Ohh the things we believe

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

For me, it's time travel in stories that often requires a leap of faith in the basic premise since there are so many time paradox issues that tend to be glossed over or ignored. For me, it isn't an issue as long as time travel is only in one direction, forward. It's when you have time travel into the past that paradoxes become a big problem.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Agreed. To paraphrase Captain Cathryn Janeway: "I hate time travel stories." I've never bought them, and view them simply as another SF-related convention, however realistic, that is used so often that it is simply accepted as possible. Like "warp drive," in fact. Moving organized mass faster than the speed of light? Yeah.

(I should talk: Three of my most popular novels use warp drive, to my continual chagrin.)

One of the things I liked about the anime series "Star Blazers" is that they didn't use faster-than-light travel in the conventional sense. Instead, the ship used naturally occuring space warps to quickly cover long distances in an instant. Considering they had to travel almost than 300,000 light years in one year and they were making several jumps each day, space warps must have been very common.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

Considering they had to travel almost than 300,000 light years in one year and they were making several jumps each day, space warps must have been very common.

Not to mention incredibly convenient...

[dsvick]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Not to mention incredibly convenient...

Well sure, had they not been there it would have been either a really short series, or a long boring one.

Episode 1: Launch, the team launches themselves space ward on an epic voyage of discovery, danger, and human endeavor.
Episode 2: The first 10,000 miles
Episode 3: Miles 10,001 through 20,000
Episode 4 - 56: Many more miles
Episode 57: Our heros enter orbit around Titan where they'll spend a few days resting and gather resources.

[sjb]

Originally Posted by happy_terd

I am a huge 007 film fan (I got every film). The stuff I have to put aside there is amazing.

Do you remember the following scene from Goldeneye?

Near the beginning of the movie there is a scene when Bond drives a motorcycle off a runway at the end of a cliff chasing a pilot-less plane that has fallen a second or two earlier. From there, he proceeds to fall as he closes the gap between himself and the plane, manages to climb inside the cockpit and finally pulls the plane out of the dive preventing an untimely demise from the rocks below.

I turned it off as soon as that scene finished and never bothered with it again.

I can suspend my belief long enough to enjoy movies that are classified as fantasy. But I can't handle it in an action movie. I can no longer sit through movies with stupidly impossible stunts.

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by dsvick

Why is it that we readily accept the clearly impossible/unlikely/fantastic while immediately calling out the faults as soon as they touch on reality?

Warning, spoiler below....

My family all watched Night at the Museum 2: Battle for the Smithsonian over the weekend. Through the entire movie we watched and laughed as the previously inanimate museum exhibits were brought to life by the ancient Egyptian artifact. We were quite happy when the 50 foot tall, marble Abraham Lincoln statue saved the day from the evil, wanna be pharaoh's undead army rescued from some other plain of existence. We never gave those things a second thought...

However, at the end of the movie, the main character looks at his watch and says they have an hour until sunrise, the next scene is them all arriving safe and sound in New York, (it is still dark) and the first thing my wife and I do is ask each other how they fly from Washington DC to New York in an hour. Nothing about it being Emelia Earheart, or that the plane they flew in had been sitting in a museum with no fuel for years, simply "how did they get there so fast? And how is she going to get back before sunrise?"

I just find it funny that we are so willing to suspend our belief for some things but not others.

It's a matter of coherence.
In a story that revolves around inanimated things made magically alive, a talking statue is completely accettable. But if that story takes place in present time, without any premise, a one hour trip from DC to NYC is unacceptable.
Unless a superfast mean of transportation was introduced earlier in the movie, I mean. That would be fair and coherent.

You can accept the classic Roman Centurion with a wristwatch in a alternate-history movie where watchmakers were common in Rome.
You can accept Gandalf beating a Balrog, not riding a motorbike.



What I hate the most in movies are wrong historical facts. And the more wrong the movie is, the more a blockbuster it is. This dirves me nuts!

[dsvick]

Originally Posted by Format C:

What I hate the most in movies are wrong historical facts. And the more wrong the movie is, the more a blockbuster it is. This dirves me nuts!

That's because if they did it right it would be boring.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by dsvick

Well sure, had they not been there it would have been either a really short series, or a long boring one.

