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Author Topic: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies  (Read 130306 times)

Greiger

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #330 on: January 14, 2013, 01:02:18 pm »

The Langoliers.  Yes it was a book first, I never read the book.

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GlyphGryph

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #331 on: January 14, 2013, 02:05:07 pm »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Neonivek

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #332 on: January 14, 2013, 04:23:40 pm »

Heck I don't even think the Langoliers were intelligent... not even on an animal level.
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Greiger

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #333 on: January 14, 2013, 08:12:43 pm »

But they did that whole dig under the ground thing to catch Toomy, that strikes me as intelligent, especially since it seems like they can be assumed to have never needed to develop real hunting skills with everything around them being completely stationary.  Seems more of a quick thinking catch rather than instinct. 

That and I seem to have a vague memory of the things kinda 'looking' at the window as they passed the plane.
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Neonivek

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #334 on: January 14, 2013, 08:14:44 pm »

But they did that whole dig under the ground thing to catch Toomy, that strikes me as intelligent, especially since it seems like they can be assumed to have never needed to develop real hunting skills with everything around them being completely stationary.  Seems more of a quick thinking catch rather than instinct. 

That and I seem to have a vague memory of the things kinda 'looking' at the window as they passed the plane.

They don't really have eyes.

Also why even catch Toomy they eat everything? If anything that would be the Nitpick right there if that actually happened.
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10ebbor10

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #335 on: January 15, 2013, 01:16:33 am »

The book suggested that Toomy called out to the beings, that he attracted them.
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misko27

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #336 on: January 15, 2013, 01:22:05 am »

wait did Brainfreez just post?
 
Anyway, one of the biggest problems with aliens in general is that even after all the human bodies and english is taken into account, you're still assuming alot. I mean, these things could be fundamentally different from us. Blue and Orange morality x1000. The concept of consumption or war could be entirely alien. to them. Their ethics or understandings could be as alien as their biologies. And it's hard to imagine that.
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GreatWyrmGold

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #337 on: January 16, 2013, 06:03:44 pm »

I think you might be thinking a little too hard about this.
...Overthinking things is the point of this thread.

Also, why are the Na'vi the only vertebrate that don't have a 6-legged body plan?
That's why they showed the monkey-things with the bifurcated arms--the idea was presumably that the dual forelimbs merged. (Personally, I prefer the idea that the tetrapodal body plan was the ancestral form of which the Na'vi and monkey-things are the only survivors, with the hexapodal body plan being a later mutation which occurred in a clade which was much more successful. Imagine if mammals had wiped out all other tetrapods on the planet except crocodiles, and then someone wondered why crocs were the only animals without fur and warm blood.)
The entire biology doesn't make much sense.  Not even going to try and defend that.
A high gravity world of carbon based life forms, and not a single snake to be seen.

