[AFAIK]

SPOILERS, DUH

There is a sci-fi movie called In Time starring Justin Timberlake. It is set in a future where humans have become immortal and eternally youthful. Everyone has a digital clock on their forearm that is activated when they turn 20 (every adult is perpetually 20 years old) and ticks down constantly. Time is currency and when your clock reaches zero you drop dead.

There is a scene in which JT is going to meet his mother somewhere but she is unable to catch the bus there as she doesn't have enough minutes to cover the bus fare. Looking at her arm she realises that she will struggle to cover the distance on foot before her clock expires. This leads to a dramatic scene in which she and JT run towards one another hands outstretched ready to make a time transfer. The seconds tick away and JT's mum collapses just inches from his grasp.

It is not explained why they were unable to make this transfer wirelessly. Currently people in remote impoverished villages have access to mobile banking via sms but this future USA apparently has no mobile phones or wifi.

Later on JT goes to a casino and plays no-limit hold em. Instead of buying chips players place their arms in a device when they wish to bet or call. There are many things wrong about this. I won't bore you with poker etiquette and strategy issues* but will point out that if someone goes all in and loses they will drop dead right there at the table. In fact if there was a delay or dispute in awarding the pot they would die as all their time is on the table. What type of casino would welcome high-so tuxedo wearing elites collapsing in the middle of the gaming floor? It might be a bit of a turn off to other gamblers, no.

*I should point out that you should never place your entire clock on the line unless you are 100% guaranteed to either win or split the pot. If you get your money in as a 90% favourite you will wind up dead 1 in 10 times!

Are there any movies that made you roll your eyes and post a rant online years after you watched it.

[fuser]

Bah !!

Check out Tamil films.

There's a scene where hero's leg is injured, he can't get the villain who is escaping and just has scaled a 10 foot wall but fear not our hero has two revolvers, he throws one in the air just above the wall and fires from the another at the trigger of the second pistol in air and bam, the second pistol fires a shot which straight goes inside the brain of villain.

[AFAIK]

Nice one, fuser. Lots of action movies have a disregard for the laws of physics but that is truly over the top.

I've been thinking of some peculiarities in The Matrix. In the trilogy the machines expend considerable energy managing, battling and waging war against humans. They have high tech to do this but why didn't any of these solutions develop;

1- Cut a few nerves to make people paralysed in their pods.
2- Plug lower mammals into the matrix as they wouldn't have an existential desire to wake up or the ability to organise resistance to their oppression.
3- Breed hamsters and set them running on wheels.
4- Space based solar power.
5- In vitro meat production.

Perhaps the machines enjoyed engaging with humans despite the headaches. What would the machines do if they had no humans to trade, compete or cooperate with?

I read a fan theory that Zion was a simulation and the matrix was a simulation within a simulation. The point of the sims was to teach AIs humanity, help them to empathise with humans and encourage them to avoid violent conflict with humans.

[fuser]

I think lot of such conflicts can be resolved if we accept that machines in matrix universe are still following The Three Law of Robotics, remember as made clear in animatrix, it was the Humans who had initiated the war and tried to wipe out the intelligent machines.

[Nets]

Cracked explains the scene I had in mind pretty well:

#1. Granny Ruth - Dante's Peak

Dr. Harry Dalton (played by Pierce Brosnan) is a volcanologist -- yes, that is a real profession -- hot on the trail of some suspicious volcanic activity in the town of Dante's Peak. Along the way, he meets the mayor of the town, Rachel Wando, and her family: son Graham, daughter Lauren and ex-mother-in-law Granny Ruth.

Dalton's suspicions are proven correct when the nearby mountain range erupts and puts the town in danger, causing the group to have to make a frantic escape in hopes of exciting the audience.

At one point Dalton, Wando and her family end up in a lake that has turned acidic due to the volcano somehow, and the water is rapidly eating through their boat as they try to make it to the shore. This is where Granny Ruth decides to get heroic.

Ruth, fearing that the lake will claim her family, jumps from the boat and pulls them the rest of the way. Shortly after making it to safety, she dies from presumably having huge chunks of her flesh melted off.

Why it's baffling:

When she plunges in to make her heroic sacrifice, they are literally less than five feet from the dock. Seriously, here's the clip:

It's right there! They can practically grab it!

"Seriously, there's wind. We'll be all right."

We might understand if she had done this when the group was, say, 20 feet away. Back then, things looked grim when they weren't moving fast enough and they realized the metal boat wouldn't hold. But then they discovered they could safely paddle themselves after wrapping their arms. Problem solved, right?

Apparently not for Granny Ruth. Deciding that the final three feet of the homestretch was just too much to cover, she leaps into the lake -- failing to do the math that would let her realize that elderly human flesh is actually not as durable as a metal boat hull -- and drags the boat the rest of the way.

"Seriously this is ... this is just grossly unnecessary."

It took all of three seconds for her to do it. The family probably could've done it in two if they didn't have to stop paddling to holler at the insanity that was transpiring in front of their very eyes.

Then, in what has to be the most simultaneously mind-boggling and gruesome sight you'll see outside of the Saw series, instead of jumping up on the dock she continues walking in the acid water, past the dock and to the shore.


"OK, well, good plan, Granny Martyr."

So let's just recap here, because we're having trouble wrapping our minds around it. We started out with a witch for whom water is acid, but who treats it like water. Then we have a mutant toad for whom water is harmless, but who treats it like acid. And finally we have a literal lake of acid water that an elderly woman plunges into for absolutely no reason at all.

What the hell?

