(no subject)

[camwyn]

Dear movie makers:

I am glad when you give us both compelling characters and a scientifically fascinating world to play with. I like filling in gaps and plastering over cracks; that's one of my favourite aspects of fanfiction. Creating a real, solid, unifying schema of how your worlds work is often more fascinating than the actual stories you give me to watch.

However, whoever was responsible for the atrocity that is Reign of Fire's scientific basis really needs to be beaten with large, heavy sticks. There's a difference between 'plastering over the cracks in your work' and 'building a structurally sound edifice over CHICKEN WIRE using only gum'. Not that I won't do it, or at least try to, but the only way I can justify the science the characters in the movie put forth to explain their situation is to say not one of the characters who speak is a genuine scientist, and therefore they are repeating second-hand knowledge, much of which is probably wrong.

Reign of Fire was fascinating whenever the Americans weren't on screen, rather like Titanic was a powerful story of human interest whenever Kate, Leonardo, and Billy weren't on screen. Post-apocalyptic community trying to live civilised instead of going Lord of the Flies? Great. Destruction of human civilisation by unlooked-for plague of critters? Fantastic. GRR ARG ME SMASH DRAGON ME AMERICAN YOU FOLLOW? Um, no- anyway, that's not the point. I liked your movie more than it deserved, and I still do, which is why I'm trying to make something reasonably solid and realistic out of it. But you have not given me very much to stand on here. The Dance of Fandom Rationalization is powerful, but your movie is wearing holes in my shoes.

I'll fix your science as best I can and I'll keep it as close to canon knowledge as possible, but you owe me for this.

Comments

[innerbrat]

*pokes* are you online or is this a drive-by comment?

[innerbrat]

Actually, that explanation's a pretty sound one. I tend to use that all the time. Even in Buffy, which comes with ready made expositors.

[trustntheharper.livejournal.com]

At least it doesn't leave you trying to come up with semi-realistic technobabble? That's the problem with Andromeda as they had whiz-bang scientitific consultants in the first two seasons, so the engineering and all actually had basis in reality. I mean, they thought of having anti-grav reduce a ship's mass to zero to make it so it was easier to move that much mass. Which makes sense.

Therefore, I actually have to read real information on stuff to come up with somewhat valid technobabble, and I do not have a brain geared towards engineering. >_>

Maybe we should trade pups. XD

[camwyn]

Not an engineer, myself. I can keep Ray's technobabble consistent because I'm pulling ninety percent of it out of my arse. Granted, when my high school physics class got to relativity, I was the only student in the class who consistently got A+ grades on the tests and assignments, but this was because years of science fiction reading had already prepared me for the material. I didn't have to struggle with which form of the time dilation equation I had to use because I knew 'the one on the ship has less elapsed time than the one who stays home', 'the one on the ship has the increased mass', etc.

Ghostbusters requires a lot of pulling, but once I get it in place it's all internally consistent. Reign of Fire requires me to get my hands dirty a hell of a lot more often.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think that when you have an idea like "Dragons vs. attack helicopters!" scientific explanations just take up valuable time that could be used for more explosions.

[camwyn]

*sigh* I know, I know. But still.


*retreats to nice cosy corner repeating her mantra for movies like this:*

I Am Not The Target Audience. They Did Not Expect Me To See This Movie.
I Am Not The Target Audience. They Did Not Expect Me To See This Movie.
I Am Not The Target Audience. They Did Not Expect Me To See This Movie.

.... mleh.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

:D It wasn't directed at you, BTW, but at the moviemakers. I'd rather just have them say "Er ... magic?" than attempt to explain something scientifically and fail miserably.

My anthropology background trips me up occasionally - I never watched much X-Files, but I distinctly remember being disgusted by an episode where they're chasing some sort of hominid and the scientific expert du jour explained that as a primate, she would naturally head for low ground when scared. Which made me want to throw things at the screen, because most primates are tree-dwellers and the first thing they want to do when scared is head up.

[camwyn]

Health sciences anthro background here. X-Files did, indeed, hurt quite a bit at times. (Although the easiest way to make me squeal incoherently with glee was to find an excuse to send in the men in the cleansuits from the episode with the glowing bugs of death. Cleansuits and grimness in the face of potentially utterly fatal organisms? BRING IT ON, baybee. I will believe, for that.)

