yronic heroism posted:Tell me more about arguing in good faith about the relative ramming impulse speeds of imaginary spaceships. When the characters on screen tell you "hey we can't maneuver" you should probably start from that rather than going into left field with 'they can maneuver they're just lying to each other/the viewers'. A serious analysis would be like "their inability to maneuver evokes the impotence of the American military machine in the face of adversity in Vietnam and Afghanistan", instead of "raghhhhhhhh clearly the ship was only damaged on decks 3 through 12, all essential engine functions were spared, therefore,".
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# ? May 28, 2013 20:38 |
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# ? May 2, 2024 23:12 |
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1st AD posted:Their other Star Trek movie reviews are loving awful, just full of pedantic nitpicking. At one point Plinkett literally says "I don't like this because it's different from the Star Trek I'm used to" and I don't think that statement is intended to be read as anything but straight. I mean those movies did stink so it's a wash, but it's not like RLM has any special insight on filmmaking or anything. I actually went to the theater inclined to enjoy Into Darkness becuse a lot of really obsessive Star Trek fans seemed to hate it. My problem was it wasn't a good movie on its own and the weight of the franchise just dragged it down. Which is a common enough problem these days. yronic heroism fucked around with this message at 20:46 on May 28, 2013 |
# ? May 28, 2013 20:44 |
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The Plinkett reviews succeeded based on their radical ambiguity. They were basically a parody of horrible nerd opinions, with a lot of salient observations mixed in - so that the viewer was obligated to think critically about not just Star Wars, but the ideological baggage they bring to a reading of Star Wars. With Half in the Bag, you just get the horrible nerd opinions delivered straight to your brain.
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# ? May 28, 2013 20:45 |
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api call girl posted:When the characters on screen tell you "hey we can't maneuver" you should probably start from that rather than going into left field with 'they can maneuver they're just lying to each other/the viewers'. The fictional set-up is what it is. The problem is a real person wrote the script and half-assed it. So they do maneuver to get their airlock aligned and something is keeping them in orbit until the plot dictates they need to almost crash. Did you watch the Room and conclude Tommy Wiseau's character was a really smart guy because some other character said he was? Because I concluded Tommy Wiseau couldn't write a convincing smart character.
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# ? May 28, 2013 20:55 |
yronic heroism posted:The fictional set-up is what it is. The problem is a real person wrote the script and half-assed it. So they do maneuver to get their airlock aligned and something is keeping them in orbit until the plot dictates they need to almost crash. Did you watch the Room and conclude Tommy Wiseau's character was a really smart guy because some other character said he was? Because I concluded Tommy Wiseau couldn't write a convincing smart character. The difference would be if the guy who is literally in charge of telling if guys are smart or not tells you Tommy Wiseau is smart. I mean, granted, that last assertion could still be true. But that has nothing to do with whether or not the condition itself was true in the movie itself. Which is what you're disputing. In conclusion: api call girl posted:I am a complete dry boring spergtastic neckbearded literalist and let me tell you about these plot holes.
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:06 |
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I'm confused, maybe someone can explain this to me. Sorry if it has been asked before. I remember someone saying that Khan is 300 years old, but wouldn't that mean he was born before first contact? If so, how did he end up frozen somewhere in space? I'm not a Star Trek fan, so hopefully someone can set me straight. Going in fresh, it kinda bugged me when they show the date, and then say how old he was.
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:09 |
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yronic heroism posted:The fictional set-up is what it is. The problem is a real person wrote the script and half-assed it. So they do maneuver to get their airlock aligned and something is keeping them in orbit until the plot dictates they need to almost crash. Did you watch the Room and conclude Tommy Wiseau's character was a really smart guy because some other character said he was? Because I concluded Tommy Wiseau couldn't write a convincing smart character. It's not insightful to point out that the movie is a movie, and that the script was written. Of course it was. You are doing this instead of reading, when no-one cares about your immersion.
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:09 |
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yronic heroism posted:The fictional set-up is what it is. The problem is a real person wrote the script and half-assed it. So they do maneuver to get their airlock aligned and something is keeping them in orbit until the plot dictates they need to almost crash. Did you watch the Room and conclude Tommy Wiseau's character was a really smart guy because some other character said he was? Because I concluded Tommy Wiseau couldn't write a convincing smart character. No Wave fucked around with this message at 21:12 on May 28, 2013 |
# ? May 28, 2013 21:10 |
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Dirty Job posted:I'm confused, maybe someone can explain this to me. Sorry if it has been asked before. In Star Trek orthodoxy there was a nuclear World War 3 in the 90's where Khan and other genetic supermen ruled the planet for a while before normal people drove them out of their countries. Following defeat, Khan fled to outer space in deep cryo to be woken up in a future where hopefully humanity forgot about them/had evolved to a point where murderous supermen were A-OK.
