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JB0

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  1. JB0
    Doesn't change the fact that he DOES copy Sarah Conner later, after leaving her alive so they can do a scene where John is faced with two Sarahs both shouting at him in identical voices. He literally had her pinned to a wall. He could've decapitated her or lanced her heart before he walked off, and then he would've won because John wouldn't have had two Sarahs both shouting "shoot her, she's the robot" at him. ... And I was under the impression he could copy someone perfectly from as little as a single footprint. Which made no sense whatsoever, but...
  2. JB0
    This is probably the first time I'm NOT going to advocate american supremacy on video game names. Megadrive Megatron is just so much fun to say! Genesis Megatron, by comparison... it rolls off the tongue like a thing that doesn't roll and sticks to tongues would.
  3. JB0
    Well, that's kind of calling back to the first movie. Judgement Day will happen. Humanity will eventually win, but at great cost. There's no way to change this. The "self-correcting" future is a way to reconcile that original concept with the fact that Judgement Day DIDN'T happen, and they kinda blew up the company's entire R&D department. Which isn't to say it was a great movie, but it was at least marginally considering some of the original film's themes. Yupyup. I still dislike the T1000, even after having made my peace with his film. I think liquid metal over robot makes more sense than liquid metal over more liquid metal. But neither one should be able to time-travel, since they aren't organic. There could be a low-level "instinctive" routine in each individual node to search for other nearby nodes to combine with until the system is large enough for something resembling intelligence. A distributed computer... much like Skynet is in Terminator 3. I'm willing to grant some of it's more egregious flaws, like suffering system failure in an environment humans operate in, as it being identified as a prototype. Skynet was desperate and sent a machine that wasn't really ready for prime time back. But no, it doesn't make an awful lot of sense. There's a lot of issues with 2 if you watch it critically. It feels to me like they were just throwing every idea into the script without considering how they meshed together. And then in the final scene, the T1000 tries to force Sarah to call John to her so he can kill John. Despite the fact that the T1000 can imitate Sarah and do it himself, which he does in the next scene after forgetting to kill Sarah. Were I trying to defend the film, I'd argue the heat was messing with his systems in more than the obvious "difficulty keeping form" issue, and he wasn't thinking properly. But... it'd be a weak defense. I yell at a lot of films for bad computers. This one was exceptionally bad with computers, though. As the public becomes more familiar with computers, movies should strive for MORE accurate portrayals, not LESS. And, well... I AM a computer nerd. An error on such a massive scale is HIGHLY distracting. (I'm also not sure how the virus got into the wild, with Skynet being disconnected from the network) As a distributed system, every cellphone and broadcast tower T3-Skynet destroyed made it dumber, every routing server and fiber-optic backbone reduced to ionized particles in the air a potentially crippling blow(or even worse, resulted in MULTIPLE DIFFERENT SKYNETS placed at odds with each other). It was in it's interests, short-term at least, to keep infrastructure damage to a controlled level, something nuclear carpet-bombing is not very good at. And yes, it would be bothered by radiation. There's a reason NASA uses decade-old processors and pays through the nose for custom versions of them. Radiation does TERRIBLE things to integrated circuits, and the more advanced they are, the more sensitive they are. So the most powerful nodes of T3-Skynet were also the most at risk on Judgement Day. So the initial strike on humanity would have to be executed very carefully to prevent Skynet lobotomizing itself in the process.
  4. JB0
    Word. Terminator 2, taken on it's own, also has plot holes big enough to drive a truck through. But no one much cares because they DID drive a truck through them. And then blew it up. And then did it again thirty minutes later. It's dumb, stupid, incredibly loud fun. Unfortunatly, Hollywood believes a single computer virus can run on a dozen(or more!) different platforms and this is a perfectly rational premise. That's going to greatly hinder any atempts at realistic portrayals. About the only thing that made sense in Terminator 3 was Skynet being a heavily-networked array instead of a single mainframe. Most of it's attempts at explanation had me screaming "computers do not work that way!" at the screen.
