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An old one from Robocop. When his partner is helping fix his aim after he gets damaged, it cuts to a shot from his perspective showing a green targeting cross a few inches to the right of the babyfood he's trying to hit, which moves over as she adjusts his aim. Surely if his aim is screwed up then he should think he is on-target but miss? If he knows the bullet is going to go off to the right where the green cross is, what exactly is wrong with his aim?
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May 14, 2014 00:27
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Trent posted:It's annoying when Vulcans say "that is a human emotion (dumbass)" to someone like Phlox who isn't loving human at all. One of my favourite bits in Undiscovered Country is when the Klingons object to being told they have 'human rights'. Shame the writing generally went downhill from there. It was one of the few times an alien race was portrayed as anything other than a single exaggerated personality trait.
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May 21, 2014 00:36
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Tiggum posted:That's the thing, the writers equate "no emotions" with "doesn't get jokes" and that's about as far as they take it. I mean, Data keeps a picture of Tasha Yar after she dies, but totally not for emotional reasons though, right? A lot of things can be explained as him trying to live like a human. He can understand that he had a 'special' relationship with Tasha and that keeping a picture of her would be a reasonable thing to do.
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May 21, 2014 17:22
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Aleph Null posted:That brings me to the thing I hate: the stupid loving "emotion chip." To be fair he is quite enjoying being terrified until Picard practically orders him to turn the chip off. Which is fairly understandable since the future of everything ranks ahead of him furthering his personal ambitions. For content, one from Robocop 2. When RoboCain makes his first appearance, we see a truck pull up on top of the camera and see his CGI robotic legs stomp out the back. And the truck doesn't even move a millimetre as he exits. Come on, he must weigh a tonne. At least have the suspension shift slightly as he steps out the back. They usually do such a good job of making Robocop feel metal and heavy that it really feels like an oversight. jabby has a new favorite as of 00:25 on May 22, 2014 |
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May 22, 2014 00:21
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Pneub posted:Ironically, when Scotty showed up on The Next Generation, he admitted that he would intentionally highball his estimates so he could beat them when Kirk was being a dick about it. He did it way before that in Star Trek III. quote:Kirk: How much refit time before we can take her out again?
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Jul 3, 2014 01:37
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CJacobs posted:This is the same dumb bullshit I had problems with that kept me from really enjoying Looper, but at least in The Butterfly Effect the producers didn't outright say "we don't care if it doesn't make sense and you shouldn't either". I don't know which is worse, putting it out there that the problem exists and pretending it's not an integral issue with the movie like Looper did, or just ignoring it and being okay with the film being inconsistent in a lot of ways like The Butterfly Effect did. Looper is actually internally consistent, there was a big debate about it in the looper thread but it makes sense. The writers just didn't want to talk about it and the movie only works if the characters don't understand how the time travel mechanic works.
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Sep 15, 2014 19:36
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DrBouvenstein posted:It's better to think of him as composed of billions of nanobots, i.e. "grey goo." One of the novels actually breaks down the T-1000s quite well. They are indeed composed of tiny individual cells, with two 'layers' of programming. The deeper layer is present in full in every cell (akin to DNA) and contains simple instructions on how to move around, form objects, and rejoin if pieces get separated. Then on top of that there is a more superficial layer of programming that is spread throughout the cells with each cell only holding a small chunk, and that layer governs its mission directives and behaviour. So any individual piece has enough intelligence to try and rejoin the whole, but its only when enough 'cells' are together that it can access its terminator programming and behave with direction. Also, the reason it can travel through time is that it can mimic the electromagnetic field given off by a living organism. drat I'm a geek. But it feels so good.
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Sep 16, 2014 23:51
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oldpainless posted:The T-1000 should have multiple arms holding a clip right underneath the gun so it can immediately reload instead of inefficiently reloading like a human. Immersion ruined. So like, one arm to hold the gun and one arm to hold the fresh clip?
