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That other sci-fi show

Well, don't get me wrong ... I love Armageddon as a popcorn blockbuster, but that doesn't stop me enjoying someone ripping apart everything that is wrong with it in terms of science and logic. And there is a lot wrong with it.

My wife and I will still turn out the lights grab a beer and sit and watch when it comes on the box though.

:D
 
See, I take issue with all the people who rip on Armageddon and pick at "everything wrong with it." Yes, there is real bad science in that movie, but you know what? WHO CARES?

The movie wasn't meant to be a factual account of what would happen if an asteroid came at Earth. It was a movie that was meant to be fun, and a great "popcorn" movie. Sit back, and enjoy the ride. I thought the movie had some fun characters, good hero moments, several GREAT and memorable lines, and was a good emotional ride.

People who look for the movie to be more than just that are fooling themselves...

Amen to that.

Oh, I loved Armageddon, just BECAUSE it was so dreadfully stupid. I had seen it and Deep Impact (a friend of mine had invited a bunch of people to the cinema on his birthday for Deep Impact, Armageddon a different friend had on VHS) .. whereas Deep Impact was truely painful to sit through, Armageddon was on SUCH a level of head-up-ass science and storywriting that I just couldn't stop enjoying how bloody ridicilous it all was .. even it I was 14 when that movie came out. I only stopped enjoying it towards the end of the movie, when it started taking itself seriousley - Bruce Willis' changing places with Ben Affleck, draaaaama, drama drama drama, more drama, .. yech.

Bad science back and forth, the one plot element that REALLY put this movie in the so bad it's good category for me was how a bunch of smaller asteroids approach earth before the big one comes .. or something like that. The first one, after smashing a space Shuttle in orbit (what are the odds?) crashes right down on Manhattan (what are the odds?). The second one smashes Paris(what are the odds?). The third one smashes Shanghai(what are the odds?). Remind me never to play darts against god :D

I doubt the guy writing that review got no fun out of the movie, considering he must have watched it a few times to compose that review.

Aren't you posting this in a Star Trek thread, where we commonly hear nice loud explosions in outer space? And aren't you posting in said thread on a Babylon 5 forum where ships travel through "hyperspace", the characters through time on a regular basis, and the main character is suspended between life and death and given a "life force" fuel that lasts 20 years?
 
Oh, I loved Armageddon, just BECAUSE it was so dreadfully stupid. I had seen it and Deep Impact (a friend of mine had invited a bunch of people to the cinema on his birthday for Deep Impact, Armageddon a different friend had on VHS) .. whereas Deep Impact was truely painful to sit through, Armageddon was on SUCH a level of head-up-ass science and storywriting that I just couldn't stop enjoying how bloody ridicilous it all was .. even it I was 14 when that movie came out. I only stopped enjoying it towards the end of the movie, when it started taking itself seriousley - Bruce Willis' changing places with Ben Affleck, draaaaama, drama drama drama, more drama, .. yech.

Bad science back and forth, the one plot element that REALLY put this movie in the so bad it's good category for me was how a bunch of smaller asteroids approach earth before the big one comes .. or something like that. The first one, after smashing a space Shuttle in orbit (what are the odds?) crashes right down on Manhattan (what are the odds?). The second one smashes Paris(what are the odds?). The third one smashes Shanghai(what are the odds?). Remind me never to play darts against god :D
You Europeans and your lack of appreciation for Hollywood blockbuster action flicks... :rolleyes: :p
 
You Europeans and your lack of appreciation for Hollywood blockbuster action flicks... :rolleyes: :p

Oh, I can love Hollywood action flicks, as long as they don't take themselves seriousley :p .. perfect counter-example: Braveheart. Like I said, I truely enjoyed Armageddon.

And FreeBaGel has got me there :p .. but I do love laughing at ridicilous things on Star Trek too occasionally. I guess different people enjoy things in different ways ...

The sound on B5 I can live with though, as JMS left the sound on the show with a perfectly good explenation ;) .. it all depends on where you put the microphones - who says they are in outer space? :D .. and IIRC, it was somewhere stated that the "scream" the shadowships leave were of telepathic nature, not of acoustic nature ..

