h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

{...not even up to Nick Park's standards of realism}

Logic seems to be missing from the two islands. If the first island got so out of hand that they had to destroy it, why replicate dinosaurs from scratch for a second island, assuming that things would go right the second time around. One definition of insanity is that it is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

OK... This is NOT a film I otherwise enjoy. I loathe it. But it's one of my favorites to pick apart for plot holes and just genuinely stupid ideas.

_Armageddon_


There are plenty of things to annoy anyone in this film (like open fires burning without atmosphere and Shuttles "banking" aerodynamically to land on an airless asteroid). I've heard that some folks here at NASA actually use the film to give examples of how poorly science can be portrayed in film (like splitting an asteroid "half the size of Texas, roughly 450 miles in diameter, with a bomb placed only two miles deep). But here's one glaring error I spotted right away and I've heard no one else mention it.


OK... so they spend a long time explaining why they have to launch two shuttles at the same time to rendezvous with the "Russian Space Station" (definitely not MIR). Their main justification for this is that they will use centrifugal force like artificial gravity to deliver the fuel from the station to the shuttles. This is actually done to justify a glorious special effects sequence showing two shuttles spiral in to dock with an already spinning station. (This is basically impossible, you would dock with a stationary space station, THEN spin it up, possibly using the two shuttles' engines.)

So, they've spent nearly 30 minutes of the film explaining and justifying this (impossible) maneuver. What's the very next scene? It's the two separate shuttle crews walking toward each other in a hallway away from their respective shuttles...


Hey, GUYS! Gravity is behind you!

In the very next scene they throw away everything they've spent 30 minutes setting up. They could have easily (and cheaply) remained consistent by simply having the two crews climb ladders upward toward the middle axis of the station. They could have faked it like they did on the old TV version of Batman by turning the cameras sideways and miming like they're climbing. But no.

Eejits!

In 1983 I went to see a screening of The Wall at a matinee in a cinema that was selling reduced price tickets during the testing of their newly installed Dolby sound system (well, that's what my memory says).

Notwithstanding any of the other strange things that happened on the day, I had a strong impression that there are two consecutive shots of a playground roundabout in which the direction of travel had reversed from the first to the second. For reasons that escape me, as I enjoyed the film, I have never re-watched it in its entirety and so I remain slightly annoyed to this day about whether I was right in my observation.

Other aspects of the day are more firmly fixed in memory. We exited, blinking, into the unexpected afternoon sun and a small boy holding the hand of his mother pointed upwards and said "Look Mummy. There's an aeroplane".

The '80s teen vampire romp, _The Lost Boys_ has two scenes using a helicopter shot entering and then leaving the vampire cave. One is day, one is night; one entering, one leaving. If you look carefully, you'll notice the waves on the shore are going out to see in one of the shots. They reversed the film and toned it dark and blue, an old technique called "Day for Night".

I notice it every time I see the film, but it just makes me giggle rather than annoying me.

*sea

"If the first island got so out of hand that they had to destroy it, why replicate dinosaurs from scratch for a second island, assuming that things would go right the second time around."


No reason whatsoever, but that's NOT what happened. BEFORE the events of Jurassic Park ever started, they bred the dinosaurs on Isla Sorna and THEN moved them to Isla Nublar. That's what they were doing with the raptor in the very first scene of Jurassic Park. Hammond spells this out in the conversation with Ian I mentioned earlier. I don't remember word for word, but it goes something like this:

"Site A (Isla Nublar) was something for the tourists. Site B (Isla Sorna) was the factory floor. We bred the animals there, and then released them into the park."



Now, you're right that there's not a whole lot in the way of new species and they certainly didn't need a new island for that. But that was never really my point.

At the end of Jurassic Park there was exactly one T-Rex alive on the island, and (probably) only one Velociraptor*. Even with the magic ability to swap genders, they can't grow their numbers from that.

Whereas in The Lost World there's a massacre of the expedition by the Raptors and, more importantly, a HUGE plot-line with the adolescent T-Rex which would have been impossible without another source for the dinosaurs, and the movie would've suffered for it.



The real failure of logic here isn't *cloning* the dinosaurs again, which they didn't do, it's thinking that they can capture them and keep them in a zoo.



*Incidentally, in real life a fully-grown Velociraptor was only about three feet tall. Not six feet, as in the movie.

You wanna' know something really cool though? Komodo Dragons can spontaneously reproduce male offspring without sexual relations!


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-komodo-d/


Jurassic Park would've made a lot more sense if they'd combined the Dino DNA with Komodo DNA instead of this silly frog nonsense.

Unfortunately, I don't think they knew about this when the movie was made, so....

Thank you, Mr. X. I completely missed those facts about transferring dinosaurs between islands.

I have misgivings about the genetic work involved, too. Given how little experience scientists have had with it, how did they end up with perfect specimens every single time? After all, the tissue samples would have to have been about 100 million years old. Even preserved in amber in mosquito innards, the genetic decay would have to have been significant. And then sequencing the DNA with amphibian or reptile DNA to flesh out the missing strands? Getting perfect specimens should have taken decades to pefecvt, if it even could have been done at all.

Cloning is still a rather messy affair. It's still rather hit and miss, and the misses can be disturbing.

Which brings us rather neatly to Alien Resurrection. Not specifically I mean; actually I do rather enjoy AR, for all the critical panning it received. The annoying things that blight so many films are sequels and remakes (and blasted reboots) and, in a few cases, prequels.

Go on. Name a good one if you dare.

House II: The Second Story

I rather enjoyed "Alvin and he Chipmunks: the Squeakuel."

And I'm amazed that "Weekend at Bernie's II" was even tolerable.

The Evil Dead sequels were progressively better.

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey was Excellent!

And, of course, everyone agrees Empire was the best Star Wars flick.

Is it topic drift when a thread about annoying movies morphs into the subject of enjoyable ones?

Not when enjoyable movies become annoying ones, like Star Wars did.

I've always thought Deep Space 9 was the by far the best Star Trek. Indeed, the majority of Star Trek has only gotten better with age.

(Stupid remakes aside.)

Thus, the topic drift comes back on topic – what did you find annoying about the remakes? Their very existence, or more?

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I'm annoyed by remakes largely because I dislike any change in the medium. If I read the book, I don't often want to see the film. If I heard the radio series I don't want to see the TV version.

Remakes have two choices it seems to me. Either they are faithful, in which case why do it at all - these often seem to become vehicles for particular actors or directors to make money from a foolish audience, or they are unfaithful. It is possible for an "unfaithful" remake to add to the story; to explore a character in more depth or explain things more fully. By the time I've seen the original though I have resolved those issues for myself. I don't need my hand held through it.

Remakes are often seen as an opportunity to update the cinematic experience by adding features unavailable to the technological era of the original. Whenever we watch films, we have to suspend belief anyway. Increasing the "realism" of a portrayal with CGI or colour or surround sound or 3D doesn't add to the story, only to the distance between the audiences upper and lower set.

Let me give three remake examples that I detest (reasons in parentheses):
- The Lady Killer (no Alec Guinness)
- The War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise)
- Alfie (Jude Law cannot act)

We can move on to sequels any time you like.

Yep - the Jeff Wayne version of 'The War of the Worlds' was definitive.

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