Casablanca: Why would the Nazis give a rat's ass about "letters of transit" signed by Charles de Gaulle?
The Sound of Music: Do the lyrics to "Climb Every Mountain" make any sense at all? I think the Mother Superior was simply searching for a nice way to say "Get the hell out of my convent."
2001: A Space Odyssey: Why doesn't Hal just open the doors while Dave and Frank are snoozing?
Goldfinger: Why does Goldfinger kill both the mobsters who agree to his plan and the mobster who won't go along? Why kill them separately? Why is the airspace above Fort Knox undefended? If the American authorities were aware of the impending attack on Fort Knox, why didn't they prevent it? Why did they allow a freakin' nuke to be dragged in?
Most other James Bond movies: Why does he always introduce himself as "Bond, James Bond"? Whatever happened to the idea of establishing a cover? (My favorite Bond movie, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, gets this part right.)
Star Wars (all): Why stash Luke on Tatooine with his kinsfolk? Isn't that the first place Darth would look? Why does Luke retain his father's name, making him easy to look up in the Tatooine phone book? A New Hope: How is it that the force-filled Darth can interrogate (and presumably torture) Leia without either party learning about the familial relationship? If the bad guys have a tracking device on the Falcon, why fire on the ship during the escape? Why didn't Tarkin park the Death Star (which can travel faster than light) in a place where he has a clear shot at the target? Empire: Luke undergoes months of training, yet his training period runs concurrently with Han's escape -- which seems to take place over the course of a day or two. Jedi: Taking out the Emperor automatically restores democracy? In what universe does that happen?
Stand By Me: The final confrontation establishes that our protagonist has good reason to fear gang leader Keifer Sutherland. An ominous threat is made. And then...nothing. The threat fades away. Am I the only the only one who saw this and muttered "What the hell...?"
Things to Come: John Cabal looks to be well into his 30s in 1940, which means that he must be well into his 60s when he flies into Everytown circa 1970. He soon gets captured. Other airmen rescue him and take over the whole city-state. So why did Cabal show up there at all? It's as though getting captured was the point of his visit! Why would Cabal -- who is not only a senior citizen but also the leader of the emergent new society -- go on a dangerous mission solo? (The movie hints that he not only takes over the government but also commandeers the Boss's mistress, an exotic Mediterranean beauty. Way to go, old man!)
Back to the Future: Why does everyone in the 1950s forget all about Marty McFly the moment he's gone?
Fantastic Voyage: Every set is lit like a game show. What's the light source inside the human body? At the end of the movie, our heroes abandon ship and then grow back to normal size. Why does the ship remain miniaturized?
Indiana Jones: Wouldn't Indy become, like, really really really religious after the finale of Raiders? Or after Last Crusade?
Iron Man: Tony Stark invents a source of almost limitless power for his suit. So why do people still drive cars? Why does Jeff Bridges nix the plan to get out of weapons manufacturing, when the company has the chance to corner the world's energy market?
Star Trek (2009): The bad guy is a Romulan who goes back in time to avenge the destruction of his planet. But in the Trek universe, time travel is an established fact. So why doesn't the Romulan simply make a much shorter hop into the recent past to prevent the tragedy in the first place? Come to think of it, why would anything bad ever happen in Trek-land, where you always have a second chance to get things right?
Spider-Man 2: Why is everyone cool with the idea of conducting dangerous nuke experiments in New York City? Why does Doc Ock throw a car at Peter Parker, from whom he hopes to get information?
The Seventh Seal: This film addresses the great problem of God's absence. But at the very end, we learn that Jof's visions are accurate. Early on, he saw a vision of the Virgin. Problem solved!
12 comments:
Re Casablanca: Because the plot isn't really so much about the letters of transit but about the fact a resistance leader and his wife (Rick's one-time girlfriend) wanted to purchase those in order to leave Casablanca.
Jedi: Taking out the Emperor automatically restores democracy? In what universe does that happen?
Certainly not in the Iraq universe.
"Why stash Luke on Tatooine with his kinsfolk? Isn't that the first place Darth would look?"
Vader wasn't going anywhere near Tatooine if he didn't have to:
Anakin Skywalker: I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.
"Taking out the Emperor automatically restores democracy? In what universe does that happen?"
I haven't read any Star Wars books but I understand that the Rebellion still had to fight the remnants of the Empire in those. Of course Lucas makes it look like the Empire immediately falls in his "improved" version but who accepts that over the original?
