Movie fictions: hardest to swallow

[r6d2]

Hi,

I've seen lots of movies, particularly in the science fiction genre, where the director expects us to believe things that just cannot happen, or that enter into contradictions with physics as we know it today.

For One: How it is possible that John Connor ended up being the son of the guy he sent to protect Sarah Connor from the first Terminator? Who was his father in the first place then?

Another example: Back to the Future I. The first time Einstein traveled 1 minute ahead of time, how possibly would the car appear in the exact same position he left before? Earth moves at 30 km/sec, so Doc and Marti had moved about 1 thousand miles during that minute!

Disclaimer: I love Sci-Fi movies, and I enjoy them in spite of these quirks, but I always thought they might have thought of those things too. ;)

Do you have your own hardest to swallow?

[jggimi]

With rare exception, any small arms handling or usage.

[StrawMan]

So you're perfectly willing to believe that reverse time travel is possible, but the rest of those little details bother you? Sheesh!

[adam]

How about Superman? Ok so he stops the missiles but not in enough time to save Lois. So he spins the Earth backwards to reverse time, silly but I can suspend disbelief for a comic book hero. So he returns and Lois is fine and all the places and people he saved are safe too, but what about the missiles? If he reversed time then aren't they still coming? How come only the good things go back to the way they were?

And then there's Signs. I love the movie, but if aliens have the technology to do intergalactic travel then I'd think they'd have a more high tech method of coordinating a global attack than crop circles. And I know the ending is supposed to be symbolic and all, but if your species' single weakness is water than I'd think you'd try to conquer a planet that wasn't 2/3 covered in it.

[Doobie]

I generally hate time travel in any movie or show, aside from the logic problems, it's usually done in dumb manner.

Movie studios need to need to make an effort to remove stupid stuff from movie scripts. But nooo, they think dumb stuff is cool.

The best scifi is when they take existing technology and make it more efficient, when they make practical technology that is now impractical, and when they have working technology that is based on what today is solid theory.

[KpeX]

Originally posted by adam
And then there's Signs. I love the movie, but if aliens have the technology to do intergalactic travel then I'd think they'd have a more high tech method of coordinating a global attack than crop circles. And I know the ending is supposed to be symbolic and all, but if your species' single weakness is water than I'd think you'd try to conquer a planet that wasn't 2/3 covered in it. *Sigh*.....yet another person that thinks Signs was about aliens...

[dani82]

@r6d2

the father doesn't really matter, she just needed to get laid; but here's a better question: "if they didn't sent back the Terminator, would John Conner even exists?"

your theory is only half here, the earth revolve & rotates, beside the 1 thousand miles, it would also be a couple 100 thousand feet above/below the earth's surface (depending on which way the car was traveling)

[bilu]

Originally posted by KpeX
*Sigh*.....yet another person that thinks Signs was about aliens... Well, the good part on that movie was the family relationship. The alien part completely sucked, and here's why:

1) They've been around Earth for thousands of years, according to the film. But they only attack now?

2) I agree with Adam. Crop signs to coordinate an attack?

3) The worst of them all. Intergalatic technology, coming to Earth for thousands of years, and they never discovered RAIN ???? Why do they walk around in a corrosive environment they know for thousands of years without protection?

Even having a nice part about family relationship, it was not the main part of the movie.

In the end, it was like "Mars Attack" but without the fun :rolleyes:


EDIT: About Sci-Fi, remember the first Star-Trek series and Space 1999? ;)


Bilu

[dragongodz]

r6d2 - about terminator, actually that part does make sense(asuming time travel possible of course). who was john conners father originally ? the same person, he has only 1 father. so how does that work you ask ? well its a temporal loop that fulfils the time line.

