logo Sign In

The Armchair Movie Critic thread

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Yes, this is self-depracating humor for all of us.  It's really not intended to target or offend anyone, but rather an opportunity for us all to consider how we view movies, and maybe take a step back.

I'll start.  And though I deliberately didn't start this in the General Star Wars thread, to illustrate my point I'll begin with the Holy Grail of originaltrilogy.com.  That's right, I'm going to critique The Empire Strikes Back:

1. It takes years to travel at the speed of light from one star system to another.  But in this movie, without light speeds, the Falcon can cover those distances (from Hoth to Anoat to Bespin) in months at most (if we stretch our timeframe, which really is never very clear, but I don't think even Hoth to Anoat was more than a day).

2. Which way is down on that asteroid.  It appears as if Leia, Han, and Chewie are standing on what turns out to be the tongue of the space slug.  Considering the slug's position, wouldn't that make gravity pull them sideways?

3. And how was gravity so strong?  Seems like earth gravity on this relatively small celestial body?

4. And if there were no atmosphere, their blood would boil and their vessels burst in response to the pressure difference.

5. What were the Rebels thinking during the Battle of Hoth?  Every single Rebel troop in that trench wasted his time and many their lives by shooting at those walkers.

6. Why did Rogue Squadron, Luke included, target the walkers that were clearly less of a threat?  They took down the generic walkers that weren't as close to the shield generator.  They should have focused on the closest first.

7. How did Fett get to Cloud City, call the Empire there, and all the wheeling and dealing get done before Han and Co. arrived?  He couldn't have possibly done so without knowing where they were going, and at the speeds they were headed, there was little he could have done to determine that for quite some time.

8. Doesn't the Falcon have any sensors, or even a rearview mirror, to know they were being tracked?

9. Doesn't the Star Destroyer have some kind of surface sensor to know there was something attached to them?

10. Asteroids are never that close in a real field.  If the field were that dense, it would actually be a dust cloud.

11. "No.  No.  That's not true.  That's impossible!  Nooooooo, noooo!"  Return of the Whiner.

12. Luke struck Vader's arm pretty hard with his lightsaber.  How come it did so little damage?  If a walker's armor can be so easily pierced by a lightsaber, I can't imagine Vader's armor is tougher.

13. Luke kept his fighter "on manual for a while."  Again, celestial distances are much larger than most realize.

14. It never is very clear that Luke flew sideways into the suction shaft.  I know I'm not the only one who thought that was the bottom of the pit rather than the side.

15. Why is Wedge still around?  That guy never does anything but survive.  He's now Rogue 3, when all he did in the last movie was run instead of getting behind Vader and his wingmen and defend Luke and Biggs.

16. The movie drags in the middle.  We get a lot of spiritual stuff and a lot of cheesy romance, while the plot takes a long time to get somewhere.

17. Luke's a moron.  He goes to Cloud City to rescue Han and Leia, but he forgets about it so he can simply satisfy his pride and face Vader in an obvious trap (as if Leia's warning weren't enough).

18. How do mynoks fly with those bat-like wings?  Last I checked, there's no air in space.

19. Why do the TIE fighters get whacked to death by asteroids, the smaller star destroyer loses its bridge from an asteroid, and yet the Executor flies through the field untouched?

20. Why do all the ships, regardless of their shape and the direction of the indeterminable light source, cast circular shadows during the asteroid flight?

 

I love this film.  It has flaws.  It's not perfect.  Who cares?  We can enjoy imperfect movies.  Someone else take a great movie, and find its flaws.  It's really not hard at all, and you might look at all movies a little differently.  We don't need to be film apologists, but at the same time we don't need to cast such a critical eye that we can't simply enjoy a bit of entertainment.

Author
Time

The New Thread Thread is silently weeping in the corner.

Having said that, I approve of anything not involving Batman or politics.

Author
Time

TV's Frink said:

The New Thread Thread is silently weeping in the corner.

Having said that, I approve of anything not involving Batman or politics.

hmmmmm....

That gives me an idea...

<span style=“font-weight: bold;”>The Most Handsomest Guy on OT.com</span>

Author
Time

I generally prefer armchairs to armless chairs but there are some I just can't stand.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Alright, I'll go ahead and do The Dark Knight, and I'll do it here because I don't want to cloud of the TDKR thread anymore.  TDK has incredibly high ratings from critics, so let's dissect its problems, some of which bug me more than Batman Begins.

1. Why would the bank hostages not simply rotate the grenade in their hands so they could hold the spoon and the grenade with a single hand?  This would give them a bit more flexibility...especially if they wanted to throw the grenade at any one of the robbers or at the bus as it departed!

2. Okay, reassembling shattered bullets by computer to visualize the fingerprint that would only end up on the shell...that's realistic.

3. What motive did any of Joker's thugs have to be loyal to him?  Sure, maybe a few crazies, sure maybe a few under threat of death, but the latter certainly don't form a loyal corp.  And especially why on earth did the Chechen's men turn on him?  What did Joker have to offer them?  He just burned all his money!

4. So Batman rescues Rachel from a 500 foot death...meanwhile, the Joker continues to interrogate and murder Bruce's guests while seeking Harvey as Batman never makes his way back up to the penthouse.  If nothing else, you'd think he'd at least say something like, "Well, better get back up there."

5. Flipping a semi...that was fun to see but...c'mon, really?

6. Converting every ordinary cell phone with their basic and limited microphones into sonars...I don't think so.  Maybe the first two if they were physically modified, but simply altering the software of every preexisting cell phone in Gotham...not gonna happen.

7. Batman crushes the scarecrows van without injuring himself at all. Or while holding Rachel he falls from several stories high without using his cape to glide and lands on the hood of a car (thankfully not on the top, as the vehicle was occupied, and not on the asphalt which was surely even harder), and doesn't get injured then either.

8. How could Harvey be so stupid as to believe that the Joker has no plans, that he's just a dog chasing cars?  He clearly has very elaborate plans, and those plans indeed led his his disfigurement and Rachel's death.

9. How could Harvey then leave Joker's fate to the determination of a coin?

10. How could the Joker smuggle explosives in so many places without ever being noticed?  For instance, it would take weeks to load up a hospital with so many bombs, and the odds of not one being discovered during that time is simply unbelievable.

11. After years of devotion and love, Rachel throws her feelings for Bruce out the window because Harvey, not Bruce, chose to mislead the public.

12. How did Wayne Tower change shape so much, even lowering where the sign was posted, all in the brief interval between the films?

13. Everyone in the police station gets blown up by the cellphone-in-the-stomach bomb....except the Joker and (the guy he held the glass to, as we see later).

14. Who were the six friends that Joker killed?  It seems that every cop that died by the Joker's hand did not die by knife, at least not as we see on film, in spite of Joker's bragging.

15. Gordon said six dead, two of them cops...let's count: Maroni, his chauffer, and his door-getter, plus Wuertz and Harvey.  That's five, including one cop.  I thought Ramirez lived to fight another day.

16. The convoy stops for nothing.  Of course, that means they can't be smart enough to take a safer road when clearly a burning firetruck was intended to divert them to the lower roads.

17. Batman won't kill anyone, but that doesn't stop him from shooting parked cars from such a distance that he doesn't know if they are occupied.  Thankfully he stopped before getting to the car with the kiddos.

18. Ric Olie must have been Gordon's co-driver in the armored truck.  "Is that a bazooka?...Okay, that's not good....Lower fifth? We'll be sitting ducks."  Thanks, Captain Obvious.

19. It sure would have been smart if Batman took a radio into that building at the end...he could have radioed to the police that the clowns were really the hostages and saved a lot of work and injuries...including a real death of one of the stuntmen during the filming of that scene!

20. Joker clearly wanted chaos, but to this day I'm still confused by his motives.  He gets the mob to hire him for massive amounts of money and captures and burns Lao on top of his pile of cash for...what?  He changes his mind on what to do with Batman, whether he should reveal himself or remain hidden or just be killed.  For a man who simply wants to see the world burn, even the means to that end seem to be shifting and uncertain.

21. While Joker's little anecdotes of his scars are fun, his lectures about being ahead of the curve or about schemers are kinda long and boring and seem out of character to me.

