"A.P.E.X"

[Fearless Freep]

I was a little worried about this one.  The one endoresement on the cover was from the Seattle Times.  Not good when the best you can dig up is a local newspaper.  The line said something like "One of your better cyborg time travel movies"  Talk about damming with faint praise; the cyborg time travelling genre is not exactly awash with oscar material.

So..anyway... The movie itself wasn't too bad.  Actually kind of enjoyable.  Lot's of explosions, and the robots (not cyborgs) were pretty cool.  They had some pretty wicked guns, but absolutely *no* ability to aim.  Although that was confusing in it's own right as the robots were designed as time travelling probes and shouldn't really have needed that much artillary.

The basic premise is that in the year 2073, a group of scientists sends a probe back to 1973 to a supposedly unpopulated section of the Mojave Desert, where it runs into a traveling hippie family taking a break.  Due to an accident with the time machine, the probe is given instructions to sterlize the area (think "Nomad") and a virus from one of the scientists ("Sinclair"), who tries to stop the probe before it wipes out the hippie family, is introduced into 1973.  The accident creates some sort of paradox loop where robots from the future keep appearing in the past, with instructions to 'sterilize', which gets read as 'wipe out humanity' and humans are dying from the virus.  When Sinclair returns to 2073, he is in a paradox alternate reality; he is now a soldier fighting against the robots, who have overrun the world and wiping out humankind; his wife from his own reality is now afflicted with the virus and doesn't like the Sinclair of her new reality.   Realizing the somehow he is the cause, he figures the only way to set the world straight again is to go back to the lab in this universe and get to the lab in ther other universe *before* the accident.  So he and a band of soldiers head across country to get to the old lab.

The ending didn't really explain how things were solved; it just happened with the flick of a switch.

Why people kept disappearing and why the robots were converging back to lab was never really addressed.

At least Sinclar never tried to explain what was going on, realizing it wouldn't do any good anyway

The acting was decent for this, no Oscar material but nothing that made me cringe.

An enjoyable hour and a half if you like robots, explosions, and bad time travel pardox plots

[Flangepart]

Oooh. Time Travel. I've always had problims with Time Travel flicks. Hey, my life is confused enough! Alternate Earths, Syncronised paralell existance i can deal with, but "Killing Grampa" stories make my brain hurt. I do have a brain...got it at Penny's........Blue light Special...........S-mart was out of the version i wanted................

[John]

>and the robots (not cyborgs) were pretty cool.

 Didn't you know? Hollywood has declared the terms robot and cyborg to be interchangable now. I blame the Terminator movies for this. A cyborg is supposed to be an organism that relies on both organic and inorganic components. The Terminator didn't require its covering of human skin to function, making it just a disguised robot.

>Although that was confusing in it's own right as the robots were designed as time
>travelling probes and shouldn't really have needed that much artillary.

 Well, some were designed to 'sterilize' situations and areas.

 Trivia: I believe I read somewhere that they only had 2 robot costumes and they just filmed multiple scenes with them to create the impression that there was a whole army of them. I think the most you ever see onscreen at the same time is 2.

[Fearless Freep]

> Well, some were designed to 'sterilize' situations and areas.

They should've gone with a smaller gun and put the money into some targetting software.  I think the only time they hit anything was from a distance of 30 feet or less.  At longer ranges they *missed* by over 30 feet

>Trivia: I believe I read somewhere that they only had 2 robot costumes and they just filmed multiple scenes with them to create the impression that there was a whole army of them. I think the most you ever see onscreen at the same time is 2.

I got the same impression as I was watching the movie.  I actually started off thinking the only had one suite, but then they showed two so I realized they had a bit more money.  Although I think I actually saw three on screen in one shot, but I'm not sure.  Still, they got good use for their money

>Hollywood has declared the terms robot and cyborg to be interchangable now.

Don't forget "android" as well.  At least "Cyborg Cop" and "American Cybotg" actually got it right

[Nathan Shumate]

I will not say that  our fearless friend Freep is wrong; opinions are opinions.  However, APEX is the first movie that made me begrudge the fact that the IMDb ratings scale only went down to 1.