the really anoying part about all the terminator movies is actually how everyone always thinks they can change the future. destroy the chips, kill dyson etc etc etc. sorry thats not going to work. simply if they did do something that stopped WW3 then the original guy(cant think of his name at the mo) would never have come back to warn them. so they would not have taken the actions to stop it, so it would have happened. then he would have been sent back to warn them etc etc etc, thats a paradox. why nobdy managed to work that out in the years the films are meant to represent is whats irritating. actually they do show a tiny bit of knowledge in to by saying if they destroy the ships the work was based on and all the original information then that would solve it. close but no cigar. the problem is that johns father would not have been sent back yada yada yada the problem is then where would the chips have come from aswell ? so once stuck in that loop there was never anyway to change it the way they wanted to.

as for back to the future, yes you are right but lets just asume that part of the time machine also allowed for earth rotation and universal expansion etc. :)

i wont go in to films like indipendance day which had so many holes in it they should have called it leaky bucket.

finally lets remember guys that these are movies and not take them too seriously. :D

[ppera2]

Originally posted by r6d2
I've seen lots of movies, particularly in the science fiction genre, ....
For One: How it is possible that John Connor ended up being the son of the guy he sent to protect Sarah Connor from the first Terminator? Who was his father in the first place then?


I think that you could give hee much better examples... There is many movie about time-travelling, and all have more-less similar nonsenses. It's called time-travel paradox :) .

My example: Star Wars (any part) - fighter ships fly in space just like in atmosphere - fast rotating and monoevring, and we hear even sound...
I could write here at least 3 screens of examples, but it has not much sense. Enjoy movies! :)

[r6d2]

Originally posted by StrawMan
So you're perfectly willing to believe that reverse time travel is possible, but the rest of those little details bother you?
Actually, because of my physics background I'm quite convinced that reverse time travel is impossible (unlike the forward one). But that's not the point. There is a difference between credibility and verisimilitude. Let me rephrase this, since it is quite "technical" in the world of writers:

A story can be unlikely, even impossible, but absolutely believable if well told. I'm willing to accept any unlikely story which is well told. (And of course I know it is just fiction).

As ppera2 mentions regarding Star Wars, almost any space movie has sound travelling in void space. You can hear the blasts coming and going and hitting their targets. Of course the movie would be a lot less interesting if it was "more real". We have learned to accept that in movies, sound travels in empty space. ;)

We have also learnt to live with time travel paradoxes. Interestingly enough, The Time Machine (the remake), has no such paradoxes. It is well thought and built, and presents a world were fate exists, and cannot be circumvented.

Nice examples you've given. Never looked into Signs and Superman thinking of this.

[r6d2]

Originally posted by dani82
if they didn't sent back the Terminator, would John Conner even exists?
If John Connor did not exist, who would have sent the Terminator? ;)
the earth revolve & rotates, beside the 1 thousand miles, it would also be a couple 100 thousand feet above/below the earth's surface (depending on which way the car was traveling)
It was around midnight, so it is safe to assume they were on the point on Earth farthest from the Sun. After 60 seconds and 1800 km traveled, the car would have been left behind, floating in space. So you see rotation is really irrelevant.

Of course that, as dragongodz suggests, the time machine could account for this effect, but they did not dig into it very much.

There is also another error, a bigger one. In part II, Tannen goes to its own youth, he knows he's talking to himself, and no "space-time continuum collapse" is produced, as announced by Doc to Marti regarding himself. OTOH, when his fiance and wife meet in the future, they both fade. Why did not both Tannen fade?

But the worst thing is that after old Tannen gives young Tannen the almanaq, he returns to a world that did not exist! Young Tannen changed history so Doc And Marti end up trapped in space-time. However, they manage to get back.

I guess that's why nature has precluded reverse time travel. My hope is the forward one, and I'm working on it. ;)

[wmansir]

For the Terminator, this is how I explain it.

Originally Sarah Connor met some guy (Mr. X) and had a kid, John Connor. Mr. X wasn't Kyle Reese. John grows up to lead the human revolt after the machines take over. The machines send back the Terminator to kill Sarah. John sends back Kyle, just at random. Kyle changes Sarah's future so she doesn't meet Mr. X, but instead father's John himself. John is raised knowing that Kyle is his father this time he sends him back on purpose (he also knows he is to become a leader, so he self-fulfills that destiny too). And now were stuck in the loop.

