katdad
09-06-2010, 12:12 PM
We of course know that a movie's fake anyway, there are sound men and grips and set movers all standing around just off camera, but we try to "forget" this and "suspend disbelief" so we can enjoy the fantasy of a movie.
But sometimes the technical errors get so bad that it breaks the spell for us. In the old War of the Worlds movie, I'm still just a kid but when they talk about "explosions on Mars" and the ships start landing riight away, I was thinking, "Wait -- Mars is millions of miles away even at its closest. Trip would take months not minutes." And I was complaining to myself a long time.
Sometimes I get irritated that the monster is invulnerable to gunfire. If he's supernatural, okay maybe, but if he's just a big beast, heck, an antitank missile could wipe out a T-Rex with ease but they just shrug off huge amounts of gunfire. Makes the fantasy way too thin. Let the beast be fast or sly and dodge gunfire, okay, but when on of 'em finally gets hit, he goes toast. That would increase the accuracy and make the plot more interesting for me. For example, in the Jurrasic Park sequel where the T-Rex gets loose in LA, okay maybe the local cops would be undergunned, but in an emergency it would take maybe 10 min to get a couple of Apache or Cobra copters in the air, carrying Hellfire missiles. Goodby T-Rex. Of course, Spielberg is way way anti-gun so he wouldn't allow that, but it then got silly, cops running around like in Blues Brothers without any defense. So maybe the Rex is near a hospital or clinic or whatever and they can't fire the missile but at least you the audience "know" it could be done, and that lets you believe the overall plot more. Am I making sense here?
Look at Predator. He wasn't invulnerable, he was just very fast, stealth imaged, and had personal armor. He could be hurt but it was just hard to do it. That made the conflict "honest" and allowed Arnie to win. If the beast had been, for example, demonic supernatural, they would have no chance and the drama would be less fun.
What about you whem seeing glaring scientific errors? Do you just brush 'em aside or do they lessen the plot fun?
But sometimes the technical errors get so bad that it breaks the spell for us. In the old War of the Worlds movie, I'm still just a kid but when they talk about "explosions on Mars" and the ships start landing riight away, I was thinking, "Wait -- Mars is millions of miles away even at its closest. Trip would take months not minutes." And I was complaining to myself a long time.
Sometimes I get irritated that the monster is invulnerable to gunfire. If he's supernatural, okay maybe, but if he's just a big beast, heck, an antitank missile could wipe out a T-Rex with ease but they just shrug off huge amounts of gunfire. Makes the fantasy way too thin. Let the beast be fast or sly and dodge gunfire, okay, but when on of 'em finally gets hit, he goes toast. That would increase the accuracy and make the plot more interesting for me. For example, in the Jurrasic Park sequel where the T-Rex gets loose in LA, okay maybe the local cops would be undergunned, but in an emergency it would take maybe 10 min to get a couple of Apache or Cobra copters in the air, carrying Hellfire missiles. Goodby T-Rex. Of course, Spielberg is way way anti-gun so he wouldn't allow that, but it then got silly, cops running around like in Blues Brothers without any defense. So maybe the Rex is near a hospital or clinic or whatever and they can't fire the missile but at least you the audience "know" it could be done, and that lets you believe the overall plot more. Am I making sense here?
Look at Predator. He wasn't invulnerable, he was just very fast, stealth imaged, and had personal armor. He could be hurt but it was just hard to do it. That made the conflict "honest" and allowed Arnie to win. If the beast had been, for example, demonic supernatural, they would have no chance and the drama would be less fun.
What about you whem seeing glaring scientific errors? Do you just brush 'em aside or do they lessen the plot fun?