  5. JB0
    Why not? It's what Terminator 2 did. Actually, that's the best part of Terminator 2, taking the audience expectations and knocking them on their side. That first half-hour, when they go out of their way to make it look like they're doing the first movie all over again, building up to that moment where both time travellers catch up to young John in the hallway, Schwarzenegger grabs John, and... takes a bullet from the "good guy" for him? That was sheer genius, and everything after it is downhill. I would LOVE to be able to watch it again without knowing that Schwarzenegger is the good guy. The quotes are an extension of that, with Arnold-Terminator stealing Reese's "come with me if you want to live" and saying "I'll be back" as a reassuring statement rather than a threat he's about to make good on. And in that regard, I think this movie works... except they just spoiled the big twist in the trailer. If they hadn't included the part with Sarah being a badass and "Yeah, we already killed the robot, deal with it!". Whoops! THANK YOU! I've finally made my peace with T2, but it took a lot of pointless analyzing, obsessing, and ranting on the internet about how awful it was. My current stance is: Terminator 2 is set in a parallel universe where something LIKE Terminator happened, but it's not a direct sequel to Terminator. Because audiences want happy endings. People were PISSED at the end of Terminator 3. When I saw it, the guy behind me was shouting swears at the screen when the nukes started blowing up. Even the bitter victory of Terminator 1 doesn't sit particularly well with a mass-market. Well, she's known as the woman who taught John to be a badass, so it's assumed. But Conner could've brainwashed Kyle into thinking of Sarah as the ideal perfect woman and make him into an obsessed stalker who would die to protect her over several years. But that would just be creepy(and the plot of T1).
  6. JB0
    Honestly, I think it was a clever move to keep the stormtroopers as faceless, largely silent antagonists originally. They were only painted as real people ONCE, and that was when Obi-Wan was sneaking by to deactivate the tractor beam while the two guards talked about space-cars. It was necessary for the scene that they be shown to not just be all soldier all the time. They had to have a human weakness for the one scene, so it's the only time they've been humanized. Which makes it stick out even more. The sequels actively avoided allowing a stormtrooper to appear human. But even in the first movie, you NEVER see one without a mask, despite the masks being a CANONICALLY bad idea("I can't see a thing in this helmet!"). It helps prevent the audience thinking of them as PEOPLE. It's more fun to mow down an army of faceless suits of armor(literally!) than a swath of real people, and makes them more useful as cannon fodder. The clone troopers were an attempt to take that to the next level and actively assure audiences that they COULDN'T be "real people" because they were clones PROGRAMMED to be warriors and nothing else. They were organic battledroids. And I think the new movie is at a point in the story where they can afford to humanize the stormtroopers. Stormtroopers aren't the fist of the emperor anymore, or likely to be involved with the primary antagonist. He's just some dude trying to make a living and getting caught up in some crazy shizzle, and it's safe to let the audience see that that because this movie won't gun down seven thousand of them.
  7. JB0
    YES! Loved that one since the original one-shot. I would pay money for a lifesize replica of that hammer.
  8. JB0
    Just a teaser unveil. That's Darth Astley, the new dark lord of the sith.
  9. JB0
    I kinda like it, but kinda feel they should've gone farther with some custom molds or at least paint detailing. If it had the triangle vents on the side like a real PS1, if the DS4 was restyled to resemble some flavor of PS1 pad, it'd be way more awesome. Hell, if they'd painted some detailing on it, a la the GBASP NES lid. Also, a PS1 emulator should be installed on it, like they did for the PS3.
  10. JB0
    Ship's computer was damaged in the crash and millenia offline(and the beast wars breaking out inside it). It had lost IFF capability. Pretty sure that's both Marvel and cartoon canon.
  11. JB0
    And Lucas did? The prequel trilogy was a big ball of continuity errors and retcons even just when considering the original movies. Start adding in all the extended universe stuff you're referencing and it almost seemed like it was actively TRYING to invalidate it all.
  12. JB0
    Actually, it doesn't. If someone slides their sword down the blade, they won't land on the guardblades, but on the emitters for the guardblades, which are high-energy devices and will likely explode spectacularly. I'd be a lot happier with the crosshilt if the guardblades had recessed emitters.
  13. JB0
    Y-Wings. Y settle for anything less?
  14. JB0
    Because armor is cheaper to design and manufacture than space fighters. Easy answer.
  15. JB0
    Yeah, 50Hz land had much more compatible stuff back in the day because who wanted to import from EUROPE? In seriousness, the conversion issues were pretty much a one-way street. 50 Hz regions imported 60 Hz content, but the reverse was rarely true. So no one was really making 60 Hz TVs that also worked with 50 Hz content. But, like I said, that took actual WORK to do back in the CRT days. Now it's easier to do it than it is to not do it. US BluRays are indistinguishable from japanese BluRays, from a format perspective. Same region code, same TV standards. DVDs were the same except for region code, despite US NTSC and J NTSC actually being slightly different formats. (The black levels were slightly different, but it was only relevant at the analog level, so it didn't affect disk format at all.) (Yes, I know too much about analog TV formats for someone who is not a broadcast engineer.) Dear Hasbro: Shut up and take my money already, geez! -JB0 PS: Can you get me Transformers: Animated on BR while you're at it?
