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A Thread About Movies

1356799

Posts

  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    I don't think The Hunger Games is for me.

    The very concept looks patently absurd, and then throw in the tweeny romance angle, the po-faced melodrama, and the ridiculous costumes and you have my anathema.

    Absurd concepts are normal for Hollywood. The Marvel movies are all absurd yet they're well executed, excluding a few.

    Superhero movies aren't absurd, they're based on a single conceit: one weird character in a normal world.

    When your whole plot is a conceit, you really have work hard to rationalize it.

  • UnbreakableVowUnbreakableVow Registered User regular
    That single conceit is absurd

    Spider-Man is pretty fucking absurd

  • EddEdd Registered User regular
    That single conceit is absurd

    Spider-Man is pretty fucking absurd

    Which is why I thought Raimi's approach to present the whole world through a silver-age filter is pretty genius. You avoid the problems of making superheroes concrete and "real" when the world you situate them in is already a bit of an exaggeration of our own, though not so much so that we can't relate to the characters on an emotional level.

  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    As much as battle royale was neat, there was nothing to it beyond "olol kids killing each other on an island. you leik violence right, weeaboos?"

    I felt like the hunger games gave it a much more "reasonable" plot/backstory to the set up.

    I haven't read the books, but from what I've read about the books, Running Man did it better. As did The Long Walk, if you want kids dying. Unless I'm just missing something somewhere it seems like the whole central concept is just absurd.

    "Hey, you guys outnumber us 11 to 1 and we make your day-to-day lives miserable, so to ensure that you don't try any silly little revolutions we're going to make you offer up your children for sacrifice. And our entire populace - or at least enough of them that we're not worried about them rebelling either - are down with watching that on TV. Annually. For like a century."

    The Long Walk was also ridiculous when it did the same thing, but it avoided appearing ridiculous by not explaining the situation at all. Kids are selected regionally to compete in a to-the-death, ambiguously high-stakes competition on an annual basis and (nearly) everyone is both uniformly cool with this happening and wants to watch it go down live on TV. Since it's a book about kids dealing with the stress of slowly walking themselves to death it doesn't really matter how the world got that way, and as such it's never addressed. I liked that about it. When you give me an explanation for something as outlandish as annual child-sacrifice-competition-TV-specials I'm going to end up spending half the time I'm reading/watching thinking about how little sense it makes.

    PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    That single conceit is absurd

    Spider-Man is pretty fucking absurd

    Yes, but he's a single conceit in a (somewhat) realistic context. The audience knows what the rules for that world are.

    Even something far-fetched like Star Wars is grounded in a modicum of reality; if you can rationalize the conceit of The Force, the rest of the movie falls into place because the morality and mechanisms are culturally scripted paradigms.

    Something like The Hunger Games takes a lot more effort because we have to actualize a world where crazy people are obsessed with children killing each other. That's a pretty unrealistic conceit.

  • a5ehrena5ehren AtlantaRegistered User regular
    As much as battle royale was neat, there was nothing to it beyond "olol kids killing each other on an island. you leik violence right, weeaboos?"

    I felt like the hunger games gave it a much more "reasonable" plot/backstory to the set up.

    I haven't read the books, but from what I've read about the books, Running Man did it better. As did The Long Walk, if you want kids dying. Unless I'm just missing something somewhere it seems like the whole central concept is just absurd.

    "Hey, you guys outnumber us 11 to 1 and we make your day-to-day lives miserable, so to ensure that you don't try any silly little revolutions we're going to make you offer up your children for sacrifice. And our entire populace - or at least enough of them that we're not worried about them rebelling either - are down with watching that on TV. Annually. For like a century."

    The Long Walk was also ridiculous when it did the same thing, but it avoided appearing ridiculous by not explaining the situation at all. Kids are selected regionally to compete in a to-the-death, ambiguously high-stakes competition on an annual basis and (nearly) everyone is both uniformly cool with this happening and wants to watch it go down live on TV. Since it's a book about kids dealing with the stress of slowly walking themselves to death it doesn't really matter how the world got that way, and as such it's never addressed. I liked that about it. When you give me an explanation for something as outlandish as annual child-sacrifice-competition-TV-specials I'm going to end up spending half the time I'm reading/watching thinking about how little sense it makes.

