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District 10 to Start Filming

^It wasn't "direct to video quality" when it was made, not if you compare it to action movies at the time. Compared to Terminator 2? Sure. Compared to Bloodsport or some other Van Damme or Segal movie? Not at all. The original TMNT movie had HALF the budget of MK, and it's full of flaws, but I've never heard anyone refer to it as "direct to video quality".

I think a lot of you have been quite spoiled by modern Hollywood blockbusters that spend $150 million on SFX.
 
FordSVT said:
^It wasn't "direct to video quality" when it was made, not if you compare it to action movies at the time. Compared to Terminator 2? Sure. Compared to Bloodsport or some other Van Damme or Segal movie? Not at all. The original TMNT movie had HALF the budget of MK, and it's full of flaws, but I've never heard anyone refer to it as "direct to video quality".

I think a lot of you have been quite spoiled by modern Hollywood blockbusters that spend $150 million on SFX.
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I don't know, to this day I think the first TMNT film had pretty good production values--and the animatronic work was excellent, in my opinion.
 
Robert Maxwell said:
I don't know, to this day I think the first TMNT film had pretty good production values--and the animatronic work was excellent, in my opinion.
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It was by Jim Henson's company, so excellence is a given. You could really see the step down in the quality of the animatronics in the third TMNT movie when they switched to a different (cheaper?) company. The mouth movements there were jerky and mechanical, much less convincing than in the first two films.

And then there was the TV series The Next Mutation, where you could see the eyeholes and neck seams in the animatronic heads...
 
FordSVT said:
I think too much has been made of my comments about those movies, and perhaps that's my fault for not being clear enough. I certainly don't think my examples were GREAT FILM MAKING.

They were acceptable to enough people to get sequels, I never claimed they were art. And they followed the plot closely enough, unlike some other "game" movies that have almost nothing to do with the source material. Of course I've played RE, the first 4 games anyway. The movie Resident Evil had Umbrella corp and the standard RE archetype heroine killing a bunch of people killing zombies. What else do you want? I really don't care if they didn't spend the two hour movie in a house fighting zombie dogs that pop through windows, collecting keys to open doors, it would be idiotic to make that movie.

The original Mortal Kombat movie is usually accepted as a fun if flawed adaptation of the game. Maybe it speaks volumes about the overall quality of game-movie adaptations, but most Geeks n' Nerds think of MK as probably the best game movie of them all. Not my problem if some of you didn't like it, they're opinions.
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Fair enough man, I was too harsh by saying their laughable - I did enjoy the MK and Silent Hill films a lot, but the point I was trying to make was they weren't "hits" like the Resident Evil films were.
 
Mortal Kombat made $122 million, which is more than the first RE movie made even without adjusting for inflation. It made as much or more than the other two taking inflation into account. The second movie made a profit for someone but only did half the business, it wasn't very good.

Silent Hill, no, that movie only did mediocre business, about $100 million. It was pretty and very creepy in spots, but not very consistent. I guess they thought enough of it to begin filming a sequel though.

And again, please don't get the idea that I think these are all wonderful movies or that I'm defending them out of some great love I have for them. All I'm saying is that basing a film on a game is not 100% guaranteed to be a failure. Most of the worst translations are based on games that have no plot at all, like Super Mario Bros. Halo, on the other hand, was practically designed as a game from the ground up to be a blockbuster movie experience. Huge set-pieces, an alien menace, square-jawed Marines and gutsy Lt.'s, a "large" but relatively simple story and a massive soundtrack. Backed by the right people, it could totally be a successful film.

Oh, and I totally forgot to mention the Tomb Raider movies! Those were obviously extremely successful, the first one grossed almost $300 million. I thought the first one was quite good (better than the last Indy film to be certain), and you can't deny that Jolie makes a perfect LC.
 
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Christopher said:
Oh, no, now years from now people are going to be wondering why they can't find the first eight movies in the series... ;)
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I work in retail, and joke with customers that 2012 only makes sense if they watch all 2011 parts before it. For a split second, they believe me!
 
Jesus, I was kidding when I said the sequel would be called "District 10." That's just awful. I pray that's just the working title.

Base Delta Zero said:
The gangsters were pursuing paperweights. The Prawn hid some of the weaponry to trade with the human gangsters and the gangsters collected the useless bits of tech. Until the secrets of operating the tech were unlocked, fighting a gang war with the Nigerians over bits of tech the MNU already had access to sounds like a waste of money and manpower. Standing policy was to avoid the problem. -easily infered from events and dialogue.
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I just realized that's actually kind of silly. The weapons themselves might be useless because of the safety software, but the power source and design itself shouldn't be unfathomable. Why couldn't humans reverse engineer the weapons? Maybe we're the dumb ones. :( And the criticism that the MNU and UoSA government would have permitted the Nigerians to collect the weapons (which, as noted, have power sources somewhat beyond human capacity to build, are probably dangerous and are potentially toxic) is a valid one. They simply wouldn't. Finally, I kind of wonder how much better the Prawn weapons really are. Okay, there's that one lightning cannon that makes people explode... well, so what? Is an exploded enemy significantly less threatening than the bullet-riddled one? And besides, we have man-portable weapons which can do that and much more already. I suppose it might make a more accurate anti-aircraft or anti-tank weapon.
 
