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thingmaker's Replies
Why do the ships fly so slowly? - They do not.
Is this a plot hole? -- It is not.
Or is there a reason for them to be moving so glacially? --- OK, lets give an example of why this is meaningless.
Ever thought about the International Space Station... Just sorta hanging up there in orbit, apparently motionless? Cuz that's how it looks in footage of the station from anywhere in it's vicinity. But you know that is not what's happening. It's zipping along at 17000 mph or some preposterous mach number if you like those... say about mach 30.
It is always about frame of reference. In interplanetary space you are well away from anything. The stars just maintain their positions, moving only if you rotate or tumble... The sun and any planets are only going to move at a crawl that you cannot perceive - again, unless you rotate or tumble. if you want to visualize a spaceship from a point of view where it seems to zip by, you just establish your viewpoint at a different velocity. You want the ship to go by as fast as a fighter jet; just view it from a point traveling 1000 mph less than it's velocity(or 1000 mph more than if you want it to zip by in the other direction).
Ultimately the point of showing the ships "flying slowly" is that they are in a sense flying slowly... It takes many long boring airline passenger hours to get to the moon, and you can hardly even see it get bigger most of the way. Flying to Jupiter takes months and months... The trip is inevitably tedious. Should the Discovery look like it's zooming?
Our White House denizen is not smart enough to be the Baron (funny abut his kid's name though).
I don't think Dune loses relevance. The movies might be able to play a very interesting trick on audiences. Paul, the "chosen one", could very easily be a hero audiences root for, as they root for other "chosen ones" like Neo in "The Matrix"... Or even Luke Skywalker, heroic and powerful because of his special lineage... If Paul makes the connection as a young, special, hero overcoming the obviously evil Baron Harkonen and the obviously corrupt empire... Well, the fact that he is leading a jihad which results in the deaths of billions could be a splash of cold water in the faces of hero-obsessed fans.
My dream is that the two Dune films are both good and successful (They could be good and unsuccessful, although that might lead to there only being one made. Or they could be shitty and successful...) and a third is made of Dune Messiah, which is a brilliant conclusion for the story about corrupted power or the corrupting influence of power. Anyway, I'm just now re-reading the first Dune books again after a number of decades and that is how I remember the first two. I read the third but wasn't impressed. Maybe that will change.
Yes and no... This is the first movie in nearly ten years that I have planned to see at the theater. I have a lot of hope and it is based on some kinda firm footing, in that I have seen the directors previous films and even when I do not like them, I find them worth a viewing.
But, if this Dune goes wrong, I don't expect little kids are going to be very happy with it. It just isn't that kind of story and if it does go wrong it will look like Bladerunner 2049. I don't dislike Bladerunner 2049, but I don't believe it's a kid favorite.
Not sure this is simply a result of the Hays Code...
The original novel, previously titled, in a slightly different form "The U-19s Last Kill" (Saturday Evening Post serial), had a... similar ending.
The robbery goes off perfectly.
The loot is abandoned (Either {in the U-19 version} the box is too big to fit down the sub's hatch and there is no time to unpack it. Or the four large sacks are too bulky to load in the really short time before the destroyer arrives {Assault version}) The Nazi is prevented from launching the real torpedoes. The Navy destroyer (not Coast Guard cutter, in the novel) apparently loses the sub after the Queen moves off. It is suggested that they thought they were dealing with a modern sub and assumed it was faster, had greater ability to dive deep... And in any event probably they felt compelled to accompany the passenger liner.
Our modern pirates just don't know exactly how they got away. The survivors, (and they all survive, Nazi included), sneak away in the sub. The sub is allowed to sink and everyone says their goodbyes.
Like I said, similar. Less melodramatic. No more believable. But both (or all three if you see the U-19 version as a seperate entity) versions are very memorable, very entertaining and I love em all.
BTW - I saw the movie at the theater on a double bill, I think with Thunderball when I was about nine or ten and probably read the novel before I was twelve. When I re-read it a few years ago, I was surprised to discover that the sub in the novel was a WWI boat... And you though the suspension of disbelief involved in fixing up a twenty+ year sunk sub was tough. How bout a forty year sunk sub?
I don't see the heavy "comic tone".
What I see is a Star Wars film with greater shades of grey. Characters who have committed terrorist acts beyond the pale of the moral tone of Star Wars. AND it still fits in perfectly because these dark rebels sacrifice themselves for the cause. Their deaths, including all those that were essentially innocent, purify the rebellion.
