I loved the original Alien film and I really admired Cloverfield. But count me among those who have no need to have the Cloverfield monster "explained," any more than I need (or want) the derelict ship navigator from Alien explained in narrative detail. These things are better left to the imagination, IMO.
I am on the fence about a Kick Ass sequel. The part of me that loves Hit Girl loves the idea of a movie focused on her. But I also realize that one of the things that made her character so awesome in Kick Ass was the fact that we got only small-ish doses of her. It was a perfect case of a movie leaving you wanting more. This may be a case where it is better not to get what you wish for because too much of a good thing can be unpleasant.
So very true.
Okay, I see three categories of "improbables" being presented here.
1) Things that are cool in the book but might be dumb in the movie.
They would only be dumb in a movie if not done right. It makes no sense to me to predict that something like wild skin colors and cat whiskers would be silly before seeing it done. To state that such things can't be done well betrays a lack of vision, IMO.
2) Things that are too extravagant for a movie.
This just comes down to budget and time. Anything you can imagine can be done with digital effects now. It is merely a matter of cost. From what I can tell, these Hunger Games movies are being done on the cheap, at least at first, until they prove themselves as inheritors of the Harry Potter mantle of franchise success. If they do Potter or Twilight business, expect bigger budgets and more faithful adherence to all the spectacle found in the books.
3) Things that are too violent or objectionable for a PG-13 movie.
Now waitaminnit. Aren't the Hunger Games books YA? Isn't PG-13 the YA rating in a nutshell? Anything "appropriate" for YA literature is surely appropriate for a PG-13 film. Either that or the Young Adult book category is incorrectly (and misleadingly) named.
One reason is that an abstract, scientific approach to problems and issues often leads to conclusions that are at odds with religious and cultural beliefs...
And there's my problem right there. As glad as I am to be a US citizen, I am nevertheless unhappy about the fact that so many of my government officials get elected or appointed by a population that allows religious and cultural beliefs to supercede abstract, scientific approaches to problems and issues. Just like there are no rotten kids, only rotten parents, I don't really blame our leaders so much as the short-sighted or narrow-minded power brokers that put them in office (to say nothing of the masses that agree with them).
I believe our Founding Fathers would be horrified by the idea of a federal government not guided by moral principles derived from a strong belief in God, but they would also be profoundly disappointed, I think, in a federal government incapable of rational action simply because oversimplified ideological dogma has utterly eclipsed the kind of reasoned common sense that is fundamental to scientific thinking.
I'll see your Olivias and your Jennifers and raise you one Kate Beckinsale.
The real problem with the entertainment industry is that it has always understood the concrete mechanics of business better than the elusive spirit of artful creation. "We may not know how to make great art, but we know how to make a buck!" This has been true of any area of the arts that has ever been turned into a (lucrative) business or industry. Anyone who does not want to be subject to the compromises necessary to turn art into product should stop participating in the process or else they will just go mad, kinda like our esteemed Mr. Moore.
I think a lot depends on what powers you have. Some would be difficult to translate into massive wealth, others would be trivial.
It looks like another one of those movies which takes contemporary fight choreography (and gratuitous slow-motion cinematography) and implants it into an historical action piece. For me, the incongruity isn't "fun" it is just stupid. Perhaps if the whole thing was played like a goofy comedy (ala Army of Darkness) it might have salvaged some degree of silly fun factor, but it doesn't look like that was the direction Bekmambetov took. I think the potential for epic fail is high on this one.
She notes that stories like Jurassic Park, Frankenstein, and The Island of Doctor Moreau can leave the public timid about the idea of "tampering" with nature, even as they have little understanding about what actually goes on in current genetic research.
Michael Crichton was the master of the art of making the ignorant masses afraid of some bit of science or technology. It is easy to scare a population that lacks any meaningful grounding in actual science. When most of your citizens believe in psychic phenomena, alien visitation, immaculate conception, etc., and have come to regard the "paranormal" as completely normal (or at least commonplace), it is really easy to sculpt such malleable/gullible minds through the forces of popular culture mass media.
It isn't the responsibility of science fiction authors to recalibrate their writing for an easily influenced public; rather it is the responsibility of society to educate its population to recognize and understand the difference between real science and pure (usually mindless) entertainment.
Absolutely fraggin' right!
Just raising the question is moronic.
I think that location may be a factor as well. Different cities have different sorts of single populations, and by that I mean what singles are looking for can often be very different from place to place.
For example, I've tried online dating sites a couple of times and I've gathered enough local data to come away with the impression that whatever women in Los Angeles are looking for, I'm not it. But for all I know, my profile might reach a more receptive audience in, say, Cleveland or San Francisco where dating dynamics are quite likely different.
