I assume everyone agreed that Battlefiled Earth was a given, which is why it has not been metioned after 80 posts 
Isn’t that the case, then?
It looks to me pretty obvious (after watching about 20 hours of documentaries 
) that the “real world” in the Matrix is just another level of virtual existence.
The whole idea behind the Matrix trilogy is the question of "What is real? How can we be sure that our perceived reality isn’t a matrix of some sort? Is there an underlying meta-reality or is that just another matrix?
Actually, depending upon how closely you define “premise”, I can disagree with you. You probably could make a decent story out of what happens between surviving humans and the aliens who defeated Earth, many years after the event. You copuld even do something with the aliens using the humans as slaves and having a revolt.
But “Walking Tree Taking Revenge” is just ludicrous from the word “go”.
This was supposed to be a comedy. That gets them an automatic pass on any kind of scientific foolishness.
Miss Hoskins, file these papers immediately. And watch out for John Travolta in a really bad wig.
The crook’s plan was also TOTALLY UNNECESSARY because getting the money revolved around the Air Marshal (ie. The Crook) phoning in the demands and collecting the money.
The woman and the girl were completely unnecessary. Apparently, all an Air Marshal needs is a phone and collect his millions.
-Joe
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Why is “petty revenge” so hard for anyone to believe? Smith, pre-disconnection, certainly had emotions.
-Joe
I think most of the responses in this thread are misguided. Any sci-fi/horror/fantasy movie is going to qualify because they ignore laws of physics and science in order to (hopefully) tell an interesting story. You accept that going into them.
I will submit Mission to Moscow (1943). Basically, the Soviets are good guys, and we should trust them.
They could have done that, or a million other things that were all within the realm of possibility, unlike the human battery thing. But they didn’t.
Failure to Launch was the latest stupid premise. We’ve raised two sons, and never once considered hiring an asexual hooker to get 'em out of the house. We just started charging rent and they left. $700 a month is pretty steep rent for a bedroom.
Come to think of it, the premise of any movie is pretty ridiculous, and I agree with Lemur 866 – the premise of all romantic comedies is the same, and it’s dumb. Anyone who even considers hiring a male escort to go to a wedding can see trouble coming a mile away. And Fifty First Dates? Ye gods, you’d have to own a major video production company.
But a lot of movies take a really stupid premise (“Like that could ever happen!”) and turn them into pretty good movies through good cinematography, good writing, good acting and good directing. And we go along with it because who among us hasn’t, as a child, asked, “What would happen if dinosaurs came back to life?” The “what if” is always a ridiculous premise, but people love to imagine alternative outcomes to the lives we’re all living.
This had a classic sequence: The heros’ ship becomes disabled in a storm; they take to the lifeboat. Driven by the storm, they become entangled in the Sargasso, having bad things happen on the way, and then when they get there–
Their ship is waiting for them, having drifted there on its own. :smack:
The only good thing about that movie was Dana Gillespie’s hoochas.
The Scout, a baseball movie which I recently had the misfortune to see.
The premise is that an incredibly talented amateur is signed to a contract by the New York Yankees in which his first start will be the opening game of the World Series, if the Yankees make it there. (This being 1994, it is considered very unlikely the Yankees will even make the Series and that this clause won’t ever be activated. How times change.) Such a contract is impossible, since someone who didn’t play during the regular season could only play in the World Series if someone on the regular roster was injured. Besides that, the guy is supposed to be talented to a ludicrous degree, in that not only every single pitch he throws is a strike, every ball he hits is a home run. But even at that level of talent it is ridiculous to suppose that any team would allow a rookie to be the starting pitcher in the World Series if he had never played a single game in the majors, just in case he was a head case - which this guy obviously is.
The great peculiarity of this movie is that it seems to want to appeal to a certain audience - baseball fans - but this audience is automatically going to know the premise is is crock.
We have a winner!
See, I don’t think a movie that has as its premise that FTL travel is possible, or that ghosts exist, or that Santa Claus lives at the north pole, or that psychic powers work, or that there is such a thing as “God” are blatantly stupid premises.
Sure, there’s no such thing as ghosts, or leprechauns, or eskimos. But making a movie about a ghost, or a leprechaun, or an eskimo doesn’t have to be dumb…although a movie about a dead eskimo leprechaun who returns as a ghost would be. You can make perfectly fine movies about bogy- or booger-men.
Likewise, movies with premises that don’t make sense, but which could nevertheless be saved by inserting a few lines of dialog don’t really count. Is Alien ruined because they don’t try to evactuate the air? Just imagine a 5 second scene where someone asks, “Why don’t we expose the ship to vacuum?” and another crewman says, “We can’t do that, we’d have to recalibrate the main deflector dish afterwards and that would take 37 centons!”. Or The Matrix, the point is that SkyNet keeps everyone in virtual reality pods, but cool people can hack the system and wear black clothes and flip around shooting guns. A two line dialog change would fix the “power source” explanation. Morpheus: “Why do they keep people in pods? Nobody knows. Revenge, maybe.”
The point is that the machine’s motivation is a McGuffin, you could change it to 100 other motiviations and the movie would still make as much (or as little) sense. If the movie is about driving around in fast cars, it doesn’t really matter if you’re trying to get a shipment of Coors beer to Atlanta in 48 hours, or if you have to stop the Nazi spies from getting the industrial diamonds, or if you have to stop your estranged girlfriend from marrying a horrible cad. The point is, the only way to solve the problem is to drive really fast and cause lots of car crashes.
“Well, if we’re being attacked by a tree reanimated by someone out for revenge, why don’t we just douse it with alcohol and set fire to it?”
“Because it’s fireproof wood”
“Well, how about a bunch of us hold it down and we chop it into little bits?”
“You fool! Didn’t you see Mickey Mouse in The Sorceror’s Apprentice?”
“Do we know every splinter would regenerate?”
“No, but why take the chance?”
“Well, how about if we weight it down and throw it in the ocean?”
“It’s get free.”
“We can tie up its arm and legs and hoist it up. Or seal it up in concrete. Or put termites on it. Or…”
“You fool! The director wouldn’t allow it!”
No, I don’t think a brief conversation is gonna make up for the fundamental stupidity of this one.
Sig line if I ever saw one.
And yet only the most minor change would have made this movie watchable – say, if it was after Gale Norton. I would pay money to watch that.
Sailboat
Not quite the same level of inanity (or maybe it is), but what was the procedure Vin Diesel’s character in Pitch Black (and sequels) had? They polished his corneas or something? :dubious:
Rationalization and denial fit those with emotions, too. Maybe we could have had Smith go to a priest and confess what was really going on?
-Joe