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Oct 1, 2014 19:00
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BiggerBoat posted:Same with Robocop and Terminator like you said. The stop motion Ray Harryhausen jerkiness somehow feels more physical and robotic than CGI does. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas uses puppetry in a similar way to visually describe an acid trip. I suppose you can add Jurrasic Park to this category. I'm sure its been mentioned before, but it still bugs me that in Terminator 3 and 4 the default method of machines fighting humans seems to be to fling them as far away as possible then slowly walk over to them and repeat. At least in the first two films you got the honest sense that if the terminator ever got close enough to touch you it was all over.
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Oct 8, 2014 01:00
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Just watched Mystic River and aside from being terminally depressing it reminded me how much I hate characters displaying too much knowledge at crime scenes. "Yeah, looks like she took a beating but that wasn't what killed her. She was shot a second time." Meanwhile the body is sitting fully clothed and unexamined partly concealed under a bush. How do you know the beating didn't kill her? Or something else entirely? At least make a token effort to show that some examination of the scene has taken place before giving us those conclusions, otherwise it's just lazy writing.
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Oct 20, 2014 12:52
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Aggressive pricing posted:Finally got around to watching Looper. The time travel was stupid, it worked however the plot needed it to on a scene by scene basis, but the thing that really bothered me was, if the whole point of loopers were to dispose of bodies because it's impossible to get away with murder in the future, why did the guys going after Bruce Willis have guns with lethal ammo? By killing his wife, they caused the exact loving thing loopers are supposed to prevent, but all they do is torch the house and drive away. If it's that easy, why bother with time travel in the first place? This was discussed to death in the Looper thread, but the time travel is internally consistent, just in a strange way that no film has really done before. And its never said they can control where people end up, it could have been that they transported Bruce Willis to the US before sending him back through time or it could have been that each time machine comes fixed to a certain location elsewhere on the planet.
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Nov 4, 2014 22:17
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Aggressive pricing posted:It wasn't consistent, the scene where the running looper loses pieces of himself one at a time shows that, if time travel worked the way it was shown, he would have gained each memory and injury as they happened, but it also would have effected the course of his life from that point forward. Each chunk they took off should have had him end up in an increasingly different situation, there's absolutely no way his life would have gone the same if he spent 30 years missing his arms and legs. Torturing the past version to preserve the future makes no sense when the torture would have such a dramatic effect on how he'd live his life, they could have just killed the past version and accomplished the same thing way easier. It makes perfect sense and is consistent within the movie, it's just not a way of dealing with time travel that has been done by a movie before. You are trying to apply rules from different movies. Look at it this way. In the Looper universe if you change the timeline, you can only affect it going forwards. So if you cut a piece off someone all versions of them lose that piece at the same moment. Why weren't they always missing that piece? Because that would mean your changes had an effect before you made them. Why don't they jump to a completely different situation? Because that would require knowing the decisions they would have made if your change had affected their past. Essentially it's time travel with free will. The characters actions are not predetermined and neither can changes to the timeline affect actions they have already taken. Simple. EDIT: Oh dear god it's happening again. NEVER BRING UP LOOPER.
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Nov 5, 2014 18:42
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Jaramin posted:Waterworld bothers me. In order to cover the surface of the earth in that much water, you would need to triple the combined volume of water in the ground, on the surface already, or in the atmosphere of the entire planet. Also that the mariner was essentially a psycho who casually killed hundreds of slaves to free a couple of people.
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Nov 9, 2014 23:07
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Basically every cop show wants to be dirty harry, but they miss the point that while Harry got results in the end his methods made all their evidence inadmissable and basically made the killer untouchable by legal means. Plus stopping that one criminal was supposed to have ruined his whole career and landed him in serious trouble.
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Dec 23, 2014 12:55
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Cage posted:That doesn't sound right, I cant believe that anyone would think a car would flip like that with just a quick right/left of the steering wheel. Suvs, sure but not regular cars and especially not sports/supercars that sit even lower to the ground. I remember thinking at the time it was a rather poor advert for aston martin, the idea that their car would horribly wreck if you made a rapid steering adjustment on an otherwise perfectly normal stretch of road.