Getting into the loop is the easy part but, as dragongodz pointed out, getting out seems more difficult.

[ppera2]

When we talk about Terminators, I must say that whole plot starts at one of biggest stupidity seen: both fighters (savior and killer) always appear in same moment in past. It stays for first part too, where human is savior. This is ridiculous - why they didn't set time machine to 1 day earlier for example, to give some advance?

But I forgive them, because of good action :) Sadly, part 3 is complete lack of invention :(

[Kedirekin]

When I was in high school, my friends and I had more fun coming up with pseudo-science explanations of why thing worked.

Sounds in space: there really aren't any. Human factors research found that people responded better (fighter pilots, people getting to battle stations or evacuation pods) when the sounds and shakes of battle are present. To improve performance, all ships reproduce the battle sensations as if things were taking place in an atmosphere.

Flying like planes: Again, human factors research shows the fighter pilots fight better when ships respond like a plane - it ties into 10's of thousands (if not millions) of years of evolution in a planetary environment. Technology allows ships to reproduce the flight characteristics of planes even in the absence of atmosphere.
[a friend of mine even came up with a pseudo-science technology for this - he called it a spacetime hook. A device induces drag directly by digging in to spacetime (like a tank locking up one tread or the other). He decided the energy released by the ship would re-enter the universe as a line of light trailing the inside wingtip - the device excites spacetime, and spacetime releases visible light as it returns to a quiescent state. Unfortunately they didn't do the light trail thing in Star Wars. I know it's nonsense, but it would be cool looking, and the point is that it's difficult to prove that such a device can't exist, and that's a whole basis for dramatic license - the movie doesn't have to explain why something works the way it does.]

Time travel and moving objects: massive objects drag spacetime with them, rotation included. An object moving through time is essentially locked to the nearest massive object (the earth), and retains it location relative to that object. No special effort is required by the scientist to account for motion through space; it's just an automatic part of time travel.
[Incidentally, even though we were just high school kids on a lark, current accepted science hints at this a little bit, though the object in question has to be much more massive than a planet. A rotating black hole or super massive (neutron matter) cylinder drags spacetime, so that in a certain region near the object, motion through space becomes motion through time.]

Okay, I know your natural reaction will be to pick apart explanations, just as you want to pick apart the fax-pau in the movie itself, but you'd be missing the point. Remember this is fiction - you can pick apart any particular explanation you want - the point is to come up with your own (somewhat) plausible explanation. Again this is fiction, and you can't prove that any given fictional device or artifice can't exist, even to the point of magic.

[r6d2]

Originally posted by Kedirekin
Okay, I know your natural reaction will be to pick apart explanations,
Absolutely not, the explanations you provided are incredible, but believable. That is precisely the point. You can tell the wildest story provided you cover all the holes.

[echooff]

I always liked the world they traveled to in Stargate. Sand and dust as far as the eye could see. Where did all the food and water come from to sustain the population. How about all of the fires burning in Armegeddon after the shuttle crashed on the asteroid. Fire with no oxygen?

[r6d2]

Oh, Armageddon and Sudden Impact are jewels on their own. ;)

And what about Red Planet? Oxygen on Mars? It could have been created by those creatures, but how was it sustained, if Mars's mass is not big enough?

[vhelp]

hay guys,

how about "first men on the moon" movie !!

The guys on the moon, right ??
Yeah, now he takes off his glove to uncover the little flag ??
I think that's how it happended. (by the way, I'm looking for this
movie for my collection) anyways..

I never really thought about till I aw "mission to mars" when the
guy took off his helpmet, so that his wife would not come any closer
to rescue him, in lue of risking her own life as well as the remaining
crews !! He instantly frooze. Actually, I thought while in space,
as he was floating in it, he would get sucked out of his space suite ?