"Back to the Future: Why does everyone in the 1950s forget all about Marty McFly the moment he's gone?"
They remember meeting Calvin Klein, who liked to be called Marty, whom they name their child after (in the new alternate timeline).
Question About Casablanca - wouldn't it be because DeGaulle was the head of the resistence and underground at the time the movie takes place? Wouldn't the Vichy government still have been in control of the government then and would be at odds with DeGaulle?
Do the lyrics to "Climb Every Mountain" make any sense at all?
If you have a dream, keep trying, don't give up until you achieve it? Makes sense to *me*.
If the bad guys have a tracking device on the Falcon, why fire on the ship during the escape?
To make it look good, to lull Our Heroes into a false sense of security.
Why didn't Tarkin park the Death Star (which can travel faster than light) in a place where he has a clear shot at the target?
Assuming it could do so at an exact point, I would say the DS dropped out of hyperspace exactly where the MF did, but by the time it arrived (hours later, as I recall), that point no longer had a line of sight to the planet. Otherwise (i.e. if it could not), then there must be some sort of minor Uncertainly Principle in hyperspace travel.
[In the first case, you might ask, why not then make a teeny tiny jump? Well, earlier depictions of jumps imply that this cannot be done, but even if so, why would they bother? They thought they were invincible, so why hurry (that is to say, beyond the need to hit the rebel base before it could be evacuated, and preventing that was what the fighters were for (the DS moves much slower than they do in normal space)- what is an hour more or less?
How is it that the force-filled Darth can interrogate (and presumably torture) Leia without either party learning about the familial relationship?
It was noted later that Leia was able to resist DV's torture and keep from giving him any information, and what Luke said about that was later seen as an implication that it was due to her latent Force powers as a member of the Skywalker clan, powers which only manifested this one time, in this one way. (Recall that Yoda noted that if Luke was killed or corrupted by Vader, someone - whom we later find out is Leia - still remained to be trained take his place.)
2001: A Space Odyssey: Why doesn't Hal just open the doors while Dave and Frank are snoozing?
Remember that over the course of the mission, Hal is slowly going insane, so his actions - while perhaps reasonable to him - when taken together don't always make sense to an outside observer. Further, as a way to try and resolve his unresolvable conflicts, he may even have developed multiple personalities, with one trying to trick the other(s) OR one partly or fully concealing its actions from the other(s).
Goldfinger: Why does Goldfinger kill both the mobsters who agree to his plan and the mobster who won't go along?
Well, he kills the latter group either to show what a badass he is, or because he felt like it (after all, he IS evil).
Sergei Rostov
Things to Come:
Well, he went alone for the same reason the Envoy did in LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness: You don't win true converts to a society by fear or force. Capture or death is always a risk. He went himself on the principle that "I wouldn't send anyone to do something I wouldn't do myself."
Fantastic Voyage:
First of all, it wouldn't be much of a movie if it took place in almost total darkness all the time. :)
But actually, you can light up the inside of the body from the outside with a strong enough light. You can even see into it (to some extent) in this fashion: it's called transillumination, and can actually be used to perform a breast self-examination (use a big flashlight in a small completely darkened closet).
As for the ship, it was eaten up by the white cells, and presumably that process interfered with the transport of matter back from the fourth spatial dimension (which was the reduction mechanism in the book). (Hmm, maybe I should have asked IA about that the one time I talked to him. :) )
Iron Man:
Once TS realized the arc reactor could be miniturized, he knew he couldn't allow it to fall into the wrong hands (even in full-size form) as it could be de-engineered (and used as a bomb) , so he had to retain sole use of it. JB just wanted the money, and being both lazy and not that smart, figured it was easier and better to just sell it in weapon form, and screw the consequences.
Star Trek (2009):
The simple explanation, is that he was driven mad by grief and thought only of revenge.
There were, however notable errors in JJ's plot which made me angry.
- Even semi-controllable time travel in the Trek universe didn't come along until WAY after the Kirk/Spock era (at least the 26th or 27th century).
- There was never even any hint of romance between Uhura and Spock (there were, however, bewtween Uhara and Kirk
As for your question, Joe, in the Trek universe you can travel in time, but you cannot change history (due to the paradox that would create: if you go back and change it, you would have no reason to go back and change it, therefore you would not go back and change it, and so it would happen, and so you would go back and change it, and on and on and on), you can only become a part of established history
(see the original-series episode
"Assignment: Earth"
-SPOILER ALERT! -
where the Enterprise crew interferes with an alien mission - then helps it be completed - only to find out that how things turned out was how the history books had had it all along)).
