Trippitaka's blog: "Pedantic Issues with Movies and TV"

For those that don't know, The Walking Dead is essentially the TV version of the Dawn of the Dead / 28 Days Later style zombie-fest.

I've started watching this recently and it opens with the guy coming out of a coma to find that the world has been overrun with zombies. My problem with it is, after he sees everything that goes on and after someone explains to him that the dead come back to life and try to eat the living, etc, etc, he doesn't say "So what we're dealing with here is zombies, right?" In fact, at no point has anyone even uttered the word 'zombie'. I find this quite bizarre. Have none of them ever watched a zombie movie? They're just the same.

Ok, I have a couple of issues with this movie...

*spoilers... as always*

Firstly, if this pyramid wakes up once every 100 years and they send their trainee predators down to hunt the aliens, the whole set-up requires the other predators to get there first to convince a bunch of people that they're Gods and that they must sacrifice themselves for the hunt. This way they can create some aliens for the predators to fight. Pretty much everything else is automated, but without some humans waiting in the sacrificial chamber, the game cannot even exist. Now, as luck would have it Lance Henriksson had his team down there and some of them got caught by the face-huggers, but had that not happened the hunters would have turned up to just find a bunch of eggs.

At the end of the movie, the sole survivor is left alone on this Antartic island and temperatures well below zero without even a coat, when all the predators fly off on the mother ship. The movie ends at this point. Are we supposed to assume that she survives by herself more than 1000 miles from the nearest civilisation?

Lastly, in the final final scene, we cut to a scene back on the mother ship when it turns out that the hunter predator had been impregnated and an alien bursts out of his chest, paving the way for AVP2. This is just incomprehensible to me. The predator would have known, and we would have known if he'd got caught be a face hugger and then spent the next several hours comatose.

Silly.

Ok, so this is just a terrible movie, but for some reason I accidentally just watched it again. My issues with this movie were so numerous that I felt I had to make a blog entry.

1) Whenever Superman flies around in space, his cape clearly blows in the wind. Following on from this, (so I'll keep it in the same point), the following impossiblities in the vacuum of space occur: i) Superman and Nuclear Man talk to each other in space. ii) Superman also talks to some Russian cosmonauts from outside their space station. iii) Superman's flight, punches, etc, all make clearly audible sounds. iv) Nuclear Man takes Lacy up into space (and Superman returns her to earth). She is apparently completely fine after having this experience with no space suit.

2) After Nuclear Man destroys a section of the Great Wall of China, Superman is able to put the whole thing back together, good as new, with blue beams from his eyes. Where on earth did this power of telekenesis / stone masonry come from all of a sudden? Superman has never been able to do this before.

3) Superman wanders into a global summit and declares to the world's heads of state that he intends to destroy all the nuclear weapons on the planet. Everyone cheers together and there is much rejoicing... Now, considering this is the 80s and the Americans and Russians are so distrustful of each other and considering disarmament talks have continually collapsed in this story, how is it that when Superman walks in, flashes his smile and gives a 30 second speech, the whole world is right behind it with absolutely no questions? Even if everyone suddenly feels compelled to trust the governments of the world because Superman says it is Ok, is everyone (including Superman) really so stupid as to not even consider the possibility that some tyrant / rebel, would not just start manufacturing his own nuclear weapons following this, with the intention of holding the world to ransom.. or worse?

4) I guess this is the case with most Superman movies, comics, etc, but the laws of physics are broken time and again when it comes to Superman's ability to move things around. I can accept that Superman is strong enough to move the Moon, but the surface of the Moon would not be able to withstand the immense pressure it would be put under without breaking apart. Superman would either burrow straight into the surface or just destroy it. On a similar note, there is no chance that Superman and Nuclear Man could hold up the Statue of Liberty horizontally by holding onto one end, without the thing just breaking... These things are absurd.

5) Talking of the Moon, if Superman did move it like he did, the effects back on earth would be catastrophic. Tides would be completely changed. There would most likely be resulting tsunamis. Possibly whole cities or countries may be swept away by changing sea levels.

6) Once again, Superman takes Lois out flying in her lacy dress. At no point does she even complain of the cold. They fly above snow capped mountains at one stage, going at quite a speed. She probably wouldn't even survive the cold and the lack of oxygen. On the subject of flying, there is also another breach of the laws of physics in that Superman would not be able to hold her hand and have her fly along side him. She would just dangle beneath him or be dragged behind him.

7) What are the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and the World Trade Centre doing in Metropolis?

You know what, there's more of this, but I can't bring myself to carry on any longer. It's no wonder the film is so hated, even if it weren't for the budget cuts and the 45 minutes that were cut from the original edit... Whoah, now I'm starting to get into movie-critique mode. Apologies.

In one scene in this movie, our hero must convince a religious cell mate in prison that he has just experienced 'stigmata'. In order to achieve this, he jumps back in time to when he was a child, skewers his hands on two metal spikes and having changed history, jumps back to the present. The previously skeptical cell-mate witnesses the scars appear on his hands and is convinced that he has just witnessed something miraculous.

If this actually happened then he would have changed history so that those scars would always have been there since that time he made them. When he arrived back in the present, as far as the cell mate would have been concerned, those scars always would have been there.

Someone hasn't thought this through.

The aliens, we are told, are brought back from Jupiter's moon Europa to earth by NASA. From what we know of Europa, it has a surface made of ice, which possibly covers a liquid ocean. This may or may not be water and may or may not be capable of sustaining life. The average temperature on Europa is some 170 degrees below zero.

So we are assuming that life can be sustained on Europa. That is fine. Considering the conditions under which this life must exist, though, are we to also believe that it could not only survive, but seemingly flourish on earth? On dry land? With the temperature so vastly higher?

There are many other reasons why the creatures may not survive, such as the entirely different environment and elements for one thing. The difference in gravity for another. Most of these things I can accept that it just happens to be Ok, but I cannot imagine that creatures designed to live in an ice-capped ocean at temperatures closer to absolute zero than our own, could possibly be versatile enough to appear completely at home in a Mexican jungle.

Otherwise, it's a good movie.

I have no real problem with this show because I'm enjoying it a lot, but something troubles me:

The characters often refer to "years" to describe people's ages and such. It is my judgement that their definition of a year matches our own in terms of its length. However, the problem is, we are led to believe that this story is taking place on another world... A world where a winter or a summer can last many years. The concept of this is fine. Obviously their planet has a much longer year than our own. The planet must also be on an uneven orbit because the seasons vary in length. My issue is, though, where does their original description of "year" actually come from, that doesn't bear any resemblance to the length of their actual year?

Perhaps someone who is familiar with the books will tell me there is a simple explanation for this.

I have only watched the first few episodes of this show, but on more than one occasion the "B.A.U Team" has been referred to. This would stand for the "Behavioural Analysis Unit Team" and it grates on me that they would feel the need to say "unit" and "team". Stupid.