I can usually follow plots pretty well. But some things in the movie “Red Planet” I didn’t quite catch. SPOILERS beyond this point, if you haven’t seen the movie, this is the point of no return!*
Okay, when they get the surface and find the living facility, they find it’s destroyed. How did it get destroyed? Also, why did the bugs explode? I thought it had something to do with them making O2… And isn’t it nice how all the hardware is compatible in the movies? Everything just happens to have similar cables and work just dandy.
No. By the time the movie takes place, “open architecture” will have finally been destroyed as a functional concept and the MicroSoft/General Motors/RJRNabisco Consortium will have gotten everything onto fully integrated proprietary systems (except for the descendents of the System 3/AS400 which will only integrate with anything else by IBM on the Day of the Apocalypse).
I don’t know about the bugs exploding, but I thought (during the movie) that maybe AMEE had destroyed the living facility as part of her/its military strategy. But who knows?
That’s exactly why they exploded. The inside of their bodies and the air immediately around them was all O[sub]2[/sub], which, in its pure form, is highly flammable.
O2 is not flammable. O2 supports combustion VERY well, but does not burn. It allows other substances to burn. In a pure O2 atmosphere some oils and greases will easily self ignite.
AMEE coudln’t had destroyed the habitat though, because when AMEE first when balistic was at the campfire when they tried to “kill” it. And the air wasn’t pure oxygen, I don’t think… We can’t breath pure 02.
Can we just agree that this was a shitty movie and let it go at that? I am a sci-fi fan and usually enjoy Val Kilmer’s talents as an actor, but this flick couldn’t have been salvaged by anyones efforts once the script was approved and filming began. Many questions were left unanswered as noted in the OP and the “plot” was weak. Bring on The Grinch!
The bugs destroyed the habitat. I thought that was really clear. They ate through the door seals and then ate everything organic except some pieces of raggedy pieces of fabric. They couldn’t eat the fabric because it needed to flap around in the breeze and look sort of destroyed.
My questions relate to why a solar flare would cause so many problems with the electrical/electronic system on the ship. What, no shielding? They didn’t see it as a problem? The electronics in the lander were fried too? No redundancy? No isolation? Who the hell designed this thing?
The bugs blew up because it looked cool and the special effects were otherwise unexciting. I think maybe it was due to the methane in the air, from the previously detonated Carbon deposits they talked about, which also made it warm somehow, but didn’t cause anyone any difficulty breathing. Maybe they had a cow on the ship with them most of the way out so they could adapt to the methane rich environment. We didn’t see the cow because they had steaks the last week before they arrived.
I liked the movie. The “science” was silly, but it was sort of fun if you ignored it.