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Jan 14, 2015 22:23
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Delivery McGee posted:
Interesting article about it here. Looks like an 8-inch ramp was enough to flip an old BMW 5-series, but the Aston Martin refused to flip on both that and even an 18-inch ramp. Moral of the story, buying an Aston is really the safest thing for your children.
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Jan 14, 2015 22:59
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CJacobs posted:edit: I have remembered that dumb loving thing about cutting off a dude's hand removing the hand from the older version of the dude and have crossed out the parts of the post that are relevant to it because that makes no goddamn sense and yes it does matter because it's integral to the story more than a few times, I agree with the post above that says that scene is annoying and useless Looper gets brought up here all the time. If you read the thread the logic is internally consistent, you just have to wrap your head around the fact that timeline changes only propagate forwards from the moment the change is made. So if you cut off a dudes hand he has no hand from every moment onwards, but you can't undo stuff he has already done because that would mean rewriting the past too. Ditto with moving him to a different place, that would mean the universe somehow predicting his no-handed actions. So if he's in a car, he's still in a car even if he has no feet. jabby has a new favorite as of 16:06 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 16:02
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Zaphod42 posted:I feel like people only want a Black Widow movie to have a proper female superhero, which don't get me wrong I am ALL for more female superheroes or female heroines in general, but Black Widow is just kinda such a boring character. If she wasn't the only female on the cinematic Avengers nobody would know who she was (and nobody did except a few nerds before the movie). Scarlet Jo does a good job (and maybe its Scarlet herself is the reason people want a black window movie?) but the character just isn't that interesting. Kind of a catch-22 if she can't have a movie because her character is boring. Her basic character is just 'mysterious female assassin with flexible morals'. If you can't make that interesting its entirely the fault of the writing, not the character.
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May 18, 2015 18:56
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Aphrodite posted:It was, but it also came from an antagonist character you're supposed to see as wrong. Maybe, but all Supergirl did was look bummed out and then (presumably) goes on to use it forever as her official title. So either we are meant to think she totally bought the 'being called a girl is actually empowering' speech or she got bullied into using that as her name by an rear end in a top hat in five seconds. Doesn't make her character seem that empowered either way.
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May 25, 2015 02:03
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Celery Face posted:
Nothing annoying about skyfall can beat 'I am escaping in pitch darkness from the villain who thinks I am trapped inside a burning house, so remaining unseen is essential. Better use my torch, I wouldn't want to trip.'
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Jun 14, 2015 13:10
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This is going back a bit, but the 2005 Fantastic Four movie. OK, so they set up part way through the film that Johnny can reach 'supernova' level temperatures, but its a really bad idea because it risks igniting the Earth's atmosphere. Fair enough, standard Chekov's gun stuff. But at the end of the film we have Doom, who has killed like two people, caused some property damage/reckless endangerment, and seems bent on killing the four heroes. So their solution is for Johnny to go 'supernova' as part of their plan to defeat him. Seriously? You're going to risk killing every living thing on the planet to stop one guy with superpowers who hasn't even reached the level of a decent spree killer? You don't even know what he wants! All he seems to be interested in is revenge against the four of you, so you are risking extinction of the entire Earth ostensibly just to save your own lives. At least supervillains in other movies seem to have some over-arching plan that makes stopping them important enough to risk everything. Doom was just pissed and wanted to kill the heroes.
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Jun 23, 2015 22:37
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Aphrodite posted:They have Sue contain it with a forcefield don't they? Pretty sure Richards told her to 'try' and contain it. Which given her general uselessness up until that point would still make me worry for the future of the entire loving Earth. Pretty much whichever way you slice it risking human extinction to stop one dude who just wants to kill you is a dick move.