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Cmndr J Crichton said:
If they did they meant Star Wars, Empire and Jedi.
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Sadly no. Actually what they asked for were the six other books in the Star Wars series. ( I was working at a book store). They had the other three and wanted the rest. (Remember when the rumor was 9 movies?). I explained that those books were based on the movies and the rest of the story did not exist in book form yet. She insisted that I was wrong and she had seen all nine books at her brothers house. I showed her "Splinter of the Minds Eye" thinking she might mean that. Nope not the books she's looking for. So she storms out saying she'll get her brothers books and prove I had no idea what I was talking about. To my knowledge she never returned with or without her brother's books.
 
Myasishchev said:
Jesus, I was kidding when I said the sequel would be called "District 10." That's just awful. I pray that's just the working title.

Base Delta Zero said:
The gangsters were pursuing paperweights. The Prawn hid some of the weaponry to trade with the human gangsters and the gangsters collected the useless bits of tech. Until the secrets of operating the tech were unlocked, fighting a gang war with the Nigerians over bits of tech the MNU already had access to sounds like a waste of money and manpower. Standing policy was to avoid the problem. -easily infered from events and dialogue.
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I just realized that's actually kind of silly. The weapons themselves might be useless because of the safety software, but the power source and design itself shouldn't be unfathomable. Why couldn't humans reverse engineer the weapons? Maybe we're the dumb ones. :( And the criticism that the MNU and UoSA government would have permitted the Nigerians to collect the weapons (which, as noted, have power sources somewhat beyond human capacity to build, are probably dangerous and are potentially toxic) is a valid one. They simply wouldn't. Finally, I kind of wonder how much better the Prawn weapons really are. Okay, there's that one lightning cannon that makes people explode... well, so what? Is an exploded enemy significantly less threatening than the bullet-riddled one? And besides, we have man-portable weapons which can do that and much more already. I suppose it might make a more accurate anti-aircraft or anti-tank weapon.
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Reverse-engineering alien tech isn't as easy as Star Trek and Stargate makes it out to be. The weapons could be made of material not present on Earth or capable of being synthesized, nor could the energy sources be replicated either. That they can't even get the weapons to come out of a dormant state doesn't help, since they wouldn't have working models in a controlled environment to observe and record the right data on. So for all intents and purposes there was no harm in letting the Nigerians have the stuff since they were just hunks of metal. As soon as they found out how to operate them, they'd likely have launched an all-out extermination campaign on the Nigerians. No point in wasting money or manpower on them BEFORE that point.

There was the gravity gun as well, which is superior to most projectile weapons in that it uses a primal force of nature itself as a weapon so it probably doesn't need to be reloaded and armor won't work on it. The lightning gun can get past armor and doesn't need a reload either.

Of course, no one stopped to ask "What kind of enemies do the Prawns have they need weapons like these?"...
 
Anwar said:
Reverse-engineering alien tech isn't as easy as Star Trek and Stargate makes it out to be. The weapons could be made of material not present on Earth or capable of being synthesized, nor could the energy sources be replicated either.
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Well, I'm no fan of the sci-fi cliche "It's made of elements that aren't on the periodic table!" or "It's made of a substance we've never seen before!" Nature doesn't work that way. All the stars and planets in the galaxy are formed out of basically the same set of raw materials; there are differences in the concentrations of those materials depending on where and when the planets formed, but it's all the same basic elements and chemistry. And any elements beyond those known on the periodic table would be extremely heavy and probably highly radioactive, not to mention very difficult to synthesize in large quantities. Heck, the single most important element in the advanced technology of the future is going to be good ol' #6, carbon. Nanotubes, graphenes, carbon composite, synthetic diamond, it's good for just about everything.

And there are unlikely to be energy sources of completely alien origin either. Energy is going to be electrical, chemical, thermal, nuclear, etc. Physics is just as universal as chemistry, so every civilization in the galaxy is going to use the same kinds of energy. If the details of their battery technologies are too advanced to easily synthesize, then you just need to substitute a bigger battery of a cruder design.

One thing that might make reverse-engineering prohibitive is if the weapons' inner workings are mostly nanotechnological. Current Earth science would have to advance somewhat to be able to replicate something like that. Although if they'd had access to these devices for two decades, it would've surely accelerated our progress in the field of nanotech.

Of course, no one stopped to ask "What kind of enemies do the Prawns have they need weapons like these?"...
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What kind of enemies do humans have? Each other. The aliens are a hive society, and hives can be quite hostile to rival hives of the same species. Maybe their queens frequently battle for dominance and breed these drones as their cannon fodder.
 
I can understand why no one asked those questions nor were they answered: Reality isn't that nice and lots of questions go unanswered. It's lazy storytelling to just explain EVERYTHING off the bat, especially when it's from a low-level employee's POV of things since he'd be less likely to learn them. If they were to explain these things it would have to be over time.

My guess is that since he retained his intelligence, Wikus ends up as some kind of Prawn leader in District 10.
 
Oh, I didn't really need it explained, that's a minor issue. The major issue, which affects the plot in an unrealistic way, is that the Nigerians are allowed to collect the "paperweights." Granted, they probably don't have the resources for an R & D program to unravel the secrets of the weapons. But they could sell them to those who do--the governments of China, USSR/Russia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Australia, and so forth. Which is apparently what the UoSA and MNU doesn't want to happen, so why permit giving these low-lives access to the Prawns or their equipment?
 
I got the sense that it wasn't so much a case of permitting as one of being unable to stop it. There's always an underground, a black market, and this seemed to be a particularly lawless area.
 
Christopher said:
I got the sense that it wasn't so much a case of permitting as one of being unable to stop it. There's always an underground, a black market, and this seemed to be a particularly lawless area.
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I think South Africa could keep people out of an area less than a square mile. Do their uranium mines also suffer from being occupied by Nigerian gangsters?:p
 
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