WHY AREN'T THEY ALL SNAKES?!!
Where'd you get the idea that Pandora was high-gravity? I always thought it was low-gravity. It makes more sense, and explains the giant flyers, giant space-wood-elves, etc.
Maybe the antimatter engines are constructed like a blackbox? Where you can't open the thing up, only use the predefined hooks into the thing. It also means that you're screwed if something happens that you can't solve without opening the engine up, but. ..
Actually, that makes sense. That much power, you don't want people playing around with the engines...
Not evil? While amorality != immorality, it's hard to argue that the former can't be evil.
Genocide and destruction wasn't their goal, no, but they considered it an acceptable cost. Preeeety sure that falls under evil.
I can't help but notice that that colonel guy died right before the end of the movie. I imagine that with him gone, the leadership of the colony was significantly less...violent. Also, the humans had been shown that these peoples' religion just might not be superstition like ours is, and either way, they'd need to pretty much wipe out every trace of macroscopic life on the planet to avoid dying. At that point, they presumably decided it wasn't worth the cost.
Yeah, I don't think so. A corporation so big has to have loads of politicians on it's payroll. And a sizeable chunk of Earth's workforce, so they're simply too big to fail. Even in the event of them being discovered, there's no real danger of them losing their mining concession.
Even though said concession specifically forbade them from doing so? Huh. Laws must work differently in the future if neither the public nor the press nor the government care about that kind of thing.
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As for gunships, rockets etc., they're quite simply more expensive and less effective than a virus. Any rational board of directors would opt for the more cost effective thing.
Assuming they had an actual reason to. Which they didn't, when they were sending the expedition out. Remember, travel to Pandora isn't FTL, it's 0.7 c, meaning it takes about 6 years to reach there from Earth.
Huge corporations getting shut down by government, greedy CEOs getting trials instead of golden parachutes? There's fiction, and there's just plain ridiculousness. Have you been under a rock this whole global economic crisis?
The global economic crisis didn't involve genocide.
But the article sounds plausible. Seems pretty likely many people would go over to that. I don't think people would be poring over the article looking for discrepancies.
We are, and we're just critiquing critiques of a movie, not dealing with a major loss of life and culture of the only other known intelligent alien species. There would be much more than 10ebbor10 looking over that news story...
The real question is why the humans didn't mine the unobtanium in the floating mountains...

I think 28 weeks later got it nicely, how it would work, the only possible way for it to spread effectively would include running zombies, not shamblers, those are way too easy to outrun.
In theory. But...to paraphrase Max Brooks, it's like the Tortoise and the Hare, only with hundreds of tortoises and a hare which will probably be eaten alive.
On the subject of zombie movies, RE5 had a big one. Wasn't the Red Queen A. destroyed in RE1 and B. trying to protect human life by stopping the zombies from escaping into the general populace back then too? Then why was she trying to kill everyone?

I might also affect human behaviour, btw.
If by affect you mean "cause brain damage" yes
That changes behavior, no?

One of the many things that bugs me about the Matrix trilogy is why the machines choose humans as their energy source. Surely other animals or even plants (although I doubt plants could survive in the wasteland) would be more efficient for energy farming and much easier to control than humans.
You're missing the point.
The Matrix's proposed energy generation scheme VIOLATES THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS. Thank you for a reminder of this major thorn.

whenever i see a movie with aliens and humans fighting each other on a planet , i just want to facepalm .
i think that if we would find another life in space , we would try to examine it and learn new things about the universe , instead of destroying it.
the same goes for aliens if they would find us , i think they would want to make friends and exchange knowledge instead of just slaughtering everyone and destroying the planet.
i guess the movie wouldn't be fun without slaughter or fast action , but it seems unrealistic for me.
Wait.
Your problem with this is that the humans and aliens are fighting, period?
1. There's a bit of evidence against your idea. *cough*New World*cough*Xenophobia*/cough*
2. If they did fight with them, why would it be planetside??

Big problem: Stupidity. Most movies that don't have people being complete idiots (and many which do) instead/also have people being inexplicable unstupid (ie hypercompetent).
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Neonivek

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #338 on: January 16, 2013, 07:14:29 pm »

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Most movies that don't have people being complete idiots (and many which do) instead/also have people being inexplicable unstupid (ie hypercompetent).

I know this example is from a game but I think it helps this point.

The weirdest thing I ever saw in a videogame and in the end the most surprising was in Metalgear 4 (or 5) where Snake checks a gun for traps using his knife... AND THEN!!! there wasn't any.

I was kinda shocked, in movies and games... characters either know something is a trap or they don't know something is a trap. You rarely see characters act in a way they would need to unless it is immediately beneficial or critically unbeneficial.

-

Also yeah this is a thread about overthinking. It is about taking a detail that 'shouldn't' detract from all the enjoyability of a movie somehow snowballing in your head until it somehow ruins the whole movie.

For example when I complained about School of Rock the moral implications of what Jack Black did is terrible but the movie still functions with it. Yet I can't get around it and I hate the movie AHHHHHHH!!!

