PeteByrdie
Privateer in the service of Princess Frideswide
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2014
- Messages
- 3,218
Hi all!
Tonight finds me having not adapted to the clock change, which I've found especially difficult this year because, obviously, all routine has collapsed anyway. So, to pass some time, I thought I'd share a thought or two that has occurred to me over the years of casually watching science fiction movies.
It's struck me that certain aspects have become staples in the genre, even though they make little sense. I'm not talking about those irrational things which appear in a single sci-fi universe, nor things that more or less make sense and appear time and again. It's those things we seem to appear frequently, yet dissolve under logical scrutiny.
I'll give a couple of examples, then, if anyone joins in, I'll perhaps throw in the odd one.
Telepathy It could be argued that some experiments have exhibited some evidence for low levels of telepathic communication, but hardly anything conclusive. But is it necessary for virtually every futuristic fictional universe to include people with ramped up versions of this unproven ability?
'Help me Obi-Wan' holograms Star Wars was set in a galaxy with technology far in advance of our own. Holograms projected in the air, not an enclosed medium, just the air about us, may make sense there. Here, people seem to buy into it because, I suppose, they think it's just an upgrade from television. So we get it in movies set in the near future, and even the present day, with no real explanation. I'm sure I saw it in a 1990s Bond movie, it was there at the inception of the MCU, with Iron Man, it appeared in Jurassic World. The problem is, it's not just an upgrade from television, and as far as I know, nobody has any idea how it can be done.
Again, it's not that these things appear in a movie, but that they appear frequently. And once I've noticed, I can't stop noticing. Am I alone in this? Should I stop analysing movies and just enjoy them? (Where's the fun in that?) Is someone going to tell me that actually the evidence for telepathy is now iron clad, and someone invented a hologram projector last week?
Tonight finds me having not adapted to the clock change, which I've found especially difficult this year because, obviously, all routine has collapsed anyway. So, to pass some time, I thought I'd share a thought or two that has occurred to me over the years of casually watching science fiction movies.
It's struck me that certain aspects have become staples in the genre, even though they make little sense. I'm not talking about those irrational things which appear in a single sci-fi universe, nor things that more or less make sense and appear time and again. It's those things we seem to appear frequently, yet dissolve under logical scrutiny.
I'll give a couple of examples, then, if anyone joins in, I'll perhaps throw in the odd one.
Telepathy It could be argued that some experiments have exhibited some evidence for low levels of telepathic communication, but hardly anything conclusive. But is it necessary for virtually every futuristic fictional universe to include people with ramped up versions of this unproven ability?
'Help me Obi-Wan' holograms Star Wars was set in a galaxy with technology far in advance of our own. Holograms projected in the air, not an enclosed medium, just the air about us, may make sense there. Here, people seem to buy into it because, I suppose, they think it's just an upgrade from television. So we get it in movies set in the near future, and even the present day, with no real explanation. I'm sure I saw it in a 1990s Bond movie, it was there at the inception of the MCU, with Iron Man, it appeared in Jurassic World. The problem is, it's not just an upgrade from television, and as far as I know, nobody has any idea how it can be done.
Again, it's not that these things appear in a movie, but that they appear frequently. And once I've noticed, I can't stop noticing. Am I alone in this? Should I stop analysing movies and just enjoy them? (Where's the fun in that?) Is someone going to tell me that actually the evidence for telepathy is now iron clad, and someone invented a hologram projector last week?
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