Episode 1: Launch, the team launches themselves space ward on an epic voyage of discovery, danger, and human endeavor.
Episode 2: The first 10,000 miles
Episode 3: Miles 10,001 through 20,000
Episode 4 - 56: Many more miles
Episode 57: Our heros enter orbit around Titan where they'll spend a few days resting and gather resources.

Per Wikipedia, "Space Battleship Yamato" (the original name for the series "Star Blazers") did the entire trip that I mentioned in 26 episodes. The series wasn't boring because they didn't focus on minute details of the trip. Often space warps were mentioned in passing, since it became fairly routine after the first few. If I remember correctly, the last half of the trip took place in about five episodes.

It's much like "Star Trek - The Original Series." True, there is a great deal of action and events happening, but that's the only time we are watching them. I suspect a vast majority of Kirk's log entries would could be summed up like this: "Nothing significant to report."

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by sjb

I can suspend my belief long enough to enjoy movies that are classified as fantasy. But I can't handle it in an action movie. I can no longer sit through movies with stupidly impossible stunts.

Watching action films is like listening to the old British Colonel and his war stories that get more incredible with each telling:

"So there I was, the only person between 5,000 Colonial soldiers with just-discovered defective rifles; and 25,000 attackers with knives and spears. In seconds, the heathens would have been upon us!"

"What did you do, Colonel?"

"Why, I quickly dismantled my own rifle's scope and used the magnifying lens, backed by my trusty shaving mirror, to reflect sunlight into our opponents' eyes... giving our boys a fighting chance..."

"Why... that's incredible, Colonel!"

"Quite."

You can almost imagine an elderly James Bond retelling his fairly conventional exploits to a young (and humoring) audience, and having them sound like the movie scripts. (Hmm: Might be fodder for the second 007 comedy, at that...)

[kad032000]

Originally Posted by dsvick

Why is it that we readily accept the clearly impossible/unlikely/fantastic while immediately calling out the faults as soon as they touch on reality?

Reminds me of the uncanny valley.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

We are comfortable with fantastic things until they cross to close to the reality we are used to and then our "something is not right here" alarm goes off.

[dsvick]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

"So there I was, the only person between 5,000 Colonial soldiers with just-discovered defective rifles; and 25,000 attackers with knives and spears. In seconds, the heathens would have been upon us!"

"What did you do, Colonel?"

"Why, I quickly dismantled my own rifle's scope and used the magnifying lens, backed by my trusty shaving mirror, to reflect sunlight into our opponents' eyes... giving our boys a fighting chance..."

"Why... that's incredible, Colonel!"

"Quite."

You should be a writer... oh hey you are - good choice ...

I can see it.... big handlebar mustache, pith helmet, elephant gun resting against the wall...

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Watching action films is like listening to the old British Colonel and his war stories that get more incredible with each telling:

"So there I was, the only person between 5,000 Colonial soldiers with just-discovered defective rifles; and 25,000 attackers with knives and spears. In seconds, the heathens would have been upon us!"

"What did you do, Colonel?"

"Why, I quickly dismantled my own rifle's scope and used the magnifying lens, backed by my trusty shaving mirror, to reflect sunlight into our opponents' eyes... giving our boys a fighting chance..."

"Why... that's incredible, Colonel!"

"Quite."

You can almost imagine an elderly James Bond retelling his fairly conventional exploits to a young (and humoring) audience, and having them sound like the movie scripts. (Hmm: Might be fodder for the second 007 comedy, at that...)

Originally Posted by dsvick

You should be a writer... oh hey you are - good choice ...

I can see it.... big handlebar mustache, pith helmet, elephant gun resting against the wall...

or as the standing joke in ROTC used to go... "there I was! the enemy in front of me, the enemy behind me and there I was up to my knees in handgrenade pins and nothing left!" "so what did you do?" "well died of course!!!" (maybe you had to be there)

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

or as the standing joke in ROTC used to go... "there I was! the enemy in front of me, the enemy behind me and there I was up to my knees in handgrenade pins and nothing left!" "so what did you do?" "well died of course!!!" (maybe you had to be there)

not a very good ending though ....

[GeoffC]

.... more a dead end.....

[dsvick]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

.... more a dead end.....

Where is negative karma button when you need it.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by dsvick

Where is negative karma button when you need it.

The mods hide it from us! Greenie meanies!