It’s cool dude, just wanted to see how far you took it. Personally, I have something like a sliding scale of contemporary dialogue acceptance. I wouldn’t expect a fantasy knight to talk like a '60s surfer. But “don’t count your chickens before they hatch” was apparently invented in the 1660s. Gotta let it slide, man.
How about the word “OK”? I’ve seen some people rant about that since it’s “too modern.” Even though it was invented in the 19th century.
Biblical phrases, no problem. These worlds are already pastiches of Earth cultures and countries. “Oh, they’re like Romans, but with dragons.” Some old well known book with these phrases isn’t exactly a stretch.
In a “Hyborian Age” sort of fantasy, it would bring me up short.
Fritz Leiber used to play games of this sort in his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories. At one point, he said (quote only approximate from memory) “Don’t kill the chicken that lays brown eggs with rubies in the yolk or white eggs with diamonds in the white.” An obvious riff on a familiar English aphorism, but made alien by the wording.
He also spoke of “Gahveh” in a way that made it clear he was describing “Coffee.”
I’m damned if I can tell you why these didn’t bother me, but if he’d used the familiar English saying, or said “Coffee,” it would have jarred terribly.
The play (and movie) Cyrano De Bergerac contains an allusion to French literature that would be lost on an English speaking audience. In the translation by Burgess it is rendered as “Oh that this too, too, solid nose would melt.”
The film Robin Hood Prince of Thieves isn’t filmed with authentic 12th century Middle English. Nevertheless, the Sheriff calling Robin and his men a band of Thugsreally made me go WTF?
So ? A translator, even a “translator” is writing for you the reader, and for your understanding. He adapts speech with that fact foremost in mind- his job is not to provide a word-for-word account of what is said/written. That’s Google Translate’s niche :p. Finding equivalent or semi-equivalent idioms is part of that (and can often be a right pain in the arse).
For example, you’ve got the French expression “Ne vends pas la peau de l’ours avant de l’avoir tué” which I would translate as “don’t sell your chicks before they’re hatched” without a second thought even though a literal translation would be “don’t sell the bear’s pelt before you’ve killed it”. The sentiment is exactly the same, but we each have our idioms and images, each with their own history/origins.
Ultimately idioms are condensed “meaning packages”, where a minimum of words are used to convey a maximum of sense. Translation the words make no sense : it’s the meaning you’re really after.
That doesn’t stop it from being jarring and taking me out of the moment.
Sure it can be rationalised, but the point of the OP is that, despite the suspension of disbelief we’re all participating in, some things sometimes just make you go “Huh?” and that’s the one that does it for me.
That’s what bothered me about the Star Wars original trilogy…every planet was ONE type of climate. Ice, desert, forest, swamp. No temperate zones along with polar regions. While I don’t want them to be just like Earth, it seems odd that there’s no variation to be found.
A nerf is yak-like animal that was native to Alderaan, but found all over the galaxy.
Count Dracula: No, Abraham, that is a werewolf
Abraham Lincoln: A werewolf? Really? Are you sure?
[Guards start to take him away]
AL: [to the guards] No harm done! The man’s all right! This was for a werewolf! No problem! Calm down! Take it easy! I’m the President! I know where I’m going!
I know medieval history and out of date armor styles bothers me, either in the period the movie is set in on just comparing two people standing next to each other with 500 years of fashion between them.
I don’t care if it’s a fantasy movie, it’s like seeing a guy in a Zoot suit stand next to a dude in a toga.
Interstellar Aliens attack: Accepted
Shield that neutralizes military outside and inside Oahu: Accepted
Board-game references, like peg-bombs and I-9 coordinate battle scene: Accepted
USS Missouri brought out of mothballs, controlled by aging vets: Accepted
But I could not buy that the screw-up who robbed a store, found the gumption to “turn his life around” and suddenly became a US Navy officer.
X-Men: First Class - the young Prof. X and Magneto are training their debut class of mutant superheroes at Xavier’s Westchester school. Magneto displays his “tough love” method of educating by magnetically levitating himself and Banshee to the top of a nearby SETI-scope radiotower (or whatever it is) about a mile away from the school.
I can accept the premise that there is a sub-species of people have extraordinary superpowers. I can accept that one or two mutants can get away with independently training a whole team of superhuman mutants as field agents with minimal to no involvement from the U.S. government. I can specifically accept that one of these lucky individuals can emit a super-sonic scream that (somehow) enables him to fly. I can even accept that the U.S. in 1962 - when the film takes place - actually HAD enormous SETI radioscope towers.
But building an enormous, view-obscuring eyesore of a SETI radioscope smack in the middle of one of the richest counties in New York state?? No. The taxpaying citizens would ensure that zoning ordinances expressly forbade it from ever being built. That is just too hard to swallow.
Really? What page is that on? That’s a pretty embarrassing continuity error, given that she is one of the four major characters and that was the sixth book King had written about her!
OK, so both organisms get equal genetic vote regardless of relative biomass. Cool. I can deal with that.
But what about genetically distinct microbes living within and without Brundle and especially the fly? (Also aren’t mitochondrions genetically distinct, too?)
Shouldn’t they have become Brundlegerm, the 185-pound single-celled organism?
Actually that might be scarier, especially if he could divide via fission and consume via osmosis.
In Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Cate Blanchett, as QEI, is encouraging the troops to resist the expected landing of the Spanish army. She’s wearing a gorgeous set of fantasy armor.
This kicked me back and forth. My initial reaction was failure of suspension of disbelief: what is this stuff? It belongs in Lord of the Rings!
By my counter-reaction was, she’s a really rich Queen: maybe she had someone tart her up a set of completely fake…but damn pretty…armor, to inspire the troops. It could have been historically plausible.
I’m still weaving back and forth!
What was your reaction to that armor? (If you saw the movie. Hope you did, as it’s pretty good!)
Elizabeth’s armouris perfectly fine armour (if somewhat thin parade-style and not nearly as decorated as it could have been). There’s not really anything fantasy-like about it.
Shit like the 300 movies etc, those feature fantasy armour.
Like shooting fish in a barrel I know, but it really bothered me in Attack of the Clones when Owen said “This is my girlfriend, Beru.” Was that necessary? Couldn’t they just have been married? Why bother with that crap?
“This is my girlfriend, Beru. Well, more than my girlfriend, I mean, we’re living together and she’s helping with the moisture farm - I guess you could say we’re engaged to be engaged. I’ll probably marry her someday, but we want to take things slow…marriage is a big decision, you know? We met one night at Tasche Station, you know, not a lot of humans out here. Anyway, after that night we started seeing each other - dates for Pod racing, drinks in Mos Eisley, picnics at Beggar’s Canyon…”
