|
Vlad!
|
 |
« Reply #80 on: February 25, 2009, 02:43:50 PM » |
|
I think I understand your position. I'm just saying, "So?"
Much like any review, you are free to take or leave my position. I can do little more than describe how I felt about the movie. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
|
|
|
|
murlough23
|
|
« Reply #81 on: February 25, 2009, 02:59:50 PM » |
|
Much like any review, you are free to take or leave my position. I can do little more than describe how I felt about the movie.
It was important for me to understand where you were coming from before deciding on the "leave" option, rather than just dismissing it outright. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Vlad!
|
|
« Reply #82 on: February 27, 2009, 04:30:49 PM » |
|
Are we seriously saying that a kiddie fantasy about penguins flying airplanes and a hard science fiction about a near-future dystopia are IN ANY WAY comparable?  Wall*E is many things, but it is far, far from hard science-fiction. Hard sci-fi is science fiction that is grounded in a technical reality. Look at the works of Arthur C. Clarke for an example--the man was a skilled astrophysicist and made several contributions to the field. His novels explained in detail the concepts behind the technology, and at no point does he hand-wave away technology or violate known scientific principles. Isaac Asimov, Ursula LeGuin, Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, and many other huge names in the field are known for their scientific rigor in addition to their skill as storytellers. Wall*E, by contrast, is the opposite of hard science fiction. The focus is on the story, not the science itself. What technology there is in the movie exists without explanation and occasionally in direct defiance to known scientific principles. Other examples of "soft" SF would be the Star Wars and Star Trek series (along with, indeed, almost every popular space-related TV show, with the exception of Firefly). "Hard" and "soft" are not qualitative definitions in that it's possible for soft sci-fi to be very good, and in fact some of the authors I list above have dabbled in soft sci-fi with great results. I don't criticize Wall*E for not being hard sci-fi, but I do disapprove of the misuse of the label. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
|
|
|
|
murlough23
|
|
« Reply #83 on: February 27, 2009, 04:36:28 PM » |
|
Agreed, Wall-E isn't hard sci-fi. Leading folks to expect it to be hard sci-fi will only lead to disappointment when not every little bit of movement in the film lines up with the known natural laws of the universe.
It's soft sci-fi. It's an imaginative story, in some ways closer to fantasy, except that it involves the future and robots and space. It's a "what if", which I guess is one of the tenets of sci-fi, but since it's not "hard" sci-fi, the "what if" doesn't need to be rooted in something that we could plausibly invent or that could plausibly happen hundreds of years down the line. I don't think actual life or emotions or whatever just happening to emerge from artificial intelligence is terribly plausible. So I have to buy an implausible premise to begin with, to even be allowed entry into the movie's world. This implausible premise is also something that I have to buy to enjoy the character of Data on ST:TNG, or pretty much any aspect of the Cylons on BSG.
If they establish a premise and then violate their own premise, I cry foul. If they violate other rules that aren't really central to the story, it may be an annoyance once I realize they goofed there, but this doesn't detract from the experience in any major way. (I know that 6th and 87th streets in New York don't actually intersect, for example, but this didn't ruin the most recent episode of Lost for me.)
NP: "Sleep", Copeland
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Vlad!
|
|
« Reply #84 on: May 29, 2009, 10:44:54 PM » |
|
I know you're on the edge of your seat, but it's not on my movie schedule, so I think you'll have to be disappointed.
(Even though the Mythbusters definitively proved that such a small amount of balloons couldn't even lift a child, let alone a whole house, for some reason the trailers for Up didn't bother me nearly as much as Wall*E bothered me. I don't know why exactly this is the case, and I'm sure you'd rather I not speculate).
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
|
|
|
|
Brenden
|
|
« Reply #85 on: May 30, 2009, 12:02:34 AM » |
|
The whole film feels like a fantasy adventure rather than the sci-fi of Wall*E, perhaps?
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
murlough23
|
|
« Reply #86 on: May 31, 2009, 08:11:48 PM » |
|
The whole film feels like a fantasy adventure rather than the sci-fi of Wall*E, perhaps?
A film set in the future can't be fantasy? |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Brenden
|
|
« Reply #87 on: June 01, 2009, 10:13:45 AM » |
|
A film set in the future can't be fantasy?
