Well, if you are going from the angle that Trashy is going to blow the city up anyway, you’re right, it doesn’t make sense.
But, IIRC, they were on a mission of God to face evil. And what has God always demanded in every culture and every religion, in one form or the other? A sacrifice. So, essentially, Larry, Glenn, and Ralph were sacrifices. (Nick was already dead, and Stu never made it.)
AH HA!!! Dooku is vindicated!! Especially with point #2 - I had forgotten that they show crewmen spinning those cranks and stuff. ::lights cigar::
Trashcan Man didn’t set the bomb off, God did. God used energy released by Randall Flagg to detonate it. Randall Flagg released the energy to kill one of his men who was speaking out against the public execution of Larry and Hillbilly Jim. So, obviously God is powerful enough to come up with a detailed plan that predicts everyone’s exact future actions (even Satan’s), but not powerful enough to just go down to Vegas and whoop some ass Himself.
Maybe the ‘higher good’ served by the good guys being present when the bomb goes off is that their standing up to Flagg caused some of the onlookers to ‘see the light’ before being incinerated, therefore saving their souls.
IMO, Superman provides us with what we need to know to understand the scene: Superman went back in time and saved Lois. The exact details of what he did are no more relevant to the story than the exact details of how Josh wins and loses his key games in Searching for Bobby Fischer, only one of which is shown. That Josh wins the final game in the first tournament and loses the first game in the rainy day tournament is what is important, not how. That Superman was willing to change the past for the woman he loves is the point of the scene in question, so the details of the mechanics involved are irrelevant to the point being made. Which isn’t to say that I like the scene; I don’t, for reasons explained earlier.
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Angus McKee: So Beautiful and So Dangerous?
From reading the book, my recollection was that God was stepping in at that point- kind of a “enoughs enough” sort of thing where instead of providing hints and helpful portents to allow his/her subject’s to do the right thing of their own freewill he directly intervenes (quite literally through the “hand of god”) and sets off the bomb. Their deaths were foregone conclusions- but God’s direct intervention saved the whole, and made their deaths a noble sacrifice rather than a futile gesture.
Besides the deaths of so many leading actors in the book, both bad and good, instead of some cheesy last minute save is what helped make the book a classic.
Also, in regards to a prior point- I thought the immunity to the Superflu came as a result to childhood exposure to some disease (I forget which one)- or was this one of his short stories I am mixing in?
-me
I guess my problem is that I can’t get passed the whole “noble sacrifice serving a purpose” thing. To me, it would have been better if their presence and deaths actually resulted in something more productive than a simple appeasement to God. For instance, them simply being in Las Vegas could have set up things so that RF could be at Point A just when a meteor comes hurtling down from the sky to smack against his head, killing him instantaneously. Ding dong the witch is dead!
It seems rather empty to just kill them “just because”, you know? That’s kind of how it seems to me.
Just saw Behind Enemy Lines with Gene Hackman on DVD. Laden with gaping plot holes.
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[li]The carrier doesn’t have any ready search/rescue teams [/li][li]TWICE, they direct him to a rendevous, he arrives and calls in, and then they try to locate him by RDF. What the hell are map coordinates for?[/li][li]Hackman continually defers to some weird “UN?” admiral without even going up his own chain of command. [/li][/list=1]
I stopped reading after the first few pages. I was surprised noone (at least up til that point) hadn’t brought up the difference between a plothole and a break in rules that violates our suspension of disbelief. It is the latter of these two problems that plague most of the films cited. The only real plotholes I saw (assuming the facts were true) were the ones regarding “Keeping the Faith”, “I know what you did last summer”, and one other that I can’t remember.
Might it be the train ride to England that Ben Affleck took in Pearl Harbor? 
Though you are right of course: the above isn’t really a plot hole but rather a very ill-thought out bit of movie-making.
Though the Superman stuff likely is a plot hole… but when you do time travel, you’re practically inviting them in.
I remember Jaws: The Revenge. It gave me, if nothing else, one of my favorite Roger Ebert quotes of all time:
OK, I’ve gone back and rewatched Superman. I conceed that it’s a plot hole, but still don’t think it qualifies as a “stupidly large plot hole”.
Kidcharlemagne: I agree with you. Most of the threads that ask for a specific type of criticism get derailed into “movies/actors/scenes/songs, etc. that I dislike,” regardless of the specific criteria set forth in the OP. Thus, “actors with limited range” becomes “actors I don’t like” or “movies with incomprehensible plots” becomes “movies with implausible premises” or “movies I dislike for some reason, so I’ll use any opportunity to criticize them”. I am not implying that any specific post here is doing this, just that it seems to be a trend among threads of this type.
I always got the impression that the sacrifice was meant to say to God, “Look, we know we fucked up this world, but we want a second chance. We’re really, really serious. So, in order to prove how serious we are, how much we care about the survivors, and how much we want this to work, we’ll pay with the only thing we have left—our lives.”
I’ve always wondered how, in the Matrix, the bodies of the sleepers in the matrix manage to match their bodies out of the matrix. That’s quite a trick. I know if I was living in my mind, my mental image would slowly drift away from reality. It would be a real shock to be confronted with the difference.
I appreciate the fact that they implied that the cool, black threads were only possible in fantasy, though.
It’s worse than that. it wouldn’t merely be a case of drifting, it would be much worse than that. Most people in the matrix live their whole lives in it, so they would have no idea of what they “really” looked like to form a mental match.
But they don’t have to. Like other physical object in the matrix, their physical appearance is supplied by the Matrix itself, which matches the computer image to the physical one.
On the other hand, if I were living in a permanent computer simulation, I’d look a lot like Tom Cruise if he were 6’ 2" and built like a top heavyweight boxer.
RESURRECT:
Day after Tomorrow, 2012, discuss…
Before this gets closed, I’d just like to not congratulate you for your attempt at cleverness.
And remember that in that movie Will Smith was a lawyer with a big firm and his wife was with the ACLU. The couple could easily have made a big fuss about any arrest which in turn could have brought the bad guy’s crime to light. The villain was trying to keep his culpability in the murder secret, naturally.
Also, if I recall, they did try to follow procedure (somewhat) by having the cronies pretend to be cops and ask Will Smith if they could look at his bags, but being a lawyer he told them to get lost.
I hope we don’t have to wait “28 Days Later” for this thread to be capped.