Anyways, good thread d2,
-vhelp

[r6d2]

Originally posted by vhelp
He instantly frooze. Actually, I thought while in space,
as he was floating in it, he would get sucked out of his space suite?
Very interesting question. AFAIK, you cannot define temperature in an empty space, but according to this (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part4/section-14.html) page, at 1 AU (Earh distance from Sun), his temperature would be like 7ºC. If we consider the man at Mars distance and ignore Sun's radiation (which decreases with the square of the radius), his temperature would be about 5ºK!!! So the movie would be correct. He freezes to hell. :D:D:D

[dvd_maniac]

How about the original Planet of the Apes... Not so much time travel but still out there. However I think this movie, as old as it is, was well thought out and very believable... The sequels sucked though...

[cypher_soundz]

finally lets remember guys that these are movies and not take them too seriously.
i second that, if every tiny detail was correct , it would cost millions more for a movie to be created, and lets not forget universal studios would be able to go back in time, thanks to their "back to the future film/invention :rolleyes: :p i think we would have a minority report on our hands then :rolleyes:.
i think in general movie fiction is supposed to be exactly that, fiction. when i sit down to watch a movie , its not how believable the film is compared to science, but how believable the director has made the movie. i watch a film with an anticipation for fiction, knowing that something could not happen in real life, i don't watch them for knowledge, but for enjoyment.
Regards
cyph

[r6d2]

Well, in spite of pointing it out twice, seems that I still don't make my point clear enough: I also enjoy the movies! And please, don't believe I take them "seriously" as facts.

But I do take them seriously as "stories".

Let me put it this way, using another writer's technicality. There's a motto some writers abide to. It's difficult for me to translate it into English, but it is sort of "f**k the reader". It means that the author does not care wether the reader gets it or not. He just writes things down counting on a high percentage of the audience will swallow anything. Sort of "They already bought the ticket, so screw them".

Commercially written best sellers are in the mass market business, and they know about Mr. Cole's Axiom (see my sig.).

Every movie script has some degree of refinement. If they target to more clever audiences, they refine it more. They do this until critical mass of espectators are covered or budget runs out. ;)

I believe that an author which respects himself (and hence respect his audience) must target to satisfy as most people as possible, without sacrificing integrity of the story with cheap tricks.

But rest assured, the Terminator series is my favourite trilogy ever, even after the third one, that sucked big time! ;) And about Back to the future, it's like Santa Claus to me. I have always wished it was true. ;)

[Sirber]

beer always helps in those situations :D

[adam]

Originally posted by KpeX
*Sigh*.....yet another person that thinks Signs was about aliens...

Last time I checked, yes there were aliens in the movie Signs and I was just commenting on the facts surrounding their arrival and how they were just a little "hard to swallow." At least my post was on topic.

[KpeX]

Originally posted by adam
Last time I checked, yes there were aliens in the movie Signs and I was just commenting on the facts surrounding their arrival and how they were just a little "hard to swallow." At least my post was on topic. Thanks for making my point exactly.

[adam]

You're right. They did look more like trolls than aliens.

Moving on: My favorite is whenever anyone is hacking into a computer and up pops colorful rubik's cubes and DNA strands, like in Swordfish.

[r6d2]

Originally posted by adam
My favorite is whenever anyone is hacking into a computer and up pops colorful rubik's cubes and DNA strands, like in Swordfish.
Yes, indeed! Or when somebody is entering the FBI or the CIA computers, all menus or commands are pretty explicit and useful.

Also, like in Clear and Present Danger, when Jack Ryan is trying to copy the other guy's computer files while he is deleting them. The delete animation is even happening on a context-related DOS like system! :)

And when someone is looking for specific files related to a case on somebody else's computer... Always to the point. Nice and easy. :)

I usually cannot find a file in my own computer. :D:D:D
So the movie would be correct. He freezes to hell.
Second thought... Only for a short while, because entering the Mars atmosphere will cook him and dissolve him, open helmet or not. ;)
That is precisely the point. You can tell the wildest story provided you cover all the holes.
Actually, Kedirekin reminded me of this (http://dbhs.wvusd.k12.ca.us/Humor/Cartoon-Laws-of-Physics.html) funny topic. You see what I mean? Even cartoon have laws, and cartoonists abide by them, what on its very escence makes what they do a cartoon. ;)

[StrawMan]

Originally posted by r6d2
Every movie script has some degree of polishment. If they target to more clever audiences, they polish it more. They do this until critical mass of espectators are covered or budget runs out. ;)

I believe that an author which respects himself (and hence respect his audience) must target to satisfy as most people as possible, without sacrificing integrity of the story with cheap tricks.



