Film Reviews

Wednesday, March 12, 2014 1:20:44 PM

Gravity

i just recently saw Gravity on A DVD & i was really expecting The Lady Astronaut to wake up from a dream at The End, Given there were so many elements that required A High Level of Suspension of DisBelief.

A Few of The Most Egregious :

 

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In The Bit where George Clooney Sacrifices himself to save The LadyAstronaut ( Astronautess ), When they Reached The End of The ‘Snap’ after being caught in The Parachute Cables, Their Momentum would have stopped. In fact, Even if The Parachute Cables didn’t have a natural elasticity, which i’m sure that they did, They would have Recoiled back towards The Space Station. George Clooney would Not have continued to Pull The Lady Astronaut away from The Space Station.

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Where were The Chinese Astronauts ? ( Asianauts )

Or Alternatively; How many Escape Pods did they have connected to their albeit tiny Space Station.

How many were on Skylab ? ( None ? )

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During ReEntry; Isn’t that a rather Precision Requiring Maneuver in which The slightest Angular miscalculation would result in a misadventure ( ? ) It seems very unlikely to have ‘gone well’ under The circumstances provided.

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The Consequences of Blowing Up Spy Satellites that have reached The End of their Expected Useful Lifespan has been well understood for quite awhile. Simply Slowing them down, so that they fall out of Orbit is The Prescribed solution. But this would only be viable for Low Earth Orbit Satellites. In either case; Might it be more Practicable to simple rig up your Spy Satellite with some kind of Internal Self Destruct mechanism that would effectively destroy any proprietary electronics or optical lens; Effectively leaving an empty ( Self Contained )husk for anyone that took The trouble of retrieving it.

A Different Explanation for this Disaster would have been more palatable.

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That all Three of The Space Stations involved where within ‘Walking Distance’ seems improbable.

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When The Lady Astronaut is attempting to rocket her way to The Chinese Space Station, The ‘Necessary’ Steps of Aiming her Capsule & Preparing The Boosters is, comparatively speaking, well scripted, Assuming that she speaks fluent Russian & Chinese, But then when she has to ‘Trick’ The Russian Escape/ReEntry Pod into firing it’s Automated Landing Rockets, it is substantially less Described. Would it even have been designed to allow for this ( mis- ) use of them ?

Also; Why are there all these Manuals onboard ? i thought astronauts were supposed to undergo months, if Not years of training ?

If you buy a new car & attentively peruse The Owners Manual, How often do you have to refer back to it to turn on The Radio or Activate The Wind Shield Wipers ?

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Given that she’s having Full blown Schizophrenic Hallucinations, Should we expect her judgements for all subsequent decisions to have been rational ?

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That ( All ) of The Communications Satellites were Destroyed by This Comparatively small Cloud of Debris, seems, well, flat out impossible. Most of our Communications Satellites are Not in Near Earth Orbit, but in Stationary Geosyncronous Orbits which are something like 22,500 miles up. The ISS & other Space Stations are like 300 miles up, Underneath The Van Allen Radiation Belts.  The GeoSynchronous Satellites are Above these Belts.

Also; Using a ‘Missile’ to Shoot down a Satellite is Not Only Ridiculous in Theory, but The Satellite would be Far out of The Range of any Terrestrial Purposed Missile.

Even an InterContinental Ballistic Missile is Not Designed to Put a Warhead into Orbit or reach A Specific Satellite for a Precision Strike.

We might be willing to allow that The Russians have a Special Missile Delivery Rocket for this Purpose; But how often are you going to use this sort of Technology ? How many Millions of Billions of Dollars are you going to Spend for a Single Purpose Mission like this ?

 

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The Other Two DVDs that i watched from this SafeWay Set

3 DVDs for 3 Days )

Were ( The Last Days of Mars

& ( Ender’s Game

>The Last Days of Mars< was a Perfectly ( Literally: Perfectly ) Horrible Film. What is so very mysterious to me, is Why anyone would Expend The Millions of Dollars that it took to make a film like this without a modicum of Oversight to simply ‘Repair’ The Horrific Dialogue, Absence of Novelty or Tweak The Plot up a little to Reflect the Evolution of The Zombie Film Genre ( ? )

Many ‘Notable’ Films are just as Bad as this one, But contain one or Two Signature Shots, A Few Lines of Clever Dialogue, Some Eye Candy, A Snappy Musical Score or A Plot Line that is So Incomprehensible that it becomes Endearing.

>The American Astronaut< is an Example of this.

But The Last Days of Mars was just awful.

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>Ender’s Game< was another Incomprehensible Film in that;

What was it about ?

The War in Rwanda ?

Human Nature ?

The Dangers of Video Games ?

A Remake of >Independence Day<, >Starship Troopers< or A Reworking of The Daleks ?

Questions Regarding -Evil- or ( Us vs Them ) ?

Are all Games, Not Games ?

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What was missing from it was an Examination of The Aliens.

If you’re going to set The film up with an Alien Species Invading Earth with a Cockamamie Premise ( Looking for Water which is Common throughout any given Solar System ) & then Extending that with Their ‘Alieness’ but Not Expanding on that, was unforgivable.

It seems to me that they should have spent a little of their Filler on Their Attempts & Frustrations with trying & Failing to Communicate with an Apparently Highly Technological Species. Were they A ‘Pure’ Insect Race that Evolved over a Period of Billions of Years from Bee Like Ancestors to Become a Star Faring Super Colony without ever developing Instinct Suppressed Consciousness ( ? )

That would have been Interesting.

Would it be possible to have A Entire Race of Beings that had Star Drive & Other Technological Wonders, But No Mathematics or Science of Physics ( ! )

No Art or Music & A Language Based only on A Small Sampling of Chemical or Static Electrical ‘Phrases’.

That alone would have made a good movie.

But what is Ender’s Game About ?

If The Human’s are The Bad Guys, What were The Aliens up to in their Initial Invasion ?

How ‘MisUnderstood’ was that ?

If The Aliens were able ‘Hack’ into a Game to communicate with Ender, Why was this Effort so Feeble & Essentially Ineffectual, & also Limited to this One Electronic Attack or Effort to Communicate with us ?

Ugh.

i hate plot holes.

And then The End is even Worse.

What is that about ?

If there is this sudden Change of Heart & The Humans decide to preserve this species, why Not simply Create an Isolated Martian Zoo Colony or Use a Moon around Jupiter or Saturn to let them live on. Clearly; If they’re going to be allowed to set up a new Home World somewheres, they’re going to have to be Watched over &/or ‘Contained’ in perpetuity.

Are The Human’s prepared to do that ?

Even if The Human’s thought that they weren’t going to be a Future Threat to us, Wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that they’ll someday be a Thread to some other World ?

 

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