For me, there is a line between suspending disbelief and just stupid. I can enjoy things on both sides of the line though. Armegeddon was entirely beyond that line. Star Trek often crossed it. Babylon 5 only rarely did (the scary monster on Grey 17 is missing for example came very close to that line :p )
 
Yeah, different things shatter the "willing suspension of disbelief" for different people. There are various reasons why that line moves around from person to person.

Sometimes it has to do with what you do for a living and / or hobby ..... and therefore what leaps out at you as being comletely *wrong* (without having to think about it at all). There are a couple categories under this heading that are problematic for me (depending upon the movie / show).

Sometimes it is a matter of a lack of internal consistency. I can accept almost any set of "universal ground rules" so long as the writers follow them once they are established. I start to lose interest and belief in what is going on when this line is crossed too agregiously. I find it irritating and frustrating even in cases when it is a comparatively minor sidelight that doesn't drive me away (the handling of Translator Microbes in Farscape being a prime example of that; I accepted TM's as part of their universe, but was frustated with them by the end of the second season because they worked differently in every episode so that there was no model that would explain their contradictory behaviors).

Sometimes it is just some bit of logic (or whatever) that a given individual can't get past. I really like the character interaction in the ST:TNG episode Darmok. However, I just can't watch it without constantly thinking: "These people never should have made it into space. There's no way to do that kind of advanced science and engineering if you can *only* speak in historic and mythologic references and metaphors."
 
Perhaps they have a written mathematical language that they just didn't speak when trying to communicate with the Enterprise.
 
I'm sorry, but that doesn't track either.

When making first contact with an alien species, talking only terms of references to your own mythology / history is an *obvious* non-starter. If you can communicate any other way, then you obviously choose that other way. Even if that doesn't occur to you at first, then when you initially run into a wall of non-comprehension you would immediately fall back to that other form.

If they aren't bright enough to figure that out, then they also should never have reached orbit ...... much less interstellar space travel.

Edit: This was in reply to hyp's "separate language" comment. Unfortunately GKE's unrelated reply got posted in between. :cool:
 
IMDB is listing Matt Damon as having been cast in the role of Cadet James T Kirk.

Ugh...

Don't fear yet. It's an unsubstantitated rumor that's been out for a few weeks. no confirmation has been given, so, merely a rumor for now. We can't even be positive yet, that it is an "Academy Prequel with kirk and Spock" because that hasn't been confirmed either.
 
I love Kirk and Spock, and the actors that brought them to life. Though I'm bored by the sad attempts to revive the Trek universe, I've kept up with it. I did see Nemesis in the theater even though I knew it would suck. The one thing that would make me completely turn my back on the whole enterprise (heh) would be to re-cast these characters.
 
I'm sorry, but that doesn't track either.

When making first contact with an alien species, talking only terms of references to your own mythology / history is an *obvious* non-starter. If you can communicate any other way, then you obviously choose that other way. Even if that doesn't occur to you at first, then when you initially run into a wall of non-comprehension you would immediately fall back to that other form.

If they aren't bright enough to figure that out, then they also should never have reached orbit ...... much less interstellar space travel.

Edit: This was in reply to hyp's "separate language" comment. Unfortunately GKE's unrelated reply got posted in between. :cool:

Yea, I do see your point. I just love the episode so much, I want there to be a way around this inconvenient little fact. :LOL: :eek:

Here's another thought: What if there is plenty of math in their language? The universal translator did partially translate what they were saying, after all. It just couldn't make out the historical references, so the translation was only half-possible.
 
IMDB is listing Matt Damon as having been cast in the role of Cadet James T Kirk.

Ugh...

:LOL: Antony would be thrilled.

And yea, it's just a rumor. But no one has denied it yet, have they?
 
There are some things in Nemesis that are ok, but there is one thing in it that I view as truly good: the Enterprise actually fired its damn weapons more than once and the spaceship battle lasted more than three minutes. I so wish that B-Four didn't sound literally retarded when it spoke. It's supposed to be a simplistic android, so it should speak simply and flatly, not retardedly.
 
