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Mu Zeta posted:There's a deleted scene where Luke is constructing his lightsaber and it uses a special crystal to power the device. I'm glad they got rid of it because nothing makes Star Wars more boring than bringing in more technical details like midichlorians or the light speed fuel in Solo. Too late, Rogue One mentions crystals briefly from that blind monk character.
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Sep 5, 2018 00:34
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Tasers that knock people unconscious. They don't do that. They prevent you from doing much with your muscles and can disorient you, but when they stop tasing you you can start fighting again.
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Sep 5, 2018 00:59
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Simply Simon posted:I read the novels before I watched the movies and it's there in quite some detail. Apparently every Lightsaber has a crystal to "focus the light", which also gives the saber its color. It's hard to find good crystals on Tatooine, so Luke also makes the crystal in some furnace and has to be real careful with the cooling down process so it doesn't crack because that would be bad. Also the tension in the scene happens when he pushes the button to turn it on the first time and prays to the Force it doesn't blow his arm off, again. Rancor tooth 
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Sep 5, 2018 01:10
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synthetik posted:Wasn’t the brain stealing cycles bit from Hyperion as well? I thought it ended up being that everytime someone went through one of the travel portals the AI used the brainpower or something. In the first two books the machine intelligences are stealing brain cycles from people when they teleport. In the second series, they're stealing processing power from people constantly through the crucifixes. poo poo gets weird in those books but they're some of my favourites.
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Sep 5, 2018 01:27
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The technology in star wars all runs on "gently caress you it's space magic." There is faster than light travel, space wizards, and laser swords because the plot needs it. It isn't trying to be hard sci fi. The matrix needs people batteries because the plot demands it. The details don't really matter. I kinda like that they never try to explain light travel in star wars honestly. Its not important. The story just needs that consumer tech to exist. How it works in particular isn't important beyond "we need time to spin up the hyperdrive!"
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Sep 5, 2018 01:40
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Simply Simon posted:I read the novels before I watched the movies and it's there in quite some detail. Apparently every Lightsaber has a crystal to "focus the light", which also gives the saber its color. It's hard to find good crystals on Tatooine, so Luke also makes the crystal in some furnace and has to be real careful with the cooling down process so it doesn't crack because that would be bad. Also the tension in the scene happens when he pushes the button to turn it on the first time and prays to the Force it doesn't blow his arm off, again. Jedi using crystals to build sabers has been A Thing for a looooooong time, it just never appeared in the books. I think its cool since you still don't know how the crystals work exactly, and it builds on the mysticism of jedi. Justin Godscock posted:Too late, Rogue One mentions crystals briefly from that blind monk character. Ahhh I felt like there was a tiny reference somewhere that I couldn't quite remember. Good catch!
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Sep 5, 2018 01:44
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Zaphod42 posted:I kinda like that they never try to explain light travel in star wars honestly. Its not important. The story just needs that consumer tech to exist. How it works in particular isn't important beyond "we need time to spin up the hyperdrive!" Yup. Good soft science fiction doesn't bother explaining the mechanics; it works exactly the way it needs to for the story. True for any advanced technology, really; laser swords? They just exist. Laser guns? Somebody invented them, they get manufactured now. Deflector shields? Don't worry about it. Sound in space? Hey buddy, this isn't reality so I can do whatever I want.
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Sep 5, 2018 01:46
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They should adequately explain how it works, just not why
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Sep 5, 2018 01:49
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Tunicate posted:They should adequately explain how it works, just not why At a certain point the distinction between those two blurs. But that said yes, they should explain the powers and limitations of those things, so that we can have actual drama about it. If they go "we need to spin up the hyperdrive" one week, and then next week they just jump to space instantly with no explanation, that's bad. How did they do that? Why didn't they do that last time? Still, I don't really need these things explained, I just need them to feel like someone understands them. I love sci-fi that starts in-media-res and uses all this stuff that they never explain, as long as it looks like somebody put the time and effort into thinking it all through. Like Ghost in the Shell. They don't explain how most of the technology really works, they use devices and they don't even talk about them so you have to infer everything's function, but you get the strong impression that the author absolutely does think those things through and has nailed them down. This doesn't really apply to what you said, but I love it so much I'm gonna post it anyways https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36GT2zI8lVA
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Sep 5, 2018 01:53
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Tolkien-esque worldbuilding sucks, especially in the limited runtime of a movie. It's better to tease at the world outside of the story than to go into agonizing detail until it's mundane.