    The Capitol has a decided technological advantage over the other districts, and they're way nicer to the "slave" districts that do a lot of their engineering and R&D work. You don't really find that stuff out until the 3rd book, which is a bit of a shame.

  • UnbreakableVowUnbreakableVow Registered User regular
    Something like The Hunger Games takes a lot more effort because we have to actualize a world where crazy people are obsessed with children killing each other. That's a pretty unrealistic conceit.

    I find a word full of crazy sadistic people a lot easier to believe than radioactive spider-bites and lightsabers

  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    I found the movie I was talking about. Yay!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZDrTylco1o

    One rogue cop! Killer cyborgs! He knows the answer but not the question!

    Tell me this shit isn't awesome. Go on, DO IT.

    manwiththemachinegun on
  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    a5ehren wrote: »
    As much as battle royale was neat, there was nothing to it beyond "olol kids killing each other on an island. you leik violence right, weeaboos?"

    I felt like the hunger games gave it a much more "reasonable" plot/backstory to the set up.

    I haven't read the books, but from what I've read about the books, Running Man did it better. As did The Long Walk, if you want kids dying. Unless I'm just missing something somewhere it seems like the whole central concept is just absurd.

    "Hey, you guys outnumber us 11 to 1 and we make your day-to-day lives miserable, so to ensure that you don't try any silly little revolutions we're going to make you offer up your children for sacrifice. And our entire populace - or at least enough of them that we're not worried about them rebelling either - are down with watching that on TV. Annually. For like a century."

    The Long Walk was also ridiculous when it did the same thing, but it avoided appearing ridiculous by not explaining the situation at all. Kids are selected regionally to compete in a to-the-death, ambiguously high-stakes competition on an annual basis and (nearly) everyone is both uniformly cool with this happening and wants to watch it go down live on TV. Since it's a book about kids dealing with the stress of slowly walking themselves to death it doesn't really matter how the world got that way, and as such it's never addressed. I liked that about it. When you give me an explanation for something as outlandish as annual child-sacrifice-competition-TV-specials I'm going to end up spending half the time I'm reading/watching thinking about how little sense it makes.

    The Capitol has a decided technological advantage over the other districts, and they're way nicer to the "slave" districts that do a lot of their engineering and R&D work. You don't really find that stuff out until the 3rd book, which is a bit of a shame.

    While a technological advantage certainly helps, my understanding is that they're depending on these other districts for labor and supplies. That provides ample opportunity for sabotage and poisoning. Or to just revolt-by-not-working, thereby denying the Capitol of the goods and services they depend on to maintain their standard of living. This kind of feudal government worked during the actual feudal period by using psychological warfare to suppress the populace's desire to rise up and overthrow their oppressors. The serfs of Europe and the common folk of feudal Asia believed - and were told over and over again, from birth onward - that the people they worked for were divinely appointed super-men who were legitimately better that they were and deserved what they had.

    History is full of warlords and dictators who maintain control of the oppressed populace through force of arms alone eventually being overthrown when the number of loyal soldiers becomes too small in comparison to the number of dissatisfied commoners. You only need to look as far as modern-day Africa and North Korea for concrete examples of why the situation described in The Hunger Games is ridiculous (at least as I understand it). The Kim Jong dynasty has worked hard to convince North Korea that loving their leader and starving to death for the glory of North Korea is the morally right thing to do. And it keeps working. Meanwhile, a rotating array of African despots keep fighting civil wars because their reign is exactly as long as it takes for the populace to become so desperate that taking a bullet seems like an okay trade-off for one more day of living their current life.

    PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    I don't think The Hunger Games is for me.

    The very concept looks patently absurd, and then throw in the tweeny romance angle, the po-faced melodrama, and the ridiculous costumes and you have my anathema.

    Absurd concepts are normal for Hollywood. The Marvel movies are all absurd yet they're well executed, excluding a few.

    Superhero movies aren't absurd, they're based on a single conceit: one weird character in a normal world.

    When your whole plot is a conceit, you really have work hard to rationalize it.

    Generally there's more than one thing absurd in super-hero movies*. In X-men films there's mutants, plus powerful technology. The first film had two ridiculous plot devices with Cerebro & Magneto's machine. In Blade he fights vampires, Reapers, Abigail Whistler's energy bow & La Magra. Spider-man not only fights super-powered villains but he occasionally deals with plot devices ( Ock's device). Captain America has the super-soldier serum,
    the Tesseract
    and Hydra wielding advanced tech powered from a "supernatural" power source. Iron Man has his various suits, Iron Monger & Whiplash's suits, the arc reactor & Hammer's drones.

