and the others turned out bad.
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Apr 6, 2015 00:17
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The lackadaisical way they approach the time planet isn't bad because it's 'tactically unrealistic', but because it's psychologically unrealistic. Getting all time-hosed like that is as bad as if the planet's radiation gave them all cancer or something. It's a horrifying prospect.
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Apr 6, 2015 02:44
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As for why they choose to go down to the water planet despite the amount of time that will require, the movie gives a a clear and reasonable explanation: the ship is low on fuel. Staying in the water planet consumes little fuel but sacrifices time. If they go to another planet, they save time but they can't come back to the water planet. The logical conclusion is that delaying the mission 7-ish years is worth doubling the chances of finding a habitable planet, especially since, as far as they know, this planet has been given the all clear. As for them not figuring out that the scientist had been there just 5 minutes, please refer to General Battuta's points. You can also think of the movie as a closed time-loop: whatever had to happen, happened.
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Apr 6, 2015 03:19
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This is an awesome post. Thanks!
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Apr 6, 2015 15:28
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Way behind on this movie, just saw it for the first time a few days ago. For a science fiction fan the movie is fairly straightforward, so its frustrating to hear so many people get confused by the whole "power of love" thing and write the movie's ending off as unexplainable nonsense. As in any good sci-fi there are aspects of the story that are purposely vague and not meant to be fully explained, but the importance of love and the connection between human beings isn't one of them. These 5th dimensional beings, whether you believe Cooper's theory that they are future humans are not, need the love between Cooper and Murph because its the only medium by which the data can be sent that is absolutely reliable. I've heard people say things like "Cooper isn't necessary because They could just send the data through the NASA sensors already in place, cut out the middle man." But that would not be reliable enough because there is so much that could prevent the message from being heard or properly interpreted. Instead what They, and in the end Cooper recognize, is that on Earth is a person who will grow up under the perfect conditions to have all the knowledge necessary to decipher the message and she will have a connection to her father stronger than any tech analysts love for a gravity sensor. Cooper realizes this when he's in the tesseract, that the watch is the perfect conduit for the data because he knows Murph will come back for it. Why does he know? Because he is her father and they have a bond that, as Brand says, IS quantifiable. Its quantifiable in the sense that a father can know what his daughter will do much more reliably than 5th dimensional beings know what a random NASA analyst will do.
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Apr 6, 2015 16:02
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computer parts posted:I thought the signal was just "all clear", not actual data. I'm pretty sure they covered every angle of the time planet, including why they misread the signal. Case said "The data we received was just the initial status echoing endlessly". and then Cooper acknowledges "We are not prepared for this." Basebf555 posted:Way behind on this movie, just saw it for the first time a few days ago. Well said. I think people sometimes miss the points of movies, like watching a romantic movie and complaining about the lack of action. This movie was less space exploration movie and more a movie on the human spirit and stuff conveyed through a space medium. Like how BSG is more of a space opera than an action TV show in space. I pulled random stuff out of my rear end but hopefully made the point.
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Apr 6, 2015 22:22
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OldPueblo posted:I'm pretty sure they covered every angle of the time planet, including why they misread the signal. Case said "The data we received was just the initial status echoing endlessly". and then Cooper acknowledges "We are not prepared for this." What people are arguing about is the team's failure to realize that Miller had only been on the surface a few minutes, which requires only high school algebra and a basic knowledge of special relativity to figure out. I think the failure is thematically and emotionally explicable, but it's certainly not something that would happen on a 'real' expedition given how trivial the computation is. (Movies are, of course, not real.)
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Apr 7, 2015 04:20
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General Battuta posted:What people are arguing about is the team's failure to realize that Miller had only been on the surface a few minutes, which requires only high school algebra and a basic knowledge of special relativity to figure out. I think the failure is thematically and emotionally explicable, but it's certainly not something that would happen on a 'real' expedition given how trivial the computation is. (Movies are, of course, not real.) Within the last decade there has been at least one instance of a probe costing hundreds of millions of dollars with thousands of hours of manpower put I to it crashing into the surface of mars purely because one guy forgot to make sure he was using the same measuring system as everyone else. Do not underestimate the ease of error in even the finest minds.