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Jun 25, 2015 14:41
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From the after-credits scene from Terminator: Genysis So the big reveal is that a huge Skynet CPU thing survived the destruction and is sitting happily buried under the rubble. We know it's Skynet for sure because the blue holographic Skynet persona is projected looking up at it. Why would Skynet bother to project a holographic representation of itself looking at.. itself? No-one is around to see it.
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Jul 14, 2015 01:08
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Jedit posted:It was basically the same ending: humanity persuaded to work together by the appearance of an antipathetic outside force. Which you prefer probably depends on whether you think the Russians were more likely to cooperate with America in the face of a rogue god or a ten ton vagina dropped on Times Square. Yeah, they both work. The comic plan probably makes more sense in the long run, since the idea is that it 'proves' to humanity that they aren't alone in the universe. Manhattan watching over everybody only really works until people start wondering if he's still there. But in the short term at least the film plan spreads the destruction evenly, it's harder to imagine all countries coming together if only New York was actually destroyed and only America had access to the supposed alien remains. In any case Ozy only felt he needed a short term distraction anyway. He had to do something to get everyone to back down from the imminent conflict, but his long term plan was always based on cheap renewable energy and providing 'infinite resources' in order to make the idea of war obsolete. He just knew he would never have the chance to enact it without a dramatic event to get everyone to back down from the brink.
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Jul 19, 2015 14:23
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NorgLyle posted:The thing that made me nuts about the Watchmen movie was that, in order to make all the flashy eye candy big scenes fit into a feature length film they had to literally cut the heart out of the book. In addition to cutting the two best pieces of Alan Moore's writing for no drat reason from the movie, the filmmakers removed basically all the minor characters who, in the climax of the story are, by their actions, refuting both Rorschach's nihilism and Adrian's utilitarianism. It's actually really important for the book and having them absent from the movie so you can fit in Big Figure is horrible. Did you watch the directors cut? I'm pretty sure 'nothing ever ends' is in there, as well as Tales of the Black Freighter and a couple of the minor characters you talk about. Also I kind of liked the change to how Rorschach killed his first criminal. After all he is supposed to be the ultimate moral absolutist, if he felt the guy had to die why wouldn't he do it himself? Chaining him up and setting the building on fire to see if he can escape just seems too Jigsaw-like. If he wanted him dead it seems out of character to leave it up to the criminal himself. EDIT: Actually I might be thinking of the animated version of the comic for the 'nothing ever ends' line. jabby has a new favorite as of 22:13 on Jul 19, 2015 |
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Jul 19, 2015 22:07
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Magnus Manfist posted:I watched watchmen on a plane, and isn't there a scene where two heroes are walking home and they're randomly attacked in an alley by a gang, and then there's like 5 solid minutes of them glamorously spin-kicking the teeth out of their mouths and shattering their limbs and I think straight up killing a bunch of them, all in super-badass slow motion. The gang of faceless mooks who are presumably just trying to mug some randoms bviously keep suicidially charging one by one at them, after like 5 of their buddies have been completely mutilated. Yes, a gang tries to mug/kill them and they straight up kill half the members and brutally beat the rest in slow motion. Then they casually stroll off to continue their day chatting about how exhilarating it was to fight crime again after all these years. Whether you see that as glamorizing violence or a harsh take on what kind of psychopaths would actually want to become costumed heroes kind of depends on your perspective. Later in the film it's demonstrated that Rorschach putting a gang member's cousin in a wheelchair indirectly causes the death of the original Night Owl, and that the previous actions of the Watchmen have caused riots among the population. I wouldn't say that overall the film presents the actions of the 'heroes' as being a good thing.
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Jul 19, 2015 22:22
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ducttape posted:One of the old star trek novels had a plot that was basically 'the crew sits down and talks about how they dealt with the Kobayashi Maru'. In that book, the test treated the Klingon ships like they were a hydra; each ship you kill would result in two more ships warping in. In the book, Kirk hacked the Klingon ships to recognize 'James Tiberius Kirk' as the best friend a Klingon could have, and of course they will aid in the rescue mission. I always thought that novel hit on the perfect way for him to cheat that fit his personality. He programmed the Klingons to recognise him, and his defense when StarFleet called him on his obvious cheating was that he intended to cultivate such a incredible reputation during his career that the reprogrammed simulation was actually more accurate. It works because he wasn't just being a cheating little poo poo, he genuinely didn't believe the no-win scenario existed and so he and found a way out no-one had considered. Whereas the Kirk in the rebooted films is just being a cheating little poo poo who didn't care about finding an actual solution.