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Sep 5, 2018 02:09
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Simply Simon posted:Back to teenage me, however, I owned all the Star Wars expanded universe books and there's a series with the next generation of teenage Jedi apprentices and their wacky hijinks, and they all go on elaborate quests to find crystals that are ~just right~ and ~special~ for them. Chewbacca's son has to lasso the tonsil stones (crystal!) off a wookie-eating giant plant on their jungle homeworld (seriously), one of the Solo kids uses the Force to pull the crystal out of a freaking gas giant's core. And there's a cool and troubled warrior princess Jedi who walks into a geyser in-between eruptions to chip a crystal off the walls. She overestimates herself and it's chipped but she builds the saber anyway out of a dragon tooth she hand-carves or whatever, then turns it on and it blows her loving hand off because she's bad at building stuff and rash and that's a super important message, don't be a loving idiot and ask someone good at electronics for help when making murder weapons at the age of 15. Anyway I loved the callback to the very first Star Wars novel because I was a weirdo nerd, and I guess I still am because how do I remember all of this??????? There's a trap about to be sprung. 1. It was Chewbacca's nephew Lowbacca, and he built his lightsaber around lenses scavenged from abandoned Rebellion-era equipment leftover at the Massassi Temple. 2. Tenel Ka got her original crystals from inside the lava vent of a volcano and did notice that they were flawed, true, but it was less her lightsaber blowing her hand off and more to the point: 3. Pre-Force-Hitler Jacen Solo was sparring with Tenel Ka when her lightsaber failed and he cut her arm off. He did build his lightsaber with a Corusca gem he got from the gas giant Yavin  So... why the gently caress do I still know this from 20 years ago?!
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Sep 5, 2018 02:22
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Simply Simon posted:Back to teenage me, however, I owned all the Star Wars expanded universe books and there's a series with the next generation of teenage Jedi apprentices and their wacky hijinks, and they all go on elaborate quests to find crystals that are ~just right~ and ~special~ for them. Chewbacca's son has to lasso the tonsil stones (crystal!) off a wookie-eating giant plant on their jungle homeworld (seriously), one of the Solo kids uses the Force to pull the crystal out of a freaking gas giant's core. And there's a cool and troubled warrior princess Jedi who walks into a geyser in-between eruptions to chip a crystal off the walls. She overestimates herself and it's chipped but she builds the saber anyway out of a dragon tooth she hand-carves or whatever, then turns it on and it blows her loving hand off because she's bad at building stuff and rash and that's a super important message, don't be a loving idiot and ask someone good at electronics for help when making murder weapons at the age of 15. Anyway I loved the callback to the very first Star Wars novel because I was a weirdo nerd, and I guess I still am because how do I remember all of this??????? People hate, but I maintain that Jace and Jaina would make a much much better story than what we got in Force Awakens and Last Jedi.
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Sep 5, 2018 02:27
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There's always a chance they show up in the cartoons since Thrawn became canon
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Sep 5, 2018 02:36
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Phanatic posted:
He's a log in screen
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Sep 5, 2018 02:36
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With the Matrix, I liked to imagine the machines were self-aware enough to have a sense of mercy and empathy. After the second Renaissance, humans nuked robots, robots fought back, humans blocked out the sun, robots crippled humanity with bioweapons, but went short of driving humanity to extinction. Maybe they got lonely. The battery explanation is just a cover to allow the whole 'glitch' that is basically Working As Intended going. Of course it raises other questions : -Why were the machines so reliant on solar power? Robots would be extremely well suited to harness nuclear power for their energy needs. -When the machines went and culled everyone in Zion 5 times, did they clean up all the blood and wreckage and stuff? Does each starting group get an immaculate Zion to populate? And wouldn't it take a pretty long time for the population to grow from 25 to half a million? -Did the machines build Zion itself? That actually makes more sense ; one of the leaders points out nobody knows how the machines that keep the place running even work.
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Sep 5, 2018 03:45
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Mu Zeta posted:Does anybody pay attention to the movie openings? I must have seen Predator dozens of times while growing up and I never realized they showed his space ship in the opening sequence. I know I don't. I watch Space Jam every few weeks; still don't know how Michael Jordan gets into the cartoon world.
