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Latte And Now For That Latte
41

I just love döppelgangers in general, whether they are clones, robots, supernatural, whatever. I remember as a kid I watched a Hammer House of Horror film starring Roger Moore, in which during an operation his heart beat split in two. Then one day he gets home and there is another version of him there, living with his wife, living his life (although the other one has a moustache! Classic sign of evil - c.f. Michael Knight’s nonsensical evil twin - nonsensical because they were identical even though Michael was supposed to be unrecognisable owing to plastic surgery). It’s one of the first films I remember really spooking me out, and no doubt responsible for a childhood full of nightmares in which something-a-bit-evil-about-them döppelgangers took the place of my parents. (Of course, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is pretty much the inversion of this plot - where everyone else is replaced. Join us!)

All the best,
Keith

42

Ok lets point out some other flaws.

The planet’s atmosphere will kill a human (we saw this play a major role in the plot) and yet all of the attack Copters (why does every sci fi use a Huey as a template) had open cock pits to the crew area and yet many of the pilots never wore breathing masks in the front but the guys in the back did. The pilots must be able to breathe the “deadly” atmosphere without the need of a gas mask.

Up in the floating mountains the wind never blows even though they climb several thousand feet. The mountains never bump into each other or move at all. (Must be made of floatbutnevermoveevertainium)

When the great tree fell and hit the ground people didn’t fly hundreds of feet in the air like they would if something larger and with something of such mass and scale as the great tree would have caused if it actually hit the ground. (The shockwave alone should have killed about everyone). We never saw a huge blast wave or massive amounts of dust and debris. It fell like a small tree and never caused the ground to “bump” from the collision of falling down from a height miles up.

The Blue Smurf race “bond” with all animals on the planet through their pony tails but don’t bond with each other while mating?

Flying animals bond for life and yet he let the great orange starburst dinosaur go after one day’s use?

The marine main character was a “warrior” and never thought of having all the flying mounts hold logs and drop logs into the fan blades of all the flying machines? The Ewoks in star wars were smarter about using low tech to fight a high tech force. (Remember tree log traps smashing AT walkers?)

ICU? Rip off of American Indian beliefs?

The technology advancements are so far in the future and yet the Military is still using “Daisy Cutters” as their most advanced attack?

The Walking attack machines were a blatant rip off of the ones used in Matrix which were ripped off from the Loading machines in Aliens.

He learns an alien language fluently in less than 90 days while also learning all of their customs, beliefs, and how to interface with animals through the “bond”? The guy has to be the faster learner on the planet.

They point out the smurfs have carbon fiber skeletons and yet they die just as easily as humans? Whats the point?

When they “escaped” in a battle transport (wanna be offsprey) they somehow had all the cabling they needed to lift a lab in secret and fly it miles away. And speaking of which, why did they need a Avatar Smurf riding on top of the lab in flight? Was he holding the cables in one hand or just there for eye candy?

The scientist guy who helped the marine fought in a battle and his “avatar” was killed. If they are so expensive, and so hard to make, how did he have a second one that looked just like the first one in the end when they were escorting everyone out of the main base. Does everyone get a buy one get one free deal or did he whip one up after the battle but before escorting everyone off base?

Another point is the Battle Transport (pictured below)

How does it fly forward so fast when the “fans” never rotate to a 90 degree (facing forward) configuration. They might rotate a few degrees forward but then they would never generate a good forward momentum. They would be rather slow. Some how this miraculous Huey’s with fans were highly maneuverable and could fly forward really fast with no obvious form of forward propulsion. (Maybe they were made of fastatainum).

They were so focused on making 10 foot smurfs they made everything in CGI when they could have saved millions if they would have made the smurfs normal human size and just used make up.

Ok the humans are vastly advanced when it comes to all kinds of “technology”, they can interface with “avatars” in link beds, they have advanced computers and gear and yet someone gets hit with one bullet in the side and they have no advanced First Aid available. They couldn;t even fork up some band aids, a few stitches, or even some glue. Nope. They have to go ask an alien race who’s biggest technological advancement is the Bow and Arrow for First Aid and how to “heal” a bullet wound, which of course failed.

In the begining the marine in the wheel chair almost gets run over by a huge dump truck. Why would you drive a dump truck that size in the middle of an airport and between the shuttles and the base. Any manager with half a brain would say OK transportation over here on this side of the base and construction over there on that side of the base…

If the marine could travel to all the outlying tribes so quickly, why did it take so long for them to arrive in one location? He visited all the tribes in what looked like one night and yet it was taking days for those tribes to travel back the same distance. Maybe the marine had some of the “fastatainum” on his person.

If that mineral is vastly expensive do we honestly believe that the mining company will leave and never come back and attack the smurfs? They will just fly back with more weapons.

