Of course it says fuck you. What else would you expect from a Christian outreach film?
I’m extremely sceptical of this claim! Sheer weight of numbers would overwhelm them in no time. Plus, archers firing high looping arrows of flame, and low knee high shots simultaneously would soon incapacitate the most hardy 2 marines…!
Well, you have to give them a pass on cheap and easy insterstellar flight. Half the science fiction industry would fall to the ground without that.
I think you’ve got it wrong. It’s not that a movie can’t have a plot that hinges on an implausibilty, it’s that they have to pick a story and stick to it. For example, if the letters of transit in Casablanca had been signed by DeGaulle, it would have ruined the movie, because a letter signed by DeGaulle would not get you through a German or VF checkpoint. The fact that there was no such thing as a “Letter of Transit” doesn’t really matter, as long as they function consistently through the movie.
And also as long as devices don’t just spring into existence at the first hint of being needed.
This is my view as well. I odn’t mind so muchif a movie is creative with the laws of physics, as long as they are consistent within their own fictitious universe.
I can hear explosions in space in your Monsters from the Galaxy movie? Fine. Suspension of disbelief and all that. But then don’t go putting a major plot point around the fact that sound doesn’t travel in a vaccuum, or whatever, later on.
Not to detract from your point (and sorry for finding a nit in your pick), but iron will fuse under some conditions. That’s where all the heavier elements come from, after all. What you’re thinking of is that iron fusion is past the break-even point–it requires more energy than it releases. So fusing the iron would quickly cool off the reactor!
Duh. The aliens that use PCs are still on their homeworld trying to get their nav computers to reboot.
I remarked upon this to my wife just this weekend. “Boy, you’d think after that first Death Star got blown up, they’d figure out that the new one should have lots of little reactors scattered all around, instead of one giant one right in the center, just like the old one.”
But here’s the thing: Brent Spiner’s character says, sometime during the scene where he reveals the downed Roswell ship to the others, that they hadn’t had any luck toying with the thing for the past several decades because “we couldn’t replicate their power.”
So, it’s not just about communication protocols: the aliens don’t even use electricity. Now, how do you get an Apple to sync with that?
According to Martin Gardner’s One, Two, Three… Infinity, it’s silver that can’t be made to undergo fusion or fission (Gardner doesn’t explain why, though, and I’m looking for an online cite that does). Iron (specifically iron-56) is the most stable element so forcing it to undergo fusion requires massively more energy than the reaction produces and you’re right - feeding iron to a fusion reaction is like feeding sand to a fire. Dunking it in the river is actually a lot riskier.
This cartoon seems appropriate. (possibly nsfw)
I’ve not seen the movie, but a few years ago I was on a D&D messageboard with the screenwriter for the movie. He was an awesome guy, ran some brilliant games from the sound of things, and in talking about the movie, he assured us that it was purely a labor of geeklove, in no way meant to be taken seriously. I think what he was going for in the movie was delighted laughter and “Yeah! BadASS!” at the sheer over-the-top absurdity of everything.
I dunno what the director did with it, but the writer sure didn’t think it was an Important Drama.
Daniel
You’re right of course, depending on how you want to define “fusion.” My understanding (admittedly limited, as a soft-rock geologist rather than a high energy physicist) is that heavier elements are not necessarily created by fusing iron nuclei with deuterium or other light nuclei, but by stuffing iron and other similar mass nuclei with high-energy neutrons. This is indeed a costly reaction, and my overall points remain: that (1) a small scale fusion reactor not only would not be able to create the required conditions but would be pointless, as it would be an energy consumer; and (2) a small scale fusion reactor could not go non-linear the way a fission reactor (potentially) can, as to grow it requires more and more hydrogen, which is available in only limited quantities in the atmosphere – but ironically would be available at much greater concentrations if you dumped the reactor in a large body of water…
Assuming it wasn’t an English army, as being shot with 1000+ arrows each would be something more than fatal.
Even with good plate armor, a few thousand longbowmen’s arrows would find a chink and you’d be down.
Even a Knight’s charge would work, although the first few ranks of knights would die.
I hear that, in the final installment of the current “Get A Mac” commercial campaign, Justin Long’s character turns into a tentacled, telepathic alien and EATS John Hodgman.
This is assuming the army’s morale keeps up: having a couple hundred of your own troops die, to just two or three soldiers, before even getting into arrow or charge range would not tend to increase your sense of cohesion and optimism.
Well, if we’re going to open that door . . . in this episode of Drawn Together, a chicken is so terrified at facing Ling-Ling in the cockfighting pit that it lays an egg. Hey, guys, it’s a cockfight!
Well the ads I saw made it look like a standard-issue horror film, with lots of eerie atmosphere and scary stuff. Then I went to see it and got a long spiel about how ‘facts’ are untrustworthy, and we should be fearful of things that may or may not be out there, blah, blah, blah. It seemed like a bait & switch to me.
Not that I was expecting a lot of cold hard science fact from a horror film, even one ‘inspired’ by real events, but the flick purports to be a ‘fair & balanced’ look at religious / scientific dichotomy, and slants everything way into the religious camp. In fact, I had no idea this was a ‘christian outreach’ film. Was it actually produced by christian film companies (a la ‘the End of Days’)?
Try this one.
Wow, that was so bad I had to watch parts 1 AND 2.