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Sep 5, 2018 03:56
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I think Zion was a useful pressure release valve. The Matrix seems like it MIGHT have the ability to either rewrite memories (Like Cypher wants) or that whoever Neo would choose to begin repopulating Zion would be the only ones in on the secret in order to explain how they find the city, how they escaped the Matrix in the first place, etc. After Zion got populated enough through rescues and births, the secret would die with them. Now, there is the issue of the benevolent AI that is supposed to be running a Matrix/systems inside Zion. Maybe the chosen of Neo are fed a false story that they were in there the whole time and never in the 'evil Matrix' and are there purposely to be the last hope of humanity to fight the machines.
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Sep 5, 2018 05:05
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Zaphod42 posted:At a certain point the distinction between those two blurs.
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Sep 5, 2018 05:21
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Android Apocalypse posted:Ghost in the Shell creator Shirow Masamune was insane regarding explaining how all the poo poo worked in his manga. The gutters between panels would be filled with footnotes regarding firearms, mecha, and computer tech. Hell, in his weird magic series Orion he'd try to explain magic. dude even explained how the hardcore lesbian sex scene in GiTS was only a metaphorical representation of what was actually going on, which was a cyber-brain interface thing of course, the lettering for that explanation was hard to read because he was obviously writing it with his non-dominant hand
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Sep 5, 2018 05:23
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and it was probably in japanese or something
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Sep 5, 2018 05:23
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Screaming Idiot posted:dude even explained how the hardcore lesbian sex scene in GiTS was only a metaphorical representation of what was actually going on, which was a cyber-brain interface thing Shirow Masamune was insanely weird.
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Sep 5, 2018 05:30
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Leviathan Wakes, the first book in The Expanse series, has an interview with one of the authors at the end. The interviewer asks him how that version of FTL drive works and he responds “Very efficiently”.
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Sep 5, 2018 05:35
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when it comes to the matrix, 99% of the fan theories of 'oh i wish this is what really happened' is just what was actually the story if you go by the events depicted on screen, instead of worrying about director statements and other stuff that wasn't in the movies
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Sep 5, 2018 06:23
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Tunicate posted:In the new Disney continuity the crystals are now somewhat sapient and if you want a red lightsaber you have to torture your crystal until it starts bleeding
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Sep 5, 2018 06:41
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Android Apocalypse posted:Ghost in the Shell creator Shirow Masamune was insane regarding explaining how all the poo poo worked in his manga. The gutters between panels would be filled with footnotes regarding firearms, mecha, and computer tech. Hell, in his weird magic series Orion he'd try to explain magic. Well drat. Bad example then. I need to read the manga.
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Sep 5, 2018 07:23
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Nth Doctor posted:There's a trap about to be sprung.  . I do remember now that everyone called Lowbacca "Lowie" because Chewbacca is "Chewie" of course and that's just stupid.To get away from the pure Star Wars derail, I used to think back when I read those novels religiously that books are always superiour to their movie versions (yes, even the Episode 4-6 novelizations, but barely and out of "principle") because you can have all those details in books and details are important and the movie inevitably cuts that super important fact, and how could they. Nowadays I realize that this is not a flaw of the medium, but one of its biggest strengths, because a good movie will just show you what a books takes pages to tell. Or useless chaff gets rightfully cut, because there's a whole lot of that in most of the trash books I used to read. To bring it back to Star Wars though, a probably rational irritation: I made it a point to read the Episode I novelization before watching the movie because see above, and I was super, super disappointed with Episode I's opening (you know, like everyone, but bear with me) because the book cold opens with a Pod Race. In the movie there's like one line to the effect of "Anakin races regularly but he never gets to the finish line because assholes keep wrecking his racer", and they detail that in the book and it's awesome. I get that having two big race setpieces would be really dumb in a movie, but drat, the alternative is not that much better. What did help me in actually enjoying Episode I the first time was that Jar Jar isn't nearly as annoying in the book (helps that you don't hear his voice and see his design), with more time devoted to him actually helping out and being somewhat clever when his life and that of his friends is on the line. So I came in with a positive impression of his character, and while movie Jar Jar is a grating buffoon, all those scenes were also in the book, so it really didn't bother me that much.