22. Ledger's acting was fun the first few times, but I have to be honest, after multiple viewings, I'm just not that impressed anymore.

Call me a heretic.  I still love the movie, but it has flaws.  Oh well.  Not going to let that ruin my experience ;)

Author
Time

TV's Frink said:

I approve of anything not involving Batman or politics.
:-(

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Sorry to offend the Off Topic New Thread Approval Security Guard, but this was a necessary evil.  It had to be done to illustrate my point.  Maybe I should critique a few other wonderful films, but we'll get to that another day.  It's pretty time consuming to recollect an entire movie and try to come up with so many points.

EDIT: I do intend to copy my Batman Begins post in the other thread and move it here, perhaps with a little updating.  I may even move xhonzi's though I fear I may already be offending him by making my point this way.  It still is a valuable lesson in the importance of paying attention to the details in films.

Author
Time

So while I may be alone, I think this thread is lots of fun and should be used more.  So I'm going to consolidate it a bit by including my Batman Begins review (with some corrections) and xhonzi's The Dark Knight Rises review here.  I also wanted to do a review of A New Hope and The Hobbit.  We'll see how soon that happends, but I should get it done soon.  Anyway, here are the other two reviews along with a bump, hoping some others will join in nitpicking enjoyable films.

Author
Time

Since Batman Begins is my favorite or close second in the series (I'd have to see how TDKR holds up to repeated viewings) and is one of my favorite movies of all time, you'll understand that what I am about to say is not intended to critique the film itself, but rather to provide an analogy to those who are reading too much into TDKR.  It seems that a light is held up to BB while the others are judged by some bizarre qualities that affect enjoyment, rather than simply sitting down and letting the film please them.

Problems with Batman Begins:

1. Batman should have experienced a "Darth Maul ending" as he clung to his grappling hook attached to the train and collided with several objects including sheet metal.

2. The microwave emitter should have caused everyone to cook over whom it passed on the train, as humans are largely made of water.

3. The pattern of the microwave emitter is inconsistent, as it trashed the Narrows immediately, but seemed to only affect the pipes over which it passed on the train.

4. Check out the water pressure at a fire hydrant.  That's from the city water supply.  How could the Arkham inmates poor water into a city water pipe that should be under extreme pressure?

5. (Credits to GafferTape, since I'd forgotten to mention such an obvious problem and instead included one that wasn't an error) "The whole first scene where Bruce declares his intentions not to kill.  He tells the League of Shadows to stuff it.  He will not kill people.  Then he blows the whole place up, most likely killing everybody except for Ducard.  That prisoner didn't seem in any shape to escape the blast.  I mean, he was tied up, so he probably died anyway.  So instead of killing one man because it's morally wrong, he ends up killing everybody except one man, and it's not even the man he was trying to stop from killing!

In your scene where you're trying to express the thematic importance of not killing people, it really hurts to punctuate that point with a big explosion showing bodies flailing through the air.  At least with the Batmobile and train sequences, while it's implausible no one was killed, it's not impossible.  In this sequence, it's like they went out of their way to show as many people die as possible."

6. I thought Batman didn't kill anyone.  As Alfred said, "It's a miracle no one was killed," and he said that for the audience's wellbeing, after Batman crushed all those cop cars.

7. Batman/Gordon also should have at least injured, if not killed, dozens more with their destruction of the elevated rail and the explosion from the microwave emitter.  Was there really no one in that underground garage?

8. Now that I'm saying it, Batman does go on with wanton destruction whenever it serves his purpose in all three films, and somehow no one gets injured as he blows up cars or rides his bike through a mall.  I know this is getting away from BB, so this will be my one exception.

9. How could they not find the Batmobile?  It's massive and they had a helicopter.  Even if they lost it at the last moment, all they had to do was follow where Batman's path led until they got to a dirt road with massive tire tracks leading back to a cave beneath Wayne Manor.  I think a pretty undevoted police investigation would still have found what they were looking for.

10. I can't help but wonder how Bruce got the black Batmobile from Wayne Enterprises to Wayne Manor.  Did he simply drive at night, make no wide turns, follow the speed limit, and always use his turn signal to attract no attention?

11. How did the Batmobile avoid crashing through the tiled roof of that one building.

12. That puny little rocket might garner some speed, but it couldn't lead to a rampless jump without angling downwards and putting out far more thrust and flame.

13. Economics are never merely citywide.  Gotham alone could not be trapped in a depression while the rest of the country (or world) is doing fine, especially with today's economics.

14. Ra's al-Ghul's motives were pretty convoluted.  He created a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Gotham's corrupt.  So we try to destroy it economically and thus make it more corrupt.  But those darn Waynes died due to the actions of a gunman (who was motivated by the League's economic actions, but of course it's not al-Ghul's fault at all, it's Thomas's for not taking action).  This makes the city a better place.  We have to make it corrupt again so we can destroy.  The League was able to infiltrate it and make it corrupt again.  It sounds like much of its evil is due to the League's own actions, and that the League considers itself plenty evil to blend in so well among them.

15. Batman released a couple of inmates from Arkham with his little pyrotechnics.  That was silly.

16. Oh, I almost forgot, how did he manage to park the Batmobile close to Arkham without anyone noticing?

17. How did the toxic water vapor not affect thousands of other Gotham residents as the sewer tops popped off and released the gas into the air?  You even see several people by it.

18. How could the police not tie so many crimes to Falcone?  Everyone knew that he ran things, but somehow they couldn't make any legal connections.

19. How stupid is it to give that little blond boy your cool little Spy Kids tool to show all his schoolmates?  If Batman was smart enough to keep his own fingerprints off it, I suspect that the tool could still be traceable to its point of origin through a serial number or manufacturer.  If it wasn't a Wayne Enterprises toy, its purchase could sitll likely be tracked.

20. How did the nearly paralyzed, only half-conscious Batman get down from that roof when affected by the toxin so deeply?  Did Alfred climb up there to get him?  Did he manage to gain his wits just enough to get down without killing himself, though he clearly seemed almost completely incapacitated when climbing up there and calling Alfred?  It would have taken a few more minutes for him to arrive, and by that point Bruce would be further affected.

21. How could a man, clinging to a snowy cliff by nothing more than his sweet gauntlets, manage to curl a 200+ lb, 6'4" man in armor in order to save him?  Even with all his training, I find it hard to believe anyone could be that strong.

Author
Time

 

Xhonzi's review of The Dark Knight Rises.  Since his was made in a more serious light than mine, I include a link to his original post, and if you read on, you can read some potential rebuttals.

xhonzi said:

I didn’t hate this movie, but I certainly am having a hard time saying I liked it.

It’s a lot like Prometheus where anything good is pulled down by all of the bad... but in this case I don’t think the good is as good.

A lot of it came down to the accumulation of little things which all added up to a big negative:

1. The plane hijacking was cool.  But the CIA guy was really dumb and incompetent to be taken in that way.  Also, whoever investigated the crash...  The wings and tail were pulled off but the plane didn’t crash for another couple of miles?  And a guy (still in a body bag?  I don’t remember) whose bloodtype (some of it, anyways) matches a wanted physicis must be the physicist in a plane crash that doesn’t look accidental and probably wasnt’?  And no one looks into this?

2. How cowardly/stupid the physicist must have been to willingly go along with the plot, knowing that they would kill him.  If he was trying to preserve his own life, he only deferred his execution.  Way to go bud, not only do you die but your actions ensure that you take 8 million of your closest friends with you.

3. Let’s talk about the reactor/bomb some more.  So, without the core, it will become unstable to the point that it will explode.  I’m not a nuclear physicist (but I did stay in a Holiday express last night) but wouldn’t an instability make it more and more likely everyday that it will go off, but with no degree of certainty when that will be?  Isn’t that the definition of instability?  Is it like a non-licensed electrician putting some faulty wiring in my house that will, without a doubt, someday, given enough time, burn my house down... and then putting a digital countdown timer to the exact second that it will light up?  I think a 5 month calculation is fine, but I think you would have a margin of error of no less than a month.  Certainly not down to the second.  And when you’re getting close to that margin, I think driving it around on a truck would probably be the last thing you’d want to do with it.  Strike that... the last thing you’d want to do is detonate an explosive right next to said truck, causing it to violently vere into the railing and drop 30 feet to the street below... with the police commissioner in the trunk with it.