I believe that is the point...
Forget culture, meaning, technique, cinematography etc.
No problem, except maybe the "etc."... cuz that covers a lot of territory. I've seen the film in theaters four or five times and on HD video often... I enjoy it completely, sometimes I think of the larger story, the way Clarke envisioned it in the novel and even the early versions which I know from Lost Worlds of 2001 and later books on the making of the film. Sometimes I think about the ramifications of every element... What's going on day to day on that space station? How about the Soviet Lunar city? How many moon buses are zipping around on the moon? How many countries and corporations have a foothold in space? How many clues does HAL drop that something is awry?
Sometimes I just go with it. The environment is immersive and believable and the story, while open to interpretation, is both awe inspiring and somewhat disturbing, with echoes of "Childhoods End".
I saw it when it came out in 1987. I had no idea what to expect. While watching it I was impressed and thought "Wow, it's like a David Drake story..." I was thinking, specifically of a short story in which a small town sheriff tracks an unknown killer which is taking people in his area all on a single night, as I recall. The killer turns out to be a non-humanoid alien that appears to be sport hunting... Of course David Drake wrote a lot of military SF too, so some of his Vietnam/horror/SF came to mind as well.
Overall, I still think the movie is great, just not as gritty and real as David Drake, but that's just me.
I looked at the list... I've seen all of the movies and Battlestar Galactica and all are bad. I saw them when they were new, except Orin, which I only managed to get through a few minutes of just a few years ago.
Are they worth watching? Well...
#1 - THE LAST STARFIGHTER is a landmark in use of (Now horrendously dated) CG effects and while clumsy in story, it's at least mildly likable. And the Craig Safan score is good.
#2 - BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS is too cheap, too simpleminded (The Seven Samurai in space only garishly silly) and, aside from the early James Horner score, totally forgettable.
#3 - KRULL is more high fantasy than SF and it reminds me of some favorite books like Andre Norton's "Witch World" series, but the central characters are bland and uninteresting and the story seems hasty and superficial (Compare the quest in Lord of the Rings). The only real saving graces are the Gandalf figures' part with the Widow of the Web and a dynamite James Horner score.
#4 - THE BLACK HOLE seemed dull and ponderous when I first saw it and I remember laughing out loud at the epic heaven and hell finale. Nice looking, if poorly conceived special effects ( the glowy meteor ploughing through the arboretum was amazingly silly but looked cool and the big space-drain of a black hole also looked cool but ridiculous.) and a listenable but inappropriate John Barry score (alternating ponderous and blaring) are the pluses...
#5 - SATURN 3 has an interesting slick looking future world and a nice attempt at isolated psychological horror but I just found the stars uninteresting in their roles. Also Harvey Keitel's voice is dubbed by someone else. Neat Elmer Bernstein score, though.
#6 - MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE is a cheap looking, stupid film based on an animated series I never liked. A couple of fun actors are not enough to make it remotely good. Again, nice music, this time from Bill Conti.
I could go on...
Me, I've seen most of the SF, fantasy and horror titles they have done and saw most of them before they did them... But I only watched the MST3K versions occasionally. I guess I am a bit offended on behalf of a lot of the films. I don't mind making fun of something that deserves it but the business of mocking everything at the same rate in order to fill out a show kinda gets on my nerves. I mean just because there is a cut-down version of "Marooned" (1969) under another title with some shitty music added... Well, it's still a decent, if slow film. And "MST3K the Movie" was "This Island Earth"... That movie is amazing. A lot of '50s elements that now seem massively dated, but it's still good. So the MST3K version feels a bit wrong to me.
Some of the minor '50s items, like "The Giant Gila Monster" (1959), are fun to make fun of but also genuinely charming and fun on their own terms. I feel just a little bad that a lot of people will probably never see them except through the MST3k versions.
I saw their version of "Gamera" (1966) long after seeing it on TV in the early '70s but now I love it even more - Because I've seen the original Japanese cut in Blu-Ray. I'm not saying it's a good movie. It's even funnier without MST3K and in it's own language.
One film I have only seen as an MST3K is "The Starfighters" (1964) and I know it's pretty bad but I would love to see not only an intact version but a Blu-ray copy at that. Nifty footage of F-104s which are possibly the coolest plane ever built...
You worry me... Cuz I can't help but agree with your gloomy forecast. But, I am still hopeful. This is the first movie in years that I will actually see at the theater. I can't quite recall if I've been in a theater since Star Trek 2009. It may be that long...
