Energy considerations.
The floaters we see are all low-mass devices (except for Jabba’s barque, but Hutt are known for displays of conspicuous consumption), and an anti-grav generator large enough to counteract planetary gravity woud take up too much room that would be better used for ordnance and armor.
This is because they aren’t aliens, but Boogie-men.
[quote=“sqweels, post:43, topic:507932”]
[li]After touting the T-rex’s great sense of smell, the lady dinosaur expert spends half the movie running around with the blood of the baby T-rex on her jacket.[/li][/QUOTE]
My husband and I were calling her TWSP, The World’s Stupidest Paleontologist. She was also the one who was going on and on about non-interference and the like, then went to pet the widdle baby dinos.
This made me laugh.
Regarding Space: Above and Beyond, I seem to recall reading that the writers were bent out of shape over the abrupt cancellation of the series, and the plot of the final episode was deliberately awful.
In one of the earliest episodes of the Star Trek with Scott Bakula, the hot human guy and hot Vulcan chick got exposed to some spores or something, and had to stay in quarantine while they smeared anti-spore gel all over each other. Except for the naughty bits. Evidently dangerous alien spores have a sense of decorum, and avoid the underwear area.
Independence Day.
Fun movie but puh-leeze. Just puh-leeze.
To be fair, they did establish in JP-I that T. rex was a stealthy bugger. I think the scientists at InGen neglected to inform the Jurassic Park staff that, in addition to using frog DNA to fill in the gaps in the dino DNA, they were also using ninja DNA…
To be fair, Signs was not a science-fiction movie proper. It was a parable. Complaining about realism in a parable is like pointing out that a camel is too large to fit through the eye of a needle; it means you didn’t get it.
Independence Day – science fiction flubs aside, how about the idea that, before the humans ever knew about the force fields, they still thought air-to-air missiles with tiny warheads would bring down a 15-mile-wide metal object as complex as a city? That’s like expecting to sink an Iowa-class battleship by waiting for the toaster to pop up.
In the first Jurassic Park, they also established that *cliffs *are stealthy buggers. It’s the *cliff *that sneaks up on them during the first T. Rex attack; it wasn’t there earlier when they were looking at dinosaurs.
They didn’t beat the Death Star by firing through its armor–they found a tiny exhaust port that the snub fighters were maneuverable enough to drop a couple of bombs down.
It had a shaky start, but it really did get a **lot **better by the end.
Personally, I like to call him M. Night Shammylammyman. (Also, how weird must his first name be that he goes by his middle name when his middle name is Night? Alternatively, how pretentious?)
Those are AT-STs, in contrast to AT-ATs.
Where did that happen? I mean, fighters like X-Wings collapse and expand their “wings,” but I don’t remember those wings being designed with airfoils or anything like that–certaily no moving parts like elevators.
See “all computers in all movies ever.” More or less.
ETA:
This is quite possibly my favorite analogy ever. I can’t stop laughing.
Thought I’d read something on this, so I checked Wikipedia - he was born Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan, and made up his middle name in college.
So, pretentious then. Okay!
Indeed. They also established that Dilophosaurus can open car doors, that Stegosaurus is spelled Stegasaurus, that Velociraptor stood 6’ tall, that dinosaur fossils are found in loose sand, that despite the T. rex’s great smelling abilities (which apparently weren’t established until JP-II) it can’t smell two humans when it’s nose is literally inches from them, that…
There was a whole lot of stupid in JP-I. And JP-II. Oh, and in JP-III.
As for why the Empire didn’t use TIEs against the Hoth base, TIEs can’t function in atmosphere. It’s yet another way that the Rebel ships are superior to the Imperial ones (which the Empire doesn’t care about, since they’ve got tons of ships, and they consider their pilots expendable).
The characters of Star Trek: TOS deserve some kind of amnesia award. They run into some kind of godlike alien approximately every third week, and each time they’re completely befuddled when weird things start happening. One or two “but this is impossible!” moments are okay, but every time they’re absolutely astonished when the giant-brained deus ex machina or talking space cloud or fake Greek god shows up and starts lecturing them. If they’ve been traveling for the better part of a five-year mission, being so skeptical about magical aliens is like doubting the existence of Canadians.
Furthermore, after they’ve seen all of this freaky shit, they’re still amazed and doubtful about the Horta! “Silicon-based life? But that’s impossible!” Really? After you’ve talked to sentient beings of pure energy, etc., who look like talking stars? It’s okay, though, since all they have to do is set all their instruments from “Carbon” to “Silicon”, and then it’s a breeze to find it and monitor it.
The Core
Ohhh that movie is bad.
OK, the core the earth stops spinning and we are all going to die unless a plucky crew of misfits can drill down in some sort of dirtsubmarine with a big laser drill hooked to the front and then set off a series of atomic bombs to get it to start spining again.
OK, I’ll accept THAT. I’ll suspend my disbelief for that.
BUT
The drilling ship is boasted to be built in segments so if one segment is damaged then it can be cut loose and the ship goes on. (do you think that will happen later in the movie?) But what if segment 3 gets damaged? If you cut off that part then segments 4 and 5 are gone as well.
But the real pisser, the most unbelievable thing was near the end, and if you haven’t seen this and spoiling it will cause you to not see then I will but up for sainthood for spoiling the picture. OK, so the blow up the bombs, the earth is saved and only two people of the crew have survived the ordeal. (Aaron Eckhart and Hillary Swank). Their section is damaged and laying on the bottom of the ocean, They have limited air. They assume they will not be rescued. Given all this, you DON’T put the movies on Hillary Swank! Hey, I’m kind of shy with ladies but I know when you have to take a shot and this circumstance, you may as well.
Miller:
Are you sure of that? I thought it was STORMS the snowspeeders couldn’t handle, that’s why the rebels could send a snowspeeder to rescue Luke (and would-be-rescuer Han, later) the following morning, but not at the immediate time that Luke didn’t report in from his Tauntaun patrol.
Out of curiosity, how do slugs and snails react to salt water?
Stargate: The baddies have a super weapon, which is basically a stick that you point at someone. It then makes some funny noises, and there are flashing lights and so on, and 10 seconds later a beam of light shoots out and kills your target. This could be easily countered by moving out of the way when the noises and flashing lights start, but nobody ever thinks of doing that.
Alien frat initiation!
Not true they did fine on Bespin which is nothing but atmosphere being a gas giant.
Remember how the ground was shaking in the Rebel Base when the Walkers were still miles away? That is why they built the Walkers the way they did: fear, baby. Yes, the AT-AT’s have all sorts of other flaws, but when the enemy is too busy peeing themselves to mount a good defense, that counts for a lot. The Empire built their ships big, bigger and Effin-GINORMOUS for the same reason: fear. When a Star Destroyer is big enough to pull a capital ship into it like a fighter, and a Super Star Destroyer is beg enough to do that to Star Destroyer, most sane folks won’t even consider trying to fight them.
The Newcomers were gengineered to be physically strong, tough, etc. etc by the race who had ensloved them. They were intentionally given that vulnerability to salt-water so they could be more easily controlled. I mean, who wants a race of super-human slaves if you can’t keep them in line? And if you can do that sort of genetic tampering, it makes sense to make them vulnerable to something that is even more common than dirt so you’ll never run out of it.