Rob P S
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Anyone else have thoughts on this movie??
Yep, I thought it was revolting racist garbage and I walked out of the theater.
Anyone else have thoughts on this movie??
Yep, I thought it was revolting racist garbage and I walked out of the theater.
Then you apparently don't understand her character, she was indeed willing to absolutely risk her life for the chance to fulfill her life's quest/dream, and in both the film and novel she had strong if not absolute faith in the fact that the aliens "know what they are doing, let's not second guess them", as a scientist she agreed to what little instrumentation she had as there may not be a second trip but as a person this was a much more personal journey with some rather selfish reasoning hiding behind her logic.
Oh, I understand full well that Ellie was willing to risk her life and the movie made her faith in the aliens abundantly clear. Ellie isn't the issue, she wasn't even in charge. It's that she was only given one recording device that's the problem. It's that thousands of scientists and engineers at the Machine project forget everything they ever learned about the likelihood of instrumentation failure during an experiment. That's what reduces an otherwise fine story to an idiot plot. The movie takes a narative shortcut that I cannot accept. The conspiracy theory that the recorder was set up to fail by the government is just about the only way a writing gaffe of that size can be salvaged.
We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
I agree 100%.
Holy Land. I'll bring a palm frond to show them where I came from."
The point is that the idea that the scientists didn't insist on them/her bringing extra equipment is false, they did, but the trip was more than just science at that point and in any case they were taking the instructions of the E.T.'s to the letter, even at the insistence by others that they should not. This may be a plot contrivance to get to the final goal of the story, I.E. Faith being a much higher unifying concept than just religion or science even in the face of social & governmental suppression, but it is a plot tool I can live with....obviously you can not and that is cool, I just wanted to point out that it wasn't a plot hole as it was covered in the book and, in a much more simplified way, in the film's script.
Personally I don't agree that it makes the rest of the story an "idiot plot" but to each their own.