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Sep 5, 2018 08:22
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Phanatic posted:Tasers that knock people unconscious. I'm sure it's been brought up before but the thing that happens in every action movie ever where they whack someone with the butt of a gun, or just hit them in the back on the head, and they fall unconscious for an unspecified amount of time. Blows to the head that knock you out for any significant amount of time involve brain damage and lengthy (years) recoveries. voiceless anal fricative has a new favorite as of 09:49 on Sep 5, 2018 |
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Sep 5, 2018 09:43
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e: quote=/=edit
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Sep 5, 2018 09:49
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Coffee And Pie posted:The best solution to lightsabers I’ve seen was in that game No More Heroes, where the solution is that lightsabers exist but they have a chunky, obtrusive metal arm on the side that telescopes out and has a thing on the end that stops the beam They're basically fluorescent light tubes. That said, the games so also have classic style beam katanas without limiters.
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Sep 5, 2018 09:51
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Coffee And Pie posted:Tolkien-esque worldbuilding sucks, especially in the limited runtime of a movie. It's better to tease at the world outside of the story than to go into agonizing detail until it's mundane. I think lots of people mistake "world building" in itself for storytelling and it usually isn't.
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Sep 5, 2018 10:04
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Wheat Loaf posted:I think lots of people mistake "world building" in itself for storytelling and it usually isn't. A lot of writers, especially.
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Sep 5, 2018 10:30
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There is good world building and bad world building. Han Solo boasting that the Millennium Falcon can make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs is much more interesting than actually seeing him make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.
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Sep 5, 2018 11:10
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Imagine a film with no fantasical or sci-fi elements taking time to have a character explain how a microwave or a car or a phone works. That's basically what it feels like when fantasy/sci-fi wastes time on explaining something that should be semi common knowledge or at best just trivia to everyone in the setting. It works if it's something that's just as new and far out to the characters as it is to the audience.
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Sep 5, 2018 11:10
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Mute gets around it in a fairly novel way by having its protagonist be Amish in a cyberpunk setting.
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Sep 5, 2018 11:13
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FreudianSlippers posted:Imagine a film with no fantasical or sci-fi elements taking time to have a character explain how a microwave or a car or a phone works. It always comes up in alternate history stories because a lot of alternate history fans are real grognards about butterfly effects and don't understand why a story about, say, JFK not being assassinated and its impact on the Vietnam War and American politics in general doesn't go into detail about how it affects crop rotation practices in rural Brazil.
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Sep 5, 2018 11:15
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FreudianSlippers posted:Imagine a film with no fantasical or sci-fi elements taking time to have a character explain how a microwave or a car or a phone works. I remember reading a short story that was 'if a story set in the modern day was written like a sci-fi novel' which almost literally has those. I suspect a lot of people focus on explaining how their made up spaceships work because they don't have many ideas for the actual plot.
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Sep 5, 2018 12:06
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Memento posted:In the first two books the machine intelligences are stealing brain cycles from people when they teleport. In the second series, they're stealing processing power from people constantly through the crucifixes. I loved the Hyperion and Endymion books, and to a certain degree Illium and Olympos as well. But in the latter two you can definitely tell he's beginning to go off his rocker with the whole thing about jews being exterminated in a giant space jihad and whatnot.
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Sep 5, 2018 12:52
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bike tory posted:I'm sure it's been brought up before but the thing that happens in every action movie ever where they whack someone with the butt of a gun, or just hit them in the back on the head, and they fall unconscious for an unspecified amount of time. Archer is about the only one in fiction that recognizes that. Of course Archer also is the only one who counts the bullets people fire so he knows when they need to reload.
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Sep 5, 2018 16:32
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bike tory posted:I'm sure it's been brought up before but the thing that happens in every action movie ever where they whack someone with the butt of a gun, or just hit them in the back on the head, and they fall unconscious for an unspecified amount of time. This gets especially goofy in Lost, where the characters are bonking each other on the head so often with so little consequence that it's basically an on-off switch.
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Sep 5, 2018 16:40
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FreudianSlippers posted:Imagine a film with no fantasical or sci-fi elements taking time to have a character explain how a microwave or a car or a phone works. Unnecessary exposition isn't just a sff problem; maid-butler has a long history of being used by lazy writers.
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Sep 5, 2018 16:51
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