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:11 |
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1st AD posted:In Star Trek orthodoxy there was a nuclear World War 3 in the 90's where Khan and other genetic supermen ruled the planet for a while before normal people drove them out of their countries. Following defeat, Khan fled to outer space in deep cryo to be woken up in a future where hopefully humanity forgot about them/had evolved to a point where murderous supermen were A-OK.
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:13 |
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quote:The difference would be if the guy who is literally in charge of telling if guys are smart or not tells you Tommy Wiseau is smart. I mean, granted, that last assertion could still be true. But that has nothing to do with whether or not the condition itself was true in the movie itself. Which is what you're disputing. The big issue is poor plotting and lazy writing, hence the The Room comparison. Now let me tell you about how Captain Kirk is Raskolnikov because. quote:Do you get that this is, like, fiction, and these rules are arbitrary? Yes, they're so specifically arbitrary that every work of fiction must turn out exactly the way it does. That is why we cannot question how the story was presented for we live in the best of possible worlds. Now sit down and enjoy your Jar Jar because that's the only way they're getting through the planet core!
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:19 |
To add to that, the novels about the Eugenics Wars are even funnier, because Khan and his supermen don't actually do anything significant but the bulk of them end up being paranoid basketcases that don't run anything more important than the equivalent of various Montana Minutemen militia groups (and some of them run those groups, specifically). This is then somehow considered significant enough to ban genetic engineering over. VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 21:22 on May 28, 2013 |
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:19 |
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Strange Matter posted:To add to this, this was retconned somewhere around TNG/DS9 to be more of a cloak-and-dagger cold war rather than an all out planetary conflict, what with the world not being blown up in 1990. Star Trek likes to quietly brush that part of their canon under the rug, since it was maybe a bit short sighted for Roddenberry to predict WWIII well within the lifetimes of his viewership. Wait, if WWWIII was actually more of a cold war than an all out war, where does the movie First Contact fit in? Don't they talk about the Earth having a low population and lots of radiation in the atmosphere because of a nuclear war or something?
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:22 |
Pope Mobile posted:Wait, if WWWIII was actually more of a cold war than an all out war, where does the movie First Contact fit in? Don't they talk about the Earth having a low population and lots of radiation in the atmosphere because of a nuclear war or something? If I remember my younger days correctly, in Star Trek canon, WWIII =/= The Eugenics Wars. The Eugenics Wars occur in the late 20th century, WWIII occurs in the 21st.
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:23 |
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Hmm I may have remembered it wrong, but maybe the Trek gurus later decided that Khan's war and WWIII were different things, since I'm almost certain that Space Seed either implied or outright stated that they were the same.
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:26 |
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yronic heroism posted:Now sit down and enjoy your Jar Jar because that's the only way they're getting through the planet core! I enjoy Jar Jar, but he is not my Jar Jar. Jar Jar belongs to us all.
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:27 |
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If Khan having a space ship 300 years before the events of the movie is confusing, keep in mind that it was basically just a cargo container loaded with human popsicles. It had no warp drive, and no real capability to do much of anything but drift along and keep the cryo tubes running. And Star Trek "history" is a hilarious tangle because like people said earlier, they just made up dates in the 1960s and didn't give a poo poo, and most of the dates have come and gone without genetic supermen running around conquering Asia or whatever, and none of it was consistent even at the time anyway.
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:36 |
Strange Matter posted:Hmm I may have remembered it wrong, but maybe the Trek gurus later decided that Khan's war and WWIII were different things, since I'm almost certain that Space Seed either implied or outright stated that they were the same. Space Seed only says that wars were fought to drive Khan's men from power. There were no references to nuclear exchanges or anything like that in that episode. edit: sorry, misremembered SPOCK: Your Earth was on the verge of a dark ages. Whole populations were being bombed out of existence. A group of criminals could have been dealt with far more efficiently than wasting one of their most advanced spaceships. Still, that implies that the bombing came afterwards. VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 21:42 on May 28, 2013 |
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:39 |
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sean10mm posted:If Khan having a space ship 300 years before the events of the movie is confusing, keep in mind that it was basically just a cargo container loaded with human popsicles. It had no warp drive, and no real capability to do much of anything but drift along and keep the cryo tubes running. I don't even get the need to retcon. The obvious point of deviation between Star Trek and reality is the existence of Star Trek as a cultural phenomenon, beginning in 1966.