  16. JB0
    My understanding is that the big obstacle was color encoding back in the day. Since the specials on-disk aren't actually stored AS NTSC or PAL, but as MPEG-2(50 or 60Hz, interlaced or progressive), and the player is responsible for the final output format... it comes down to whether the TV can accept 50 Hz input. This was low odds on CRT, but is trivial on a modern display. I THINK the TV should accept it, especially as many of them already accept 24 Hz content natively. And I THINK that if it doesn't the BluRay player should automatically start frame-rate conversion. Again, in part because it does for 24 Hz content. Aaaaaaand now that I think to do an actual search, the internet says(with surprisingly little digging, I thought this was gonna be hard)it MIGHT be a problem, depending on the specific player and TV. http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=95245 is a list of US players that can handle 50 Hz content, and whether they resample to 60 Hz or output at 50(in which case your TV needs to handle 50 Hz, and I don't see a good list of those). ... ... ... For Primus' sake, people! It's the twenty-first century, this should not be that hard! I KNOW these companies are all global businesses selling the SAME SLAGGIN' HARDWARE in multiple regions, so why not just put the SAME SLAGGIN' FIRMWARE on all of them(sans region code and "does 'color' have a 'u'" settings) and let the people that care about imports be pleasantly surprised by their newfound multisync compatibility?!?! I THOUGHT this idiocy was coming to an end when we all moved to DTV and BluRay had three region codes instead of eight, but apparently manufacturers STILL can't get their cranial units out of their exhaust ports! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *deep breath* Okay, I'm done. ... It's still a stupid situation that shouldn't exist. Oh hey, Baron Von Joy looks a lot better as a car than I expected him too.
  17. JB0
    It's not an unsound argument, really. They all have a lot in common. Classifying dinosaur species and genus is far less clear than classifying living animal species and genus, since, you know... it's all bones, and not even complete sets usually. I do not envy the folks that have to figure out how a critter looked from a dozen bones, much less who it's cousins were.
  18. JB0
    Macross 7 Plus +: Basara learns the art of dance and Fire Bomber gets some choreography
  19. JB0
    For a while, they were the same genus. Deinonychus was split back out later. Apparently, the book made reference to the merger. I'm not clear if they were split back after the book was written, or if Crichton had dated reference material(You'd think after 65 million years it didn't matter if you were off by one or two, right?). I'm willing to give them a pass on that either way, though I DO wish deinonychus had made it in as himself, particularly as it's such an IMPORTANT species. That actually came up in the first book. Their lead geneticist proposed tweaking the DNA to make dinosaur 2.0: The dinosaurs people EXPECTED rather than the ones that actually were. Hammond was furious because they HAD real dinosaurs, you can't IMPROVE on perfection. Didn't appreciate counterarguments that they weren't real dinosaurs since they'd been gene-spliced to hell and back already.
  20. JB0
    Actually, PAL and NTSC are no longer relevant at all. I THINK modern hardware handles 50/60 Hz seamlessly, but won't swear to it as I haven't had occasion to test. Not a damn clue. But I want an answer to that question as well.
  21. JB0
    Without the epilogue, it's ambiguous, but the epilogue makes it explicit. Funny story, that. Spielberg upscaled the velociraptors beyond any then-extant species so they'd be intimidating. The utahraptor was discovered while the film was in post-production, and through some insane coincidence almost perfectly matched the scale of Spielberg's raptors. And while the movie didn't really make it obvious, Utahraptor in life would have had a similar mass to a friggin' polar bear. Though utahraptor is not, and never has been, a member of the velociraptor genus The velociraptors in the film were likely modelled after the deinonychus, which was classified as a member of the velociraptor genus at the time Jurassic Park was written, and velociraptor antirrhopus appears to be the actual species of 'raptor that Crichton was thinking of. But deinonychus antirrhopus' head was only at about chest level on an adult human, so still too small. It would be a fitting choice, though. Deinonychus was one of the major discoveries that made people question the long-held image of dinosaurs as slow, plodding, clumsy beasts, thereby paving the way for stories like Jurassic Park. Incidentally, when I saw the movie as a kid, I was all "That's a deinonychus claw! What the heck is a velociraptor, anyways?" My, how times change.
  22. JB0
    Epilogue of the first book. The Costa Rican government is blocking his burial. Apparently some crazy shiznit happened on an island they leased to some wealthy american, they're VERY upset about it all. Last time I had this discussion with someone, it turned out they had the "Jurassic World" anthology, and for SOME REASON said anthology omitted the original book's epilogue.
  23. JB0
    "But this time we'll do it RIGHT!"
  24. JB0
    I could never get over zombie Malcom. The first book is pretty unambiguous. He's dead in the end, they are trying to get the government to let them bury his body. Then the second book rolls around and he gets better somehow.
  25. JB0
    I don't understand you guys saying the movie is a guilty pleasure. That's one of the greatest works of cinematography ever.
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