    * excluding Dark Man or Punisher (but he's closer to being an action hero)

    Harry Dresden on
  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    I don't think The Hunger Games is for me.

    The very concept looks patently absurd, and then throw in the tweeny romance angle, the po-faced melodrama, and the ridiculous costumes and you have my anathema.

    Absurd concepts are normal for Hollywood. The Marvel movies are all absurd yet they're well executed, excluding a few.

    Superhero movies aren't absurd, they're based on a single conceit: one weird character in a normal world.

    When your whole plot is a conceit, you really have work hard to rationalize it.

    Generally there's more than one thing absurd in super-hero movies*. In X-men films there's mutants, plus powerful technology. The first film had two ridiculous plot devices with Cerebro & Magneto's machine. In Blade he fights vampires, Reapers, Abigail Whistler's energy bow & La Magra. Spider-man not only fights super-powered villains but he occasionally deals with plot devices ( Ock's device). Captain America has the super-soldier serum,
    the Tesseract
    and Hydra wielding advanced tech powered from a "supernatural" power source. Iron Man has his various suits, Iron Monger & Whiplash's suits, the arc reactor & Hammer's drones.

    * excluding Dark Man or Punisher (but he's closer to being an action hero)

    But the rules of those worlds are still normal, and those movies are generally created as being escapist fantasy.

    Hunger Games is, I believe, to be taken as serious drama.

  • a5ehrena5ehren AtlantaRegistered User regular
    a5ehren wrote: »
    As much as battle royale was neat, there was nothing to it beyond "olol kids killing each other on an island. you leik violence right, weeaboos?"

    I felt like the hunger games gave it a much more "reasonable" plot/backstory to the set up.

    I haven't read the books, but from what I've read about the books, Running Man did it better. As did The Long Walk, if you want kids dying. Unless I'm just missing something somewhere it seems like the whole central concept is just absurd.

    "Hey, you guys outnumber us 11 to 1 and we make your day-to-day lives miserable, so to ensure that you don't try any silly little revolutions we're going to make you offer up your children for sacrifice. And our entire populace - or at least enough of them that we're not worried about them rebelling either - are down with watching that on TV. Annually. For like a century."

    The Long Walk was also ridiculous when it did the same thing, but it avoided appearing ridiculous by not explaining the situation at all. Kids are selected regionally to compete in a to-the-death, ambiguously high-stakes competition on an annual basis and (nearly) everyone is both uniformly cool with this happening and wants to watch it go down live on TV. Since it's a book about kids dealing with the stress of slowly walking themselves to death it doesn't really matter how the world got that way, and as such it's never addressed. I liked that about it. When you give me an explanation for something as outlandish as annual child-sacrifice-competition-TV-specials I'm going to end up spending half the time I'm reading/watching thinking about how little sense it makes.

    The Capitol has a decided technological advantage over the other districts, and they're way nicer to the "slave" districts that do a lot of their engineering and R&D work. You don't really find that stuff out until the 3rd book, which is a bit of a shame.

    While a technological advantage certainly helps, my understanding is that they're depending on these other districts for labor and supplies. That provides ample opportunity for sabotage and poisoning. Or to just revolt-by-not-working, thereby denying the Capitol of the goods and services they depend on to maintain their standard of living. This kind of feudal government worked during the actual feudal period by using psychological warfare to suppress the populace's desire to rise up and overthrow their oppressors. The serfs of Europe and the common folk of feudal Asia believed - and were told over and over again, from birth onward - that the people they worked for were divinely appointed super-men who were legitimately better that they were and deserved what they had.

    History is full of warlords and dictators who maintain control of the oppressed populace through force of arms alone eventually being overthrown when the number of loyal soldiers becomes too small in comparison to the number of dissatisfied commoners. You only need to look as far as modern-day Africa and North Korea for concrete examples of why the situation described in The Hunger Games is ridiculous (at least as I understand it). The Kim Jong dynasty has worked hard to convince North Korea that loving their leader and starving to death for the glory of North Korea is the morally right thing to do. And it keeps working. Meanwhile, a rotating array of African despots keep fighting civil wars because their reign is exactly as long as it takes for the populace to become so desperate that taking a bullet seems like an okay trade-off for one more day of living their current life.