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:43 |
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That Star Trek lacks historical accuracy is not a plot hole or lack of foresight. Geez.
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# ? May 28, 2013 21:53 |
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Everything that isn't exposition is a plot hole!
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# ? May 28, 2013 22:01 |
SuperMechagodzilla posted:Everything that isn't exposition is a plot hole! If you don't like a specific aspect or passage of the exposition due to personal preference X, don't worry, that's a plot hole too! e: And let me write 3000 words of fanfic about how I would have handled it, by making a small change Y that would only affect 90%, or, Z parts, of the film. VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 22:04 on May 28, 2013 |
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# ? May 28, 2013 22:02 |
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Danger posted:That Star Trek lacks historical accuracy is not a plot hole or lack of foresight. Geez. To be clear, I for one am not seriously arguing this at all. Star Trek history is messy if you're trying to reconcile it with real history, but that's not a "real" problem with something written in the 1960s. The whole Eugenic Wars idea is pretty wacky but it's all in good fun, plus they were talking about genetic engineering in a 1960s TV show, how cool was that?
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# ? May 28, 2013 22:05 |
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Strange Matter posted:To add to this, this was retconned somewhere around TNG/DS9 to be more of a cloak-and-dagger cold war rather than an all out planetary conflict, what with the world not being blown up in 1990. Star Trek likes to quietly brush that part of their canon under the rug, since it was maybe a bit short sighted for Roddenberry to predict WWIII well within the lifetimes of his viewership. I've always interpreted that as Roddenberry seeing humanity as a kind of addict - we have to hit absolute rock bottom before we can pull ourselves together and build the utopia he wanted.
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# ? May 28, 2013 22:13 |
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Strange Matter posted:I think there's also much more to examine as far as the prequels are concerned than just the failure of the film's text and cinematography. A big portion of the RLM reviews, which I sincerely enjoy and which made me appreciate the OT even more, show the behind the scenes process of how the films got that way. The "shot/reverse shot" analysis gets its impact from showing Lucas sitting in his director's chair gloating about his sophisticated film-making process. I don't think that same level of behind the scenes documentation exists for other films that RLM targets, which drains a lot of their punch. But that's where I really think they overreach, though, trying to read great significant psychological import into the footage and using their after-the-fact knowledge of what the movie was to say "Okay, clearly everyone here knows it's a bad movie but is too scared to tell George" or "See how arrogant he is talking about poetry" when that may not be the reality of what anyone was thinking or feeling at the time. (It's especially tricky when you're trying to read Lucas himself since this is somebody notoriously aloof and introverted.) It's the Commentary Tracks of the Damned problem- if you look at the making of a movie you hated, sure, everyone's going to seem arrogant and stupid because how could they not see how horrible this was?
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# ? May 28, 2013 22:42 |
It probably doesn't help that the Star Wars productions have probably been variously the most scrutinized and documented ones in the history of film, so they had a LOT of material from the 40 years or so to draw upon to establish their narratives. When they have to get at material themselves with more contemporaneous works it doesn't work out nearly as well. Just elaborating on the "after-the-fact knowledge" comment.
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# ? May 28, 2013 22:48 |
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yronic heroism posted:The big issue is poor plotting and lazy writing, hence the The Room comparison. I have seen three different nerd handwavings for the core thing: 1. Naboo actually did have a watery core (official EU explanation) 2. The "core" refers to subterranean waters that are not the core (general consensus on fan forum) 3. Boss Nass is an idiot who just got force-fooled seconds before, there is no way they are going through the core, you're stupid for assuming that (from 108-page RLM rebuttal) The real explanation, of course, is that Qui-Gon and co. have to go through the core so that they can establish an unparalleled intimate knowledge of Naboo and its dangers beyond either the humans or the Gungans, thematically setting up their authenticity over the robot army.
