General > General Technical Chat
SciFi movies and pathetic misconceptions of tech failing for the story line.
tggzzz:
--- Quote from: Brumby on April 02, 2023, 04:06:54 pm ---
--- Quote from: tggzzz on March 27, 2023, 02:27:16 pm ---Ah, what it is like to be young, and not to remember 1950/60s movies[1], nor TV programmes like Space 1999.
[1] exceptions: The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, 2001
--- End quote ---
I might also add War Of The Worlds (the 1953 version)
--- End quote ---
That was certainly a cut above the "reds/homosexuals/druggies are comin' t' get ya" movies. Nonetheless, living not far from where the martians landed, the movie felt too Amuricanised.
Rick Law:
--- Quote from: coppice on April 02, 2023, 02:24:28 pm ---
--- Quote from: Rick Law on April 02, 2023, 12:59:49 am ---re: Arrival
It is a good movie and I do enjoy it. I have a couple of issue with it but not enough to not like the movie. Mostly, I have trouble with their treatment of Time and the assumption that changing our perception of Time can give us the ability to experience events in the future.
There was a time when I spend a lot of time thinking about Time. While that time has passed, my thoughts on Time still consumes my free time; from time to time.
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Our way of thinking affecting our perception of time is the whole plot of Arrival (The Story Of Your Life). If you don't like that then the movie has nothing for you.
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Time travel per se is not the issue. It is how it was "used" in the movie.
In Interstellar, using Worm Hole to go back in time is consistent with the way we understand Worm Hole. Constructing and transiting the Worm Hole for now are fantasies. Accepting that two fantasies, no other Laws of Physics broken there for the time-travel part (unless there are new findings in the last few years that I am not aware of). How Cooper can interact with Murphy's room is of course fantasy.
In Arrival, it was the brain perceiving past and future events. That assumes future already happened so it can be perceived. That is the part that I needed a good amount of salt to accept. Further, learning a new language is a "software" change whereas time perception in our brain/mind is a function of both software and hardware (sub-processor level specialized groups of neurons). To have those affected by a "language sub-processor software enhancement" takes yet more salt to accept.
Either way, both are good and enjoyable movies. Both tried to be scientifically correct succeeding to some degree, but certainly both are good movies.
coppice:
--- Quote from: Rick Law on April 02, 2023, 09:39:37 pm ---
--- Quote from: coppice on April 02, 2023, 02:24:28 pm ---
--- Quote from: Rick Law on April 02, 2023, 12:59:49 am ---re: Arrival
It is a good movie and I do enjoy it. I have a couple of issue with it but not enough to not like the movie. Mostly, I have trouble with their treatment of Time and the assumption that changing our perception of Time can give us the ability to experience events in the future.
There was a time when I spend a lot of time thinking about Time. While that time has passed, my thoughts on Time still consumes my free time; from time to time.
--- End quote ---
Our way of thinking affecting our perception of time is the whole plot of Arrival (The Story Of Your Life). If you don't like that then the movie has nothing for you.
--- End quote ---
Time travel per se is not the issue. It is how it was "used" in the movie.
In Interstellar, using Worm Hole to go back in time is consistent with the way we understand Worm Hole. Constructing and transiting the Worm Hole for now are fantasies. Accepting that two fantasies, no other Laws of Physics broken there for the time-travel part (unless there are new findings in the last few years that I am not aware of). How Cooper can interact with Murphy's room is of course fantasy.
In Arrival, it was the brain perceiving past and future events. That assumes future already happened so it can be perceived. That is the part that I needed a good amount of salt to accept. Further, learning a new language is a "software" change whereas time perception in our brain/mind is a function of both software and hardware (sub-processor level specialized groups of neurons). To have those affected by a "language sub-processor software enhancement" takes yet more salt to accept.
Either way, both are good and enjoyable movies. Both tried to be scientifically correct succeeding to some degree, but certainly both are good movies.
--- End quote ---
I suspect Ted Chiang was riffing on differences between languages he actually speaks - Mandarin and English. English has a rich set of tenses that set things in very specific temporal contexts. When first learning Chinese (any dialect) an English speaker finds it bizarre that there are no real tenses, and tense has to be implied. Its a whole different relationship to time. He extended that, not to time travel, but to a perceiving a wide span of times at once, rather like we see large sections of the X, Y and Z axes not bit by bit, but concurrently.
tszaboo:
--- Quote from: David Hess on April 01, 2023, 01:57:31 am ---
--- Quote from: snarkysparky on March 27, 2023, 01:46:43 pm ---Firefly was a good show but they made no attempt to get spaceflight correct.
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Firefly is the *only* show or movie that I have ever seen showing how a ship properly descends into a lower orbit for entry into the atmosphere. I almost jumped up to cheer.
https://youtu.be/J3rX0T2XNxs
Forward takes you out, out takes you back, back takes you in, in takes you forward.
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Ha. Flip and burn maneuver. Despite the early sci-fi CGI it really looks like something a ship would do.
It's a strange disconnect for people. Everyone seems to know that you can go to mars every 26 months, and the route is 9 months long, but then you rarely see anything else orbital implemented. Like I was watching Red Planet the other day. They start the landing like 20 minutes early, end up kms from the original landing site. So the ship must be going 20km/h in orbit I guess.
tggzzz:
--- Quote from: David Hess on April 01, 2023, 01:57:31 am ---
--- Quote from: snarkysparky on March 27, 2023, 01:46:43 pm ---Firefly was a good show but they made no attempt to get spaceflight correct.
--- End quote ---
Firefly is the *only* show or movie that I have ever seen showing how a ship properly descends into a lower orbit for entry into the atmosphere. I almost jumped up to cheer.
https://youtu.be/J3rX0T2XNxs
Forward takes you out, out takes you back, back takes you in, in takes you forward.
--- End quote ---
Babylon 5 was good w.r.t. spaceflight dynamics. It completely avoided the "spitfires/mustang in space" syndrome. It also replaced "cowboys and indians in space" with "Roman empire / Japanese empire / Tolkien in space".
But then B5 was pioneering in many ways, including CGI, 5 year story arc, plot points being introduced many many episodes before they came to fruition, none of the "global reset" between episodes (think Star Dreck!), general literacy, being based around classic philosophical questions, and the way the creator (JMS) interacted with the fan base on usenet after each episode was transmitted.
Still worth rewatching after 30 years. Newbies should start with series 3, get hooked, then watch the earlier series to see how they got to that point.
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