It could if it had fantastic elements, but Wall*E didn't have those that I remember. I'm one of the people who didn't care about the physics issues and just loved it, though. I saw Up at the drive-in and stayed for the second movie, which was Hannah Montana, which was possibly even more unbelievable than Up and was incredibly stupid. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
murlough23
|
|
« Reply #88 on: June 01, 2009, 02:20:13 PM » |
|
It could if it had fantastic elements, but Wall*E didn't have those that I remember. Maybe I just perceive different boundaries between the plausible and the fantastical. To me, the very premise of Wall-E is fantastical. I don't believe it's possible for a machine to develop a personality or a soul or what have you. The personification of a machine as if it were human is amusing to me because of how things that are not "alive" can fool us into looking like they are. I am impressed because I feel empathy for what is essentially an advanced computer, just as I felt empathy for a freakin' toy way back in 1995. Up, which I haven't seen just yet, appears to have a modern-day setting. If anything, I'd have a harder time buying inconsistent physics and what have you in a movie set in the "real world" that we recognize as being our own, rather than in the distant future. Regardless, it's a cartoon, so I truly don't care about the physics or even whether the logic internal to the cartoon is consistent. That's part of what makes cartoons fun - they can do stuff that makes no sense. Though there was a story about a dude who attached balloons to a lawn chair and managed to float to 16,000 feet before entering controlled airspace and having to shoot balloons to get himself down. Obviously a lawn chair weighs much less than a house, but the point here is that what happened in the real world served as a launching pad for cartoonish imagination. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Brenden
|
|
« Reply #89 on: June 01, 2009, 02:33:47 PM » |
|
Maybe I just perceive different boundaries between the plausible and the fantastical. To me, the very premise of Wall-E is fantastical. Once science starts to get involved, I consider it to be more sci-fi than a movie like Up, which ignores science altogether, placing it fully in the realm of fantasy. Yeah, a guy can float a lawn chair using weather balloons, but I think Mythbusters demonstrated than from a scientific angle, that many normal balloons would probably have done absolutely nothing to move the house from its foundation, let alone support it for days through multiple thunderstorms, caves, and fires. Besides the house not being singed despite a large fire being directly underneath it for a good 30-45 seconds. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
murlough23
|
|
« Reply #90 on: June 01, 2009, 02:40:54 PM » |
|
Once science starts to get involved, I consider it to be more sci-fi than a movie like Up, which ignores science altogether, placing it fully in the realm of fantasy. Yeah, a guy can float a lawn chair using weather balloons, but I think Mythbusters demonstrated than from a scientific angle, that many normal balloons would probably have done absolutely nothing to move the house from its foundation, let alone support it for days through multiple thunderstorms, caves, and fires. Besides the house not being singed despite a large fire being directly underneath it for a good 30-45 seconds.
Sure. I wouldn't assume Up to be fantastical. I'm just pointing out that (a) sometimes these fantastical ideas have their roots in real events, even if the events being depicted in the cartoon are anything but realistic, and (b) it's somewhat arbitrary to say, "I can accept fantasy in this time period but not the other one". Both films are fantastical with some scientific notions undergirding them, but not claim to scientific accuracy ever having been made. They made the movie, we assigned a genre to it based on our assumption that if it's in the future and about robots, it's sci-fi, and if it's in the present and involving only humans, it's probably not sci-fi. Then we assigned expectations to it based on the fact that "science fiction" has the word "science" in it. (It's also good to understand the difference between "hard sci-fi", which does try to stick to speculation on ways that plausible scientific principles could be used, and the rest of sci-fi, which more or less bends the rules as it sees fit.) This is very much like the argument about time travel on Lost. If you believe time travel's ridiculous in the first place, you can just accept the ridiculous premise and have fun with. If you actually hold some notion that it's theoretically possible and must operate by certain rules, then you're going to want to nitpick. These things are much easier if you just accept the premise as fantastical from the get-go, and I think the premises of both Wall-E and Up (as well as pretty much every other Pixar film) make this incredibly easy to do. But adults have this weird habit of trying to apply rules that need not be in place for films directed at children. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Vlad!
|
|
« Reply #91 on: June 01, 2009, 04:56:30 PM » |
|
I think the introduction of a slightly plausible backstory and the appearance (if not the actuality) of an actual message gave Wall*E a lot more of a sci-fi feel to it. The line between sci-fi and fantasy has never been wholly distinct (see, for instance, Clarke's third law), and it's certainly arguable about which has a more fantasy-ish setting. I think I'm in agreement with Brenden on this one. Also, I don't have a great track record of defending my own instincts and gut feelings well enough to convince others, so I won't add any more fuel to the fire at this time  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
|
|
|
|
bloop
|
|
« Reply #92 on: June 01, 2009, 06:41:31 PM » |
|
I find murlough's argument more convincing, but remembering that both applaud the merits of "Wall*E", I'm not complaining.
I don't know why the explorer guy in "Up" kept searching for that damn bird. He would be hailed as a genius for that dog collar.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Enjoy our pub. user/pw: thephorum Follow me on Grooveshark or Spotify. username: iceybloop |
|
|
|