What kind of respect for himself does an author have who uses a word like "polishment"?

[r6d2]

Originally posted by StrawMan
What kind of respect for himself does an author have who uses a word like "polishment"?
Oh, a lot indeed. I just polished my post to use "refine" instead, so I could target more educated audiences like you. :)

BTW, iespell suggested me to replace StrawMan with Straw Man, but I guess that would not be right, would it?

[Soulhunter]

Originally posted by r6d2
How it is possible that John Connor ended up being the son of the guy he sent to protect Sarah Connor from the first Terminator? Who was his father in the first place then?
Ok, made some thoughts about that stuff !!!

Maybe this theory sucks, but...

Time traveling into the past should be impossible if you want to stay in the same dimension (killing your grandfather paradoxum). Ok, sure time is also a dimension, but mean the "place" here... How could you kill your grandfather without fearing that you will never be born? Simple, you don't kill your own grandfather, you kill the grandfather of "you" in a parallel dimension! Only the father of your parallel "you" will not be born, your parallel "you" too. But your "real" grandfather, of "your" dimension, is still alive...So you are still able to do all this nasty stuff. Means, traveling into past is also a travel into a parallel dimension... For traveling into future, its anyway possible, because we all doing it all the time, also right now... Watch your clock!


Did I wrote all this dumb stuff... :O

Nah, it was my "bad twin" from a parallel dimension !!!


Bye

[markrb]

Sometimes people do actually try to make it as close to reality as possible given that most of SCI-FI is what is not possible today.

In the show FireFly (short lived, but excellent) they had the no sound in space and tried to stay with the laws of the universe as much as possible. Even consulting with scientists to see if things were possible if the technology exhisted.

On the show Babylon 5 Nasa was a constant contact. Occasionally there would be sound in space and they justified this by saying that if a ship exploded and you went through the remains of it's atmosphere you would have enough air to hear the explosion. This point was brought up by one of the Nasa people. Nasa even contacted the show to see detailed drawings of the fighter the humans used as they felt the design was a good one for a space cargo mover. The show gave them everything they had in return that if this was ever built it was to be named a Star Fury after the name of the ship on the show.

Both creators of the show freely admitted that they stretched the realm of reality to help the show, but whenever possible they stuck with what was possible.

Just consider how many things that were once just science fiction are now reality. Scuba gear was first used as a prop in a James Bond movie, before it was even an invention. Later it was made into a real usable item. Same with the underwater camera.

Lasers were long only in the realm of sci-fi, but we do laser surgery everyday now.

There will always be things that are just plain stupid in film, books and TV, but this has always been the case. It doesn't have to be Sci-Fi to make no sense at all. I would much rather live in a world full of imagination, no matter how absured, then to live in a place without vision.

Mark

[ppera2]

@Soulhunter

Is that parallel dim. stuff inspired with book 'Timeline' ?

[vhelp]

How about in Superman (a favoriate of mine 1 and 2) ...

When LEXX shoots superman w/ a many guns and none of the bullets
seem to go near his eyes. Common.. shoot the eyes and they'll pop
out or something - pfew!


Another thing that really gets me is this.. when two guys are fighting,
ever notice how, where one guys getting the crap kided out of him and
is almost unconchious (spelling) and just as he looks like he's gonna
get the hit, he's all full of energy and start kidding the other guys
butt, and then it's the other's turn, and then the other guys, and so
on and so on and .. .. ..
You've gotta be pretty monkey-mad to not figure out somethings' wrong.