I read Dune around 1970 0r 1971, when I was twelve... I didn't find it tough going, but I had a tendency to read everything I could find that sounded cool to a science fiction and fantasy fan. I read pulpy space opera and lots of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Howard and imitators thereof. I read Heinlein Juveniles and Andre Norton. I also read Doc Savage adventures, H.G Wells, and stuff by Olaf Stapledon. Dune felt like a giant adventure to me, with the added bonus of a map (I love maps), and appendices with all kinds of convincing detail.
So. I'd say Dune is not that dense or difficult... There's lots of interior monologue but it seems to move right along to me. Additionally, I think that what matters is just Dune and Dune Messiah. I stopped reading the books after Children of Dune.
I'm not up on what's leaked about the movie but my ideal version would be three movies - Dune Part 1, Dune Part 2 and Dune Messiah (Dune Part 3).
Well, I don't know about in 1983... But in 1958 there was "Monster on the Campus" wherein the plot hinges on blood from a dead coelocanth. And I'm pretty sure that the coelocanth is mentioned in "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954). Other than that I'm pretty sure the coelocanth has been one of the most popular examples of a, so called, "living fossil" in other movies and TV for as long as a justification was needed for some sort of prehistoric critter turning up in the present day.
There's a bit more to this...
It was, bitterly, funny to be planting the flag on an unknown planet, millennia in the future and probably long after the United States would even exist... But Taylor was also an angry misanthrope and mocking the action of one of his fellow astronauts was very much in character.
Taylor has a character arc in the story. He starts off believing that the human race is worthless, hoping to find something better in deep space... Then he winds up defending humanity and, finally, telling Dr. Zaius (About the planet's original, human, inhabitants) "They were here before you, and they were better than you". And then, of course he finds out the truth.
Not really... I'm a fan of genre fiction: Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy, Pulp Adventure... Also some Mystery and Thrillers and, outside the realm of genre fiction, History and Folklore. I'm a reader and encountered a lot of fiction which is usually thought of as film or video through print. My first Star Trek was a James Blish paperback...
In the "good old days" I remember having to wait forever for some UHF station to pop up and air episodes of "The Outer Limits". A few "the Prisoner" episodes would be screened at SF or Star Trek conventions... German expressionist cinema was available one or two films at a time at rep houses or at special screenings on college campuses. I remember setting alarms to get up at 3 in the morning to possibly record on VHS obscure movies like "Kronos" (1957).
I read my used copies of "Doc Savage paperbacks and wondered what the other hundred and thirty novels in the series were like, cuz I couldn't afford, even at 1970s prices to buy the old pulp magazines. I only discovered classic fantasy as the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was published. My favorite music - film scores - came out in dribs and drabs... Vast amounts of material unavailable even with the most ardent used bookstore hunting.
Thing is... Now everything I love, which used to be hard to come by is easy to find. Now you can download or stream damn near any video. Text is almost unlimited. My favorite music is available in vast quantities.
Also. I'm one of those nerds with no social skills except the ability to become paralyzed by fear in social situations. If I had been born 20 years earlier I would not have had access to the internet until I was nearly 60... And would therefore never have gotten married. So, from my, admittedly nerdly, point of view - THESE KIDS HAVE IT ALL!!!
Kinda likely, I suppose. I remember the way he clapped when Tom Atkins (the hero) turned the tables by dumping boxes of those deadly Silver Shamrock medallions on the "control room" and magic circle. This was a guy who just appreciated a bit of irony.
Of course, if his plan went off without a hitch and the maximum number of sacrificial victims resulted, maybe he expected to get something for his efforts. Something from a hypothetical dark or elder god... I don't think that Nigel Kneale intended that when he wrote the original screenplay, but... maybe.
Anyway, speaking of Nigel Kneale, I think this story might be based round an alternate version of "The Stone Tape". I'd call this one "The Stone Battery"; with the assumption being that power of some paranormal variety is stored in standing stones that have been the focus of worship and sacrifice. Some sort of mathematical code or symbol series equating to ancient incantations and occult ceremonies (in this case being run on computers) can release and channel the power.
Hey... Half a million dead children by apparently supernatural means... Cochran had better have some apocalyptic follow-up or he's dead... Santa Mira's the biggest crime scene since, well, since ever.
And we could definitely write some kick-ass sequels, but they wind up looking a bit like Hellboy.