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Apr 7, 2015 04:39
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I know people in this thread like to jump on and tear apart anyone that dares to "nitpick" anything about this movie that doesn't have to do with themes, but I'm wondering what the plan was for governing this crop of Plan B people. Would the Endurance also have databases full of human history and everything we've ever discovered and created? Or would they have just let them start over and figure it out for themselves? I realize it wasn't addressed in the movie because, essentially, it wasn't the point. But I like to think Brand would have been the kind of person to both literally and figuratively cut all ties from Earthlings, let the Plan B-ers find their own way. P.S. how long until everyone dies from Vitamin D deficiency from having a black hole for a light source.
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Apr 7, 2015 04:52
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I lied you do need some general relativity I think.
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Apr 7, 2015 05:47
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Basically all of the relativity stuff in the movie is general. Loosely, special relativity is "go fast, time slows down" and GR is "in a deep gravity well, time slows down." They don't go nearly fast enough for long enough for SR to be even like 1% of the slowdown they experience, it's all gravity.
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Apr 7, 2015 16:43
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speshl guy posted:P.S. how long until everyone dies from Vitamin D deficiency from having a black hole for a light source. I think they'd be alright because the glowing matter around a black hole would give off black-body radiation with a reasonably similar spectrum to the Sun. The emission lines would be different, but there would be the same amount of ultraviolet radiation in it relative to the overall amount of light. I'd be more concerned about the fact that a system like that can't be expected to glow at a consistent brightness over hundreds of years, and the shifts in radiation would cause crop failures, extreme weather, and worse.
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Apr 7, 2015 19:25
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Chamale posted:I think they'd be alright because the glowing matter around a black hole would give off black-body radiation with a reasonably similar spectrum to the Sun. The emission lines would be different, but there would be the same amount of ultraviolet radiation in it relative to the overall amount of light. I'd be more concerned about the fact that a system like that can't be expected to glow at a consistent brightness over hundreds of years, and the shifts in radiation would cause crop failures, extreme weather, and worse. Frankly I don't think the logistics of the star system in question are worth worrying about too much. Once they get to the far side of the wormhole, we're basically at Doctor Who levels of concern for scientific accuracy.
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Apr 8, 2015 02:09
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speshl guy posted:P.S. how long until everyone dies from Vitamin D deficiency from having a black hole for a light source. The black hole was tearing apart sun(s) which would be a perfectly acceptable light-source
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Apr 9, 2015 03:37
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General Battuta posted:You actually can do that because movies aren't realistic. The characters can't see the problem because they are characters in a story who are (as they say, post-water-planet) mentally and emotionally unprepared for what they're doing. They thought they were intelligent and prepared, but they weren't! Your book is called 'The Martian,' and I believe Ridley Scott is directing it.
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Apr 9, 2015 19:56
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Darko posted:Your book is called 'The Martian,' and I believe Ridley Scott is directing it. Yup. The scheduled relase date is november of this year, and the main character is played by
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Apr 9, 2015 21:02
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Darko posted:Your book is called 'The Martian,' and I believe Ridley Scott is directing it. I don't know, in that book we had a unreasonably well-rounded and min-max skilled mary sue-ish main character and even then the dude had to insert a lot of 'totally foreseeable problems ruin his day' events.
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Apr 9, 2015 21:18
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Finally saw the film, and did enjoy it immensely, but holy poo poo the robot designs were awful. A guy painted silver would have looked better. The NOMAD probe from the Star Trek episode "The Changeling", which did NOTHING, was a better robot design then the robots in Interstellar.
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Apr 9, 2015 23:12
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Davros1 posted:Finally saw the film, and did enjoy it immensely, but holy poo poo the robot designs were awful. A guy painted silver would have looked better. The NOMAD probe from the Star Trek episode "The Changeling", which did NOTHING, was a better robot design then the robots in Interstellar. If it wasn't for the robots or the docking sequence I would tell anyone to stay clear of this movie.
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Apr 9, 2015 23:55
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Davros1 posted:Finally saw the film, and did enjoy it immensely, but holy poo poo the robot designs were awful. A guy painted silver would have looked better. The NOMAD probe from the Star Trek episode "The Changeling", which did NOTHING, was a better robot design then the robots in Interstellar. I respect your decision to have a profoundly wrong and incorrect opinion, though I also enjoyed Interstellar immensely.
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Apr 9, 2015 23:56
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Davros1, please lower your sarcasm setting to 20%.