[Solastalgia]

Funny enough, there's a whole website entirely dedicated to this...

http://www.moviemistakes.com/

[AFAIK]

Check out Cinema Sins and How It Should Have Ended on youtube.

[Solastalgia]

Check out Cinema Sins and How It Should Have Ended on youtube.

Those look pretty cool. Have you seen this?:

[youtube]v9d09JLBVRc[/youtube]

hilarious.

[ThirdTerm]

[youtube]UEaKX9YYHiQ[/youtube]

[Rejn]

[youtube]FIpdAly9z9o[/youtube]

Pretty much every scene in Le Libertin, but this one is really absurd (and funny). Oh hon hon hon hon

[wat0n]

Bah !!

Check out Tamil films.

There's a scene where hero's leg is injured, he can't get the villain who is escaping and just has scaled a 10 foot wall but fear not our hero has two revolvers, he throws one in the air just above the wall and fires from the another at the trigger of the second pistol in air and bam, the second pistol fires a shot which straight goes inside the brain of villain.

Okay, I really need to watch a video of that scene. It's just too awesome

[SolarCross]

Nice one, fuser. Lots of action movies have a disregard for the laws of physics but that is truly over the top.

I've been thinking of some peculiarities in The Matrix. In the trilogy the machines expend considerable energy managing, battling and waging war against humans. They have high tech to do this but why didn't any of these solutions develop;

1- Cut a few nerves to make people paralysed in their pods.
2- Plug lower mammals into the matrix as they wouldn't have an existential desire to wake up or the ability to organise resistance to their oppression.
3- Breed hamsters and set them running on wheels.
4- Space based solar power.
5- In vitro meat production.

Perhaps the machines enjoyed engaging with humans despite the headaches. What would the machines do if they had no humans to trade, compete or cooperate with?

I read a fan theory that Zion was a simulation and the matrix was a simulation within a simulation. The point of the sims was to teach AIs humanity, help them to empathise with humans and encourage them to avoid violent conflict with humans.

The worst nonsense in the Matrix back story is that of the machines using human beings as a source of energy; its a blatant violation of the Laws of Energy Conservation. Any energy you can extract from a human will be less than what you have to give him under those circumstances. The machines would do better with nuclear power, fossil fuels, tidal or geothermal energy sources.

[Heisenberg]

This scene from If... will simply never make any sense to me.

[youtube]Ne6B_Qyt_fs[/youtube]

[Rilzik]

The most ridiculous thing about sci fi movies is how white (non-Hispanic) most of them are. The main characters I can understand since the audience needs to connect with them. While the international audience is quickly becoming more important than the US audience, China for example, is apparently much more likely to watch white main characters than black ones. But the way they show the demographics of cities and populations in the future is quite dishonest most of the time.

[AFAIK]

That's true of most American TV as well Rilzik. Apparently 99.9% of New York's residents are WASPs at least according to mainstream sit-coms and dramas.

[fuser]

Okay, I really need to watch a video of that scene. It's just too awesome

Sorry, I can't remember the film's name (not in my native language) and thus the limited searches failed.

The worst nonsense in the Matrix back story is that of the machines using human beings as a source of energy; its a blatant violation of the Laws of Energy Conservation. Any energy you can extract from a human will be less than what you have to give him under those circumstances. The machines would do better with nuclear power, fossil fuels, tidal or geothermal energy sources.

Two things.

First, as shown in animatrix, the humans surrender only after the promise that they will not be killed and now as machines have to keep humans alive, why don't use them for their purposes to rather than them being just a strain. Either way resources will have to be spend on humans and in this scenario (where humans have to be kept alive), its a better arrangement, isn't it?

[youtube]nGwz1s1E1aw[/youtube]

Second, machines are still following the "three law of robotics" as postulated by Issac Asimov and have came to realize that this is the best arrangement in which Humans won't try to exterminate them (remember the human machine war was initiated by humans) while they could still serve (yes) and make humans lives better. Remember that the first matrix was akin to a paradise (machines trying to make humans life better after all what does it matter if you don't realize that its all not real) but it only failed once again because of humans who en masse begin to reject this paradise.

[Thompson_NCL]

I've no idea where you got that from, fuser. The animatrix shows the machines defeating the human armies, and when the humans surrender, they nuke them. There was no conditional surrender, only defeat.

[fuser]

Yeah, it was not a conditional surrender. But look at it this way, Machines demanded (in order to end the war) something to which humans agreed and surrendered rather than fighting to the last man.

Hand over your flesh and a new world awaits you. We demand it.

Humans accepted this demand and surrendered, also Humans nuked before surrendering. The video I have posted is the last scene of the movie iirc.

[AFAIK]

I think lot of such conflicts can be resolved if we accept that machines in matrix universe are still following The Three Law of Robotics, remember as made clear in animatrix, it was the Humans who had initiated the war and tried to wipe out the intelligent machines.

I've rewatched the movies and done some reading online and there is no mention of the 3 laws anywhere. I even did a search on the Matrix Wiki and found nothing. The scene with the Architect explains the situation pretty well.

The Architect states that 99% of people accept the matrix after being presented with a choice but those who don't accept it risk destabalising the system as their numbers grow. So they are removed (to Zion) and when the populations grows too large Zion is destroyed and then repopulated by The One and a fresh group of exiles. Zion acts as a release valve to reduce pressure on the matrix and allow the freed humans a way to rebel. It is pruned periodically to prevent the rebels from growing too strong.

[Kapanda]

[youtube]v9d09JLBVRc[/youtube]

hilarious.

That was the first Onion piece I've ever enjoyed. It was really good!