4. Did Talia still have the clicker?  Did Batman tape the jammer to the bomb when he flew off with it?  I hope against the former, but in its event I hope in favor of the latter.

5. What is Talia’s motivation exactly?  She is trying to fulfill her father’s mission or not?  Is Gotham still the festering cesspool that concerned the league of shadows?  Didn’t Batman/Dent/Gordon clean it up almost completely?  Did Talia want revenge on her father’s killer?  She said that was just a bonus.  Was she concerned about the organized crime and corrupt cops?  Or capitalism run wild?

6. I thought Bane was really interesting and scary until Talia appeared holding his leash.  This turned him into a petty thug in my mind.

7. How did the Daggett/Bane/Talia thing work anyways.  Before the ending, I thought Daggett hired Bane because he was a skilled mercenary, didn’t realize he bit off more than he could chew... and actually thought that Bane would just disappear once the job was done.  However Bane saw an opportunity and didn’t want to let it go, so he took advantage of it.  Once we learn that Bane and Talia have been working together all along... where does Daggett come in?  Did Talia manipulate Daggett to do what he did?  How did she put Bane in contact with Daggett?  Outwardly Talia and Daggett appear to be bitter rivals. Was this simply a show?

8. If Talia/Bane knew the bomb was going to go off, and this was allegedly what they wanted all along, why give Batman, the cops the chance to stop it?  Just click the Button as soon as Batman shows up/the cops riot and make sure your 5 month siege ends with an earth-shattering-kaboom even if it is 10 hours premature.

9. Batman hid “The Bat” on top of a skyscraper with a camo net for six months?

10. How did the occupation work, exactly?  Did people still go to work?  I don’t think there are any farms in Gotham, so food supplies on the island would be gone within 2-3 days.  I saw trucks taking GD Twinkies and pop-tarts to a convenience store... how could a couple hundred thugs manage the herculean effort of feeding 8 million Gothamites everyday.  I didn’t see a lot of people in the streets... how were people getting food?  How could a single organization provide for that many shut ins?  This is something that takes a million people to do, each pursuing their own employment, all day everyday to do, and that’s when people come into their shops with money and trucks bring whatever the people want to buy?

11. John Blake figured Bruce was Batman because he was faking being happy?  I think that’s a bridge too far.  I think you could fix this with. Blake: All of the orphans idolized you.  The Billionaire orphan!  We’d come up with elaborate fantasies about you.  And what could be better than a billionaire orphan playboy, than a billionaire orphan playboy who was also the Batman?  It was ridiculous to be sure, but then it started to make sense.  Bruce Wayne came to Gotham the same time Batman did.  Batman went into hiding the same time Bruce Wayne became a recluse.  Of course, I wasn’t totally sure, until you let me in today.

12. “Did you come back to die with your city?” “No!  I came back... to stop... you!”  Really?

13. I know Batman hates guns.  But how many innocent lives is he willing to spend to keep this ideal?  He fights Bane mano-e-mano and almost loses (twice!) when a well placed bullet to the head could have ended things pretty quickly.  8 million lives are on the line, but Batman still refuses to use a gun.  [JohnAdams]Incredible.[/JohnAdams]  Henry Jones, Jr. could have ended that fight a lot sooner and wouldn’t have put so many innocent lives on the line.

14. Blake, a trained cop, uses his gun once, looks at it in disgust and then throws it away?  I know killing a perp can be very difficult for the most seasoned officers to cope with... but this seemed like a cheap moment to try to make Blake seem like the perfect Batman replacement.

15. I have to agree with Warb- Batman seems to trust Selina much more than he should/would.  She was directly responsible, several times over, for what was going on.  Once she and Batman established some kind of working relationship, she betrayed him and caused the people of Gotham to suffer for 5 months.  If she had a change of heart, she should have had to work much harder to earn Batman's trust back.  She should have been trying to convince him... not he her.

16. Bruce is still broken up about Rachel 8 years later?  Truth be told, I think Harvey in TDK acts a little too over the top at her passing.  Maybe my wife of 10 years, but not a girl I had been dating long enough to be quasi-engaged.  Rachel must be some girl that both Harvey and Bruce can't live without her.

17. But then he sleeps with Talia.

18. Why did Bane totally wreck Batman when they first fight, but Batman can easily take him on after a couple months of recovering from a broken back?  Was he in better fighting shape after being in the jail.

19. Two minutes until a nuke goes off in downtown Gotham, but Batman stops to makeout with Catwoman, and then give a cryptic hint to Gordon about his real identity (does he think he's the Riddler?).  Really?  Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!

20. Gordon says "Bruce wayne?!?" to make sure that no one in the audience is thinking, "What is that Bat-Man talking about?!?" after the clue and the flashback.  Maybe test audiences still didn't know Bruce's secret identity until they added this clever bit of exposition in.

21. Not that Bruce seemed very concerned about hiding his secret identity in this movie.  Again, Bruce and Batman return to the scene on the same day.  He shaves the beard and loses the cane (wouldn't these have been good disguises) and expects no one (except John Blake, whose expertly honed orphan skills can't be fooled!) to figure out he's Batman?

22. Wayne Manor was rebuilt and already looked 100 years old and somehow they got the exact same Bed?  Hmm... smells more like they just returned to location.

23. I agree with Gaffer that the OWS/99% thing was laid on too thick.  Dude, I got it.

24. For the first time, the Batman growl-voice annoyed me.  Perhaps everything else above had suspended my suspension of disbelief...  Perhaps I have heard too many spoofs of the voice... that Bale's voice sounded a lot like in this movie.

25. Batman's first night back in Gotham- he has about 20 hours to stop the bomb from killing everyone- and he spends the entire night rigging skyscraper windows and the bridge supports to burn a Bat signal when he pushes a button?  Was that really the best use of his time?  How many people (besides Bane) even saw them?  I heard the Bale voice spoof growling- "Look!  I... spent all night... rigging those fires... because fires are cool... bats are cool... bats on fire are super cool... except that they're hot... because they're on... fire."

26. I thought the ending was a total cheat.  I am so sick of fake deaths in films, and superhero films are some of the worst.  I thought Nolan might have been above it.  Guess not.

27. Why was this even a Batman movie?  He's hardly in it.  It's more about Bane and John Blake.  Why not just make that movie.  It's almost like Nolan made a Batman movie under duress.  He was contractually obligated to put Batman in at least 15% of the movie, so he did... but that didn't stop him from making 3 or 4 other characters be more interesting and have more screen time.

28.  WaitforthetwisthereitcomesJohnBlake'sfullnameiswaitforitwaitforitwaitforROBINJohnBlake
holycarpyoudidn'tseethatonecomingisn'tthatawesomewetotallyfooledyouandwe'reawesome
becausehisfirstnameisfrinkinROBINhowawesomeisthatitissoawesomeIbetyoycan'tbelievehowawesomeitis

And this is probably the final kicker for me:  Bruce was Batman for how long before the end of TDK?  2 years?  Can it be that long?  Could it be as short as a couple of months?  And then he goes into 8 years of retirement.  He reappears for a couple of nights and then disappears for 5 months... and is back for one more day before he's "dead" again.   There’s no room for any more Batman stories.  No other villains.  Nothing.  I understand that Nolan and company wanted to tell the end of the Batman story

 

 

xhonzi said:

Oh, I forgot one more- 29. When Selina corners Daggett and asks for the Clean Slate I was thinking, Gosh, I sure hope they tell me what the clean slate is in a totally natural, non-groan-inducing-expository way.  And man, did it deliver!

 

 

Author
Time

darth_ender said:

1. It takes years to travel at the speed of light from one star system to another.  But in this movie, without light speeds, the Falcon can cover those distances (from Hoth to Anoat to Bespin) in months at most (if we stretch our timeframe, which really is never very clear, but I don't think even Hoth to Anoat was more than a day).

