>> ^Boise_Lib:

I Will see this movie.
[Edit: at 4:10 you can hear the Nazi motorcycles--LOL (oh, and the gunshot--Ha!]


Yeah, and the spaceships right at the start... who cares really? When they try to do movies with no sound in space (action ones anyway), they do seem remarkably lifeless.

It's not exactly a hard sci fi sort of movie now is it?

>> ^Ryjkyj:

So, is it like an "Alien" prequel? Or maybe a way later sequel? You gotta love that a lot of the imagery here is borrowed from Cameron's "Aliens", and of course, Giger.
If it IS is a prequel, I gotta wonder if they'll still be using green-screen monitors on their spaceships.
EDIT: oh yeah, it's all there on IMDB but I won't spoil it for anyone.


That's because Dan O'Bannon recruited Giger for the alien creature design after working with him on Jodorowsky's failed attempt to make Dune.

Yep, that big horse-shoe shaped ship is the ship from the first two Alien movies. Halfway through you can see the cockpit pop up that is in the first movie as well. >> ^Ryjkyj:

So, is it like an "Alien" prequel? Or maybe a way later sequel? You gotta love that a lot of the imagery here is borrowed from Cameron's "Aliens", and of course, Giger.
If it IS is a prequel, I gotta wonder if they'll still be using green-screen monitors on their spaceships.
EDIT: oh yeah, it's all there on IMDB but I won't spoil it for anyone.

So, is it like an "Alien" prequel? Or maybe a way later sequel? You gotta love that a lot of the imagery here is borrowed from Cameron's "Aliens", and of course, Giger.

If it IS is a prequel, I gotta wonder if they'll still be using green-screen monitors on their spaceships.

EDIT: oh yeah, it's all there on IMDB but I won't spoil it for anyone.

what is that?! i don't know folks... that's why I'm definitely sure it's a cloaked alien spaceship.

>> ^rottenseed:

From my understanding of relativity and space-time continuum, 587 light years at close the speed of light wouldn't take very long to those on the space-craft because of "time-dilation". However, to those not on the spaceship...well, they'd be LONG gone. Somebody want to back me up on that? Maybe somebody smart?

That's true, but the problem is getting close enough to the speed of light to make an appreciable difference. I read in one of the science mags recently (SciAm or Science, I think) that traveling at 99.9% the speed of light would allow a crew to travel to the edge of the known universe and back in about 57 years, ship time. Not an exact quote, but it was something pretty insane like that. Unfortunately, we haven't even begun to dream of a propulsion system/energy source that would allow us to reach anywhere near that kind of speed.


Small moves. Let's get to Mars first.

From my understanding of relativity and space-time continuum, 587 light years at close the speed of light wouldn't take very long to those on the space-craft because of "time-dilation". However, to those not on the spaceship...well, they'd be LONG gone. Somebody want to back me up on that? Maybe somebody smart? >> ^zor:

OK now all you have to do is build a space ship that can go the speed of light, get on it, and ride for 587 years. sheesh!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Roughly 2/3s of all spaceships destined for Mars fail before completing their mission. All of the points of failure on this one make it seem like hubristic over-reach.

Lego, not legos. "The spaceship is made of lego", "There is lots of lego still in the bucket", "How many bricks of lego do you need" etc.

"WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH LEGOS? I MEAN, HAVE YOU SEEN THESE THINGS? IS IT REALLY NECESSARY TO PUT THE LOGO ON EVERY BLOCK? LIKE I'M BUILDING A SPACESHIP CASTLE AND SUDDENLY, "WHAT IS THIS STRANGE MULTI-COLORED BUILDING MATERIAL? WHO MANUFACTURED THESE? AM I RIGHT FOLKS?"

>> ^pyloricvalve:

That's a good summary of the Keynesian response. I guess my answer would be that even supposing the 10% unemployed were neatly then employed in building these weapons this would just be temporary. Later they will eventually all be unemployed again having wasted time and money in training for "fictional" work.