If the Vortex is a place where no systems work how do the machines still fly in all that interference? Since guidance does not work how do they know how to get there?
If no guidance works how do they know exactly where the “Sacred Area” is?
Why is the shuttle painted like the Real shuttle and not painted green?
Why is everything just plain green? Why not paint camouflage on the vehicles and use neon colors? I would think a solid green machine flying through a neon Forest would be easy to spot?
Why were the walking machines silver and not green? They run out of paint?
Why did the walking machines need to carry large machine guns? Why not just attach them to the arms like in the Matrix?
Was it me or did the walking machines seem rather wide and bowlegged? WHy couldn;t they make them more narrow so they could fit in tighter places?
How does a Blue Smurf block blows from a metal Goliath with only a slim piece of metal? I guess physics and the idea of MASS and FORCE play no part…
Why all the political environmental interlaced in the movie? Does James Cameron recycle and use little to no electricity? I mean his choice of having to have 10 foot smurfs increased all the CGI needed by tenfold which of course increased all the electricity needed to power the computers to make all that CGI which in turn kinda goes against his whole “enviro” message which is apparent throughout the movie.

So is the new type of western? “Cowboys and Indians” done in shades of blue?

Dances with Smurfs?

I could go on and on and on…

But I did enjoy the movie. I was entertained watching it. But I was also entertained when I watched the movie JACKASS so…

In the end the movie is an eye candy good versus easy predictable flick. Good the first time but lacked so much in plot and believability.

I would say geared more towards teenagers with short memory spans.

43

An overlooked science fiction action film is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Sixth Day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is a great film, but it works as both an action picture and as science fiction because it raises questions about what makes us human. Plus it is silly fun, with a few nifty twists and turns.

Then, of course, there is the all-time classic, Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabit. Hard science fiction, if I’ve ever seen it!

44

So a few points:

  1. Pandora is low gravity. When we meet the head merc he makes that clear.
  2. The propellers are lift only. Thrust is primarily jet based. That has other problems relative to maneuverability.
  3. Nav in the vortex is LOS. We find that out when we first see the floating mountains.
  4. The cockpits are isolated from the open bay. Hence the pilot’s lack of rebreather. But then we see Trudy’s transport shot full of holes.
45

Keith: Definitely a doppleganger fan here. One of the first serious literary books that really struck a cord with me as a teenager was Dostoevsky’s “The Double”, which is the classic doppleganger story. Still sticks with me all this time later, lurking behind my own mild everyday multiple personality disorder. :slight_smile:
I wish more scifi would bite the bullet and not chicken out by keeping different versions of a character (time traveller etc ) separated for fear of “paradox”. I want them to meet and have a deep, confusing, mind bending conversation. More boring writer crap? Well then you could just show Hermione Whatshername making out with her time travelling self! I bet they’re working on that one in the Harry Potter marketing room as we speak.
I do have to say, I admire the courage that the Star Trek “writers” took by rebooting history in the last movie - not to mention letting Spock talk to himself (if only a little). Why not? It remains to be seen whether they explore the implications.

46

Ooh. While we’re on the subject of recent SF movies… District 9.

Loved it. Big, dumb (yet underneath it all quite smart) and violent. Not unlike the stereotypical image of the boers it lampoons.

Ok, seriously, while there are a couple of huge leaps of faith involved in the timeline and the human/bug communication/interaction, I really liked this subversion of the alien invasion movie. All alien films are in part about racism, and this foregrounds it (obviously), but the added edge of it being set in South Africa (and the pseudo-documentary aspect) was really very clever.

47

Which I mentioned up-thread. :slight_smile: As I said there, the ending in which the clone happily gave up his family was rather silly. But hey, it’s Arnie, so it’s fun. If a film has Arnie or Willis in it, that’s basically a stamp saying, “Hey, even if every law of physics is broken, you’re going to have a fun two hours.” (Willis has done some very good films among the big blockbusters in all fairness.) Surrogates was a recently underrated Willis film - it’s a shame it didn’t explore the idea of being able to have a second identity in the real world in more detail though. It could have been really fun if you’d seen apparently adult Surrogates being controlled by teenagers with no sense of responsibility, to see the real-world turned into an extension of internet forums… There’s a fun sf movie waiting to be made there, perhaps.

All the best,
Keith

48

monkquixote: Yes, I loved District 9. It took a lot of flak for not being a deeper allegory for apartheid, but such criticisms seemed to miss the point for me. Whereas the critics complained that it dropped the interesting pseudo-documentary aspects and turned into a generic chase movie, for me it did that very subtly; the pseudo-documentary aspects sucked you into caring about a character who was, initially, a selfish, “racist” jerk, and then it took you on the journey that led to him making the ultimate sacrifice for a creature he started off despising. Maybe it wasn’t a deep allegory, but it was a bloody good story (my only criticism being the stereotyped Nigerian voodoo baddies).

