I’m on the road and I had a day off, kinda of. I was working on reports and decided I needed to get out of the hotel room.
My first choice was to go the the Planetarium in town, as I love Planetariums, however they were showing a family friendly video, about the ocean. Damn, I wanted to see stars.
So I went to the movies instead.
Like many people I have the ability to suspend my disbelief allowing me to enjoy fantasy, science fiction, rom-coms or even Hallmark movies.
Unless its an subject I know really well, then the plot machinations can be really annoying.
Case in point; the movie I choose to see on my day off: Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning.
Now, to be clear, I really wasn’t expecting too much from the movie. Interesting stunts, not a lot of plot, and what plot there was would be convoluted, and of course, more stunts. I got all of that and I also got two different scenes with two different nuclear bombs set to explode.
That’s where I got annoyed. In both cases they described very large nuclear bombs, bigger than any country has in its current inventory, but the cases they showed the bombs in were way too small and in a movie where people wear masks that are perfect recreations of other people and a computer program is capable of taking control of all the world’s nuclear weapons and a 63 year old lead actor is taking the kind of punishment that would kill anyone else, THIS is what took me out of the movie. Do some research, build a bigger box, change the dialogue, but I beg of you do something to, and I realize the irony of what I am about to type, make it more realistic.
Speed, a Sandra Bullock movie with nice guy, Keanu Reeves. Loved that movie until I got to the part where the bus jumps the break in the overpass. In my head I did the math and realized there was no way that could happen. Damn, I find myself going to the concession to get more popcorn because I’ve lost interest in what’s happening on the screen.
I had a similar problem with Gravity. I like George Clooney and, again, there’s Sandra Bullock. I really wanted to like Gravity, but the physics was so bad, I just couldn’t get into the movie. Every crisis that happened I would think to myself, “in real life that wouldn’t happen” and boom, I’m back at the concession ordering more popcorn.
It sounds like I’m picking on Sandra Bullock movies, but really I’m not. Well, maybe a l little bit.
It’s not like a reasonably accurate science movie can’t be made. The Martian is a great example. Except for the storm at the beginning, it’s pretty accurate. Really, the most annoying thing about the whole movie was the disco music the mission commander liked. (Being a rock/blues loving teen in teh disco era was traumatic.)
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Oddity was also very realistic. And pretty to watch, although that first 25 minutes with no dialogue might drive current, younger movie goers to watch Tik Tok on their phones in the theatre.
Rabbit Hole
Interesting side note, there is also no dialogue in the last 23 minutes of 2001. In fact the movie is 134 minutes long has an average of 35 words a minute. Compare this to Casino, by Martin Scorcese. That movie is 178 minutes and averages 380 words a minute. Yikes, too many words, the ear can only hear so much (Amadeus reference).
End Rabbit Hole
Anyway, I’m now back in the hotel room and its time to go back to work on my reports.
Totally unrelated Rabbit Hole
I type faster with my left hand and than with my right hand. Not sure why but words like “and”, “because” and “the” routinely come out “adn”, “becasue”, and “teh”. Weirdly, “with” comes out “wiht”, which is a faster right hand type.
These words are so common that one program I have has “learned” not to correct them because it sees them so often.
I’m reminded of this when I look at the screen and see a plethora of red squiggly lines, almost all of the under teh, wiht, adn.
End Rabbit hole.
And thus ends my rant about movies and bad science.
Next week, notes on planning our next trip and perhaps future stories about the god awful insects that come out at dusk and threaten to carry people away. Yes, I’m in Winnipeg.