This sorta came up in the "Reign Of Fire" thread...
Anyway, last night I started watching "Exterminators of the Year 3003" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085514/). I haven't watched it all, just maybe the first half hour or less, but a couple of things caught my eye.
In the year 3000, following destruction of the ozone layer by nuclear weapons (huh??), apprarently the level of technilogy will be...approximately mid 1970s. Think about that ..that's like a movie set in 2000 where human technology was thrown back to the 10th century. If the world came to an end fairly recently before the events in the movie ,which seems to be alluded to, then you would think that something more 'modern' to them than 1000 year old technology would have survived. If the catastophe happened much earlier, then you would think some technology wouldve been created in the ensuing hundreds of years. They should've just called in "Exterminators in the Year 2010" or something and kept in at least a bit sensible
Which brings up the classis suspension of reality in these post-apocolyptic Road Warrior rip offs (and I really mean rip-off! You should see the 'band of bad guys in makeshift vehicles chase the tanker truck down the highway' scene ) Water. In this movie, a band of humans is running out of water and thus the ability to both have drinking water and to grow crops. However, they apparantly have enough gas and mantained vehicles to send several large vehicles almost 200 miles across the desert to look for water. Where do they get the gas? How are the vehicles maintained? What year and technology level are we talking about again anyway? Hard to believe that a little society about to run out o water and food would have a fairly active motorpool. Where are they getting the gas and why can't they get water from the same source as whatever is supporting the infrastructure. This issue is further confused by an opening scene that seems to indicate that their is an active police force...someplace in the world that could somehow impact the rest of the movie.
"Road Warrior" did it right, set in the very near future so the possibility of some infrastructure still remaining as a source of gas and oil was there. Also, setting the conflict as a competition over a petroleum refinery made it sensible, and hey just sorta assumed water, etc...was available.. Ironically, "Steel Dawn" also got it right be putting the conflict over water but reducing technology to wind power.
This one needed just a *little* bit of thought as to 'does this make any sense?'
It probably didn't take you long to catch these plot-holes, Fearless Freep. Before most of these bad movies we watch are even halfway through, I've already got a list of plot-holes as long as my arm ready and waiting to be posted on various messageboards. And it makes me wonder what these script writers are thinking... they must realize their movies are based on faulty logic and completely unbelievable pseudoscience. Do they just not care? Do they think the majority of their audience won't pick up on these problems? Or is it something else entirely? I'd love to interview a few of these writers and find out once and for all.
I saw this movie years ago with a friend of mine in my "smoking" room in the basement. Even being under the influence didn't help this movie. For one thing, both of us were huge Road Warrior fans (I still am) and all this movie did was p**s us off. Terrible, terrible movie. In the category of "so bad it's not even good".
In the early 80's there were so many Road Warrior knock offs it was ridiculous.
Maybe they were bad because the screenwriters were in the "smoking room" when they hatched their ideas.
The fuel thing is very believable, because in a world where everything is in short supply people will want to be able to go where the things needed for living are. Thus fuel equals power, either as bargaining power or being able to control access to other resources. The two Mad Max sequels did a good job of portraying this.
That's nothing. I just watched Carnosaur II the other night. This team of...I don't know what they were, high school wrestling coaches judging by their maturity level. Anyhow, they're sent to this uranium mine that is apparently having some computer problems. They start getting attacked by dinosaurs (of course), but they can't send for help because it's an isolated mine and nobody apparently cares. Okay, so a bit later in the movie we find that this place is actually a top secret nuclear weapons storage facility. Um, okay, so does it still make sense that if something went terribly wrong here, that there would be no way to contact anyone and inform them of the problem? Talk about a terrorists wet dream. And that's not even mentioning that now it really doesn't make sense for the team of loud morons to have been sent in. Maybe the Army and Marines were all on vacation that day?
And then later on, they have this problem with "losing containment" on the storage facility - you know, like it's the warp core of the starship enterprise or something. This isn't a futuristic movie, they're not using force fields to contain this stuff. What could be failing? Anyhow...they're all running around like idiots because, well, they are idiots, but also because the place is going to blow up when containment is lost. Finally, containment is lost - and nothing happens! They pull out a remote control unit and use that to set off explosives which destroy this nuclear weapons storage facility. Why? Well, because there was a 5-4-3-2-1 countdown to containment being lost, and nothing happened, but since they had a countdown SOMETHING has to blow up, so they blow it up themselves. I guess. This also made the whole climax of the movie unnecessary, as if they could have just blown the place up, there wouldn't have been any need to fight the dinosaurs. Oh, and there's this little unanswered question - wouldn't it be a sort of bad idea to blow up a nuclear weapons storage facility? Maybe the writers have never heard of radiation. That really wouldn't surprise me after watching this thing.
There were a few other little things. A guy throws a hand grenade at a raptor that's standing five feet away. It blows the raptor to bits, but doesn't hurt the guy who is still standing just five feet away. And about, oh, 25 or 30 other minor nitpicks like that.
but I love these things, I tell you!!
If a plot hole is huuugggeee enough, then it has huuuggggeee entertainment value -- something you can laugh about for the rest of the night --
In the words of Ed Wood: "Noone will notice! . . .".
peter johnson/denny crane
Well, I'll grant that these sorta of basic premse holes do give movies a certain sureal fun to them.
I do remember Carnosaur II and thinking many of the same things "This makes no sense..why is this post isolated from contact...with nukes..and...huh?"
Rather than just plot holes, these are sorta over-arching 'premise holes' that establish whhy what happens in the movie actually happen.
The really silly part is that *most* of this has nothing to do with production, special effects budget, sets, acting, etc...just a few lines of dialog or a scene or two that ould just be easily written with just a bit more attention to detail to actually make it make sense.
For some reason, I'm reminded of watching Phoenix (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114125/) the other week. In it, Brad Dourif's character is a real jerk but with military authority. I kept thining, no kerk who was the big an idiot would every survive to gain that much authority..and the story really doesn't need a character like that. Yeah, I suppose it adds to the tension a bit as the good guys have to overcome this dweeb as well as the real threat but...... This seems to happen a lot in B movies. Someone has a position of control or authority or power that you cannot fathom any way he actually was able to get there in the first place,
Don't get me wrong...I ...er...enjoy...watching these movies. It does, however, make it really hard to give them the proper..er..focus...that the filmakers wants the movie given when they set it up witha premise so logically flawed andyet so easily correcte
I think everyone thinks that they're making Star Wars, and that the things they're asking us to swallow are akin to the Force, lighsabers, hyperdrive, etc.
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