The BORG.. my favorite (even though they killed it ta death w/ wayyy
too much publicity and nonsense) .. they could've done MUCH bette w/
this if they hadden't gone to far w/ their "boring" stupidity.
Did you ever stop to wonder, when thier constant battle w/ taking over
many worlds and what nots, that they came accross various time-travel
technoligies, that they would have done as Star Fleet did, keep several
portals open in various time-lines, so that if something goes wrong,
they send somebody back in the undo the scew-up. YOu would think that
w/ the BORG, they've ben even smarter, and done the same, but probably
even better when Star Fleets way, that when Voyager had so called
destroyed them, the queen (or queens) would have ben able to undo what
Voyager did, and consiquently, the BORG would continue - - and continue
w/ screwing the Humanity etc, bla bla bla ???

More mayham ...
-vhelp

[r6d2]

Originally posted by markrb
Occasionally there would be sound in space and they justified this by saying that if a ship exploded and you went through the remains of it's atmosphere you would have enough air to hear the explosion. This point was brought up by one of the Nasa people.
Uh...? Did that NASA guy know that according to the Kinetic Theory of Gases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_theory_of_gases), if pressure approaches to zero, volume tends to infinity? What kind of medium is that whose density is practically zero?

Maybe those were the same NASA guys which did not consider the differences between the UK and US metric systems and blew up Mars Orbiter (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/514763.stm), a US$125 million piece of equipment. :)
Scuba gear was first used as a prop in a James Bond movie, before it was even an invention.
According to this page (http://www.123scuba.com/history.html), Scuba was taken to its current form by Cousteau and others around 1943, long before the first Bond movie was shot. Check also here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuba). :confused:
Lasers were long only in the realm of sci-fi, but we do laser surgery everyday now.
A group of scientists was awarded the Nobel prize in 1964, 40 years ago, for the successful construction of a maser-laser beam. Whatever ray-emitting pistol you saw before that might have been a vision of what would be to come. I don't remember to have seen any movie with that concept though, dated before the invention of the Laser.
There will always be things that are just plain stupid in film, books and TV, but this has always been the case.
I agree with the first part of your assertion, but not with the second one. Kubrick, for instance, was much like Verne. He cared for details, and he built a piece of work which is correct on almost every respect. For those interested, this (http://www.kubrick2001.com/) may be worth a look.
I would much rather live in a world full of imagination, no matter how absured, then to live in a place without vision.
Fully agree with this. Very good line indeed! Just don't be carried away by fireworks. True scientific innovation is not likely to come from the movies. 95% of the scientists that history of mankind has known are alive today, and they are working real hard. ;)

[dani82]

okay, here's a though, "time is constantly changing", the Terminator was sent back to kill the leader of the resistant* and not John Conner

here's something that's been bothering me, everytime they shot Superman, the bullets bounce off him, where exacting do they go?

"killing your grandfather paradoxum", Futurama did an episode about that.




*************SPOILER******************









*the leader of the resistant is the boyfriend of the General's daugther at the time of Judgement Day; in that timeline the boyfriend's John Conner (now! that's a loop)

[r6d2]

Originally posted by Soulhunter
Time traveling into the past should be impossible if you want to stay in the same dimension (killing your grandfather paradoxum...) !!!
Well, this parallel universe stuff is the explanation Doc gives to Marty in Back to the Future. It's a nice one, but as I said before, even the movie does not respect it! :)

You see? This is again what I mean. The author uses the parallel universe to explain things, which is not science, but fiction. The movie could be consistent if it stayed always into that track, but then the script writer does not follow its very own line of reasoning on the old Tannen backtrip...
okay, here's a though, "time is constantly changing", the Terminator was sent back to kill the leader of the resistant* and not John Conner
Not at all. Remember that on T1, it was sent to kill Sarah. On T2, it was sent to kill John. Always with a first and a last name, a specific person.

[r6d2]

Originally posted by vhelp
Another thing that really gets me is this.. when two guys are fighting [...]
This is very recurring too, very well noted!

Also, have you noticed that the bad guys just never kill the hero? In James Bond, for instance, he is always left besides a bomb, tied into a laser's path, sunk into water with a heavy object, etc. Never just plain shot at once.

