SF and Hollywood's Dumbness: A Question About Burton's _Apes_ Movie (2 Viewers)

[PhilipG]

Going back to the original post...

What I know is this: somehow Wahlberg's spaceship crashes on an "Earthlike" planet in the year 2029.
My question: Was he supposed to be on an interstellar mission? If so, did Tim Burton really think that such would be possible just thirty years from now? Really?
If we're lucky, a manned expedition to Mars will probably have occurred by then. But interstellar travel is at least five-hundred--maybe a thousand or more--years away.

I always laugh at such comments - people predicting how quickly events will occur in the Future based on the Past. It is exactly the same mistake people made in the 1960's when they said there'd be flying cars in 2000.
Newsflash: nobody knows. 2529 may be a safer bet than 2029, but to say straight out that it won't happen by 2029 shows a lack of imagination.
Scenario 1: Someone invents a superfuel. One thimbleful of this stuff is enough to send a capsule into orbit. Could happen this year. In five years we'd have international space stations coming out of our ears. In twenty years you can bet we'd have moonbases, and colonies on Mars.
Scenario 2: Someone invents an anti-gravity generator. It could happen. See scenario 1.
Scenario 3: Humankind is given, or comes across, alien technology to solve problems of interstellar flight etc. Not likely, but certainly possible. See scenario 1.
There are several problems with space colonisation at this time:
1. Getting people and equipment into orbit cheaply.
2. Dealing with alien atmospheres, or no atmospheres, inc. armour protection from space debris.
3. Interplanetary travel.
4. Interstellar travel.
Now 2) isn't going to be too much of a problem once 1) is achieved.
3) will be done, in the first instance through criogenics, probably. 4) likewise, though I wouldn't volunteer . 4) most likely through wormhole technology, either discovered or given to us.
Remember: this is science fiction.
All these things are possible within 30 years.
But then again, what do I know. I'm not a physicist. I don't think in terms of formulae and Newton and Keplar and the equations of the past, as if extensions of these laws are all that are ever likely to be discovered. I am a writer of fiction (though not of SF).
Remember it's fiction, and anything is possible. It's up to you if you think it's likely, but that's where suspension of disbelief comes in.

 

[cafink]

What is "deus ex machina" ?

 

[PhilipG]

Deux ex machina:
From my Shorter Oxford:
lit. 'god from the machinery' (by which gods were suspended above the stage in Greek theatre)
A power, event, or person arriving in the nick of time to solve a difficulty; a providential (often rather contrived) interposition, esp. in a novel or play.

 

[Bjorn Olav Nyberg]

Loosely translated as "God in the machine", a plot device originally used in greek plays, where the hero would be opposed to impossible odds in a fight, but all of a sudden, God would interact and save the hero, depicted on stage with a crane or something like this coming in to lift the hero out. The crane in this case would represent God, thus "God in the machine"

In later years this has come to be used as a term in every case where the hero/heroes get saved by an outside force. Examples are

Jurrassic park

Just when the raptors seem to win and all hope is lost, the T-rex appears and kill the raptor

Raiders of the lost ark

Quite literal in this case. After the ark is open, God or at least some kind of spirit vipes out all the eneies

The abyss

Just when all hope is lost for ed Harris and he basically lies down to die he is saved by those underwater beings (but in this case he is saved because of his own actions to save those same beings, so it may not be entirely qualified)

I can't think of any other examples right now, but at least you should get the general idea I think

 

[Bjorn Olav Nyberg]

Philip beat me to it

 

[PhilipG]

Nice examples, Bjørn, but (just to nitpick ), "ex" is Latin for "out of" or "from", not "in".
There's another expression: "Ghost in the machine" which is the mind viewed as distinct from the body.

 

[Max Leung]