Well, it's possible that Cochran had further resources... I mean, he did steal a titanic stone from Stonehenge. But. I got the impression that he didn't have any strategy for world conquest after his colossal Halloween joke/mass murder.
I imagine that in the wake of his success, there would be epic upheavals in society.
* The religious reacting to a satanic outbreak of epic proportions.
* The non-religious either getting religion or interpreting the event as "paranormal" - rather as I assume Nigel Kneale intended (See "The Stone Tape" and "Quatermass and the Pit")
* The authorities would follow the obvious course of descending on the Santa Mira factory as the source of the deadly masks, regardless of the actual mechanism of the deadliness... Here we see helicopters, SUVs and the most immediately available military hardware supporting an army of armed law enforcement and, probably, the Army... Posse Comitatus? Screw that. Martial Law would be declared.
So, unless Cochran had some much better robots or some serious "combat magic" (Storms of brimstone, fireballs, earthquakes) or had actually invoked Satan or Cthulhu or Whatthefuckever... Well, witch burning might just come back in the form of flamethrowers and napalm bombs. Hell, "combat magic" vs. tac nukes is not out of the question.
Anyway.
Society would change. But any police state would be something we did to ourselves - probably to protect the remaining children.
Covert government research into "paranormal weaponry" would ensue. Great Britain would either be coerced to serve the CIA/NSA/HSA or would become Great again with it's vast resource of megaliths... An international Para-Arms Race would be underway.
Well, the obvious source is the 1964 movie "633 Squadron" which has a flight through a fjord to strike a hidden target which could not be bombed from a saner altitude. Of course ever since "Star Wars" was first released, we've known about the "Dam Busters" connection, based on the 1955 film which was itself based on the "bouncing bomb" attacks on the Ruhr dams in Germany during WWII.
I watched (1)"The Comedian", (2) "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" and (6) "Six Degrees of Freedom"...
I thought "The Comedian" was nicely done with good performances, but really not very interesting. Quite a typical TZ kinda story about getting what you wish for and finding out it's not what you expected. An example of the deal-with-the-devil story with a chance for redemption. I was mildly hopeful.
"Nightmare" seemed to be a total travesty. All over the map with elements of contemporary paranoia that seemed to go nowhere... which is exactly where it ended up, with a "twist" ending that could be episode one of some abysmal knockoff series like "Lost" meets "The 4400".
Having better things to do (and to watch) I skipped ahead to "Six Degrees"... Now, the science in the original series, when it chose to do unambiguously science fictional stories, was never rock solid... But it was par for the course in film SF for the period. So I, maybe, shouldn't be upset by: nuclear war ends everything, our spaceship's computers need to download updates, we have insanely visualized artificial gravity (Tell me there aren't high-school graduates who think that system would provide anything but vertigo)... But my annoyance was controllable. The effects looked good and the suits and sets looked nice (Although I am getting a little tired of magical cgi spacesuit helmets/visors)... BUT, the episode was obviously playing with audience expectations in the most simple-minded way. From the moment the opaque "radiation shields" are closed over the only windows on the spacecraft we are tipped to suspect the business to be a simulation; a "test" or an "experiment". I won't say what actually happens, but it was a lot like the "twist" of "Nightmare". And it left me completely uninterested in seeing any more episodes.
Oh, and one more thing. What is the business of the inside references? Whipple? Toy plane from "Nightmare"?
In my opinion there are three stages of Lost in Space... None of which are the worst anything ever.
*The first five episodes of the first season are genuinely good. They are dramatic and full of great ideas, even if the ideas don't always make complete sense (The orbit of the planet is outrageous... The dangerous solar maximum lasts for about a minute and the orbital "winter" peaks in a couple of days... And then the cycle stops.). The effects are top notch for the period too. And I love the music. John Williams and several other composers, supplemented by Bernard Herrmann from the Fox library produced dynamite scores - the best of which was composed for the early episodes.
*The remainder of the first season is better than average for Irwin Allen but is mostly pretty poor by comparison with those first episodes.
* Everything after the first season is whole 'nother thing. It is bad. But it is bad in a fun way. If you have no tolerance for Dr. Smith, I guess it would be pretty awful but I enjoy it more than the latter part of season one. In fact the more insane the stories - The more goofy the monsters and the more ridiculous the sets and props, the better.
I thought the comic book from Innovation in the early '90s had a brilliant conceit: The early episodes represent reality rather well but the later ones are based on reality filtered through the diary of Penny.