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Jul 20, 2015 01:27
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SiKboy posted:Honestly I prefer nu-kirks solution, simply because anyone who declares "I'm going to be so great that everyone will love me and recognise my name" sounds like an absolute oval office you would never get tired of punching. They are both cheating in the same way by hacking the program, at least nu-kirks method is upfront about being a cheat. The whole point is that Kirk has a ridiculous ego and refused to believe a situation existed that he couldn't win. It's not supposed to make him likable, it's supposed to help drive the plot of the film. His overconfidence and the fact that he has never faced a no-win scenario are pretty central themes. So yeah, he missed the point of the Kobayashi Maru when he was younger, that's the point. Nu-Kirk wasn't trying to make a point that he disagreed with the conditions of the test, he was just demonstrating that he didn't give a poo poo about his training. Yeah they are different characters, but being a bratty douchebag is arguably a less interesting character trait than a pathological refusal to accept defeat. Plus it's not like the new film uses that as a jumping off point to develop his character. He remains a bratty douchebag throughout.
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Jul 20, 2015 13:28
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BigPaddy posted:On a similar subject of why does the "good" guy always have to win in Hollywood, You know what the problem with Hollywood is? They make poo poo.
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Aug 8, 2015 21:06
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Snapchat A Titty posted:There's no reason to assume that you can't get viable sperm from some gonads that have been hanging out up in the pelvis for a decade or two. Yes there is. Cryptorchidism and its impact on male fertility posted:The incidence of azoospermia in unilateral cryptorchidism is 13% and this figure increases to 89% in untreated bilateral cryptorchidism, making cryptorchidism the most common etiologic factor of azoospermia in the adult. So nearly 90% of people with bilateral undescended testes will be totally and irreversibly infertile by the time they are adults. They also have a high incidence of testicular cancer.
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Aug 16, 2015 18:11
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muscles like this? posted:He screws up with his gadgets but then Mr. Incredible does a really poor job of explaining why he shouldn't help, basically saying that because he doesn't have powers he should go away. Isn't there a bit where Mr Incredible basically admits he was wrong for snapping at Buddy but it doesn't mean Buddy can blame him for his actions? Plus I think you're supposed to sympathize with him having such a crappy day at the start.
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Sep 8, 2015 23:16
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The thing that annoyed me most about Cube 2 was that the idea of the hypercube having an 'expiration date' and all you need to do is wait it out doesn't really gel with the idea that time moves differently in different areas and you can age ten years simply be going through the wrong series of rooms.
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Sep 18, 2015 23:50
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DecentHairJelly posted:On the topic of blood, it always bothered me that whenever a character in a movie has to swear some kind of blood oath or something they almost always draw their own blood by cutting the palm of their hand. Its never like a small cut either. That seems like a really annoying place to have a self-inflicted wound since you generally use that part of your hand to, you know, grab things. Maybe like the back of the hand or outside of the forearm would be better? Star Trek Nemesis was one of the worst offenders for this. Evil Picard slices up his hand and gives them a bloody knife just for a DNA sample, despite a few skin cells being enough even at our current level of technology.
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Oct 22, 2015 01:55
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ianmacdo posted:The Borg never seemed to adapt to melee attacks though. And guns are like hitting, just with bullets The only people who ever effectively melee attack the Borg are super strong/highly skilled though, like Data. Even Worf typically needs a weapon, so the average human would be totally hosed. That's why the Borg don't adapt, it would be a ton of effort to armour up all their drones on the off-chance they will run into the one or two guys that beat them hand to hand. I think Picard gets bailed out several times in the film by other characters right before a random drone kicks his rear end. Similar thing with the Tommy gun, it worked because it had never been used before. Start using it regularly and suddenly the Borg force fields block bullets.