We can make it even more bearable by remembering that, traveling at high enough speeds (and gosh, what isn't that Falcon capable of) without exceeding c, Han & Co would experience time dilation. A few days pass, Vader has plenty of time to do whatever he wants, then arrive at Cloud City before Han.

2. Which way is down on that asteroid.  It appears as if Leia, Han, and Chewie are standing on what turns out to be the tongue of the space slug.  Considering the slug's position, wouldn't that make gravity pull them sideways?

You're assuming that the tunnel has no bends. If Han was able to land the Falcon, it's pretty safe to assume that the tunnel has bent somehow making down...down.

3. And how was gravity so strong?  Seems like earth gravity on this relatively small celestial body?

It's a very big, very dense rock.

4. And if there were no atmosphere, their blood would boil and their vessels burst in response to the pressure difference.

Given its size & density, some atmosphere in the deeper caves isn't entirely out of the question. Knowing, as we do, that it was really the inside of a creature, it's even more plausible.

5. What were the Rebels thinking during the Battle of Hoth?  Every single Rebel troop in that trench wasted his time and many their lives by shooting at those walkers.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Maybe someone would find a weak point.

6. Why did Rogue Squadron, Luke included, target the walkers that were clearly less of a threat?  They took down the generic walkers that weren't as close to the shield generator.  They should have focused on the closest first.

Knowing that evac was inevitable, but wanting to buy time, they went for those closest to the inhabited tunnels.

7. How did Fett get to Cloud City, call the Empire there, and all the wheeling and dealing get done before Han and Co. arrived?  He couldn't have possibly done so without knowing where they were going, and at the speeds they were headed, there was little he could have done to determine that for quite some time.

Given that they're moving at sublight speeds, one can limit the range of your search (just as Han did). Once you have a chosen system, the only sensible strategy is to point straight at your destination. Once the Falcon seemed set on a course, it was pretty easy to figure out.

8. Doesn't the Falcon have any sensors, or even a rearview mirror, to know they were being tracked?

One assumes so, but if those worked on Fett, he wouldn't be a very effective bounty hunter.

9. Doesn't the Star Destroyer have some kind of surface sensor to know there was something attached to them?

No? They docked lightly, so no one noticed the bump, and they stayed out of anyone's scopes.

10. Asteroids are never that close in a real field.  If the field were that dense, it would actually be a dust cloud.

Hey, you don't know how it was formed.

11. "No.  No.  That's not true.  That's impossible!  Nooooooo, noooo!"  Return of the Whiner.

Yes. It's one of Luke's flaws, which make him human.

12. Luke struck Vader's arm pretty hard with his lightsaber.  How come it did so little damage?  If a walker's armor can be so easily pierced by a lightsaber, I can't imagine Vader's armor is tougher.

Vader used the Force to stop him from getting farther.

13. Luke kept his fighter "on manual for a while."  Again, celestial distances are much larger than most realize.

I won't speculate as to the distance between Hoth & Dagobah, but perhaps he was keeping it on manual for the part of the journey that wasn't hyperspace.

14. It never is very clear that Luke flew sideways into the suction shaft.  I know I'm not the only one who thought that was the bottom of the pit rather than the side.

Yeah, that is just poorly communicated to the audience. It's not important to the story, but I agree that it takes too much effort to work out.

15. Why is Wedge still around?  That guy never does anything but survive.  He's now Rogue 3, when all he did in the last movie was run instead of getting behind Vader and his wingmen and defend Luke and Biggs.

If you're asking why they didn't kick him out, it's the Rebellion. They can't afford to. If you're saying he's a bad pilot, I'd say his presence and later performance demonstrate otherwise.

16. The movie drags in the middle.  We get a lot of spiritual stuff and a lot of cheesy romance, while the plot takes a long time to get somewhere.

You're right, it should be faster, more intense.

17. Luke's a moron.  He goes to Cloud City to rescue Han and Leia, but he forgets about it so he can simply satisfy his pride and face Vader in an obvious trap (as if Leia's warning weren't enough).

Luke has been living in a swamp with a gremlin and a robot, fighting ghosts. His head ain't quite in the right place. Plus, if Vader is the source of all their troubles, surely defeating Vader would help quite a bit.

18. How do mynoks fly with those bat-like wings?  Last I checked, there's no air in space.

They're in the space slug, inside a deep cave on a big, dense asteroid. There's atmosphere.

19. Why do the TIE fighters get whacked to death by asteroids, the smaller star destroyer loses its bridge from an asteroid, and yet the Executor flies through the field untouched?

It has deflector shields. The Executor has better shields than the smaller destroyer.

20. Why do all the ships, regardless of their shape and the direction of the indeterminable light source, cast circular shadows during the asteroid flight?

Yeah, George should rerelease the film with improved shadows.

ROTJ Storyboard Reconstruction Project

Author
Time
 (Edited)

darth_ender said:

Yes, this is self-depracating humor for all of us.  It's really not intended to target or offend anyone, but rather an opportunity for us all to consider how we view movies, and maybe take a step back.

I'll start.  And though I deliberately didn't start this in the General Star Wars thread, to illustrate my point I'll begin with the Holy Grail of originaltrilogy.com.  That's right, I'm going to critique The Empire Strikes Back:

1. It takes years to travel at the speed of light from one star system to another.  But in this movie, without light speeds, the Falcon can cover those distances (from Hoth to Anoat to Bespin) in months at most (if we stretch our timeframe, which really is never very clear, but I don't think even Hoth to Anoat was more than a day).

2. Which way is down on that asteroid.  It appears as if Leia, Han, and Chewie are standing on what turns out to be the tongue of the space slug.  Considering the slug's position, wouldn't that make gravity pull them sideways?

3. And how was gravity so strong?  Seems like earth gravity on this relatively small celestial body?

4. And if there were no atmosphere, their blood would boil and their vessels burst in response to the pressure difference.

5. What were the Rebels thinking during the Battle of Hoth?  Every single Rebel troop in that trench wasted his time and many their lives by shooting at those walkers.

6. Why did Rogue Squadron, Luke included, target the walkers that were clearly less of a threat?  They took down the generic walkers that weren't as close to the shield generator.  They should have focused on the closest first.

7. How did Fett get to Cloud City, call the Empire there, and all the wheeling and dealing get done before Han and Co. arrived?  He couldn't have possibly done so without knowing where they were going, and at the speeds they were headed, there was little he could have done to determine that for quite some time.

8. Doesn't the Falcon have any sensors, or even a rearview mirror, to know they were being tracked?

9. Doesn't the Star Destroyer have some kind of surface sensor to know there was something attached to them?

10. Asteroids are never that close in a real field.  If the field were that dense, it would actually be a dust cloud.

11. "No.  No.  That's not true.  That's impossible!  Nooooooo, noooo!"  Return of the Whiner.

12. Luke struck Vader's arm pretty hard with his lightsaber.  How come it did so little damage?  If a walker's armor can be so easily pierced by a lightsaber, I can't imagine Vader's armor is tougher.

13. Luke kept his fighter "on manual for a while."  Again, celestial distances are much larger than most realize.

14. It never is very clear that Luke flew sideways into the suction shaft.  I know I'm not the only one who thought that was the bottom of the pit rather than the side.

15. Why is Wedge still around?  That guy never does anything but survive.  He's now Rogue 3, when all he did in the last movie was run instead of getting behind Vader and his wingmen and defend Luke and Biggs.

16. The movie drags in the middle.  We get a lot of spiritual stuff and a lot of cheesy romance, while the plot takes a long time to get somewhere.

17. Luke's a moron.  He goes to Cloud City to rescue Han and Leia, but he forgets about it so he can simply satisfy his pride and face Vader in an obvious trap (as if Leia's warning weren't enough).

18. How do mynoks fly with those bat-like wings?  Last I checked, there's no air in space.

19. Why do the TIE fighters get whacked to death by asteroids, the smaller star destroyer loses its bridge from an asteroid, and yet the Executor flies through the field untouched?

20. Why do all the ships, regardless of their shape and the direction of the indeterminable light source, cast circular shadows during the asteroid flight?

 

 

*kicks darth_ender out of the forum*   

Author
Time

darth_ender said:

18. How could the police not tie so many crimes to Falcone?  Everyone knew that he ran things, but somehow they couldn't make any legal connections.

for the same reasons that they couldn't get Al Capone for so long. 