Console Role Player fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 9, 2015 23:58
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Davros1 posted:A guy painted silver would have looked better. Totally. 
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Apr 10, 2015 00:53
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Darko posted:Your book is called 'The Martian,' and I believe Ridley Scott is directing it. I've read it! It's a compelling read, but disposable.
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Apr 10, 2015 03:51
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Watched this a few days ago, absolutely love it! I feel like the movie did a great job exposing how people can and will rush into situations without exploring the consequences, all under the guise of being "rational", and the idea that realizing we do that will allow us to better judge ourselves. That's why they didn't realize the doc on the water planet had only been there an hour (or even thought it didn't matter) - in the rush for a habitable world (and to minimize dilation) the crew of the Endurance figured an all-clear signal was enough. The realities of time dilation hadn't been experienced up to that point, so when the wreckage was found and the waves hit, Brand and Coop had that "oooooohhhh gently caress ME!" moment. Such an easy thing to predict, but since we're emotional beings who want to be logical we place blame on each other, thinking that we'd totally have known that, even though at the time we let it go right past us. I also think that's why Dr. Mann's planet happened; Coop wants to believe he's free from emotions, so when the Edmund romance plot comes up he gets to be a petulant dick, elevating himself above petty human needs, while ignoring the fact that he's doing everything for his children. At this point Brand has realized that, in this grand uncharted territory, there's no "logical" path, so why not go based on the human aspect?
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Apr 11, 2015 16:12
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Chamale posted:I think they'd be alright because the glowing matter around a black hole would give off black-body radiation with a reasonably similar spectrum to the Sun. The emission lines would be different, but there would be the same amount of ultraviolet radiation in it relative to the overall amount of light. I'd be more concerned about the fact that a system like that can't be expected to glow at a consistent brightness over hundreds of years, and the shifts in radiation would cause crop failures, extreme weather, and worse. The accretion disk of a black hole is hot enough to emit primarily in the x-ray spectrum. Gargantua not frying everything with hard radiation is one of the film's concessions to story. The "echo" they describe coming from the water planet is impossible. They should have received less than ten minutes of extremely redshifted radio if they were equipped to receive at very low frequencies at all. They don't ever look at a planet from orbit or from a distance. Literally not even once, don't consider it or speak of it. Endurance apparently carries no sensors to speak of or more probably the writers forgot. The tiny little Ranger shuttle has enough delta v to break orbit from a planet with 1.3G surface gravity. Lamprey Cannon posted:Frankly I don't think the logistics of the star system in question are worth worrying about too much. Once they get to the far side of the wormhole, we're basically at Doctor Who levels of concern for scientific accuracy. Wibbly wobbly lovey dovey stuff. Interstellar is not hard scifi. Chamale what on earth makes you think that an accretion disk should have a similar emission spectrum to a G type star? The inner accretion disk is hot enough to eject plasma at relativistic speeds. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Apr 11, 2015 |
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Apr 11, 2015 17:13
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They actually wrote some fluff somewhere for the Ranger, explaining its absurd delta-V. It still probably wouldn't hold up to hard numerical analysis, but it jives with how we used to exploit the game using high-efficiency scramjet->rocket hybrids in Kerbal Space Program so it's obviously good enough for me. 
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Apr 11, 2015 17:15
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Basebf555 posted:Way behind on this movie, just saw it for the first time a few days ago. Hi your opinion is ridiculous and beyond its prima facie absurdity it only makes sense in the context of unsubstantiated speculation from clueless characters.
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Apr 11, 2015 17:33
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Arglebargle III posted:The "echo" they describe coming from the water planet is impossible. They should have received less than ten minutes of extremely redshifted radio if they were equipped to receive at very low frequencies at all. The "echo" is from the repeater drone they left around the wormhole on the far side. It's just going "yep, last signal from the water planet was A-OK" quote:They don't ever look at a planet from orbit or from a distance. Literally not even once, don't consider it or speak of it. Endurance apparently carries no sensors to speak of or more probably the writers forgot. Even if you assume that they have invented Star Trek scanning technology or tricorders somebody would probably forget to compensate for relativistic effects of gravity on time until they've come across it at least once. (lol compensating for that while staring at a planet from outside the effect) VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Apr 11, 2015 |
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Apr 11, 2015 18:00
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