IMDB is listing Matt Damon as having been cast in the role of Cadet James T Kirk.

Ugh...

:LOL: Antony would be thrilled.

And yea, it's just a rumor. But no one has denied it yet, have they?

Right. And as the "psychic" Criswell says at the end of Plan 9 from Outer Space - "Can you prove these events didn't happen? Well, can you?" :)

Luckily for all concerned Matt Damon is way too old to play a Starfleet cadet, who would be between about 18 and 22 in the normal course of things.

Regards,

Joe
 
Oh that's right, this was to be a story about their cadet days.

I feel relieved already. :LOL:

Also, wouldn't doing a Star Trek movie or series be a bit of a step down for the actor? I'm going to get lynched for saying that here. :LOL:
 
I just love the episode so much, I want there to be a way around this inconvenient little fact. :LOL: :eek:
Yeah, I can understand that. As I said, I really *do* like the way the character interaction plays in there.

But the whole point of my post that started this sub-thread was that different people have their suspension of disbelief shattered by different things in different pieces ..... and *sometimes* that difference can be pretty random and hard to explain or predict.

You love the way the episode plays enough to not look too hard at some of the leaps of logic that are implied in the back story. That's cool. I have certainly done that at times (one or two episodes of Farscape leap immediately to mind).

For whatever reason, that particular one just bugs me. And though I do like the character stuff, I don't love it quite enough to make me not care about at all about the one logic issue in the background. I can't explain why that one is more of problem for me than some other things ...... it just is.

Different strokes (to quote Sly Stone :cool: ) ...... that was my original point. I don't mean to try to debate anybody who loves Darmok (and I know there are many who do) into rejecting it.


Here's another thought: What if there is plenty of math in their language? The universal translator did partially translate what they were saying, after all. It just couldn't make out the historical references, so the translation was only half-possible.
As I said, I don't mean to try to get people to reject the ep because of my particular quirky inability to suspend disbelief in this specific case.

So I'll just say that this doesn't really work for me either.
 
Sometimes it has to do with what you do for a living and / or hobby ..... and therefore what leaps out at you as being comletely *wrong* (without having to think about it at all). There are a couple categories under this heading that are problematic for me (depending upon the movie / show).

That's true I guess .. It *really* bugs me on 24 how they constantly have IP Adresses with one number being something like 284 .. GAH! You can't get 284 into 8 bits! :D .. I know they do it to have non-real IP addresses, and I know that it's only a minor point really in general .. but gah! It bugs me! :D

I disliked Darmok, as it just seemed so .. constructed. Built up trying to make an interesting plot, but it just made NO sense. Oh Well :D

As for the movie .. hmpf, I'm guessing I'll go see it, no matter what - I suck :p .. but recasting Kirk and Spock is not a crime I'm willing to forgive them for - no matter whom they cast.

But PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE not Matt Damon :eek: .. how about Ben Affleck as Spock while we're at it? :p
 
It *really* bugs me on 24 how they constantly have IP Adresses with one number being something like 284 .. GAH! You can't get 284 into 8 bits! :D .. I know they do it to have non-real IP addresses, and I know that it's only a minor point really in general .. but gah! It bugs me! :D
Now, you see, that one doesn't bug me ..... although I know about the problem.

Maybe it's because I'm so used to every phone number on TV starting with the 555 prefix even though absolutely *no* phone number (in the US, anyway) has that prefix, except for the automated "the time is ...." sorts of services. The IP address thing strikes me as a similar dodge just to avoid inconveniancing real people (or businesses) . *I* can live with that one.

Besides, ......
There are sooooooooooo many other problems with what happens on 24. Things that *do* directly impact the plot line. And I'm not even someone who knows the LA basin well enough to catch when their drive times are off by an order of magnitude. :p
(Out of all of television, 24 has to be one of the biggest users of the principle behind that old JMS quote about ships traveling "at the speed of plot". :D )
 
Darmok is one of the greatest episodes of anything ever.

I do look forward to seeing it in English. Dubbing really is the best way to ruin great acting :p
 

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