This is my beef with any number of movies. You either get someone who sustains injuries that would result in the immediate cessation of all life functions, yet they still have the strength and focus to give a speech (or sing, if it’s an opera), or they drop dead at once from a wound that would take hours to kill, if not days. Watch the girl stab the Bad Guy in his beer gut with the pen knife. Watch him drop dead. Riiiiight!
New BSG = Good. Old BSG = Crap. Memories are fond because they happened long ago and we don’t have to go through that crap again. Kinda like the definition of “Adventure.” “Something unpleasant happening to someone else a long way away.”
My friend and I were talking about this the other day - the eighties sitcom Family Ties was always kind of the most comforting, tokenistic “Family that you wish you were a member of” show of its era…except for the fact that the entire family, parents included, treats Skippy - the nerdy but entirely kind and innocent neighbor who drops in for visits - with unmasked, unrestrained contempt. Even the father, who’s usually the understanding, affectionate EveryDad, makes no attempt to mask his brutal barbs and naked dislike of Skippy.
It kind of undercuts the sweetness and gives the whole show an uneasy subtext.
They are “signed by General qwertyuiop and cannot be rescinded.” 
“The Mexican”, a decent movie spoiled by the 'Cell Phones Work Anywhere" movie plot line.
I think the issue is that Skippy “drops by for visits” all the time, probably during meals especially, and despite routinely being denied continues to pine after their oldest daughter in unsubtle and bordering on creepy ways.
That’s below feeble.
“Cap’n! We can do annathin’ 'cept invent a hard drive!”
Or perhaps flash memory.
Transporters are infinite plot-screwers. Pretty much any problem can be fixed with them - that’s why the writers conveniently forget them (as they do with all techology that they had last week that could have fixed this week’s problem) or come up with some half-assed (ion storm! aah!) reason that it won’t work right now.
-Joe
Sounds like someone needs to read Dune Messiah and God Emperor of Dune. 
Correct me if I’m wrong (as someone who has absolutely no medical knowledge), but my impression wasn’t that Mal’s heart had stopped so much as Mal was shot, breathing bad air and ready to collapse - so, to keep himself going and functioning he injected himself with adrenaline to push his body past normal limits. You know, like adrenaline can do naturally…he just did it artificially. Of course, he didn’t have to do it in his HEART, but maybe he was feeling impatient?
-Joe
Well, I didn’t say it was a GOOD answer, just the one they use.
First off, I never watched Firefly which I am beginning to regret more and more. I need to get netflix or something so I can check it out. Anyways;
I’m with the above posters saying, it would be one thing if they were using old-fashion style guns. It’s another for them to be using actual old guns. As a distant future series, you could get away with one or two characters using archaic but still effective guns as anachronism (it would become an interesting character trait), but making it a regular thing is pushing it. As for cowboy clothes; that stuff is purely functional clothing, if there are characters rustling herds of animal and riding horses, motorcycles, or something similar, then it makes perfect sense for such clothing to still be in use; otherwise? no. Just no.
Umm, I guess I miss your point about Iron Giant? I read the book it’s based on in Kindergarten, and loved the movie as well. I never took it as anti-gun, or even especially preachy about it’s anti-war message. But that’s what it is, anti-war, anti-prejudice. And really, what’s wrong with having that message in a kid’s book or movie? I believe in keeping a strong military, pre-emptive actions, and I support our troops, but I still think it’s a good idea to portray war as a bad thing.
Battlestar Galactica; You have a point, but… If they didn’t use the old name and acknowledge where the main ideas are coming from, then people like you would be posting to complain about how “Space Show X” was a ripoff of good old BG.
Although, I do think it would be better to use the title (or better yet, a variation of the title), and include an “inspired by” credit to the OS in the openings, but otherwise use new names, etc.
Presumably, since their dreams are nothing but future murders (as we are told in that scene with Crazy Plant Lady), as soon as the murder rate of DC drops to a negligble level, their powers will start naturally seeing crimes from across the only country anyway.
Ha! When the RotK came out, my mom bought me a book all about the design of the costumes, weapons, and other props from the movies, because “I’m a big Tolkien fan, so I’d like that!” Much to my surprise, it really was fascinating, with lots of great pictures of the stuff, and detailed explanations of the research the costumers, etc., did to give it an authentic feel, or make it fit the thematic notions, etc. Really good read if you haven’t gotten it already, WhyNot!
Bumping this thread because I have a new one.
I sat down last week and watched a movie that my dad had recently purchased, The Duellists. It’s an excellent movie in every respect. My only pet peeve was the accents. The actors were English and American, but playing Frenchmen from the Napoleonic Era. Yet everyone (I am supposing) spoke in their natural accents. It makes it a bit jarring when D’Hubert (Keith Carradine) sounds like a midwestern Yank, his sister (don’t know the actress) sounds perfectly English, and his rival Hussair, Feraud (Harvey Keitel) sounds straight off the boat from New York.
A minor point, to be sure, but annoying nonetheless.
In an episode of Voyager, there was a transporter accident that turned Neelix and Tuvok into a single being, who called himself Tuvix. They fixed the problem before the end of the show, of course.
The “doing detective work at people’s houses” bugs the crap out of me. They should all be in jail and breaking & entering.
Yep, but they don’t realize that. I don’t recall how developed it was in the movie(s), but in the books, the gradual discovery of just what makes Arrakis tick becomes a major plot point (a minor mention in Dune, but practically the central character of God Emperor). It seemed a bit silly to me that nobody ever pieced it together, considering how important a resource spice is, but then if you pick up a Scientific American, there are regular articles about some new discovery of how ecosystems interlock in unexpected ways.