I hated hated hated this movie.  It was like wiping my ass with a wire BBQ-cleaning brush and then having Mexican-food diarrhea.

Nathan

[Fearless Freep]

OK, A caveat, there's a huge gulf between "I liked this movie" and "this is a good movie" :)

and in my mind, there is often a difference between "I liked this movie" and "this was an ok way to pass an hour and a half" :)  I have a very high tolerance level
for pretty much anything sci-fi related (robots, cyborgs, time travel, space ships, whatever).  This wasn't a great movie by any stretch, but it was certainly not nearly as bad  as "Robot Holocaust", more exciting than "Nemisis" II-IV and not nearly as boring as "Nadja".

There's a lot worse stuff out there than this one :)

BTW, Nathan, your review of Nemesis is very funny, but i wasn't *nearly as bad as it's three sequels

[John]

>They should've gone with a smaller gun and put the money into some targetting
>software. I think the only time they hit anything was from a distance of 30 feet or
>less. At longer ranges they *missed* by over 30 feet

 But then the humans wouldn't have stood a chance. Of course, robots do a lot of things in movies that they shouldn't, like swinging their arms when they walk.

>Don't forget "android" as well. At least "Cyborg Cop" and "American Cybotg"
>actually got it right

 Yes, too bad they sucked.

>I hated hated hated this movie. It was like wiping my ass with a wire BBQ->cleaning brush and then having Mexican-food diarrhea.

 At least you didn't have the diarrhea BEFORE you wiped...

[Fearless Freep]

> >At longer ranges they *missed* by over 30 feet

> But then the humans wouldn't have stood a chance.

That's true, they were very close to Starship Troopers for "rounds expended per kill"


> Of course, robots do a lot of things in movies that they shouldn't, like swinging their arms when they walk.

What's wrong with swinging arms?  It helps balance and I would imagine any human-like android or robot with a human-like mode of transportation would need balance as well

> >Don't forget "android" as well. At least "Cyborg Cop" and "American Cybotg"
> > actually got it right

> Yes, too bad they sucked.

Well, yeah...that's true...but at least they know what a Cyborg is! :)

[John]

>What's wrong with swinging arms? It helps balance and I would imagine any
>human-like android or robot with a human-like mode of transportation would
>need balance as well

 I imagine a human-like robot would probably have an internal gyro for balance. There are lots of other things too, like moving their head when they walk. Humans make lots of little incidental movements, but a robot/android would have to intentionally make those movements. Or let's say that it puts a cup or something else on a table, it should be able to pick it back up without even looking by exactly reversing the movements used to put it down.

 Here's another question; you see lots of scenes of robots/androids having a rubber face peeled off and it's a smooth metal skull underneath. How do they make their faces move? I suppose the terminator could include pinpoint electrical contacts in the face to stimulate the muscles in the flesh covering it, but what about ones with rubber skin?

[Fearless Freep]

>I imagine a human-like robot would probably have an internal gyro for balance.

Umm..humans have an internal gyro, too, in the inner ear, for balance.

All that does is help you know which way is down.  You still have to obey physics to keep from falling over.  Human walking is a coordinated balance action in falling over and than catching yourself.  An internal gyro in the robot is not going to help; iy'll let the robot know where "down" is, but not keep it from falling over unless it's balanced.

>There are lots of other things too, like moving their head when they walk.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.  Humans don't really move

> Or let's say that it puts a cup or something else on a table, it should be able to pick it back up without even looking by exactly reversing the movements used to put it down.

Sure, and I do that all the time as well and I'm not a robot.  I regularly put my cup of coffee on the roof of my car, get in the car, and then reach my hand up to grab the cup, without looking.  The only reason you really need to look at something you already put down is to make sure it's still there.  Just reversing your motions doesn't work, though, unless you want to end up standing exactly were you were, which isn't always that useful, and only really works in a very short term (If you put a cup on a table and then walk across the kitchen, it wouldn't make sense to walk backwards across the kitchen just to pick up the cup again).  The reason one would want to look at something again before picking it up is because the world changes when you're not looking at it so it's best to make sure it's the same before doing something blindly, whether you are a human or a robot

Humans do a lot of little things that actually make sense for balance, perception, etc.. and any human-like being is probably going to run into the same kinds of situations and probably deal with them in roughly the same way, especially when built by humans who are used to solving certain situations in a given way

> How do they make their faces move?