Author
Time

Ha ha! Don't forget my purpose in creating this thread. It was not to really destroy these movies. My criteria for critiquing them was that I had to thoroughly enjoy them. I created it when people were bashing The Dark Knight Rises for things I felt were largely insignificant. I mean, sure, there were plot holes. But if a film is enjoyable, it easily overcomes small plot holes in my opinion.

Nice rebuttals, timdiggerm, though a lot of them are speculation and a few don't quite satisfy the nitpicker in me. But really, many of them are quite good, and I especially liked the reasoning for why they didn't take down walkers like General Veers' (which has always bugged me, but I can now find more acceptable) :) I could probably try to counter some of them, but then that probably defeats the intended humorous nature of the thread.

Author
Time

Star Wars

1. C-3PO knew about the princess, as he said there'd be no escape for her. Then he knows nothing more than that she might have been a passenger on his last voyage. He clearly wasn't intending to lie. So why the lapse?

2. It takes an incredible amount of energy to blow up a planet. It could be rendered uninhabitable by a powerful weapon, but to cause such a massive explosion that would hurl its own matter at such fast speeds would require the same amount of energy as our sun produces in 8,000 years! But this power was held inside of a space station the size of a small moon. Source: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Beam/Alderaan.html

3. What is up with stupid Rebel tactics in fighting the Death Star? For instance, when most of the TIE fighers had retreated and only Vader's squadron was fighting the Rebels, why didn't other Rebels provide backup and get behind Vader and his compadres?

4. Or why didn't they approach the trench closer to the reactor shaft so they didn't have to get stuck with pursuing fighters for so long and actually have room to maneuver?

5. Or even in the trench, why didn't they have multiple fighter groups in the trench simultaneously? Luke, Biggs, and Wedge could have followed Red Leader and his wingmen at a greater distance in case Vader tried to drop behind them. And if Vader tried to get behind Luke and his wingmen, they could peel out. If he pursued them, it would buy more time for Red Leader. If he stuck with Red Leader, once Vader got in front they need only drop in behind him.

6. If it wasn't foolish enough during all previous trench runs, when it was most critical Wedge simply fled when he could have saved Biggs and provided more help to Luke. What a coward!

7. If Ben Kenobi is such a powerful Force user, why did he not telekinetically flip the switch to shut down the tractor beam power instead of climbing out over a bottomless pit?

8. For that matter, since size matters not, why didn't Ben simply fling the Death Star away when it grabbed the Falcon in its tractor beam?

9. Anyone think to install security cameras on the Death Star? Could have helped them locate some escapees.

10. So shy does the Death Star simply pop like a firecracker? We know it houses a powerful reactor, plus it was comprised of its own dense materials. It appeared not to be suffering any kind of cataclysmic failure, and the lights didn't even flicker for Tarkin, but suddenly it simply *popped* into glowing little fragments. You'd think it would have more debris and would blow up more violently than even Alderaan.

11. Does Leia ever redo her hair and makeup while prisoner on the Death Star? She looks exactly the same as when she was first captured, despite numerous apparent torture sessions as well.

12. Why would the Death Star have such a poorly designed tractor beam station? I mean, we all hate those stupid Christmas light strings that go completely dead when a single bulb burns out. You mean to tell me they set up the entire station's tractor beams in the same manner?! You'd think they'd have redundant systems, not codependent.

13. I know everyone asks this question, but what kind of speciesists wouldn't give Chewie a medal?

14. Heck, despite Wedge's cowardice, why didn't he get a medal? He fought through most of the battle. Han only showed up at the last second with minimal threat to himself, shot one fighter (not even the obvious one that really would have made a difference), and he gota a medal.

15. Why was Threepio complaining that his joints almost frozen after walking a mere 100 yards in the sand? He walked much further after that apparently.

16. Wouldn't the Star Destroyer Devastator have at least captured in their tractor, if not flat out shot, any escape pods from the Tantive IV? There could be something valuable in there, like, I dunno, maybe Death Star plans. Hopefully that gunner got a Vader choke.

17. Why was Leia cool with leading the Empire back to the Rebel base, since she was so confident that the Falcon had a homing beacon? As pointed out by How it Should Have Ended, you'd think she'd be smart enough to trasmit the plans somewhere else. If the Rebellion was so farspread and well organized, you'd think they'd have spies at multiple drop points.

18. Does Luke really need to whine so much? "But I was going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters. Waaaaa."

19. "STOP THAT SHIP! BLAST HIM!!!" There's no better way to grant your quarry time for an escape than by shouting your intentions so loud that he could hear instead of giving silent orders before he even knows you're coming.

20. Interesting how the ships seem to be subject to the physics of atmospheric flight even though they're in space. For instance, there appears to be a limit to their speed. They turn like they have flaps guiding their motion. They change direction in spite of only having rear-facing engines. What happened to interia?

21. How do eight separate energy beams pause in the middle of space so all the others can catch up, coalesce, and change direction so they all shoot straight instead of at their initial angles? You and your friends try and replicate that with eight laser pointers.

22. How does a man like Vader every use the potty?

23. Ever since I was a child (until they obviously changed it for the SEs), why was everything red during that dianoga eye shot?

24. I love how they take an untested pilot (Luke) and put him in one of their best fighters. I mean, surely they could have either found another pilot. Either through some amazing coincidence

25. (I'll have to edit this later at a different computer where I can include pictures, as I can't access the advanced editor features on this one; I'd like to include pics). Who is that guy who says, "That's impossible, even for a computer," in Wedge's voice? He sure doesn't look like Wedge. And why don't we ever see him again? Or for that matter, why don't we see any of those pilots (except Gold Leader) again? Heck, even when the X-wings are taking off, we only see guys with plain white helmets with blue Rebel insignias, but we never see those guys again, as everyone in the actual battle has fancy helmet designs. Of course supposedly there were initially 30 ships, and really we only see like 15 faces, but still, why so little connection between the hangar and the battle?

26. Okay, we're talking about a massive space station, right? That likely means it stations a lot of ships there, right? Leia caught on pretty quick when she noticed they only sent four TIEs after the Falcon that their escape was too easy. But you'd think that once the Battle of Yavin commenced, especially after they realized the dangerous potential of the Rebels' attack, they'd have sent more fighters to take out the X- and Y-wings, just to be sure.

27. Why does Red Leader look like he's laughing as he crashes into the Death Star surface?

28. Why did Red 10 fly with his eyes shut when he said, "There's too much interference"? Did he have a migraine? Was he trying to use the Force and got poor reception with lots of Force static?

29. "This one's locked, move onto the next." So if you're searching for someone, and you find a locked door, that usually seems like a pretty good candidate as the location of your prey.

30. If Vader sensed a presence since he'd not felt since...don't you think he'd probably investigate further or at least wait around to see if Kenobi is on the ship? I'd be anxious for the results of the scan myself.

31. I know we already all know this one, but come on, "Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise" in their shooting, yet Luke, Han, and Chewie always manage to outdo them, even when the baddies already have their guns pointed at them.

32. Now I may sound like Father Skywalker, but seriously, was there any moral dilemma in the minds of the Rebels when blowing up the Death Star? They could have probably evacuated their sparsely populated moon before the Death Star got there and regrouped. But instead, they chose to kill probably hundreds of thousands if not millions who were on board that station, many of whom were probably decent people.

33. Did Luke even care about his uncle and aunt? Sure, he looked bummed when they died, but he handled it pretty well and seemed to get over it quickly, never mentioning it again. He seemed far more distraught at the loss of Kenobi, whom he had only really gotten to know in the previous few days at most.

34. Back to the TIE vs. X- and Y-wing battles, if I were Vader, I think I'd actually come at the Rebels from above, not behind. That way they could still be under fire from the turbolasers, plus I could keep striking at them.

35. Why was it so imperative to "stay on target" during the earliest trench runs? Obviously when time is running short you just gotta take out your target, but why didn't Gold Leader and Gold Five just leave the trench when they saw their comrade die and noticed Vader? Sure, they lose a few minutes, but then they can handle the more pressing situation of being attacked by TIEs, and when that's been cleared up a bit, then they can traverse the trenches and launch their torpedoes unmolested.

