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What tropes in science fiction annoy you?

But if you're watching a monster movie and King Kong is stomping a city, don't you get thrilled and excited . . . even though you know that Kong is just a special effect and giant apes aren't real?

Heck, if we can't "believe" in monsters or superheroes or alien body-snatchers for the duration of a movie, why watch anything that isn't "believable" or "realistic"?

I mean, everyone knows that mermaids aren't real so why should we care what happens to Ariel in the Disney cartoon? Especially since she's just a drawing. :)

And, honestly, movies are full of situation that I can't ever really see myself being in, even if they're not overtly fantastic. I'm not an international super-spy so I don't imagine that I will ever be menaced by a laser-beam or take part in a high-speed car chase through Monte Carlo. Doesn't matter because I'm not watching a movie about me. I'm watching James Bond or Matt Helm or whoever.

I think I didn't express myself correctly and I apologize. What I mean is that there are situations that I am willing to believe in because they don't "overly" violate my sense of realism. I mean everything that happens in a JB movie may be improbable but you get a feeling that it could be real. The Dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park saga (there's one this year) may be based on extremely strained science, but they aren't the result of magic or incantations, they are the result of science, that you could accuse of being inaccurate but not fundamentally wrong.

I don't know if I've successfully conveyed my idea but I am willing to develop it further if necessary.
 
I just watched Skyscraper with Dwayne Johnson. They had the scifi trope I mentioned awhile back.

Death traps that are built into the buildings or ships for some unknown reason.

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Who designs massive rotor blades on the outside of a building that someone later on has to pass?
 
Why is it always ten times as difficult to blow up the ship of the good guys as it is to destroy the one of the bad guys?

I have one outrageous example of that. It's when the Defiant is incapacitated by the Breen weapon in "The Changing Face Of Evil". The ship was defenseless! the first torpedo should have blown it to pieces... Instead, it took countless shots!!!

I really find that kind of thing annoying and I have to ignore it to enjoy the episode.
 
I think I didn't express myself correctly and I apologize. What I mean is that there are situations that I am willing to believe in because they don't "overly" violate my sense of realism. I mean everything that happens in a JB movie may be improbable but you get a feeling that it could be real. The Dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park saga (there's one this year) may be based on extremely strained science, but they aren't the result of magic or incantations, they are the result of science, that you could accuse of being inaccurate but not fundamentally wrong.

I don't know if I've successfully conveyed my idea but I am willing to develop it further if necessary.

It's funny. My brain works the opposite way. I don't worry about whether flying carpets or death-rays or haunted houses or superheroes are "believable" or "realistic" enough, but I will notice if a movie or TV show get some mundane detail wrong. A giant time-traveling werewolf from another dimension is menacing Manhattan? Fine with me. But somebody takes the "F" train to the Javitts Center? "Hey, you can't do that!" :)
 
It's funny. My brain works the opposite way. I don't worry about whether flying carpets or death-rays or haunted houses or superheroes are "believable" or "realistic" enough, but I will notice if a movie or TV show get some mundane detail wrong. A giant time-traveling werewolf from another dimension is menacing Manhattan? Fine with me. But somebody takes the "F" train to the Javitts Center? "Hey, you can't do that!" :)

That reminds me of something that's loosely related to that. Have you noticed that often the same people who disparage science because in spite of its enormous and undeniable successes there are still some questions that are without satisfying answers are singing the praises of some charlatan because they heard from a friend of a friend that he once wasn't completely wrong?
 
She wouldn't have liked Marley & Me I bet.

Was there supposed to be another POTA movie after War?
War was the end of Ceasar's story, but I don't thik rule out maybe jumping ahead and following his son in more movies.
I just watched Skyscraper with Dwayne Johnson. They had the scifi trope I mentioned awhile back.

Death traps that are built into the buildings or ships for some unknown reason.

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Who designs massive rotor blades on the outside of a building that someone later on has to pass?
Whenever I see stuff like that, all I can think of is this scene from Galaxy Quest.
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Something that I find particularly annoying is how the hero/good guy makes weak, questionable hypotheses upon hypotheses more fragile than a house of cards in a hurricane and yet reality vindicates him to the smaller detail. Like for example in TUC, Chekov says something like: "Maybe the assassins beamed from and back to the Klingon ship." and Spock's unrelated response is: "But the memory banks have been modified here" and then he deduces that the gravity boots must be on the Enterprise. I mean either the writer was in a coma when he wrote this or he thought that he could get away with it since the viewers were idiots. And then of course regardless of the fact that Spock's reasoning is completely off base, reality confirms his conclusion. Well, I hate that. Sometimes I still like the movie in spite of that but I could definitely do without it.
 