Interesting points PhilipG.
However, I would add that, although technology may seem to be within our grasp, it is the acceptance of new ideas that often take the order of a hundred years or more to grasp (or to discard).
A recent GREAT example of this is a 2-hit combo: The discarding of communism and the acceptance of Darwin's idea of sexual selection. (Now, please note carefully that I am ONLY talking about the acceptance of ideas, not the actual idea itself...no political discussion please!)
Darwin's work was published in the latter half of the 18th century. His central idea, natural selection, was accepted very quickly. However, and until very recently, it was thought that humans are very special beings who are somehow above the animals. Hence, Darwin's idea of sexual selection was virtually ignored. Darwin himself knew his idea would be very unpopular, and so to prevent his book from being censured and publically flogged, he downplayed the idea in his later works, in the hope that a new generation would discover and expand on it.
(This has finally happened, and has given me some hope for the future of humanity.) The theory of sexual selection is incompatible with the assumptions made by Marx (and Freud, and a host of other thinkers...I'm not just singling out Marx here!) as discovered by primatologists, psychologists, and biologists. The "new" idea is that biology and environment drives human behavior, not the other way around. But this time there is strong evidence to support it.
It took 100 years after Darwin's death to rediscover his brilliant new idea. The man is full of surprises.
When we review SF, we should consider the underlying idea behind it. Is man the center of the universe? If he is, then he should be able to do anything, think anything, overcome everything (including himself). If man is not infinitely flexible, what constrains him? Is his behavior limited by billions of years of slow evolutionary change? Can he exceed these limitations, or perhaps he doesn't yet know what these limitations are?
We already have movies that attempt to answer these questions:
The Matrix: Man can overcome any obstacle, do impossible feats, fly, and is a true superhero...but only in the Matrix! I am intrigued that they forced Keannu to read "Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology" and "Simulacra and Simulacrum". The first movie implies that anything is possible...that people can "free their minds". But, perhaps the 2nd and 3rd movies will challenge this idea? The 1st movie hinted this with Cypher's weakness and betrayal. Perhaps Neo finds that there are some things the human mind can never overcome...(the Lady in Red can be a symbol of man's roots...sexual selection is the gravity that holds man down).
Gattaca: The idea that genetically engineered people are not always superior to the "natural" or "normal" people. (However, I always felt this film to be incomplete, but oh well). It's been awhile since I saw it, maybe someone can elaborate on this?
A.I.: Man cannot deal with his creations that are not constrained by evolutionary forces. The destruction of the AI machines ensures that humans will feel superior, but now humans have turned inwards, not outwards. They cannot push past the boundaries. They have created beings that are superior to man in every way...man's purpose flounders, and eventually humankind fades away...

 

[Mark Zimmer]

WRT to the space program and 2001, and the poster's question about whether Clarke really thought we would be going to Jupiter in 2001....

No, I believe Clarke didn't expect trips to Jupiter in 2001. But at that time (I remember it well) we thought that regular traffic to the moon would indeed be a reality. I don't recall there being mention in the film of going anywhere else in the solar system, until the Discovery's trip.

Remember that in the movie 2001, there is an impetus for putting a lot of resources behind a trip to Jupiter: the signal from the Moon Stargate to the Jupiter Stargate. There would be an intense interest in following that ASAP to see what was up. As it is in the real life 2001 and 2002, Jupiter's there, and it's not going anywhere, so there's no immediate need or desire to visit Ganymede. There's not the urgency that is hinted at (subtly) in the movie. I suspect that the rush to get there is part of the root to HAL's problem as well.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Well, a recurring question keeps cropping up here: Why does SF have to adhere to science and not take liberties with physics as we know it?

Easy: Because it would not then be science fiction. As RobertR pointed out, in creating SF a director or a writer can't just make anything up. The understood universe of the story or film must be consistent with what we know about science. If, on the other hand, a writer wants to employ a wildly advanced technology as a plot device, then, as long as it is not at odds with what we know to be possible, fine.

I should have responded much sooner to Steve Enemark's post (back on this thread's first page): So Wahlberg was stationed on an outpost orbiting Saturn? No way that's going to be possible by 2029!

Folks, much of SF is extrapolative. It has to be if the story is set in anything like the near future.

We all have known and loved The Twilight Zone--but as much as we're fond of the old series, Rod Serling's attempts at SF were often pathetic. Remember that episode with Fritz Weaver, who plays some sort of engineer, and who, along with his neighbors and family, hijacks a spacecraft (Forbidden Planet's C-57) to take them away from their own world, which is about to be pummeled in a nuclear war?

They must head to a planet, said Weaver, that's "11 million miles from here. It's called Earth."

Another one of Serling's twist endings. But his emmisaries are coming from an Earthlike planet that's just 11 million miles from here? There's no excuse for such sloppiness.

But that sort of sloppiness prevails in Hollywood today.

 

[Rob Willey]

One of the problems that sometimes crops up with discussions like this on the HTF is that we have to keep in mind that we're a lot more discerning than most movie goers. I'm not trying to strike a superior or elitist attitude with this, but my time on the HTF has convinced me this is true.
That said, I think many of us are less likely to suspend our disbelief if the movie doesn't contain some semblance of scientific grounding before it goes off on its fictional tangent than the bulk of the audience the moviemakers are targeting.
Me? I'd love more sci- in my cinematic sci-fi but I'm not holding my breath waiting for Hollywood to deliver it.
As for POTA, good science or not, what's up with that ending??
Rob