At the same time it isn't just about overthinking. It can be a basic flaw. Shakey Cam ruining a movie that was otherwise good? Perfect Nitpick.
« Last Edit: January 16, 2013, 07:20:50 pm by Neonivek »
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GreatWyrmGold

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #339 on: January 16, 2013, 08:03:21 pm »

True, but it's a boring thing to talk about. Can you talk for 5 pages about a shaky camera? I doubt even Bay12 could. (We might be able to talk for 5 pages about how long we can talk about shaky cameras, though.)
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Flying Dice

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #340 on: January 16, 2013, 09:13:37 pm »

Can we talk about how shaky cameras and zoom shots can be good if used in the right context? WOO JOSS WHEDON!
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Starver

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #341 on: January 16, 2013, 09:15:33 pm »

That 'Cloverfield' film, eh....  Eh?  Eh?


(Oooh, ninjaed by FD, and now it's not slightly humorous any more... darnit.)
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Flying Dice

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #342 on: January 16, 2013, 09:52:29 pm »

Don't worry, there will always be time to rag on Cloverfield.
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kaenneth

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #343 on: January 16, 2013, 09:52:53 pm »

On the subject of zombie movies, RE5 had a big one. Wasn't the Red Queen A. destroyed in RE1 and B. trying to protect human life by stopping the zombies from escaping into the general populace back then too? Then why was she trying to kill everyone?

She was programmed to stop the spread of leaked biohazard (AKA Umbrella's intellectual property) using any means necessary; not to protect human lives.

One of the many things that bugs me about the Matrix trilogy is why the machines choose humans as their energy source. Surely other animals or even plants (although I doubt plants could survive in the wasteland) would be more efficient for energy farming and much easier to control than humans.

They are not an energy source, they are just recovering what energy they can. It was only a rebel theory/propaganda that they were 'Coppertops'. The machines are still bound by the classic 'First Law', which is why they tried to give humans a virtual paradise. Remember, it was the humans who destroyed the environment. The Agents can kill humans because of the implied 'Zeroth Law', they are fighting the rebel terrorists to protect the majority of humanity.
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GreatWyrmGold

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #344 on: January 16, 2013, 11:37:02 pm »

On the subject of zombie movies, RE5 had a big one. Wasn't the Red Queen A. destroyed in RE1 and B. trying to protect human life by stopping the zombies from escaping into the general populace back then too? Then why was she trying to kill everyone?
She was programmed to stop the spread of leaked biohazard (AKA Umbrella's intellectual property) using any means necessary; not to protect human lives.
Two things. One, the Red Queen's twin in RE3 attributed the same motive as I to the Red Queen. Two, Alice had been purged of the virus by that point. Surely, letting hundreds or thousands of zombies loose in the compound had a higher risk of spreading the infection than letting a single person who the virus had been eliminated from in the previous movie leave?

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One of the many things that bugs me about the Matrix trilogy is why the machines choose humans as their energy source. Surely other animals or even plants (although I doubt plants could survive in the wasteland) would be more efficient for energy farming and much easier to control than humans.
They are not an energy source, they are just recovering what energy they can. It was only a rebel theory/propaganda that they were 'Coppertops'. The machines are still bound by the classic 'First Law', which is why they tried to give humans a virtual paradise. Remember, it was the humans who destroyed the environment. The Agents can kill humans because of the implied 'Zeroth Law', they are fighting the rebel terrorists to protect the majority of humanity.
First off, wasn't my quote; that was a quote by someone else. It's completely stupid to assume that ANY organism could violate thermodynamics in such a way that farming for energy makes sense.
Second off, I still like the wetware theory better. The robots never seemed like they were Three Laws compliant to me--why not just screw with the connections the rebels had to the Matrix?

...How did the rebels even have access to the Matrix?? Is it that hard to turn off the Wi-fi on your world simulator?
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