Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Movie Magic

Recently when I see movies that try to be realistic (i.e. they don’t explain impossible feats with magic or future) I find myself being very critical. When I see a movie now I am way to analytical with my analysis of the vehicles and stunts that occur. I look at an airplane for example and I say well that’s just plain impossible, although it looks cool it is not aerodynamic; the engine intakes are to small etc. this removes some of my enjoyment of the films in question. Additionally I have begun to do sums; I have begun to count things or people. I have begun to look for movie mistakes or blunders and I am not talking about things like in Batman the movie (Adam West Batman) where robin trips and falls while ducking under the tail boom of the Batcopter, no I am talking about doing bad algebraic operations. The example I will discuss happens in the movie Thunderball (I have been watching the classic James Bonds over the summer). Toward the end of the film there is a huge underwater battle, in this battle the bad guys are fighting some good guys underwater with harpoon guns, now I counted the number of bad guys who enter the fight based upon a helicopter shot from before the battle. I confirmed this number based upon a pan underwater of the bad guys, I said that there was 25 bad guys to start (this is an overestimate in my opinion). Now during the course of the battle I counted how many bad guys get killed (this time underestimating the number), I also count how many run away and how many surrender (once again underestimating). I counted twenty-four dead, three ran away, and five surrendered. This results in a simple equation 25=24+3+5-x, now with some simple operations you will find that x=7 this means that the makers of the film decided to have seven extra bad guys killed in the fight then there where to start with. Of course there are tons of other inaccuracies in other James Bond films, however as you don’t want to be here all day so I won’t. My advise to you is that if you want to enjoy movies more leave your brain at the door.

3 comments:

  1. Yikes. Only Aryeh can show such complete disregard for grammar and spelling. But folks, let me assure you, this is nothing compared to the way he used to write and spell.

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  2. Yeah, it's a pain when you can't stop analyzing. When I was in theatre school, we were constantly in analysis mode -- picking apart scripts, sets, performances... It got to the point where I couldn't just sit and enjoy a play or a movie. And I resented that! Now, with a bit of time gone by, I only analyze and nitpick when I have a reason to, and the majority of the time I just relax and enjoy.

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  3. obviously, the bad guys must have cloned themselves mid-battle. That's against common battle etiquette and fair play, of course, but hey-- they're bad guys, so they probably have no qualms about that.

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