- Arglebargle III
- Feb 21, 2006
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That part of the book was the only one I really rolled my eyes at, but not because it was unrealistic. The time I spent in engineering school made me nearly immune to awkward curve-breaking schlubs who still thought Chuck Norris jokes were the height of comedy ten years after they'd gotten irritating for everyone else.
Annoying repetition and an inability to understand others' concepts of humor are classic signs of autism.
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Oct 1, 2015 22:34
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Apr 29, 2024 04:20
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- Arglebargle III
- Feb 21, 2006
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How about an insane inferiority complex about Mad Max Fury Road (the best movie of the year) (and it's criminal that it's being out-grossed by such pablum as Pitch Perfect 2 *spit* and Terminator: Genisys).
Sorry I don't know what you're talking about.
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Oct 1, 2015 23:25
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- Arglebargle III
- Feb 21, 2006
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What's the hivemind of this thread think? Is the 3D worth it?
Ribley Scott, filmed in 3D, probably worf it.
I just saw it the 3D was pretty unobtrusive but real good for the opening scenese.
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Oct 3, 2015 06:34
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- Arglebargle III
- Feb 21, 2006
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The main question of the film, given that it's a fairly clear example of utopian sci-fi, is what sort of utopia it's promoting.
And that's where the nerd stuff should be taken quite seriously: the movie actually is about mutinous space pirates. The 'lol so wacky' reaction eclipses the fact that it's quite literally what's going on.
So the movie's rather explicitly about nerds, modeling themselves after Tony Stark and the multiculti crews from Lord Of The Rings & Avengers - but who are Sauron and HYDRA in this analogy?
Did you miss Watley telling the audience the moral of the story at the end?
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Oct 3, 2015 06:44
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- Arglebargle III
- Feb 21, 2006
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Right, but then you basically have a revenge of the nerds movie about the pissing off the grumpy old dean. But Jeff Daniels is as much a part of the team as anyone else.
That other guy was much closer to the truth when he said the enemy of the film is Mars itself. But we do get that cut directly from Daniels being pessimistic on Earth to the disastrous accident on Mars, implying something like a causal relationship.
So the real question here is 'what does Mars represent, to those of us in the audience who will never be there?' reading the film purely literally is a mistake, given that the film begins with Watney being reborn - waking up, gasping for air, cutting the cord from his belly, etc.
The cord is also, of course, the communication antenna. So what you get is effectively a redux of the Matrix scene where Neo pulls the wire from his neck, at which point he enters desert of the real' and whatnot. So Watney really is born as an alien - and, as the titles go, we're shown his transition into becoming a human again.
That's to say Mars stands in for an apocalyptic future-Earth / exaggerated third-world hellhole. The flipside to all the suits in glass offices is the threat of ecological catastrophe, starvation and so-on. That's why the film's politics are important.
As Zizek would note, the film ends with the production of a couple. J. Chastain was, weirdly, punished for having jokingly cut off Watney's radio earlier, as of the entire storm were something she had unwittingly conjured. And, naturally, she learns Watney is alive at the same point that he officially restores communication - so in the same sense that Daniels' pessimism causes the explosion, Chastain's guilt is manifest as this undead thing that haunts everyone. So the film's 'really' about Chastain overcoming her guilt over having put Watney in this impoverished situation.
The ambiguity of the film is whether all this is more conducive to a properly Christian interpretation (the whole world has gotten together to perform impossible feats in service of the lowliest dehumanized individual, and this logic should be applied to combatting homelessness everywhere) or whether it's the liberal gradualist film I've outlined earlier (like, okay we've saved this guy and we don't feel guilty anymore. Plus US-China relations improved slightly. Let's get back to collecting rocks). And yeah: though it's important not to dismiss the former elements out of cynicism, it is mostly the latter.
After all, doesn't the narrative bear an uncanny resemblance to the saga of Doobie's Dog House?
I was wondering how far you'd have to bend this to fit it into your marxist/christian schema.
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Oct 4, 2015 05:55
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- Arglebargle III
- Feb 21, 2006
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I think more dead astronauts is exactly what Nasa needs IRL.
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Oct 4, 2015 18:58
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Apr 29, 2024 04:20
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- Arglebargle III
- Feb 21, 2006
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Heavy rockets are difficult to build since they're like a twenty-story aluminum can of rocket fuel sitting on top of a bomb. Oh wait they aren't like that, they are literally that.
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Oct 5, 2015 18:16
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Oct 1, 2015 22:34