    Well, life in the Districts isn't as bad as places like Sub-Saharan Africa or NK. It's a tough existence, but they get just enough supplies to get by (honestly, District 12 doesn't sound too much worse than West Virginia is today for a lot of people - except that shooting critters in the woods doesn't carry a death sentence). There is no communication between the Districts, so they are all directly dependent on the Capitol to get goods from the other districts.

    Honestly, it's just a YA book - I doubt the author put as much thought into the political dynamics as we are here.

  • SarcasmoBlasterSarcasmoBlaster Austin, TXRegistered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Man, imagine if all nerd worlds had to endure this level of political/social/economic scrutiny.

    SarcasmoBlaster on
  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    I don't think The Hunger Games is for me.

    The very concept looks patently absurd, and then throw in the tweeny romance angle, the po-faced melodrama, and the ridiculous costumes and you have my anathema.

    Absurd concepts are normal for Hollywood. The Marvel movies are all absurd yet they're well executed, excluding a few.

    Superhero movies aren't absurd, they're based on a single conceit: one weird character in a normal world.

    When your whole plot is a conceit, you really have work hard to rationalize it.

    Generally there's more than one thing absurd in super-hero movies*. In X-men films there's mutants, plus powerful technology. The first film had two ridiculous plot devices with Cerebro & Magneto's machine. In Blade he fights vampires, Reapers, Abigail Whistler's energy bow & La Magra. Spider-man not only fights super-powered villains but he occasionally deals with plot devices ( Ock's device). Captain America has the super-soldier serum,
    the Tesseract
    and Hydra wielding advanced tech powered from a "supernatural" power source. Iron Man has his various suits, Iron Monger & Whiplash's suits, the arc reactor & Hammer's drones.

    * excluding Dark Man or Punisher (but he's closer to being an action hero)

    But the rules of those worlds are still normal, and those movies are generally created as being escapist fantasy.

    Hunger Games is, I believe, to be taken as serious drama.

    It's also the difference between, "Here are these N things that don't exist in the real world, but in this world they do." and "Here is a population of people who do not behave in a manner that can be reconciled with either logic or what you understand about historical human behavior."

    Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings are full of patently absurd fantastical bullshit, but the people (or aliens, elves, dwarves, robots, etc. people-analogs, as the case may be) behave in a manner that you can look at and, within the confines of the fantasy world where laser-swords and magic rings are possible, understand.

    Then you have settings like Twilight, Battlefield Earth, or (to my understanding, at least; I may be missing some critical detail somewhere) The Hunger Games. There are sci-fi/fantasy conceits (vampires, aliens, space-ships, flying cars, etc.) and then there are people whose actions just don't make any goddamned sense, even considering the conceits. Why don't Twilight vampires rule the world? They're apparently immune to everything except other vampires and werewolves, and werewolves aren't immune to guns. Why did anyone in Battlefield Earth do anything? Why has the populace in the Hunger Games been okay with upwards of 3/4ths of a century of Hunger Games (I seem to recall reading somewhere about either the current Games being the 74th or one of the characters having been in the 74th Games, so presumably they're pushing 75 years of oppression here). The answer is generally "because that's how it has to be for the plot to work", which is a shitty answer.

    PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    I don't think The Hunger Games is for me.

    The very concept looks patently absurd, and then throw in the tweeny romance angle, the po-faced melodrama, and the ridiculous costumes and you have my anathema.

    Absurd concepts are normal for Hollywood. The Marvel movies are all absurd yet they're well executed, excluding a few.

    Superhero movies aren't absurd, they're based on a single conceit: one weird character in a normal world.

    When your whole plot is a conceit, you really have work hard to rationalize it.

    Generally there's more than one thing absurd in super-hero movies*. In X-men films there's mutants, plus powerful technology. The first film had two ridiculous plot devices with Cerebro & Magneto's machine. In Blade he fights vampires, Reapers, Abigail Whistler's energy bow & La Magra. Spider-man not only fights super-powered villains but he occasionally deals with plot devices ( Ock's device). Captain America has the super-soldier serum,
    the Tesseract
    and Hydra wielding advanced tech powered from a "supernatural" power source. Iron Man has his various suits, Iron Monger & Whiplash's suits, the arc reactor & Hammer's drones.