And the bad guys always "explain too much", which gives the hero enough time to react and plan a scape or situation turnover. ;)

[dragongodz]

everyone please read carefully because this is the last time i will write this.
with in terminater with reese being sent back and father john connor etc there is NO PARADOX. why ? because it fulfils and maintains the timeline quoted. so no need for parralel dimensions or another father that never was etc. THAT part is actually correct.
the part that isnt is the constant expecting to change the future orto be precise the older john connors past(he who sent back reece). see things like killing reese before he impregnates sarah or dtopping WW3 which was the reason for reese to be sent back etc would cause the "killing ones father" paradox quoted.
so PLEASE drop the suposed mistake of reese since it ISNT.

please lets here about some other movies ?

"have you noticed that the bad guys just never kill the hero?"
yes and the autin powers movies make fun of that very fact. :)

heres a quote from a reasonably well known sci-fi author which says a lot aswell.
"there is more to a science fiction story than the science it contains. there is also the story and if the science it contains is bent by later discoveries , or because the plot absolutely demands the bending , we tend to forgive and overlook." - Isaac Asimov
really you need to read the whole text. its the introduction in the book "robot dreams".

[r6d2]

Originally posted by dragongodz
everyone please read carefully because this is the last time i will write this. [...] there is NO PARADOX. [...] so PLEASE drop the suposed mistake of reese since it ISNT.
OK, I get your point now. The time loop closes perfectly then. There is no way to change the future, right? Well, I think I have to watch T3 again with that in mind. Maybe I'll find it does not suck that much. ;) (And I'll be watching out for Doom's day) :D:D:D
please lets here about some other movies ?
I know you want to leave the Terminator series behind, but since you cleared my first non-paradox at last, maybe you can clear for me other things:

1. If only organic material can travel back on the time machine (according to T1, that's the reason they did not bring any weapons), how did the terminators, all somewhat metal, did the trick?

2. If the future cannot ultimately be changed, how can be explained that TX actually kills some of John Connor's first line officers of the resistance? (like the one on the AutoMac).
heres a quote from a reasonably well known sci-fi author which says a lot aswell.
Asimov is my favorite Sci-Fi author (he is one of the two most prolific authors in history of mankind). He practically invented the Sci-Fi genre. I've always wondered why nobody has taken the Foundation series to the silver screen.

The phrase you quoted is precisely the idea. I could not have said it any better, of course. As an author, you are allowed (and encouraged) to bend the rules, or even create new ones. In fact, he created the laws of robotics which almost every other author has decided to take as "absolute".

But when creating new worlds, he was pretty aware of the consistency matters. He was even consistent with some his other stories too! That was a bright guy indeed.

[markrb]

Uh...? Did that NASA guy know that according to the Kinetic Theory of Gases, if pressure approaches to zero, volume tends to infinity? What kind of medium is that whose density is practically zero?

I am not saying the five minutes or even 5 seconds after the explosion you would be able to hear it, only during the explosion. Basically you would have to arrive at a point were air or other gases are leaking/leaving the destroyed or soon to be destroyed ship. You would have to be almost in the explosion to be able to hear it.

I mixed my movies up on the SCUBA. I meant 20,000 leagues under the Sea, but even that was made later then that article you showed me.

Mark

[lexor]

how about X2? When wolverine gets shot he usually out for a bit while his regeneration system kicks in. But in X2 he got shot in the forehead, which is impossible since his forehead is plated with Adamantium (or whatever that unbreakable metal is called), you can see it in X1. the bullet shoul've merely scratched the surface, and definitely not gone into his skull.

[r6d2]

Originally posted by markrb
You would have to be almost in the explosion to be able to hear it.Well, I think you had to be there. :D:D:D

But give it yet another thought. A spaceship would contain as much air as its volume, otherwise there would be overpressure for the crew. Even if they had some compressed reserves of air to recycle and that stuff, let's assume twice its volume, the very instant the explosion blows volume constrains are released, so air expands quite fast and density should decrease with the cube of the expansive wave radius...