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Nov 1, 2015 21:47
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Inspector Gesicht posted:Watching Inside Out made me like Frozen a lot less in hind-sight. Hans exists to misdirect and subvert the usual Disney princess storyline. The whole twist at the end of the movie is that the 'true love' Anna needs to cure her doesn't come from some random handsome dude she met a few days ago, but from her sister. He's a pretty pivotal part of the film. For my part, Spectre: - At the start a building explodes, Bond runs for thirty seconds and ends up in a crowd of happy parade-goers. No way do people keep dancing and having a good time when a massive explosion just levelled a building a few streets away. - When Bond is fighting the guy in the helicopter, he nudges the pilot and it goes out of control. But then there's like two minutes of him fighting without going near the pilot, and the copter just keeps on making wild swooping movements. Is the pilot trying to mess with them, or is he just terrible? - At the end Bond shoots down a helicopter from a massive distance with his Walther PPK. A small calibre handgun that would be a) totally inaccurate at that distance and b) about as effective as a peashooter.
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Nov 7, 2015 08:47
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To be fair the most annoying bit of Spectre is that towards the end Bond goes to visit Blofeld without any sort of plan besides get captured, get tortured and wing it from there. I mean he literally surrenders to him, somehow survives the torture without permanent injury due to sheer luck, and then escapes due to sheer luck. And the shoots down his helicopter in total defiance of the laws of physics. Basically I would be pretty pissed if I was the villain, because Bond is a hapless idiot who is totally outclassed at every turn but succeeds due to blind luck and blatantly impossible feats.
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Nov 7, 2015 19:05
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Any time a scene ends with the entire location blowing up for very dubious reasons, as if the scriptwriter couldn't think of a climactic ended so just finished with 'and then everything exploded'. Bond films are particularly bad offenders. Quantum of Solace, the hotel is obliterated because somebody crashes a car in the garage. And now Spectre, Blofeld's entire base goes up like a munitions dump because Bond shoots some kind of gas valve thing a couple of times. It's a loving information gathering facility, why the hell would it be so explosive?
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Nov 9, 2015 21:12
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My irritating book moment from The Hunger Games was when Snow bombs a hospital. Like he literally orders his precious and irreplaceable military hovercraft to go and destroy a hospital full of wounded soldiers. Naturally it's a huge propaganda boost for the rebels and Snow ends up losing his hovercraft. When I was reading it I remember thinking how the obvious twist was going to be that it was actually the rebels posing as Snow who bombed their own hospital. Effectively demonstrating their callousness in targeting their own people just to score a propaganda victory and simultaneously get rid of the drain on their resources posed by the wounded. A decent literary device, if a bit predictable. Except it turns out it really was Snow, and he's just the worst military tactician ever and didn't realise a hospital full of wounded soldiers that need food/medicine/shelter is better for his side than a smoking crater the rebels can point to and say 'look what a dick this guy is'. Or to put it another way, writing convincing villains is hard and it's easier just to make them puppy-kicking evil for no goddamn reason.
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Dec 1, 2015 02:13
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muscles like this? posted:Yeah, there was some war that killed off most of the population in the world, just leaving a chunk of North America left. That's why the Capitol has such a high level of technology, it is several hundred years in the future. Except the Capitol's technology level is totally inconsistent and basically just follows whatever the author thought would be cool. Which is why they have holograms and crazy advanced genetics but they burn coal as fuel and their top tier weaponry is the hovercraft. They don't even appear to have an army as such, just a handful of easily defeated 'peacekeepers'.
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Dec 1, 2015 22:08
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Aleph Null posted:The problem with a book series is that, once it's published, is really hard to change your mind later. Thats kind of where being a good author and not just pulling stuff out your rear end as you go along comes in.
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Dec 2, 2015 19:50
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