I'll still probably watch Skyscraper.

Disappointed it's not a remake of The Towering Inferno, but you can't top the classics. I was so hoping this was a remake of that, but it just seems to be an action movie in a tall building with rotor blades on the sides.... WTF?
 
I plan on checking it out eventually too. The trailers looked fun, and I'm not to bothered by a bit of ridiculousness like the rotor blades.
 
Something that I find particularly annoying is how the hero/good guy makes weak, questionable hypotheses upon hypotheses more fragile than a house of cards in a hurricane and yet reality vindicates him to the smaller detail. Like for example in TUC, Chekov says something like: "Maybe the assassins beamed from and back to the Klingon ship." and Spock's unrelated response is: "But the memory banks have been modified here" and then he deduces that the gravity boots must be on the Enterprise. I mean either the writer was in a coma when he wrote this or he thought that he could get away with it since the viewers were idiots. And then of course regardless of the fact that Spock's reasoning is completely off base, reality confirms his conclusion. Well, I hate that. Sometimes I still like the movie in spite of that but I could definitely do without it.

Well, what Spock actually says is something like 'either the assassins are here or the person who altered the records is here - in either case what we are looking for is here'. That's a reasonable assumption, assuming the Enterprise's records can't be altered remotely, which Spock would know if they could. The problem in the writing comes when somebody asks 'what are we looking for exactly?' and Saavik answers 'two pair of gravity boots' when the answer should've been 'two pair of gravity boots OR evidence of computer tampering'.
 
Skyscraper is a straight actioner, so it's fun. Not as much Rock humor as Rampage.
The rotors actually make sense in context - they're basically a windmill generating electrical power for the building, giving it independence from the power grid. What makes NO sense is that a critical system control that needs to be accessed is in a panel in the spindle! :lol:
 
Skyscraper is a straight actioner, so it's fun. Not as much Rock humor as Rampage.
The rotors actually make sense in context - they're basically a windmill generating electrical power for the building, giving it independence from the power grid. What makes NO sense is that a critical system control that needs to be accessed is in a panel in the spindle! :lol:

Oh boy, so he has to navigate to that to shut it off. Sound like this is going to be mindless fun.

A wind turbine I get but are they actually mounted on the sides of the building and not on the roof, that part makes no sense if true.
 
Was it possible the rotors were conceived as a stabilizing mechanism, pushing the building back toward vertical? I could easily imagine the director deciding this didn't need explanation, because the director is the #1 dude in charge of messing up the script.
 
Maybe someone already said it but one thing that sometimes gets on my nerves is that aliens (especially in ST) are obsessive monomaniacs. I mean if they like logic it's all they like and the ones who don't are pariahs, same thing for trade, honor... etc... It's not simply their main trait, it's their ONLY trait.
 
Maybe someone already said it but one thing that sometimes gets on my nerves is that aliens (especially in ST) are obsessive monomaniacs. I mean if they like logic it's all they like and the ones who don't are pariahs, same thing for trade, honor... etc... It's not simply their main trait, it's their ONLY trait.

Peter David once wrote a Trek novel in which a green Orion woman chose to become a scientist, not a dancing girl or seductress or whatever. I always thought that was very cool and clever. And it's always neat when we meet a Klingon lawyer or nanny or something.
 
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A remake of the original? I always thought they were leading up to that.

Except that they couldn't do a straight remake because it's not going to come as a shock to the audience that (gasp!) the Planet of the Apes is Earth! Not after devoting an entire trilogy to showing how that happened. :)
 
Except that they couldn't do a straight remake because it's not going to come as a shock to the audience that (gasp!) the Planet of the Apes is Earth! Not after devoting an entire trilogy to showing how that happened. :)

Or they could tell the story of the book, in which the planet of the apes ISN'T Earth... the ending is a bit more subtle.
 
Peter David once wrote a Trek novel in which a green Orion woman chose to become a scientist, not a dancing girl or seductress or whatever. I always thought that was very cool and clever. And it's always neat when we meet a Klingon lawyer or nanny or something.
Sontaran nurses are the bomb.
 
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