It seems to me that building real military spaceships would require real skills, real work, real factories, real technology, and there's no particular reason why if the demand for military spaceships evaporated, that they wouldn't just pivot into trying to serve a different market, like, say, commercial spacecraft.

That's the kind of adaptation free markets are supposed to be good at, right?

>> ^pyloricvalve:

Even if that work had some beneficial side effects, making unnatural economic growth will still be a net cost to the economy versus spending time finding real jobs. These are what they really 'should' in some sense be doing. To do this would surely be better unless you claim the 10% will continue unemployed permanently.

There's no reason to think additional idleness accelerates the process of someone finding their "right" job. That also presupposes that there's a right and a wrong job, and that there's inherently some economic damage being done by seeing someone doing real work producing real goods rather than having them stay idle and wait for Godot.

>> ^pyloricvalve:

These arguments can be seen in the two Hayek/Keynes rap videos. There are two inconsistent models of the economy. How can we decide which one is right? This argument is very old so I guess it's not that easy... Maybe look at long run growth in more and less interventionist countries? I suspect growth will be faster in the less interventionist nation.

Actually, it's not really a persisting argument amongst actual trained economists. The Austrian theory of economics has been invalidated time and time again by facts, but it lives on because it's a branch of economics that appeals to the ideological right.

That's not to say everything Hayek ever said was wrong, but the Hayekian idea that Keynesian fiscal and monetary policy will inevitably lead to utter ruin has definitely not been borne out by the facts. Also, no country that has followed a Hayekian prescription for recessions (keep money tight, and implement fiscal austerity) has ever done anything but deepen their recession and prolong their recovery.

That's a good summary of the Keynesian response. I guess my answer would be that even supposing the 10% unemployed were neatly then employed in building these weapons this would just be temporary. Later they will eventually all be unemployed again having wasted time and money in training for "fictional" work. Even if that work had some beneficial side effects, making unnatural economic growth will still be a net cost to the economy versus spending time finding real jobs. These are what they really 'should' in some sense be doing. To do this would surely be better unless you claim the 10% will continue unemployed permanently.

A typical argument against my response is that the economy is like a pump and that this is pump priming. Demand from these people's fictional labour will create the new jobs. The Austrian reply to that is that the pump metaphor is simply not valid and the economies grow organically. If you force a branch to grow with artificial sunlight, when that fake light gets turned off the branch will wither and all the people involved in its support spend a lot of time looking for what they should have been doing. I think Hayek would claim this type of fake labour policy is what causes the 10% unemployment to begin with.

These arguments can be seen in the two Hayek/Keynes rap videos. There are two inconsistent models of the economy. How can we decide which one is right? This argument is very old so I guess it's not that easy... Maybe look at long run growth in more and less interventionist countries? I suspect growth will be faster in the less interventionist nation.


>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^pyloricvalve: Just seems like straight up broken windows fallacy. If we spent 18 months preparing for war with aliens we might all be employed but we'd end up with a bunch of weapons pointed at the sky. Otherwise we could have spent the time making ipods, cars or whatever good or service you might want. Doesn't what he's saying just sound wrong? It clearly would not be a good thing for the world to spend 18 months that way.. I think that's the real problem with the broken window "fallacy" -- it assumes that as your starting point you already have full employment and no idle infrastructure or capital. That's not true in our situation at all. Unemployment is around 10%, factories are being left idle, and companies are sitting on mountains of cash. The idea here is to get people back to work doing something, because even if they're producing things there isn't a high demand for (windows, alien-fighting spaceships), it's not like those things come at the cost of the other things they would've otherwise been producing, since they're not producing anything at all right now. Oh, and in the case of alien-fighting spaceships, there's a pretty high chance that the technology and industrial infrastructure that's developed to build them will be able to be re-purposed for consumer goods once the alien threat is shown to be fake. Ideally instead of faking an alien invasion, we'd just have the government go and invest directly in our infrastructure (transportation, education, power generation), but without the alien threat it doesn't seem like Congress is willing to engage in any more fiscal stimulus, no matter how economically sound it would be.

