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[Sergius]

Rise!!!

So, watching Happy Feet on cable (again) reminded me.

Morale of the story:

We must save the penguins, because they can dance good.

Except they can't. So... fuck 'em?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(oh yeah other than the semi decent CGI the movie is really bad and stupid but that's besides the point)

[Sinistar]

I'll just add my 2 cents to SST discussion because as a fan of both movie and book it is simply to tempting not to.

I think a fair questions that need to be asked are also:

1) Are bug-infested planets otherwise interesting for colonization?
TBH, this one could be a bit moot as all of the planets in (original) movie are more or less just desert/rocky wasteland BUT they do feature atmosphere that is breathable by humans without problems so one could speculate they do hold some strategic value... maybe? Reducing them to irradiated rocks significantly reduces this value. Which kinda brings us to next question;

2) Are the bugs radiation resistant?
What's that about Earth's roaches and scorpions being able to survive ground zero amount of radiation? I'm not sure what amount of nukes you need to destroy planets surface, I'm guessing we are pretty capable of doing this today, but no amount of nuking will help you if the bugs just duck and cover during initial bombarding and then crawl out, happily unbothered by the now-glowing surroundings. Speaking of burrowing;

3) What do humans even know about the bugs?
As it's been said, you'd probably need bunker busters and the like to destroy their underground cities from the atmosphere. However, I'd argue that the problem is in large in humanity's misinformation regarding bugs. "Random plasma fire" and full-frontal night-time assault on a major bug planet and all that jazz. They don't even know how deep the bug tunnels really go. OR where to even aim with their potential orbital bombardment if they'd wish to bomb the tunnels directly, instead of dropping bunker busters on every m² of the planet.

Still, I'll admit my point are a bit weak, especially 3rd one. There's no stopping humanity just dropping asteroid on bugs head or otherwise destroying planet as whole, bar the actual possession of such planet-destroying technology (which honestly we know nothing about). And for 2nd - radiation resistance or not, it seems future humans are pretty rad resistant themselves... or their bombs are pretty low-impact in that regard, seeing how willfully they use tac-nukes (and nuking whole planets with small scale nukes, though in this particular case I might just be misunderstanding military jargon for "glazing the planet").

[Sergius]

Watching WALL-E for the nth time, and this keeps bothering me.

The "Axiom" and everything in it is so futuristic, lots of artificial and anti-gravity and probe robots with ridiculously overpowered cannons that don't even need finger joints, can enter warp or hyperspeed or whatever that was.

Everything in Earth at the time they leave is so low tech it seems barely 21th century, except for WALL-E robots that grab tiny amounts of garbage and compress it into cubes, apparently one every few hours or so, barely faster than a Roomba. Nothing about it is advanced at all (except maybe its AI, and a maybe too-efficient solar charger), it could be built out of components in most hardware stores today.

Sure, some would say that it's been generations since humanity left, but actually the Axiom(s) were built to leave Earth, so they're at least as old as Earth-tech at the time of the big cleaning project. And no human in the ships seems to have done any kind of productive work since they left, so research and development seems VERY iffy, specially on that scale. Specially inventing a hyperdrive mid-travel.

So, you have something that looks out of Star Trek (Axiom, EVE) and something that seems out of... well, here. Don't even see any kind of ruined futuristic cars in the streets or anything. It all just seems incredibly stupid.

[Neonivek]

One possible explanation is that the Axiom is built with nothing but state of the art technology that has exceeding FAR beyond the surrounding tech (possibly due to increasing prices). With no expense spared.

While WALL-E is basically a trash bot made for low grade commercial work that was likely outdated and obsolete even during its time.

How many buses have you ridden on that were several years out of date?

[andrea]

also, the axiom is basically an extra large cruise ship, in which some people planned to take a 5 year vacation while earth was being cleaned up. I assume that the median income was quite high among first generation.

While the earth you see is made of ruins, abandoned for centuries and covered by dirt and filth.  You can see some nice engineering feat here and there, but that is it. Anything less big than hill sized has been long destroyed, by environment or by wall-e and his other robotic buddies.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Don't forget Dune where you back to the start of mankind if you have enough spice.

Ya I know this is from the start but I feel like doing this anyways

Wouldn't collecting enough spice in dune and using it like that just mean your going past the speed of light and god knows people can interpret that anyway they want
Or does spice work differently?

[Neonivek]

Don't forget Dune where you back to the start of mankind if you have enough spice.

Ya I know this is from the start but I feel like doing this anyways

Wouldn't collecting enough spice in dune and using it like that just mean your going past the speed of light and god knows people can interpret that anyway they want
Or does spice work differently?

Spice is a drug that pilots take because it allows them to make course corrections long before any problem has occurred. Without it faster then light travel becomes pretty much impossible.

I won't lie for the longest time I did think the FTL engines ran on spice.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Oh.. Ok

[Parsely]

Honestly that aspect of Assassins Creed was so stupid that I just imagined that the machine was actually a time reader that needed a DNA match to work.

I was willing to go with it to a point, but the whole "synchronization" stuff really made me wonder. Since taking damage of any kind reduces synchronization, that would imply Altair/Ezio were never, ever injured.

That's not true, you're only desynchronized if you die, and of course none of them died before the time when they actually died. It's still dumb though, AssCreed would be better games without the badly interwoven sci-fi plot about aliens.

[Neonivek]

Honestly that aspect of Assassins Creed was so stupid that I just imagined that the machine was actually a time reader that needed a DNA match to work.

I was willing to go with it to a point, but the whole "synchronization" stuff really made me wonder. Since taking damage of any kind reduces synchronization, that would imply Altair/Ezio were never, ever injured.

That's not true, you're only desynchronized if you die, and of course none of them died before the time when they actually died. It's still dumb though, AssCreed would be better games without the badly interwoven sci-fi plot about aliens.

The issue is that Ezio wasn't injured at that point so the contradiction as well as the shock from taking damage lowers the synch.

Yes the weird synch rules do allow some incredible flubbing such as the "Hay piles of safety" and "Water kills!" but still.

[Radio Controlled]

In the third starship troopers movie they have planet killers. As in, full on Alderaan on their asses. But then the next (animated) movie shows the bugs got some new tricks, so no happy ending just yet.

[itisnotlogical]

Any situation that could be resolved if people just communicated. I can't think of any from the top of my head, but I know there's tons of movies (maybe I'm getting it confused with games) where the plot could be resolved in the first 30 minutes if the hero simply talked to somebody.

[Neonivek]

Any situation that could be resolved if people just communicated. I can't think of any from the top of my head, but I know there's tons of movies (maybe I'm getting it confused with games) where the plot could be resolved in the first 30 minutes if the hero simply talked to somebody.

Well here is a hint or two
1) The government doesn't actually want the war to end
and
2) We are not the good guys

[itisnotlogical]

Any situation that could be resolved if people just communicated. I can't think of any from the top of my head, but I know there's tons of movies (maybe I'm getting it confused with games) where the plot could be resolved in the first 30 minutes if the hero simply talked to somebody.

Well here is a hint or two
1) The government doesn't actually want the war to end
and
2) We are not the good guys

I was saying in general, not about Starship Troopers.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Pacific Rim was ruined for me just by the little nit picks everyone else kept telling me
Oh that movie was terrible, the lighting sucked, why wouldn't they just?, how did?, blah blah blah
I was so into that movie before I listen to everyone's nit picks now I can't watch it anymore .-.