I think the only ones to barely hear a very short sound would be the poor crew members of that ship. :)

BTW, this reminds me of another weird Sci-fi typical space effect: explosions generally expand along the horizon line of the observer, like if empty space was not isotropic. ;)

[theReal]

One movie that really tops them all in my opinion is Starship Troopers: They know that those bugs are attacking from this one single planet. Why the hack don't they throw a bunch of H-bombs onto this planet and thorouhgly destroy it once and for all ??????

Even nowadays we could produce enough weapons to tear a whole planet into pieces - why should those guys in the future not be able to do it????

No, instead they play WWII on bug-planet and shoot the bugs with tiny handheld firearms...

[StrawMan]

Hydrogen bombs don't actually "destroy" the planet, they just explode on the surface. "Destroying the planet" is really just a euphamism people use to mean "kill all the people on the planet." haven't you ever heard the one about the only species that could survive a nuclear holocaust are cockroaches?

Since the bugs in Starship Troopers lived underground, I don't think nukes would have killed them. In fact later in the movie soldiers fire nukes into the caves in order to kill the bugs.

My favorite factoid about Starship Troopers (Based on the Heinlein book) is that a New York Times movie reviewer accused the filmmakers of "accidentally" making a movie that promotes fascism. I wonder if the reviewer even knew the movie was based on a book that itself was a condemnation of fascism? And that the moviemakers were trying to convey that in the film?

I guess most people just think it's a fun spacey shoot-em up film.

C'est la vie.

[lexor]

fine then neutron bombs, the'll destroy every(including underground) forms of life (aka biomatter). done.

what is even worse in that movie is that there are all these bugs on completely deserted planets, what the hell do they eat?

[Soulhunter]

Originally posted by ppera2
@Soulhunter

Is that parallel dim. stuff inspired with book 'Timeline' ?
No, just some dumb thoughts of me... :D

All knowledge I have about this stuff is a mixture from Star-track n' the Discovery-channel !!!


I only tried to think this way... ;)

Having a hole in a story... Fix it by reverting the problem !!!


And something Ive learned from the Simpsons...

Having a hole in a fantasy story... Tell them it was the wizard !!!


Bye

[Jolard]

Bad logic in movies bothers me too. In fact I can live with far out unrealistic stuff in movies, as long as they are consistent in their own "universes" laws. For example, I can live with magic, which doesn't exist in the real world, as long is it is consistently applied. What annoys me is when writers break their own rules.

For some other fun examples, here is a great site:

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/

[r6d2]

Originally posted by Jolard
For some other fun examples, here is a great site:
Very great site indeed! :thanks: a lot! I had heard some of that stuff before, but here you get it all, and it is very well written and explained, and fun!

[dragongodz]

"how did the terminators, all somewhat metal, did the trick?"
T1 touched on it itself.while metal could not be transported back flesh covered metal could. think of it like a radiation suite or protective layer. actually in T2 and T3 they dont mention it too much but notice the new terminators dont need human flesh ? they are more advanced though with morphing capabilities which one has to asume includes the ability for the surface structure to emulate flesh to the degree that it form the same protective barrier. thus the new terminators dont need flesh while the old(arnie) one does.

"If the future cannot ultimately be changed, how can be explained that TX actually kills some of John Connor's first line officers of the resistance?"
since the whole fact that the future cant be changed (since it also the past of reese which interacted with the past etc etc etc) then this is possible. that being its actually impossible(so a mistake) but made possible for the use of tension and to get the common person to think there is some danger. if you explained to everyone that there was absolutly no risk to the main characters before they watched the movie then most people would not find it as interesting a film would they.

"Asimov is my favorite Sci-Fi author"
mine too of course. :)
"I've always wondered why nobody has taken the Foundation series to the silver screen."
complexity, cost, the risk of a very big backlash from fans if they stuffed it, all of the above. :D
its a pity that the connecting series he had planned (from 'robots and empire' to 'foundation') will never be written.