# Commonly(and frustratingly) misunderstood plot points(spoilers, I guess) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 6, 2012, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920 "2012-02-06T01:56:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/61 "2012-02-06T17:34:37Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > Why? Because the film is called AI and is all about super-advanced robots. > > Like I said, I can understand people maybe thinking at first that they were aliens. But I don’t get why anyone’s insisting they were right. And the movie **Alien** is about an _alien_, but that didn’t stop Ridley Scott from randomly dropping an unexpected and unexplained Robot into the middle of it (Ash). ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/62 "2012-02-06T17:39:45Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > And the movie **Alien** is about an _alien_, but that didn’t stop Ridley Scott from randomly dropping an unexpected and unexplained Robot into the middle of it (Ash). I’m not saying that there can never be a movie that has both aliens and robots - I mean, there are tons of movies and TV shows that do. But if there are beings that you think look like aliens, that also look like robots, in a movie all about artificial intelligence, robots seems more likely. IIRC, the future mecha also interacted directly with some machinery. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/63 "2012-02-06T17:41:32Z")
_The House of the Seven Gables_: What happened to Judge Pyncheon? Am I supposed to know? Does everybody else know and I’m the only one who doesn’t? Should I just nod my head and pretend I do? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/64 "2012-02-06T17:52:27Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I’m not saying that there can never be a movie that has both aliens and robots - I mean, there are tons of movies and TV shows that do. But if there are beings that you think look like aliens, that also look like robots, in a movie all about artificial intelligence, robots seems more likely. > > IIRC, the future mecha also interacted directly with some machinery. And I’m simply applying your logic that a movie about identifying robots and aliens. When I first saw Alien, I was sure that Ash was some sort of aliebn creation/construction/ taken over human, because they hadn’t mentioned a word about robots before that point, and the film was about Aliens, and even entitled that. It wasn’t until they actually _told_ you that Asah was a robot that you got the point,. They never said that the AIs at the end were robots, and nothing clearly indicated it. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/65 "2012-02-06T17:57:56Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > “It’s robots. We didn’t expect anyone to misunderstand this.” > > They were aliens. I can’t imagine how anyone could misunderstand this. Can’t they be both? ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/66 "2012-02-06T19:21:44Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Blade Runner > > Misunderstanding(maybe!): The exact nature of the replicants, many viewers believe them to be machines in the classic sense. The film is very vague on this probably by design. I have seen people say who cares about the replicants, even if they are sentient they are malfunctioning robots so kill em all! > > But we get hints they are biological, maybe even genetically altered humans. The film makes a lot more sense this way and has no easy answers. > [@Quimby](#): > > Yeah I always assumed Replicants were humans grown in a vat. If they were filled with wires and circuits you wouldn’t need a special test to ID them. A scene was filmed in which Deckard visits Holden in the hospital. (Holden is the Blade Runner who was shot by Leon in the film’s opening interview.) In early drafts of the screenplay for that scene, Holden complains about how difficult it has become to identify the newest replicants, and mentions a case where a pathologist was two hours into an autopsy before realizing his subject was a replicant. . ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/67 "2012-02-06T19:46:45Z")
It had never occured to me that Deckard was a replicant or the creatures at the end of A.I. were aliens until I saw these baffling ideas being advanced on the internet. To me, they just make the stories more complicated without making them better. On a much smaller scale, I recall a minor edit-war about Wikipedia’s _Watchmen_ entry in which someone was very determined to argue that Manhattan didn’t kill Rorschach - he just teleported him somewhere far away. The idea struck me as full-on absurd. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/68 "2012-02-06T19:49:49Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > On a much smaller scale, I recall a minor edit-war about Wikipedia’s _Watchmen_ entry in which someone was very determined to argue that Manhattan didn’t kill Rorschach - he just teleported him somewhere far away. The idea struck me as full-on absurd. Wow, that is a good one, then. I’ve never heard that idea, certainly not enough to be called common, but it would be a very bad misunderstanding. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/69 "2012-02-06T19:56:28Z")
As an afterthought, I don’t get why some people think Kirk’s ‘KHAAAN!!!’ yell is anything other than a geniune expression of fury and frustration. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/70 "2012-02-06T19:57:00Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > And I’m simply applying your logic that a movie about identifying robots and aliens. When I first saw Alien, I was sure that Ash was some sort of aliebn creation/construction/ taken over human, because they hadn’t mentioned a word about robots before that point, and the film was about Aliens, and even entitled that. It wasn’t until they actually _told_ you that Asah was a robot that you got the point,. > > They never said that the AIs at the end were robots, and nothing clearly indicated it. I don’t think there’s anything more I can say apart from repeating my previous posts with the evidence for why they must be robots (the electrical impulses, the communication with machines, the themes of the film). You think they were aliens. Fine. I don’t think there’s anything left to discuss here, then - it’s just a movie, after all. WRT Alien, I think it was a clever distraction; I also thought Ash might have been the alien of the title, so it was more shocking when the real alien was revealed. It has been a very long time since I saw the movie, so I might be misremembering. I guess you could also say that Ash was ‘alien’ in a way, although definitely not in the way we usually parse that word. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/71 "2012-02-06T20:02:54Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > It had never occured to me that Deckard was a replicant or the creatures at the end of A.I. were aliens until I saw these baffling ideas being advanced on the internet. To me, they just make the stories more complicated without making them better. Both of these stories have meditations about what differentiates a human being from a mere simulacrum of humanity at their core. The ambiguity of Deckard’s humanity definitely makes the story better, but interpreting the advanced AI at the end of _AI_ as aliens misses the point entirely. > [@CalMeacham](#): > > They never said that the AIs at the end were robots, and nothing clearly indicated it. “These machines were trapped under the wreckage before the freezing. Therefore, these robots are originals. They knew living people.” ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/72 "2012-02-06T20:22:00Z")
Of course, the entire _point_ of the novel **Contact** was completely missed by the filmmakers. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/73 "2012-02-06T20:24:12Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > It’s from\*\* A League of Their Own\*\*. Dottie and her sister are players in a girl’s baseball league during WWII, with some friction between them. The sister is traded to a rival team, that just happens to be the opponents in the championship game. Dottie is the star player, but she has no plans to keep playing, she’s going home with her husband to do the family thing. The sister really has nothing going for her except baseball even though she’s really a mediocre player, and has always been in Dottie’s shadow. The scene in question is a play at the plate, with the sister attempting to score. **Dottie is the catcher. There is a collision, Dottie drops the ball on purpose, allowing her sister to score and be the hero for once.** In a thread on common misunderstandings, you repeat the common misunderstanding? Come on man! ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/74 "2012-02-06T20:28:35Z")
Everyone who tries to say that everything in **Total Recall** actually happened and it wasn’t all a dream. Yes, it was. You have to watch the scene where he’s at Recall getting ready for his implanting with bilnders on to not think so. They show the “reactor” as an image to be loaded in the simulation. The technician says “Here’s a new one - blue skies on Mars.” Melina is 21A. No getting around it. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/75 "2012-02-06T20:32:18Z")
> [@Rick](#): > > I have run into several people that did not understand the plot to Trading Places. > “How did they sell the futures they didn’t own?” > :rolleyes: I understood the plot, but technically in the early 1980s when the movie took place trading regulations established in the 1970s would have stopped the specifics from going down the way they did in the FCOJ market. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/76 "2012-02-06T20:43:29Z")
I recognize that the beings at the end of AI were intended to be robots, but I also recognize that they made some very poor design decisions with them, such that it’s quite understandable that some viewers might mistake them for aliens. > [@](#): > > Quoth **SciFiSam** : > The robots never mentioned her soul. They just said that they can only bring her back for one day. He thought that maybe, maybe she’d be the one to buck the trend. When they’re talking about how they bring people back, they say that they were surprised to learn that there was an inherent record of the person embedded somehow into the fabric of space-time, but that such records could only be retraced once before being irretrievably lost. That sounds like a pretty clear SF dog-whistle for “soul” to me. ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/77 "2012-02-06T21:31:46Z")
Aliens, robots – > [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Can’t they be both? Like the late Earl Warren? ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/78 "2012-02-06T21:38:53Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > As an afterthought, I don’t get why some people think Kirk’s ‘KHAAAN!!!’ yell is anything other than a geniune expression of fury and frustration. Perhaps it’s because Kirk is deliberately misleading Khan, making Khan think he’s won, while not actually being quite as badly hurt as he seems. Certainly, that “days instead of hours” message was a lie to deceive Khan. Maybe the ‘Khaaaaan’ cry was also just pretending to be furious and frustrated, while actually being in control. Plus, about thirty seconds later, he’s calmly asking if there’s anything to eat. Actually, I never thought about this until now.I always thought he was angry and frustrated, but now I think he was just pretending. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/79 "2012-02-06T21:48:48Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > I actually think I read a review from a “real” reviewer who commented that Indiana Jones 4 was a pointless thing to watch because Indiana Jones is now immortal after drinking from the cup in part 3. Anyone else ever run into anyone who thought that? Which part? That I.J. 4 isn’t worth watching? Yeah, a lot of people thought that. Or that Indy is immortal? Yup, Some people thought that, including the author of the novelization of the film. ---
**Author:** ![Christopher\_Robin\_Davies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8dc957/32.png) [@Christopher\_Robin\_Davies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Christopher_Robin_Davies)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920/80 "2012-02-06T21:54:38Z")
> [@IvoryTowerDenizen](#): > > Dottie did not drop the ball on purpose (D&R) What movie are you talking about? Never mind I read further in the thread. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-and-frustratingly-misunderstood-plot-points-spoilers-i-guess/611920.md?page=5)