Jowibou: It’s been a long time since I’ve read The Double, so I’m afraid I barely remember it. I must refresh my memory sometime soon. But talking of sf too often keeping the leads apart, one of my favourite instances of a “double” being used in sf TV series was in Farscape’s third series (I admit it: I loved Farscape, muppets-in-space and all; Ben Browder should have been the natural successor of Bruce Willis in big dumb action movies had there been any justice in this world). John Crichton was not cloned but “doubled”, so that neither of the resulting two Johns had any more claim to being the “original” than the other. They got a lot of humour out of that. Of course, they did separate them (though not for reasons of “paradox”), and in so doing managed to have their cake and eat it: one John could consummate the will-they-won’t-they romance with Aeryn while the other went mad knowing that this was exactly what he would be doing if he were with Aeryn, and even though you just knew the only resolution was to eventually kill off the John that got everything he had wanted all along, they still managed to do it in a way that made you care, and in the process crafted one of the best seasons of an sf show until the first BSG series came along (in my opinion, if no one else’s :slight_smile: ).

All the best,
Keith

49

On the campness of “Fifth Element”, I have to agree that “Ruby Rod” or whatever his/her name is was the one thing I disliked in the movie. As you say, a little toooo campy. And the high pitched screams were grating after a while.
Yet you liked crossdressing Deniro in Stardust - which felt similarly tacked on and overdone to me. Cheap laffs …not to mention one of the few things in the movie that weren’t in the book. Fun casting though.
Farscape - I actually rewatched the whole series over a few weeks not long ago. It stands up surprisingly well and I agree that storyline is the most thorough treatment of the doppleganger I’ve seen in scifi. Plus I’m a bit of an Aeryn Sun fanboy: we all have our little fetishes. :blush:

50

Except for vic-k. His are all big.

51

Ha, I have to admit that there is not a thing about Stardust that I dislike. I think it’s the perfect, feel-good movie. This may be heresy, but as good as the book is, it’s one of the few films where I prefer the film to the book (the only other example I can think of is Fight Club). The book is a superb take on an adult fairy tale, but the film is more charming than it has any right to be. (Although for the sake of parity, I’ll admit a fondness for Claire Danes. :slight_smile: ) So no, I loved Captain Shakespeare and had no problem with Robert de Niro doing the can can. The whole fifth sequence on board his ship is hugely entertaining. Sorry!

Oh, and there’s nothing wrong with being an Aeryn Sun fanboy. I started re-watching Farscape again recently, although I haven’t had time to plough through it as I’d like (I got caught up on Moonlighting, and suddenly realised that’s why I always thought Ben Browder would make a great Bruce Willis-style action star: because one aspect of Farscape that raised it above similar TV sf was that it was often Moonlighting-in-space).

52

Please don’t say that…really…please.

53

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that. Moonlighting rocks, and I will happily shout it from the rooftops - it’s the Bruce Willis factor. :slight_smile:

54

Is there a little man crush going on there KB?

55

Damn straight! As a teenager I bought knock-off Raybans and boxer shorts covered with hearts because that’s what David Addison wore.

But that’s more than anyone needed to know…

56

Does the hopefully-less-crazy-but-certainly-better half know of this?

57

If my perfectly harmless Aeryn Sun fantasies start turning into romcom nightmares starring Sybill Shepherd I am going to be so pissed…just stop it, man. My mother used to watch that show! For pity’s sake STOP IT!

58

Jowibou: Ha, now you are showing your youth. :slight_smile: And I hate to tell you this, but apparently on the DVD commentary to Throne for a Loss, even Ben Browder and your fave Claudia Black say how Farscape is often like “Moonlighting in Space”. Sorry; them’s just the facts.

Jaysen: She does know of this as I announced it recently while watching an episode of said show. She wasn’t impressed; I think she’d rather it were still something she didn’t know.

59

If she hasn’t left you for that then you must have a keeper. That or you are a really good baby sitter.

Off to prepare for tonight’s showing of Fifth Element.

60

(Fingers in ears) nanananananananana…I can’t heear yooooou…nananananananana

Nah, just my mother’s age, rest her soul. So does this mean I’m going to have to look up old episodes of Moonlighting just to see what the fuss is about? The imdb page is full of blather about how great the writing was. Quite frankly all I can remember is Bruce Willis with hair talking to the camera, which somehow is filed in my mind as the birth of TV postmodernism and the origin of youtube - surely just another filing error. And nothing, nothing is going to make me like Shepherd, who is permanently, and accurately filed under “Icky.” After seeing “The Last Picture Show” all I could think was “I certainly hope so.”
So, very well, if I’m going to watch an episode of teh Moonlighting to start with, what would you… ahem…recommend?
Curiosity’s a bitch.