[jeditigger.livejournal.com]

Um, yeah, but...did you see how hot Christian Bale was in that movie? :)

[camwyn]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmpretty....




*shakes herself off violently*


Yes. Yes I did. Which is why I'm playing him at milliways_bar and apharsites and why he's the first of my characters anywhere, ever, to have multiple icons with 'gratuitous shirtlessness' in the keywords.

Icon page here. Hmmmbaby.

[jeditigger.livejournal.com]

Where'd you get all the Batman ones?!

[camwyn]

The first twenty minutes of Batman Begins. I watch my fandom movies twice on DVD, usually. Once for the movie itself, and once to screencap. And I tend to wind up getting a good ninety or more screencaps out of a twenty minute period, just in case someone finds certain facial expressions or lighting conditions more interesting than I did. I screencapped up through the plane ride home from China, if you want me to pass you the files when I get home.

[quintus.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine was in a play whose central conceit was that the audience were watching the recording of a 1950's American radio theatre play. His character was an Alan Rickmanesque British actor. Anyway, at the end of that "episode" they did the trailers for next weeks show. Announcing a threat the British crown, he leans into the microphone and says in his best panicked upper class tones : "We're totally powerless, we'll have to ask the Americans for help."

And that, in essence, is my bitch with "Reign of Fire", along with the thermodynamically improbably monsters...

[camwyn]

Which is why I'm playing Quinn- this all came up because I'm playing him in Milliways- as being from several months before the movie. I don't want to deal with the Americans. I want him to resolve as many of his personal issues as he can before something like this happens:

AMERICANS: Who's in charge here!
QUINN: *raises hand*
AMERICANS: Fuel and food and some of your people. Now.
QUINN: Is this about the dragons?
AMERICANS: Hell yeah.
QUINN: Actually? Been there, done that. There's a whacking great corpse in the river near where Tower Bridge used to be if you want a look.
AMERICANS: ...
QUINN: You wouldn't have any extra first-aid kits in there, would you? Only we're a bit low on antiseptics just at the moment.

[quintus.livejournal.com]

=grin=

The Americans seemed, well... unneccessary in that film. Swan over the Atlantic with their impressive kit, expound about how they're here to save everyone, eat the locals out of house and home, die in droves and not achieve as much as they set out to do.
It would be like Steven Seagall turning up in '28 days later'.

Even if the chopper pilot gave us the look for a certain VE of mine.

Was the tank in the movie an M1A1, only if it was... I am pretty sure there's hardly a road bridge in the UK that'd've taken the bloody thing :-)

(There's a reason the Challenger II is a little bit smaller)

[camwyn]

Well, I figure Quinn lived in Fucked Up Geography England anyway. Northumberland's all mountainous and you can hug the cliffs from there down to London. So why not assume that there were some properly stout road bridges?


... except that if I don't, I can assume the Americans got as far as the first bridge and had the tank go into a river and Van Zant had a hissyfit, ordered his drivers flogged, got a mutiny, etc.... *happy sigh* well, a girl can dream, can't she?

[quintus.livejournal.com]

=grin again=

Without magic, I stubbornly refuse to believe that an organic creature that can fly would not be sprayed over the landscape by the modern weapons in the possession of a moderately well equipped LA street gang, let alone Her Majesties Armed Forces.

Oh, and who would be printing glossy magazines depicting burning cities with "Is this the end?" on the cover?

Sooo much to like in that film... sooo much to react to in a mental analphalyctic fashion

[camwyn]

*nods soberly* Chicken wire. They gave me chicken wire and a ten-pack of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum to build a semblance of realism on.

[sundre.livejournal.com]

Which is a few inches better than toothpicks and a glue gun.

The combination of certain invented terms, infernokrusher and narrativium, have helped me keep my sanity while watching the shiny movies with no sense.

All I want in life are dragons and giant robots of doom. The dragons can also be of doom, but this is not a requirement. Oh, and airships. Of doom. And a zombie-proof house.

Is this so much to ask?

[camwyn]

Well, the zombie-proof house may be a little bit difficult to come by unless you're willing to put it together under your own power. Rather like airbags that could be switched off, no company is really willing to face the lawsuits if something goes wrong.

[batyatoon]

See, this? This is why you are my favorite.

