While they do want to discredit her, they don’t necessarily know that she’s telling the truth. It’s been a long time, and those responsible for the order likely made an effort to cover their tracks when the Nostromo went missing; they wouldn’t have wanted to risk being blamed for losing the ship. That, combined with decades of bureaucratic shuffling, retirements, and people dying off could plausibly leave the board ignorant of the real events.
Burke seems to be the only one who thought she might be telling the truth, and he was–from his perspective–betting on a longshot in hopes of a big payoff in either cash or career advancement.
IMHO, somebody knows something, otherwise Burke wouldn’t have acted like Burke, defending the company’s interests. Regardless, you are right - the Board is likely just as in the dark about real events driven by the true power brokers on Weyland-whatever as Ripley is.
But there’s no evidence to conclusively support one theory or another, probably for the better. Makes it more interesting.
In fairness, Leia really didn’t have much choice. Han wasn’t going to let his big payday just go traipsing off with a “We’ll catch ya later and square up with that reward thing,” and he wasn’t going to leave the Falcon on some out-of-the-way planet to go with Leia on an non-trackable ship to the Secret Rebel Base ™.
Plus, even if they did do that, whatever planet they left the Falcon on would’ve still gotten the finger from the Death Star, and I don’t see Leia just sentencing a few million/billion innocents to die (even if it was an Imperial-conrolled world) just to cover her tracks.
Even if we delved into the EU (which didn’t exist at the time of the writing/filming of the original movie), and thought in non-Heroic/practical terms, Han would have to try to contact somebody like Doc and Jessa (see Han Solo at Star’s End, by Brian Daley), arrange a meet, and have them try to get the homing beacon located and removed.
This is problematic, since, while Doc and Jessa like Han, they don’t work for free, and don’t strike me as the sort to accept an IOU from a dispossessed Rebel Princess, and wouldn’t let a (even suspected) trackable Falcon within 12 parsecs of their hidden/secret outlaw tech base.
If Han didn’t tell them up front what the real deal was, they would be mighty chuff if he admitted after arriving at their hidden/secret outlaw tech base that he thought that the Falcon was being tracked by the Empire’s new planet-destroying super-weapon, and could they please locate/remove said suspected homing beacon?
“Chuff” being defined as shoot Han and everyone with him in the head, dump their bodies in a shallow grave (if that), and do the bug out boogie toot-sweet, leaving the Falcon sitting there for the Empire to find.
But if we’re going to be practical like that, Leia could have had Han take her to a Rebel-friendly world long enough to drop her, Luke, the droids, and Han off, while Chewie takes off in the Falcon to fly a zany/crazy zig-zag course, stopping briefly at a bunch of worlds to confuse the Empire’s tracking.
Leia contacts a Rebel cell and arranges alternate transport to Yavin IV, delivers the plans, gives Han his big reward, and even arranges safe transport for Han to leave and later hook back up with Chewie. Tracking problem solved. And an additional ~30 minutes tacked onto the movie.
I know that Jake and Elwood were trying to find all the original members and reunite their band. However, why on earth didn’t they glom onto Aretha Franklin once they heard her sing? I’m sure her husband was talented and all, but Aretha would have made their band a superstar band that earned buttloads of money.
Instead they just left her in that dumpy diner. What a couple of dumbasses.
Speaking of asses, I can overlook magic faeries and wooden boys but I always balk at the economics of Pinnochio. Apparently, you can kidnap hundreds of small children from their parents, transport them over land and sea to Pleasure Island, spoil them with unlimited candy, cigars and booze while they do tens of thousands of dollars in property damage all to get a few donkeys out of it. I can’t help but think it would be cheaper to put a couple of donkeys in a pen with a copy of Playmule magazine.
Is this a logic flaw/implausibilty? Or just plot-convenient arrogance/stupidity?
Imperial Officer: “Governor Tarkin, we detect 30 Rebel ships on an intercept course.”
Governor Tarkin: " Our turbolaser batteries should suffice to deal with them."
IO: “They’re small one-man fighters, Sir. Our guns may not be able to target and track them.”
GT: :mad: :smack: “Oh, very well. :rolleyes: How many one-man fighters do we have?”
IO: “Somewhere north of 7,000, Sir”
GT: :dubious: “You can’t be more precise than that?”
IO: “Against thirty Rebel fighters? :dubious: Do I need to be?”
GT: “Point taken. Launch them.”
IO: :eek: “All of them?”
GT: “Sure. Why not? I mean, we have them, they’re just sitting there on their launch rails, pilots are standing by… :rolleyes:”
IO: “Very well, Sir. I will give the order immediately.”
And thus an unknown farmboy from an obscure desert world dies a quick, fiery, unnoticed, and unremarked (except for some grim, Imperial, “Oh, those silly, stupid, Rebel sunsabitches” humor) death.
