9th February 2008, 3:29 PM
Quote:There is no such thing as "bad taste". There is no objective standard for that.
Hey, if you want to eat poop and say it's the best thing you've ever tasted, that's fine. But don't try to convince me that you have good taste. I mean, come on now, we're talking about CONTACT. One of the few scifi movies that actually takes its subject seriously and doesn't try to bombard the viewer with overblown explanations, has amazing special effects that still look as good now as they did when the movie first came out, and actually manages to walk a fine line between science and faith.
Quote:Again, different tastes. I actually WOULD like an explanation for why the sun is "going out".
What's the point in trying to explain something like that? Does it move the plot along? Does it provide some deeper understanding of the character or their actions? Does it somehow improve the overall product? The answer to those questions, minus the first one, is no, it does not. This is not a documentary, whose point would be to explain WHY the sun is dying. It is a movie about the FACT that the sun is dying. There's no reason to make up an obviousy phony reason for why this fact IS. "Oh, there is this...celestial particles...and something...obstructing the nuclear reaction...whatever."
It wouldn't work. Because all it would do is pull you out of the movie. Throwing out some theory as to what's going on would only act is target to direct your disbelief towards. "What did they say? There's no way something like that could happen! It defies all the knows we know to be true!!" and so on.
Quote:same for Solaris (the newer one, haven't seen the older one)
Okay, for the record here, the version of Solaris that I've been talking about in this thread is the original one. The original version is a great movie, the George Clooney version is merely good.
Quote:Man becomes giant space baby, yeah, I guess. It seems more like weird just for the sake of being weird than actually meaning anything... like... at all.
You could write an entire series of books about the layers of meaning that are present in virtually every single scene in 2001, not that I profess to understand that much about it but the analyses are out there. Kubrick rarely ever did anything just for the sake of being weird or contrary.
Sometimes you get the scorpion.