[camwyn]

Which reminds me, I really do need to show you the canon for Quinn at some point. I've got an evil plan related to one of the big plot points from the movie.

[drharper.livejournal.com]

You know...I'm beginning to think I'm gonna have to watch this movie. :)

[camwyn]

It's fun, and it's pretty, but I heard somewhere that the studio gave it to two or three different writing/editing teams, so you can see all the patches and seams where somebody forcibly changed direction. And, um, not to be un-patriotic or anything, but I totally cheered when Matthew McConnaughey's character left the screen for the last time.

[mephron]

General hate-on for the character, or, as in my case, general hate-on for McCoughdropy?

[camwyn]

Oh, both. The character's an ass who makes Captain Ahab look like Erwin Rommel. And I've just never liked Matt, for various reasons.

BTW, we should probably get together sometime and watch movies.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

Check your brain at the door. It has been best described (by a webcartoonist) as "testosterone nirvana." Great fun, but reality is best left outside.

[blackswanevent.livejournal.com]

sadly, rarely do movies consider a scientific outlook. I admire you for trying at least. It's better then most films where the writers just say, "ZOMG. IT'S CAUSE I SAID SO whut."

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

I think I died from the cute of the Star Wars re-enactment, and that carried me through the entire American segment.

[cupenny.livejournal.com]

I'd have to nominate that part as one of the best scenes in the movie.

[parke-matru.livejournal.com]

*patpat* I know the feeling. I worked out Fables theories on Bill Willingham's boards to explain the weirder details of Snow's pregnancy -- the mixed genetics, given the gestation period of a wolf, would provide a sensible reason for a pregnancy that lasted about three months. And the fact that there are completely fraternal septuplets . . . I gotta check my notes, but the theory had something to do with wolf pheromones inducing hyperovulation.

Then Bill Willingham goes and replies to my timeline explanation that he just mucked up the dates for the pregnancy.

*does dance of victory due to getting one of the cubs' names right. Even given the number of middle names Millie and Wade have*

And dear god, it's good to know that I'm not the only one who thinks Titanic would be so kickass if they released a geek version that edits out the main characters.

[flariadallian.livejournal.com]

I got stuck with the sex of the dragons - the first one was male, but all the other ones were female. How does that work?

And why is the male easily found in London if it has to fly around the world and fertilize all the eggs? Literature-influenced guess puts it only in London for one out of eighty days.

Little things like tanks not making it over bridges... the mind already boggled too much.

[camwyn]

I have my doubts about that. Nature is not easily prone to producing species with such fragile generational chains. Besides, while I mean no offense to members of the United States Armed Forces, I have rather more difficulty swallowing that any of the people who served under Van Zant were exactly statistics majors or scholars of epidemiology. I'm rather more inclined to believe that the Americans were wrong in their science and that the dragons made marginally more sense. (Besides. If they're going to say he's got a reproductive pattern like that of certain fish, I have other fish-based science that makes the species' reproductive habits easier to swallow.)

As for why it was easily found, I just wrote that off to narrative convention. Star Furies travel at the speed of plot, and the dragon is at home when the hero needs him to be, except when it'll hurt more if he's not.

[vitruvian23.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, there's just no saving even a pseudoscientific rationale from this one. Leaving aside the icky thermodynamic implications of saying that they only eat stuff that's already oxidized (where's the energy), there's the simple factor that if the dragons are susceptible to harm from the weapons shown to work on them in the movie (e.g., the honking big crossbow bolts), then they should have been fairly quickly wiped out by assault helicopters, RPGs, and other modern weaponry when they first showed up. Maybe they'd have some resistance to incendiaries, but if kinetic energy in one form tears them up...

[camwyn]

Yeeeah. I've been busting my butt to figure out what the deal is with their diet, and while I can do some pretty impressive leaps of rationalization to get to the point of 'they eat ash, but they also eat meat, and need both to survive, and it didn't sound good to write it that way for the montage'... like you said, kinetic, not so much.

I try as far as I can, and then I say 'screw it, if JKR doesn't have to come up with a damn realistic scoring system for Quidditch, I don't have to come up with a realistic explanation for the dragons' and just thank my lucky stars that anybody else who likes the movie enough to read stuff I've done with it probably isn't going to fuss over not being able to justify everything.