>> ^pyloricvalve:

Just seems like straight up broken windows fallacy. If we spent 18 months preparing for war with aliens we might all be employed but we'd end up with a bunch of weapons pointed at the sky. Otherwise we could have spent the time making ipods, cars or whatever good or service you might want. Doesn't what he's saying just sound wrong? It clearly would not be a good thing for the world to spend 18 months that way..


I think that's the real problem with the broken window "fallacy" -- it assumes that as your starting point you already have full employment and no idle infrastructure or capital.

That's not true in our situation at all. Unemployment is around 10%, factories are being left idle, and companies are sitting on mountains of cash.

The idea here is to get people back to work doing something, because even if they're producing things there isn't a high demand for (windows, alien-fighting spaceships), it's not like those things come at the cost of the other things they would've otherwise been producing, since they're not producing anything at all right now.

Oh, and in the case of alien-fighting spaceships, there's a pretty high chance that the technology and industrial infrastructure that's developed to build them will be able to be re-purposed for consumer goods once the alien threat is shown to be fake.

Ideally instead of faking an alien invasion, we'd just have the government go and invest directly in our infrastructure (transportation, education, power generation), but without the alien threat it doesn't seem like Congress is willing to engage in any more fiscal stimulus, no matter how economically sound it would be.

I thought Indy 4 was almost there....
a) The two best Indy movies (1 & 3) had their roots in Biblical myths, this made them feel sort of 'legit', a nice sort of 'what if' these stories were true. Temple of Doom lacked this with him not searching for anything really, just stumbling across the Thuggees. The crystal skulls could have been a pretty good myth to work with, but there wasn't enough decoding scripture or writings or anything really to _do_ with the myth... I think that's where the two weak films initially fail, they aren't a good 'search for a lost item' story.

b) Far too much CGI, the chase through the jungle, while having some nice action and set pieces, just feels like a cgi scene, doesn't feel based in reality.

c) Too much lame humour. It's where Lucas failed a lot with the Star Wars prequels too... resorting to fart jokes and bad slapstick when the originals had a semblance of subtlety to them.

d) The end... just... a spaceship... really? The first one, we have ghosts... that's good, honest, old school movies. The second has some heart ripping and glowing stones, the third has life giving/sapping cups... but none of them have alien creatures coming to life and a space ship taking off... just doesn't work. That really should have been played down a lot, lot more. Some sort of alien power source that activated and made a whole lot of ancient machinery come to life would have been more in keeping.

I really enjoyed the motorcycle chase, I like Shia, I think he does well with whatever he's given. I think Harrison is still excellent in the role, there were some great action pieces. It's just really annoying to see a film get so close... so close and miss out due to what feels like just not having one more person look over the script and say 'Hey guys... you're kinda missing a few key "Indy" things here... and a few of these scenes are really very hokey'

But yeah, not as bad as some would make it out to be.

Very well done, and I did enjoy the *animation. But I can see how it might not necessarily add that much to the story. Alternatively they could have written in some dialogue maybe like:



"Supe: Here's the crystal spaceship that I used to travel back to Krypton to search for my family. (gestures to ship/part of ship/model/picture of ship/10 second cutscene of ship...)

Lois: Did you find anyone/anything?

Supe: Only a rock filled with Kryptonite (and loneliness.)

End scene!"

4 minutes and 9.75 million dollars saved!

With the advent of superb digital animation (such as this) too many films try to cover up poor planning/writing and ultimately sacrifice good story-telling with, well, high-production cartoons and special effects.

>> ^EMPIRE:

to be honest, it's a bit too long, but I kinda liked it. With better editing they could have left it in.