Elusive Paladin on 21/10/2009 at 11:17
I think the fact that the coolant would be something like supercooled gas which would kill you if you tried to swim in it, not iced water.
Muzman on 21/10/2009 at 11:29
Did they say it was water? I can't remember.
There's a lot of factors that can be explained through safety. Super cooled gas is hard to make and store, so is dangerous and difficult to replace. They would consider such things on a long haul space flight.
Wormrat on 21/10/2009 at 13:08
The coolant was shown as being
extremely cold, to the point where the guy's arm was trembling and frozen after he quickly reached in to grab a tool he had dropped.
First of all, there's the minor nitpick that the coolant was shown on his arm as an ice-like solid, like it froze to his arm. This makes no sense, as the coolant is obviously colder than the air. I could ignore that easily, as it was at least a good way of showing how cold it is. But, if you're going to set that up, don't expect me to believe that a human can not only fully submerge himself multiple times for several seconds, but
open his eyes beneath the surface. A single quick dip would have been dramatic enough.
Quote Posted by RocketMan
[spoiler]When you say explosive decompression, do you mean when Kappa had to get to the bomb at the end and decompressed the whole ship? It may not be so dramatic but that effect is believable.[/SPOILer]
[spoiler]He punched a tiny hole in the door, then relied on the MASSIVE VACUUM OF SPACE trope to let decompression do the rest and rip the door apart. In reality, air would just leak out of the hole. Slowly.[/spoiler]
For what it's worth, I still really liked this movie. It's miles beyond any of the other "save mankind from space-related doom" flicks; it's just that it started off so strong that I wanted it to be perfect.
jay pettitt on 21/10/2009 at 20:09
Awesome until about half way through, when it suddenly becomes the worst film ever made.
Chimpy Chompy on 21/10/2009 at 20:23
I get how the slasher stuff felt like a not completely appropriate distraction - like the film wasn't quite sure of itself and went for some simpler thrills to try and hold our attention.
but I don't get the UGH HORRIBLE RUINED reactions :(
Muzman on 21/10/2009 at 21:24
Grip should leave now while we spoil away :cheeky:
Agreed there. "Worst film ever"? Very far from it.
There's a couple fo things that are shakey really, but what happens makes pretty good thematic sense. They just didn't handle it as well as they might have.
There's an argument to made that all of Garland's work like this involves everything turning to shit and people chasing each other around. So that's a problem. You kinda know something has to go horribly wrong sooner or later like this and the other ship is the obvious source, so it's fairly predictable. But having it be someone who has spent a long time communing with god, as it were, and thinking he sees the big picture is "better" than it being someone on the main ship.
They just didn't set it up as well as they might and the resulting plot distractingly resembles too many other things we've all seen before, undeservedly I think (also the guy's name being way too similar to Pinback from
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069945/) Dark Star stuck out like a sore thumb for me).
If you let the film's bouts of apparent genre blindness get in the way of what it does right you're doing it a disservice. Yeah it's disappointing but it's not the end of the world (ar ar).
Incidentally one of the science advisors points out in the commentary that even if all went according to plan it'd take about a hundred thousand years for the sun's surface to show the full effect, so we'd be screwed anyway.
Banksie on 22/10/2009 at 02:45
Quote Posted by Chimpy Chompy
I get how the slasher stuff felt like a not completely appropriate distraction - like the film wasn't quite sure of itself and went for some simpler thrills to try and hold our attention.
but I don't get the UGH HORRIBLE RUINED reactions :(
Because it took what was the best part of the film - the sense of isolation and pressure that was getting to the crew in a nice psychological study and turned it into Friday the 13th in space.
Visually the film is beautiful and gets the majesty of the sun right. A lot of the details about how the ships works had been thought through but then there were the magic tech bits. Like the gravity generator that never made sense - no rotating crew section so it had to be a field generator of some sort yet even when they lose power completely somehow it keeps on ticking...
So yeah I get the horrible ruined reactions because this film came so close to being a classic only to fall very short of that in the last third.