36. Leia seemed to handle the loss of her family and everyone she probably knew growing up surprisingly well. She looks frightened when Alderaan blows up, but we never see her cry or in shock, and even later she tells one of the Rebel commanders, "We have no time for sorrows," regarding the event. Does she ever need therapy? How did she handle this so well?

I'm sure I could come up with more, and some of those are really trivial, but at least we see that no movie is above criticism.

Author
Time

37. Did Tarkin survive or didn't he????? I'm serious they should have explained that that.

Author
Time

darth_ender said:

32. Now I may sound like Father Skywalker, but seriously, was there any moral dilemma in the minds of the Rebels when blowing up the Death Star? They could have probably evacuated their sparsely populated moon before the Death Star got there and regrouped. But instead, they chose to kill probably hundreds of thousands if not millions who were on board that station, many of whom were probably decent people.

this one is easy the rebels simply realized that more decent people were going to killed by the Death Star when it blew up who knows how many planets, than would be killed when the Death Star blew up.    

Besides how many decent people would be working on battle station called the Death Star, designed to blow up planets full of people?   How many decent people wouldn't have quit after the Death Star was used on Alderaan?  

Author
Time

DominicCobb said:

37. Did Tarkin survive or didn't he????? I'm serious they should have explained that that.

I am pretty sure he died.

Author
Time

But are you positive???????? How do you know???????? Maybe it was a clone!!!!!!

And Warbler, regarding decent people working on the Death Star, have you ever heard of conscription? I don't think they had the option of quitting.

Author
Time

The Holiday [spoiler warning, heh]:

1. Jude Law's character receives a couple of calls on his cellphone while in the presence of his new-found love interest (Cameron Diaz) and she sees the caller IDs of "Sophie" and "Olivia" and gets sorta jealous. We later learn those are his two daughters (who are like 5-7?) spending the weekend at their grandparents'. Why in the world do those children have cellphones?

2. He doesn't answer for one of his daughter's call. Granted the grandparents might call if there was a serious problem...but ignoring the phone call of your young daughter for no good reason?

3. Jude Law has sex with Diaz in his sister's bed a couple of times and it's never even a thought that it might be inappropriate.

4. Kate Winslet, a mere journalist, got a last minute ticket to L.A. for the holidays...how?

5. Diaz got fed up with the loneliness of being in a small cottage in England after a day or two and was going to go back to L.A. when she could have headed for London or Paris and done anything. Plus where would that have left Winslet for the home exchange - would she have been allowed to stay?

6. Diaz's reviewed the movie trailer her team was creating and called for a couple of changes...yet it aired in England the next day.

7. The home exchange internet site appeared as a specialized program imbedded in the Desktop (in the shape of a house) which was ridiculous.

8. Diaz drove into town in the snow on narrow roads, confused and frustrated by having to drive on the wrong side. She then went into a market where she chugged a bottle of wine and presumably had to drive home in that condition.

9. Diaz had at least 3 different coats for her 2 week trip. And why did she bring a cocktail dress when she intended to be alone, delighted by the fact that there were "Zero" men in the town, according to Winslet?

10. Diaz's chauffeur refused to drive her all the way to the cottage because the lane was narrow and he wouldn't be able to turn around. Yet Law never has that issue in his SUV, nor does the chauffeur have that issue when he later picks her up and drives her back to the cottage when she has a change of heart.

The blue elephant in the room.

Author
Time

I really enjoy replying to these, so I'm glad you seem to take it well. It's a lot of fun, but I'll probably limit myself to the Star Wars ones.

darth_ender said:

Star Wars

1. C-3PO knew about the princess, as he said there'd be no escape for her. Then he knows nothing more than that she might have been a passenger on his last voyage. He clearly wasn't intending to lie. So why the lapse?

In all the excitement of the capture/boarding, his circuits got crossed, leaving him a bit traumatized afterward. He just wasn't made for battle.

2. It takes an incredible amount of energy to blow up a planet. It could be rendered uninhabitable by a powerful weapon, but to cause such a massive explosion that would hurl its own matter at such fast speeds would require the same amount of energy as our sun produces in 8,000 years! But this power was held inside of a space station the size of a small moon. Source: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Beam/Alderaan.html

That guys makes a lot of assumptions about how the Death Star works and the innards of Alderaan.

3. What is up with stupid Rebel tactics in fighting the Death Star? For instance, when most of the TIE fighers had retreated and only Vader's squadron was fighting the Rebels, why didn't other Rebels provide backup and get behind Vader and his compadres?

4. Or why didn't they approach the trench closer to the reactor shaft so they didn't have to get stuck with pursuing fighters for so long and actually have room to maneuver?

5. Or even in the trench, why didn't they have multiple fighter groups in the trench simultaneously? Luke, Biggs, and Wedge could have followed Red Leader and his wingmen at a greater distance in case Vader tried to drop behind them. And if Vader tried to get behind Luke and his wingmen, they could peel out. If he pursued them, it would buy more time for Red Leader. If he stuck with Red Leader, once Vader got in front they need only drop in behind him.

The more fighters in the trench, the easier it is for someone to get hit. The more crowded, the harder it is to dodge those turbolasers. And I'm guessing the targeting computer needs a good long while to get itself calibrated, matching sensor readings to blueprints, in order to hit something not much bigger than a womp rat.

6. If it wasn't foolish enough during all previous trench runs, when it was most critical Wedge simply fled when he could have saved Biggs and provided more help to Luke. What a coward!

Biggs, having a damaged engine, could not keep up with the trench run. He would have quickly fallen behind, leaving Luke with just as much backup (zero), but still in a trench full of turbolasers.

7. If Ben Kenobi is such a powerful Force user, why did he not telekinetically flip the switch to shut down the tractor beam power instead of climbing out over a bottomless pit?

He couldn't see the controls/labels from the main catwalk. Does the Force allow you to read printed instructions from a distance?

8. For that matter, since size matters not, why didn't Ben simply fling the Death Star away when it grabbed the Falcon in its tractor beam?

Oh my gosh how powerful do you think he is

9. Anyone think to install security cameras on the Death Star? Could have helped them locate some escapees.

Well they have some (the stuff they blast at the start of the detention block scene), but only in really important areas. The Death Star is so big that it's just too expensive to install cameras everywhere. Besides, who's gonna monitor all those? And just how do you propose they search a Death Star's worth of camera feeds for a few people?

10. So shy does the Death Star simply pop like a firecracker? We know it houses a powerful reactor, plus it was comprised of its own dense materials. It appeared not to be suffering any kind of cataclysmic failure, and the lights didn't even flicker for Tarkin, but suddenly it simply *popped* into glowing little fragments. You'd think it would have more debris and would blow up more violently than even Alderaan.

It's a lot smaller than Alderaan, yet, thanks to its core, probably has even more energy.

11. Does Leia ever redo her hair and makeup while prisoner on the Death Star? She looks exactly the same as when she was first captured, despite numerous apparent torture sessions as well.

You answered your own question: Evidently, yes, she does.

12. Why would the Death Star have such a poorly designed tractor beam station? I mean, we all hate those stupid Christmas light strings that go completely dead when a single bulb burns out. You mean to tell me they set up the entire station's tractor beams in the same manner?! You'd think they'd have redundant systems, not codependent.

Pretty sure he turned off power to the tractor beam specific to their docking bay, or side of the Death Star. He didn't turn all of them off, but he turned off the ones that were in the right position to get them.

13. I know everyone asks this question, but what kind of speciesists wouldn't give Chewie a medal?

I'm sorry, but my personal canon only includes ANH:R

But seriously, what if Wookiees don't accept awards for bravery? What if Wookiees don't accept awards for helping people to whom they owe lifedebts?

14. Heck, despite Wedge's cowardice, why didn't he get a medal? He fought through most of the battle. Han only showed up at the last second with minimal threat to himself, shot one fighter (not even the obvious one that really would have made a difference), and he gota a medal.

Luke, Han and Chewie didn't just blow up the Death Star. They also saved Princess Leia from it and delivered the R2 unit containing its plans.