So, based on the "compatibility matrix" data available on match.com I can fairly deduce that women in Los Angeles look primarily at three things on a profile: age, height, and fitness regime. Classic "genetic selection" criteria, driving dating behavior that may not even be aimed at creating a family. That's how strongly biological imperatives inform all our relationship choices. But I'm still willing to bet that in other cities, women will give more consideration to other factors than those in cities like Los Angeles where mate selection is something of a "high pressure spectacle."
Now, this "small study" was conducted in San Fransisco, which I tend to think would tell us more about the kinds of dating strategies women have adapted to there, than how men and women approach online dating in general.
So basically this is tv's answer to found footage movies, where the conceit is that we're watching the raw footage for a reality tv show. Pass. So much pass.
We may be agreeing in part. But I like to think that even non-serious, fun, adventurous sci-fi can avoid things that make you go, "Well that was dumb after all," if/when you think about it later.
Star Wars, as a sci-fi universe, is an interesting case in extremes. On the one hand, there is enough "plausible science" in it that websites like stardestroyer.com can actually calculate the power of Imperial turbolasers, the energy dissipation of shields, and so on, just from the images we see on screen. But then you have plot elements like orbiting space stations the size of small moons being destroyed and the debris defying all the very same laws of physics we've witnessed throughout the film, just to keep the obvious and natural curiosity over "what would happen next?" from becoming a horrific Ewok-obliterating nightmare.
I tend to think that we can have exhiliratingly fun sci-fi (or space opera) like Star Wars that maintains a reasonable degree of scientific verissimilitude throughout every scene. The two are not mutually exclusive, except in the hands of writers with questionable talent. It isn't 100% accuracy we should strive for (unless it is very hard science fiction that is the goal), but solid plausibility 100% of the time. The only thing necessary to maintain plausibility is to simply avoid anything that later makes you think, "But that simply can't work within the framework of reality established by the rest of the film."
I think the more interesting question is who actually cares about any particular movie's financial success? Almost nobody owns stock in a studio or has invested personally in a film. The financial return of a film is of virtually no relevance to the average movie-goer. So why does this statistic hold any fascination whatsoever?
I think it is because Americans like to treat financial investments as sporting events. They like to determine a winner and a loser in anything and everything that can be cast as competitive. The obsession with "Top 10" or "Top 100" lists for everything from weekly box office performance to utterly subjective things like "best rock songs of all time," is abundantly clear. And it is also clear that it is the list itself, and not its veracity that matters.
Ultimately I don't think anyone cares how these things are measured as long as someone constructs and publishes a list to argue over at the watercooler. In fact, if we adopted a concrete, verifiable, and logical system for measuring box office performance, nobody would use it because it would eliminate all the looseness of the current method that allows for competing conclusions to be drawn and debated. And, just like the old saying that when two guys fight over a girl it is usually the fight they want, not the girl, when people debate over which movies "are best" (because they "did best" at the box office), it's really the debate they want, not definitive results.
Science fiction that asks, nay requires you to shut off your brain and keep it shut off even after reading/watching, is dumb science fiction, maybe not even worthy of the name. Science fiction by its nature draws thinkers, and thinkers like to examine and hypothesize beyond the limits of the original material. When you can't do that without entire plot strands collapsing under the weight of their own illogic, then the material has failed its audience, I feel.
"Entertainment for entertainment's sake" is okay, but if that is all popular science fiction ever strives for then it will deplete itself of what makes it so potentially valuable as a genre. Taking out all the compelling, plausible science that makes you really think is like taking all the vitamin C out of orange juice. Our society is already overloaded on empty cultural calories as it is.
That's why I feel time travel stories will almost always fail the audience. There are very few things you can do with it, as a dramatic device, without demanding that the audience not think with their brains. Most writers are sloppy or lazy and want the cheap benefits of the device without putting the effort into making it actually "work" logically. Picking on time travel, as this article does in places, for its inability to function (in a story) without glaring contradictions is so easy (and obvious) as to be kinda pointless.
Well, (Ultimate) Hawkeye is gifted with superpowered eyesight and, one presumes, an unusually efficient brain to process visual stimuli in ways we can only dream of. He can probably switch eye dominance at will. :)
Impossible. The ignoring doesn't begin until the movie exists.
Neil's final actions make sense if you assume he saw a future of himself in which being imprisoned led to a life of agony somehow, and his suicide-by-federal-agent was his way of giving himself a "merciful" ending instead.
It's too bad that in this season the relations between the two universes has thawed so thoroughly. I sort of miss all the paranoia. There was a time when Fauxlivia giving Walter a shiny metal box of mints very likely meant she was planting a surveillance device (or worse) on him. Oh for the more intriguing days of seasons past...
I don't really care if this happens. It'll just be another movie to ignore, that's all.
I long ago ceased expecting anything good to come out of Lucas or the Star Wars franchise. I just stick to watching the first two movies and pretend they were never altered or prequeled or turned into pandering fodder for pop culture and merchandising/advertising. It really isn't that hard (for me) to just ignore everything else by lumping it in the "for kids" category. *shrug*