    * excluding Dark Man or Punisher (but he's closer to being an action hero)

    But the rules of those worlds are still normal, and those movies are generally created as being escapist fantasy.

    Hunger Games is, I believe, to be taken as serious drama.

    True.

  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    Considering it's a re-drawn version of the Minotaur legend from Ancient Greece, I am not entirely surprised the economics don't quite work out. If you really want to get down into it, the population density numbers make absolutely no sense, as presented in the book. But it's an insane issue to bring up. It's not hard sci-fi. There are good characters and good action sequences, and some interesting themes about war, its affect on children, the fucked up way we look at the wars we fight, and what not.

    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    a5ehren wrote: »
    Honestly, it's just a YA book - I doubt the author put as much thought into the political dynamics as we are here.

    Well, that's kind of the whole problem. You can't really tell a competent narrative if you don't address the obvious political and social realities inherent within the main conceit of the film, at least not if you're striving for legitimacy.

    It's one of the reasons that the X-Men deal so strongly with the government in their films; people would be freaked out if these people were just running around willy-nilly, and they'd demand federal protection.

    It's also one of the reasons the Harry Potter series is kind of crap.

  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Man, imagine if all nerd worlds had to endure this level of political/social/economic scrutiny.

    Most genre worlds either fall into two categories:
    - A normal world with a few people behaving abnormally (Spider-Man, Superman)
    - An abnormal world with most people behaving normally (Blade Runner, Lord of the Rings)


    The Hunger Games asks for the audience to buy into an abnormal world where people behave abnormally, and then wants to handwave the obvious issues that brings up. If every narrative were so shaky, people would never read. If something is both improbable and without a strong set of rules, the stakes are meaningless.

    This is the point where the plot begins to be clumsily bent to serve the author's objective rather than the plot being informed by the central conceit.

    Atomika on
  • RT800RT800 Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Well (Hunger Games)
    Trilogy endgame spoilers
    They do revolt and overthrow the Capital over the course of the trilogy. That's kinda what the whole series is about.

    Also there was the earlier rebellion of District 13 that actually won its independence from the Capitol due to its being the only district in possession of nuclear weapons.

    RT800 on
  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    Man, imagine if all nerd worlds had to endure this level of political/social/economic scrutiny.

    They already do.

  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    a5ehren wrote: »
    Honestly, it's just a YA book - I doubt the author put as much thought into the political dynamics as we are here.

    Well, that's kind of the whole problem. You can't really tell a competent narrative if you don't address the obvious political and social realities inherent within the main conceit of the film, at least not if you're striving for legitimacy.

    It's one of the reasons that the X-Men deal so strongly with the government in their films; people would be freaked out if these people were just running around willy-nilly, and they'd demand federal protection.

    It's also one of the reasons the Harry Potter series is kind of crap.

    HP failed not only because it wasn't thought in detail enough, but each book got more "adult" to grow with its readers. Having a more serious tone made the audience/readers notice the plot holes easier, something that wouldn't have had such scrutiny in the earlier books.

  • belligerentbelligerent Registered User regular
    As much as battle royale was neat, there was nothing to it beyond "olol kids killing each other on an island. you leik violence right, weeaboos?"

    I felt like the hunger games gave it a much more "reasonable" plot/backstory to the set up.

    I haven't read the books, but from what I've read about the books, Running Man did it better. As did The Long Walk, if you want kids dying. Unless I'm just missing something somewhere it seems like the whole central concept is just absurd.

    "Hey, you guys outnumber us 11 to 1 and we make your day-to-day lives miserable, so to ensure that you don't try any silly little revolutions we're going to make you offer up your children for sacrifice. And our entire populace - or at least enough of them that we're not worried about them rebelling either - are down with watching that on TV. Annually. For like a century."

    The Long Walk was also ridiculous when it did the same thing, but it avoided appearing ridiculous by not explaining the situation at all. Kids are selected regionally to compete in a to-the-death, ambiguously high-stakes competition on an annual basis and (nearly) everyone is both uniformly cool with this happening and wants to watch it go down live on TV. Since it's a book about kids dealing with the stress of slowly walking themselves to death it doesn't really matter how the world got that way, and as such it's never addressed. I liked that about it. When you give me an explanation for something as outlandish as annual child-sacrifice-competition-TV-specials I'm going to end up spending half the time I'm reading/watching thinking about how little sense it makes.

