Monday, March 13, 2017

What Two Words Instantly Destroy a Sci Fi Movie

If you had 'Arnold Schwarzengegger' then come on down and claim your prize.

Schwarzenegger isn't bagged for those crappy Predator and Terminator movies but rather for "True Lies" and that wasn't sci fi but one aspect was so offensive it nailed him for life.

In one of the big scenes toward the end, the terrorists set off a stolen A-bomb with about ten or fifteen kilotons of bang.  Our heroes are about fifteen or twenty miles away and they assure everyone, just cover your eyes and you will be fine.

That lie buries him deep in the ground, regardless of whether the entire last part of "True Lies" was some of the worst and most ridiculous stuff he ever did.  For example, he rescued his daughter from a high construction crane by flying to her with a Harrier jump jet ... and it gets even more absurd as it continues from there.  Even Marvel wouldn't have used rot like that.


How fucking romantic.


That Hollywood presentation of the idea of a safe use of tactical nukes is one of the most vicious lies tinsel town ever perpetrated.  Maybe you have noticed in movies with nukes, they love to show you the bangs but they rarely show you the consequence.  The mushroom clouds make great video and it's safe, really.

"True Lies" appeared in 1994 and we have seen multiple examples of the Pentagon dancing with the idea of tactical nukes since that time.  Whether the movie had anything to do with that is unknown but overestimating the intelligence of the Pentagon is a mistake.  If any of them knew what they were doing, ISIS would have been wrapped in ribbons years ago.

By the way, how much have you considered how the level of the cancer in the world now is directly attributable to military testing of nuclear weapons.  That won't account for all of it but they covered the world with fallout from their testing so they definitely own a significant piece of it.

Note:  the research plan would go to consider the cancer levels in pre-nuke times to cancer levels now and the model must account for better detection now along with other variables before it approaches truth but it should be possible.  I may take a look to see if someone has already done it.


Meanwhile, "Predator" isn't even worth a review and I've seen it but wouldn't bother again.  "Terminator" could have been good but the producers became so enamored of their technology, they lost track of the story.

I cast about for sci fi and IMDb has all kinds of lists, one of which is 'best sci fi ever.'  I've seen almost all of those.  From there, the search goes to best from the '10 years, best from the '00 years and on back.

The next move after that is to search for sci fi made in other countries.  Maybe some remember the Japanese monster movies from the Fifties and Sixties.  They were cheap but great fun and all, at least the originals, had a social conscience insofar as the source of the monsters was almost always radiation from all the nuclear testing which was so prevalent above-ground in those times.

Mostly Japan seems to go with the Marvel comics movies lately and some may call that sci fi.  I'm not one of them but some might.

There are many more countries producing sci fi other than Japan so much more search potential remains.

Ed:  but no Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Nah, I want the real thing and not cartoons.  I may even watch "Europa Report" again precisely because it was so non-cartoonish and it really strived to make the trip to Europa as realistic as possible.

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