The Empire Strikes Back: As soon as you see that even your heavy emplacement guns can’t take out the advancing enemy armor, why is your infantry holding position with small arms?
:smack: An entire sentence just upped and disappeared from my previous post.
It went:
So, the Death Star, 120 km in diameter, armed with thousands upon thousands of TIE Fighters, is being attacked by 30 Rebel fighters. Even assuming there were 10 times as many as we saw on-screen (what was it? 8? 10? flying in formation against the X-Wings?), isn’t that still kind of paltry?
Wouldn’t the conversation go a bit more like this:
Burke: "They, uh, they tell me that all the weakness and disorientation should pass soon. It’s just natural side effects of such an unusually long hypersleep, or something like that. "
Burke: “You were out there for fifty-seven years. What happened was, you had drifted right through the core systems, and it’s really just blind luck that a deep salvage team found you when they did. It’s one in a thousand, really. I think you’re damn lucky to be alive, kiddo. You could be floating out there forever.”
So, not so common.
We also don’t know how much of a stir the loss of the Nostromo may have caused–since it had been diverted from its official course by a secret order, it’s likely no remnants of the ship were ever found. So, assuming the company wasn’t able to cover it up completely, the public impression would be of an enormous ship on a routine run that simply vanished with all hands–sort of like an tanker disappearing in the Atlantic without leaving so much as oil slick.
If it caught public attention, there’d be conspiracy theories, (incorrect) speculation about alien attacks, pirate stories, ghost ship legends…and then, years later, one survivor appears, rescued by an incredible coincidence.
She was lost for 50+ years, her ship destroyed by a core (nuclear) explosion, and declared dead. I’m pretty sure that her being found became a blurb on some website (or equivalent) somewhere.
OTOH, Ripley does live in an unbelievably advanced civilization: They have FTL, have expanded at least 33 light years from Earth, achieved artificial gravity through a means so small that it works on shuttles, have a coldsleep system that lasts decades (how the thing found mass to keep Ripley fed all those years is something else unexplained), and they can terraform planets.
So maybe “yet another astronaut found after being in coldsleep for 50 years” news stories aren’t really news enough as they would expect you to live 50+ years in a shuttle…
In that universe there is a god, who seems to be at least somewhat actively involved in stuff. There was a scene, can’t remember if it was shot or not, that shows the sub going down but with a bubble around Indy.
This is a different universe, do we know who controls Egypt at the time? Besides, archaeologists are in enemy territory all the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t Americans in Iran right now. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the British just said, “you’re paying for all the works and equipment? Go right right ahead, knock yourselves out.”
Maybe. Like one of those Japanese soldiers in the South Pacific who went for decades without knowing WWII was over. Interesting for a day or two, then she fades into obscurity as the Bermuda Triangle–type stories resume.
*Rounders *has a great many issues that gloss over actual poker strategy and stuff, but I’m willing to let most of it slide. However, at the end of the movie, I’ve always had a problem with Gramma’s reaction to Mike taking Teddy KGB down. I suppose, Gramma was supposed to be just some big dumb oaf, but it seems to me he was deep into the the underground poker world; he must have been able to pick up a few things … for example, when the other guy has all of your chips, the game is pretty much over. But he sat there watching Mike rake chips from KGB all night long, to the point where KGB was completely busted, and he says, “What are you waiting for Teddy - take the kid down.” That would be like saying, “what are you waiting for Hiroshima, win the war!”
It Happens Every Spring was a favorite of mine when I was a kid – a local tv station used to show it every year on the Sunday before baseball’s opening day. I just watched it last weekend for the first time in 40 years and I was appalled.
Ray Milland plays a mild-mannered, chemistry professor who accidentally invents a formulation that repels wood. So he rubs it on a baseball and then joins the St. Louis Cardinals, where he spends the season repelling baseball bats, compiling a record of 35-0, presumably all no-hitters. HE CHEATS.
Flaws:
Milland’s character, a college professor, mind you, experiences no ethical dilemma or remorse. Not one second.
He does a horrible job of disguising it. He cheats by soaking a sponge with his magic substance, placing in the palm of his glove hand and cuts a hole in the center of his glove.
**
Yet, not once does any umpire or opposing manager or league official check** Milland’s character for illegal substances, even though his ball literally hops over the bat.
This guy makes Barry Bonds look like a choir boy.
And although the movie is a comedy, it’s not a complete baseball fantasy like Angels in the Outfield – in every other facet it tries to be realistic.
One thing that I still liked: Milland wins 3 games in the World Series to screw the Yankees out of another championship.
Our turbolaser batteries should suffice to deal with them."
Launch them.”
I mean, we have them, they’re just sitting there on their launch rails, pilots are standing by… :rolleyes:”