15. Why was Threepio complaining that his joints almost frozen after walking a mere 100 yards in the sand? He walked much further after that apparently.

The guy will complain about anything. After a long time serving aboard clean starships, he's just not used to the desert sands and underestimates his resilience.

16. Wouldn't the Star Destroyer Devastator have at least captured in their tractor, if not flat out shot, any escape pods from the Tantive IV? There could be something valuable in there, like, I dunno, maybe Death Star plans. Hopefully that gunner got a Vader choke.

There were no lifeforms aboard and a lowly gun crew officer wasn't informed that they were actually there to recapture data. As far as he was aware, they were there to kill dirty, Rebel scum, and the pod contained none.

17. Why was Leia cool with leading the Empire back to the Rebel base, since she was so confident that the Falcon had a homing beacon? As pointed out by How it Should Have Ended, you'd think she'd be smart enough to trasmit the plans somewhere else. If the Rebellion was so farspread and well organized, you'd think they'd have spies at multiple drop points.

She knows that sooner or later they're going to have to attack the Death Star, and it's a lot easier to do that if the Death Star comes to you. The Rebellion being compartmentalized as it is, for security reasons, and the Empire's control being so great, she has to deliver them physically (or else why did she not transmit them from the Tantive IV?) and she only knows to go to Yavin.

18. Does Luke really need to whine so much? "But I was going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters. Waaaaa."

Yes. It's one of Luke's flaws, which make him human.

19. "STOP THAT SHIP! BLAST HIM!!!" There's no better way to grant your quarry time for an escape than by shouting your intentions so loud that he could hear instead of giving silent orders before he even knows you're coming.

The Empire certainly does not assign their finest troops to the Outer Rim backwater worlds.

20. Interesting how the ships seem to be subject to the physics of atmospheric flight even though they're in space. For instance, there appears to be a limit to their speed. They turn like they have flaps guiding their motion. They change direction in spite of only having rear-facing engines. What happened to interia?

Yeah, I got nothing.

21. How do eight separate energy beams pause in the middle of space so all the others can catch up, coalesce, and change direction so they all shoot straight instead of at their initial angles? You and your friends try and replicate that with eight laser pointers.

You really do assume a lot about your understanding of their technology.

22. How does a man like Vader every use the potty?

Internal hoses.

23. Ever since I was a child (until they obviously changed it for the SEs), why was everything red during that dianoga eye shot?

Artistic choice to make it creepier. Turns out, wasn't part of the original vision.

24. I love how they take an untested pilot (Luke) and put him in one of their best fighters. I mean, surely they could have either found another pilot. Either through some amazing coincidence

They're pretty shortstaffed there at their illegal rebel military force, and suddenly they have on their hands the son of a long dead hero of the Clone Wars, who's become one of the best bushpilots in the Outer Rim? Yeah, I'd give him a ship.

25. (I'll have to edit this later at a different computer where I can include pictures, as I can't access the advanced editor features on this one; I'd like to include pics). Who is that guy who says, "That's impossible, even for a computer," in Wedge's voice? He sure doesn't look like Wedge. And why don't we ever see him again? Or for that matter, why don't we see any of those pilots (except Gold Leader) again? Heck, even when the X-wings are taking off, we only see guys with plain white helmets with blue Rebel insignias, but we never see those guys again, as everyone in the actual battle has fancy helmet designs. Of course supposedly there were initially 30 ships, and really we only see like 15 faces, but still, why so little connection between the hangar and the battle?

You're probably aware of the real life production reasons, but I think you (other than the Wedge thing) explained it all yourself.

26. Okay, we're talking about a massive space station, right? That likely means it stations a lot of ships there, right? Leia caught on pretty quick when she noticed they only sent four TIEs after the Falcon that their escape was too easy. But you'd think that once the Battle of Yavin commenced, especially after they realized the dangerous potential of the Rebels' attack, they'd have sent more fighters to take out the X- and Y-wings, just to be sure.

I'm not really convinced they had full staff onboard yet. Besides, they still underestimated the hell out of the Rebellion.

27. Why does Red Leader look like he's laughing as he crashes into the Death Star surface?

People do weird stuff when they go out in a blaze of glory.

28. Why did Red 10 fly with his eyes shut when he said, "There's too much interference"? Did he have a migraine? Was he trying to use the Force and got poor reception with lots of Force static?

I'm pretty okay with the headache explanation. Interference is noisy and annoying.

29. "This one's locked, move onto the next." So if you're searching for someone, and you find a locked door, that usually seems like a pretty good candidate as the location of your prey.

Evidently they don't have lockpicks and/or don't want to create too much of a stir yet by breaking and entering.

30. If Vader sensed a presence since he'd not felt since...don't you think he'd probably investigate further or at least wait around to see if Kenobi is on the ship? I'd be anxious for the results of the scan myself.

He then proceeds to run right into Kenobi in the hall. Everything proceeded as he foresaw, basically.

31. I know we already all know this one, but come on, "Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise" in their shooting, yet Luke, Han, and Chewie always manage to outdo them, even when the baddies already have their guns pointed at them.

Sadly, I got nothing.

32. Now I may sound like Father Skywalker, but seriously, was there any moral dilemma in the minds of the Rebels when blowing up the Death Star? They could have probably evacuated their sparsely populated moon before the Death Star got there and regrouped. But instead, they chose to kill probably hundreds of thousands if not millions who were on board that station, many of whom were probably decent people.

How many more would have died, had they not destroyed the Death Star? How many worlds would have perished in fiery agony?

33. Did Luke even care about his uncle and aunt? Sure, he looked bummed when they died, but he handled it pretty well and seemed to get over it quickly, never mentioning it again. He seemed far more distraught at the loss of Kenobi, whom he had only really gotten to know in the previous few days at most.

I have to admit, this is a legit problem.

34. Back to the TIE vs. X- and Y-wing battles, if I were Vader, I think I'd actually come at the Rebels from above, not behind. That way they could still be under fire from the turbolasers, plus I could keep striking at them.

The Rebels are moving down the trench at great speeds, apparently nearly (but not quite) as fast as his TIE can go. It's much easier to track and aim at targets that are moving like that if you're moving with them, and any angle away from their own trajectory slows you down a bit, as your speed is partially consumed by the vertical axis. Combine this with a ship with no turrets, and it makes sense.



35. Why was it so imperative to "stay on target" during the earliest trench runs? Obviously when time is running short you just gotta take out your target, but why didn't Gold Leader and Gold Five just leave the trench when they saw their comrade die and noticed Vader? Sure, they lose a few minutes, but then they can handle the more pressing situation of being attacked by TIEs, and when that's been cleared up a bit, then they can traverse the trenches and launch their torpedoes unmolested.

See my rebuttal to #4.

36. Leia seemed to handle the loss of her family and everyone she probably knew growing up surprisingly well. She looks frightened when Alderaan blows up, but we never see her cry or in shock, and even later she tells one of the Rebel commanders, "We have no time for sorrows," regarding the event. Does she ever need therapy? How did she handle this so well?

She handles it later, after the Death Star is destroyed. She has no time for sorrows.

So, a few I couldn't rebut, but in general I'm pretty pleased.

ROTJ Storyboard Reconstruction Project

Author
Time

Mrebo, I'm sorry I haven't seen The Holiday, so I can't read your list there (considering your spoiler warning).  When I do watch it, I'll comment :)

And timdiggerm, nice rebuttals once again.  And again, not all are perfect, but many are really good and you did a very good job :)

Author
Time

darth_ender said:

And timdiggerm, nice rebuttals once again.  And again, not all are perfect, but many are really good and you did a very good job :)

Well thank you. I'm quite pleased with a few (particularly the one about Chewbacca & awards), as I actually agree with your criticism but had to invent reasons.

ROTJ Storyboard Reconstruction Project

Author
Time

I'm also glad you're having such fun with the Star Wars ones. Problem is, ROTJ has had plenty of criticism (much of which I don't agree with), and the PT has been torn to shreds by this site. I don't know if I could come up with new stuff. But maybe I should make lists for those flicks, even if I have to recycle some of it, just so you can provide some rebuttals.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

So after hearing the news about Abrams directing Star Wars, I decided to watch ST09 to sort of get a feel of his style. I know everyone else already did this in the General Star Wars forum, but I wanted to list my problems with the film; I actually have several gripes with it, and hopefully I can list them all here.