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# ? May 28, 2013 23:00 |
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api call girl posted:All 50 of them making the incredibly risky/dangerous cross-over in the debris field? That's not Kirk. Of all the things people bitch about, these (especially the first) are the worst. Like, what do you want to see, Star Trek: Team Up? Where some bad poo poo goes down and Kirk pushes a button and summons a fleet of 10 other starships and they just pound on their enemy til it's over? "Oh no, Khan stole the Vengeance!" "No problem, here's 30 other ships!" BAM PROBLEM SOLVED "There's a risky mission. Should the Captain and Lead Actor of the Franchise go?" "No, let's send some extras. They can't talk though, they aren't SAG."
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# ? May 28, 2013 23:09 |
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Astroman posted:Of all the things people bitch about, these (especially the first) are the worst. Ya because it's impossible to create situations in which those problems don't occur... It comes down to lazy writing and bad world building if you just ignore such questions and it even contradicts previous stuff (the Federation DID afterall react to the Romulan threat in the 2009 movie and we know that other ships must have been around Earth due to the meeting/"terrorist" attack).
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# ? May 29, 2013 01:32 |
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What is lazy writing. What is energetic writing.
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# ? May 29, 2013 01:50 |
Speaking as someone who thought STID was a pretty average film at best with a lot of problems, I don't really understood the criticism of how the Enterprise is always the only ship in the sector. I mean, this isn't TNG where they have magic factory boxes that can poo poo out fully built spaceships with the press of a button, interstellar starships are probably a pretty big investment of time and resources best used for, you know, interstellar exploration rather than chilling in orbit around Earth waiting for some invasion fleet or giant black space dildo or unsubtle communist metaphor to roll in.
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# ? May 29, 2013 02:01 |
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mr. stefan posted:Speaking as someone who thought STID was a pretty average film at best with a lot of problems, I don't really understood the criticism of how the Enterprise is always the only ship in the sector. I mean, this isn't TNG where they have magic factory boxes that can poo poo out fully built spaceships with the press of a button, interstellar starships are probably a pretty big investment of time and resources best used for, you know, interstellar exploration rather than chilling in orbit around Earth waiting for some invasion fleet or giant black space dildo or unsubtle communist metaphor to roll in. From Trek 09 you can even tell it takes a few years to make ships because Kirk saw the Enterprise being constructed and it only went on its maiden voyage like three years later. Couple that with all the ships that got destroyed over by Vulcan and you can assume that Starfleet is still rebuilding its fleet.
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# ? May 29, 2013 02:25 |
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Except that everyone meeting in that room who got shot up were captains of, ya know star ships. So where the hell did all their ships go?
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# ? May 29, 2013 02:58 |
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Na'at posted:Except that everyone meeting in that room who got shot up were captains of, ya know star ships. So where the hell did all their ships go? Space. The ships are in space.
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# ? May 29, 2013 02:59 |
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And since they can travel from Earth to the Klingon homeworld in like a day, or from Earth to Vulcan in 10 minutes like they did in the last film why didn't Kirk rather than just broadcasting the Admirals admission of guilt ship-wide broadcast that poo poo out to every ship in the federation? I get suspension of belief but internal logic and consistency should count for something too.
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# ? May 29, 2013 03:04 |
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Na'at posted:And since they can travel from Earth to the Klingon homeworld in like a day, or from Earth to Vulcan in 10 minutes like they did in the last film why didn't Kirk rather than just broadcasting the Admirals admission of guilt ship-wide broadcast that poo poo out to every ship in the federation? I get suspension of belief but internal logic and consistency should count for something too. If they had included a throwaway line about "the communications being out" you would just complain that it wouldn't be plausible. I know this because there was a throwaway line about how the communications are out.
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# ? May 29, 2013 03:12 |
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So I got the soundtrack to this, very redundant. Giacchino, this is NOT the show Lost, or Medal of Honor, Stop recycling your poo poo. And I thought James Horner was bad. I do enjoy it, but those track names make me feel like even he didn't care so much about the music. (Buying the space farm, warp core values, really?) And NO end credit music? Are you kidding me?
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# ? May 29, 2013 03:16 |
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computer parts posted:If they had included a throwaway line about "the communications being out" you would just complain that it wouldn't be plausible. If their communicators were out then how were they communicating with the Admiral?
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# ? May 29, 2013 03:17 |
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The end credit music is the same from the 2009 film.
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# ? May 29, 2013 03:18 |
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# ? May 2, 2024 23:12 |
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Na'at posted:If their communicators were out then how were they communicating with the Admiral? Local and interstellar communications are rather different beasts, I imagine.
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# ? May 29, 2013 03:19 |