(That was the biggest error in the movie: JJ never resolved the paradox. Another 2 minutes of film would have been enough to do it and set everything right. Grr.)
Sergei Rostov
SR, one of the hardest things in the world is to create a time travel story that does not contain at least one paradox.
Frankly, I also think that every narrative of a certain length and complexity will contain at least one plot hole or flaw in logic.
"Luke undergoes months of training, yet his training period runs concurrently with Han's escape -- which seems to take place over the course of a day or two."
No, it took the Millenium Falcon months to travel to Bespin, because they couldn't travel in hyperspace. The nearest star system is still a few lightyears away, which takes months in sublight speed.
"Taking out the Emperor automatically restores democracy?
I have read the books that followed Jedi, and the above poster is right. It took four years for the Rebel Alliance to take Courscant(with an infiltration by Rogue Squadron).
The books start the day after Endor, and the Alliance slowly takes systems from the Empire, and even after the New Republic is established, a civil war with the Empire continues for about another 17 years, until accords are reached.
And totally agree about the superiority of the original ending. Some of the upgrades were cool, like the details in the X-Wings as they approach the Death Star in a New Hope, along with the new intro to Mos Eisley. But the original ending with the Ewok Dance Party was awesome. The music was better the first time too.
As far as Bond goes, it seems to me his M.O. has always been to stroll into a situation and announce himself, drawing the bad guys out, tricking them into revealing themselves. So the "Bond, James Bond" thing is more a feature than a bug.
!
My father complains about the narrator in "Sunset Boulevard," who dies during the movie, and goes on narrating.
Joe, what I was saying was, that the Star Trek franchise (up until now) always resolved potential paradoxes in just the way I described. In fact, in one episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, exasperated Temporal Agents even had a name for it (which escapes me).
Oh, further comments:
Star Wars:
Familial issues:
From what I am told, there was originally meant to be just the one movie - which seems to be borne out if one contrasts the castigation of Vader as a "religious fanatic" in Ep. IV with Ep V and the fact of his being the second-in-command of the Emperor himself (who was really the Dark Pope Of The Force Religion) - i.e. Luke, Leia, and Vader were not originally conceived as related (no pun intended).
The fall of the Empire:
Here's how I see it. The Empire had to overthrow and occupy all the worlds of the old Republic. From Petraeus we know that this would take at least 1 troop for every 50 civilians. Even with 1000 worlds of only 50 million population each , that's still 1 billion troops just holding the ground. Add in policing all the space in between, and it's a gargantuan task. I figure that the Empire couldn't manage this, and so threw a huge percentage of its resources behind the Death Star in order to cow the Republic worlds into submission. Once it was destroyed, there were insufficient resources left to maintain a counterinsurgency, and so the Empire fell/would fall in short order (think the Soviets and Afghanistan, only more so).
Luke on Tatooine:
Again, here's how I figure it: the Empire thought it had taken out all the Jedi, so with no one to train him, Luke was no threat (recall that he didn't know the Force even existed, let alone how to use it). Vader discovered Kenobi was still alive and living on Tatooine, so he then went after him and Luke (who was now a potential threat).
Bond, James Bond:
Let's look at it this way. Normal agents need to establish cover because they go after people who don't know who they are. Bond, however, is on another level: he is one of a handful of super-agents - the 00's - who specifically go after supercriminals and entire branches of international criminal organizations. His opponents have good enough intelligence that already know who he is (by face as well as reputation)...at least, it always seemed to me to be so. So it doesn't make any difference if he uses his real name. This may not be the case, so then, why does he use it so blatantly?
At one and the same time he is communicating:
"I'm James Bond, and you know what *that* means." (My reputation will make you hesitate and screw up.)
plus
" I am so badass that me telling you who I am will make absolutely no difference in how easily I will kick your ass." (I place the fear in you that I am even more skilled than my reputation.)
So it's a double intimidation tactic to throw them off their game and give him an edge.
Final Note: Things To Come is one of my favorite movies of all time. I've seen it many times, and I once spent a rather pleasant New Year's Eve watching it...and if you are down, or think you might be getting down, who can beat that ending?
Sergei Rostov
Bigger problem with Indy Jones/Last Crusade than him becoming religious - he's become IMMORTAL (or at least got vastly extended longevity) after drinking from the Grail. But maybe the nuke-the-fridge incident killed off his immortalness.
I assume you already know the big flaw with Citizen Kane?
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