First, let me acknowledge that I understand that this is science-fiction with a certain amount of escapism expected and several natural laws, such as sound in space, are simply ignored for enjoyment purposes. However, several things really stood out to me as implausible and distracting. So while many of my reviews in this thread are tongue-in-cheek, this one is more serious.

1. I understand the purpose of the convenient plot device/MacGuffin in red matter. However, this is truly a distracting element to me. Aside from the fact that we aren’t even graced with any technobabble explanation of what red matter is or how it’s contained, why does “igniting” this tiny bit of magical substance create a black hole? They don’t call black holes singularities because they couldn’t think of a cooler name. A black hole is comprised of such heavy mass that it collapses on itself, creating a “single” dimensionless point in space comprised of truly tremendous amounts of mass and energy. So how does this red matter create enough gravitational pull to do this? Where does the additional mass come from?

2. There seems to be some confusion as to how a black hole works. Yes, theoretically black holes affect the space/time continuum to the point that time travel can take place, but that is before you actually reach the black hole. If you fall into the hole, you contributing to the growing mass of this gravitational pit in space, you don't simply travel through some space tunnel.

3. The strength of a black hole's gravity is enough to prevent even light from escaping its grasp. The Enterprise's engines are supposed to take it to speeds far past the speed of light. Yet, with the warp engines going full power they still couldn't escape, meaning they were past the event horizon and should have been doomed. But no, they eject several small canisters filled with antimatter that surely would create a tremendous explosion here on earth, but would amount to nothing compared to the gravitational pull of the black hole. Yet, the explosion is more powerful than the Enterprise's warp drive, and it blasts them to safety...and it doesn't destroy them in the process. Oh, and the Enterprise was only maintaining its distance from the black hole because their warp engines were running, engines that are powered by the jettisonned warp cores--why didn't they get sucked in the moment they released the cores?

4. Okay, I understand that people receive field commissions. But Pike elevating cadet Kirk to first mate while he was being tried and stowed away on the ship is sloppy. I can't imagine the crew would stand for that promotion. It clearly was borne out of favoritism. Then Kirk's cruel means of proving Spock was emotionally compromised--yeah, that would win him brownie points with the crew that is supposed to follow him. Field commands are only temporary, and I find it unlikely that, in spite of his amazing last minute save, he would receive a permanent promotion to captain once he got back to earth.

5. Why would anyone in the crew accept Kirk’s command anyway, given his clear disrespect for the authority of others, his means of attaining that authority, and his clear and dangerous impulsivity? I can imagine he would be arrested a second time for his own violations and relieved of his illegitimately obtained position.

6. What kind of moronic admiralty would send an entire fleet except for five about-to-be-manned-for-the-first-time-and-almost-entirely-with-new-recruits vessels in defense of its headquarters world? It must have been a rather small fleet or an extremely large engagement to have tied up Starfleet in the Laurentian System.

7. It’s amazing how all the original crew members find their way to their intended positions/roles despite a completely different set of events leading up to their assignment to the Enterprise. The butterfly effect would dictate that a number of events would have gone differently, including and perhaps most obviously the conception of anyone younger than Jim Kirk (considering that was the day the timeline was altered). Yet all posts are filled by their respective crew members (including Chekov, who didn't join the crew till, what, the second season?) in a few days time.

8. If xhonzi hates little “wink-wink” lines in The Hobbit and The Dark Knight Rises, he must have really hated the plethora of dumb nods in this film, like Spock's line about eliminating the impossible, etc., etc.

9. A transporter can beam through atmospheric disturbances across massive distances and even traveling at very high speeds, but apparently an energy drill provides enough interference to completely prevent teleportation, and only as an incidental byproduct. Perhaps if the Romulans had developed a device devoted specifically devoted to interfering with transporting, then I could believe such was taking place.  But I guess then it would have been harder to justify an orbital skydive to take out a single device and attempt to kill two birds with one stone.

10. What is the point of even having a separate, descending drill? If this drill is powerful and cohesive enough to cut into the crust of a planet, I can’t imagine that it would suffer much from atmospheric interference. But instead the Romulan ship lowers this scrawny little device with a powerful beam miles deep into a planet's atmosphere where it could much more easily be damaged or even destroyed.

11. And in a combination of the drill and the red matter/black hole weirdness, why would a drill even be needed? A black hole right next to the planet would be more than enough to completely destroy it.

12. A supernova can send out massive amounts of radiation and can destroy any existing life in “nearby” systems (nearby of course being a relative term, approximately 100 lightyears) in the same way that the Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine threatened anyone who lived near it when it exploded. However, I’ve never read of a supernova threatening an entire galaxy (ours being 100,000 lightyears across) as old Spock states, or that its mere explosive force could even reach into other systems and destroy planets (only the radiation should be able to reach that far). But even imagining that such a supernova were so powerful, it would take years and years to reach the next planet, as such an explosion would be traveling significantly slower than the speed of light. A warp capable ship would be able to get where it needed to easily in time to utilize whatever crazy plan folks had. And you’d think that Starfleet would have the technology to detect that a star is becoming critically unstable and develop that plan in advance. And again, that silly black hole idea…considering that this supernova is blowing up in all directions. One would have to get this black hole in the middle of the supernova to successfully suck it all back up, and then make it strong enough that it’s gravity would pull the massive and ever expanding explosion in and thus stop it from spreading any further. But wait, if the gravity is so strong, it would also pull in all planets, stars, and ships in the same radius! That means the Vulcan plan to save Romulus would have killed it anyway! Wow, I should have divided that into like 4 or 5 different points. Oh well.

13. Okay, so Vulcan gets destroyed.  Spock Prime is apparently on a planet close by called Delta Vega. Again, I can’t help but wonder how the black hole consumed Vulcan and didn’t harm a planet that must have been about as close and the earth and the moon, judging by the size of Vulcan when Spock watched it get destroyed.

14. Who would build a massive ship filled with a bunch of spaced apart catwalks and no railing? Sure, it’s fun, makes for some nifty Mario-style jumps and slow-mo shots, but in reality there has to be some sort of Romulan builder’s code or safety standards that disallow this.

15. I understand that this is a different version of events, but obviously some things must have remained consistent between the two timelines of Star Trek for so many similar events to take place. Let’s look at the Kobayashi Maru scenario. For story purposes, I can buy that events were not changed enough to forgo the existence of this scenario (though one cannot truly even guess the extent of the butterfly effect were history ever altered in even the slightest manner), but clearly Spock Prime was not ever involved in the original programming of the Kobayashi Maru in the classic timeline, yet he is intimately involved, to the point that we get hints at hurt pride in the Vulcan in this new timeline. If this were a change, you'd think the scenario would have been drastically different than described in The Wrath of Khan.

16. The concept of rebooting, yet maintaining the original continuity in Star Trek is a clever way to appeal to two different sorts of fan, IMO. However, what was it that drove Spock to be so much more emotional and identify so much more closely with his human side, at least prior to the loss of the planet Vulcan? Perhaps following its destruction I could see the timeline leading to a more human Spock falling in love with Uhura, being more emotionally driven, etc. After all, his father confessed his love of his mother, earth is the closest thing he has to a home now, etc. But really, the pre-Vulcan holocaust Spock should have been as in control of his emotions as Leonard Nimoy.

Alright, that was pretty harsh. So let me say what I liked about it. It's fun. It's different. I did like the concept of a reboot that doesn't erase what "old-school" fans love about Trek. I like that they travel to other worlds, that there is good old-fashioned fisticuffs, and so on. I don't really have too much of a problem with the lens flares. I would watch it again without shame, and I look forward to its sequel. But it is certainly a very flawed movie.

BTW, I won't bother posting in the other thread because I'm only making a few cameos, but I think Abrams can do a great respect to Star Wars. He's flexible, innovative, and recognizes what makes a particular film work. I think he can stay true to the style of Star Wars and especially the OT.