Well, if your android is played by Jean Claude Van Damme or Oliver Grunner or even Arnold, their faces are't exactly that articulat to begin with :)

[John]

>Umm..humans have an internal gyro, too, in the inner ear, for balance.

 Not exactly the same thing.

>All that does is help you know which way is down. You still have to obey physics
>to keep from falling over. Human walking is a coordinated balance action in
>falling over and than catching yourself. An internal gyro in the robot is not going
>to help; iy'll let the robot know where "down" is, but not keep it from falling over
>unless it's balanced.

 Actually, a gyro will help with balance, although now that I think about it, I'm not 100% sure it would work the way it was supposed to in a walking robot.

 What I'm talking about is a heavy, spinning wheel that exterts so much centrifugal force that whatever it's in wants to remain upright. For example, there are toy tops you can buy that have an open metal frame with a weighted wheel mounted horizontally in them. There's a hole in the axel so you stick a piece of string in, wind it up and when you pull it, the wheel spins super-fast. At that point, you can put it down on the floor and it will balance on a single point on the bottom of the frame. In fact, the one I have somewhere has a ball on one end and a notched ball on the other and it will balance on a piece of string. In fact, you can loop a piece of string around the ball and the top will just hang there at a 90 degree angle to the string, like an off-center yo-yo. If you hold it by the frame and move your hand around while it's spinning, you can feel resistance to the movement. In fact, I think they sell hand exercisers like that.

 Check out this page for a perfect illustration of what I'm describing;

http://www.tpub.com/neets/book15/63.htm

>I'm not sure what you mean by that. Humans don't really move

 Ok, bad example. What I mean is that a robot wouldn't have any incidental movement. If it's aiming a gun at a stationary target while standing still, it would be as steady as a statue, their arm wouldn't waver at all, like a human's would. Or they could stay perfectly motionless for hours. Arnold did this in Terminator II when he spent the night standing and looking out the window in the gas station.

 Did you ever see an old movie called Gog? It had two robots with treads, cone-shaped bodies and a variety of arms with different tools on them. They were programmed by paper tape. Anyway, every time one of the robots moved, the arms flailed all over the place. Since a robot's movements have to be instructed by the computer, why would anyone write a movement routine that included things like "Flail arm B 30 degrees left. Flail arm C 45 degrees right. Move arm E up and down constantly."? If the arms didn't need to be moved to perform a specific task, they wouldn't move, other than maybe from a little vibration. It's like a printer; when you print something, it moves the head to where characters need to be printed. It doesn't move the head back and forth a random number of times for each line.

>Sure, and I do that all the time as well and I'm not a robot. I regularly put my cup
>of coffee on the roof of my car, get in the car, and then reach my hand up to grab
>the cup, without looking. The only reason you really need to look at something
>you already put down is to make sure it's still there. Just reversing your motions

 Well, there's lot of other things too. A robot should be able to reproduce a drawing or something it's seen by using a pen and paper. It should be able to look at computer equipment on either side of it and then be able to operate it just by reaching out to the side since everything would still be in exactly the same place as it was the last time it looked. It should be able to fire a weapon without having to actually sight down the barrel (fire once from the hip, note where the shot hits, then reproduce that pose exactly and it would know exactly where the shot will hit) etc. (Robocop did this in the first movie).

 There was a recent episode of The Outer LImits (one of the last SFC made) that had a guy playing chess against an android. The part that bugged me was that the android sat there and watched the moves. It should be enough for the human player to just annouce the moves and the android could visualize them in its head while doing other things. I suppose you could explain it as him being programmed to imitate humans so as to fit in better, but there's no reason a machine would need to sit at the actual board to play.

>Well, if your android is played by Jean Claude Van Damme or Oliver Grunner or
>even Arnold, their faces are't exactly that articulat to begin with :)

 Good point. :)