    Right, except there is a reason for the games. I'm going to put them in spoilers, even though you learn about this in the first book:
    74 years ago there was a rebellion in the districts (this is after they get all split up). The capitol has advanced science shit, and weapons(including their own nuclear arsenal. It's said that they wiped out the 13th district with nuclear weapons as an example, and the war ended. No one from the districts can own weapons, or leave the district. Rations are given to the families, but it's not enough.

    The hunger games were designed as ongoing punishment for the rebellion. lol we destroyed a whole district and have advanced tech and weapons. We're going to make your children die as a reminder that you should never ever rebel because you can't win.

    That it's not a great reason doesn't meant there isn't one. It's a play on gladiator slaves.

    I agree with why these books are popular: Katniss is a much better character than Bella. First, she thinks at all, which is a major difference, but even the "love triangle" is done better. It's not like these two guys just appear out of no where. There are reasons she's connected to them, and as she goes through the books she deals with having relationships in a fucked up world where your children could die at any moment.

    The whole protecting her sister thing is a great thread, too, and how people deal with loss.

    I'm stoked to see it, and I'm glad I gave the books a chance after the shit that was twilight.

  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    a5ehren wrote: »
    Honestly, it's just a YA book - I doubt the author put as much thought into the political dynamics as we are here.

    Well, that's kind of the whole problem. You can't really tell a competent narrative if you don't address the obvious political and social realities inherent within the main conceit of the film, at least not if you're striving for legitimacy.

    It's one of the reasons that the X-Men deal so strongly with the government in their films; people would be freaked out if these people were just running around willy-nilly, and they'd demand federal protection.

    It's also one of the reasons the Harry Potter series is kind of crap.

    HP failed not only because it wasn't thought in detail enough, but each book got more "adult" to grow with its readers. Having a more serious tone made the audience/readers notice the plot holes easier, something that wouldn't have had such scrutiny in the earlier books.

    Harry Potter was a narrative failure for lots of reasons, I think we can (or should) all agree. The biggest flaw was simply writing a 3400-page tale to tell a really simple story.

  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    And it didn't fail because no one fucking cares about this bullshit nerdery. Harry Potter's biggest failing is that Harry is literally the least interesting person in the series. But since everyone is pretty awesome, it's not that big of a failing.

    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
  • RT800RT800 Registered User regular
    ~70 years is a single life-time.
    I don't find it hard to believe that it would take that long for a second rebellion to build itself up, especially under such controlled conditions. Especially when most of the people during that period would have been alive to remember how the first rebellion got put down and put down hard.

  • belligerentbelligerent Registered User regular
    History is full of warlords and dictators who maintain control of the oppressed populace through force of arms alone eventually being overthrown when the number of loyal soldiers becomes too small in comparison to the number of dissatisfied commoners. You only need to look as far as modern-day Africa and North Korea for concrete examples of why the situation described in The Hunger Games is ridiculous (at least as I understand it). The Kim Jong dynasty has worked hard to convince North Korea that loving their leader and starving to death for the glory of North Korea is the morally right thing to do. And it keeps working. Meanwhile, a rotating array of African despots keep fighting civil wars because their reign is exactly as long as it takes for the populace to become so desperate that taking a bullet seems like an okay trade-off for one more day of living their current life.

    Imagine a population where it was broken down into Manhattan, Orlando, and some run down villages in mexico, and they were all next to each other. Manhattan rules this country, orlando produces the food and the villages do manual labor (like coalmining and other band jobs) Then manhattan says you don't have to coal mine if you work for us a police, and join other police from manhattan and orlando. In fact, you get to move out of mexico and instead of eating shit, you get the good orlando food. All you have to do is keep the other mexicans in line.

    Also, mexico and florida and manhattan have huge defenses against talking to each other. Each village cannot interact with the next one.

    In the book it's not just tech, it's numbers and organization. It'd be like Africa trying to rebel against the US without the internet.

  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    a5ehren wrote: »
    Honestly, it's just a YA book - I doubt the author put as much thought into the political dynamics as we are here.

    Well, that's kind of the whole problem. You can't really tell a competent narrative if you don't address the obvious political and social realities inherent within the main conceit of the film, at least not if you're striving for legitimacy.

    It's one of the reasons that the X-Men deal so strongly with the government in their films; people would be freaked out if these people were just running around willy-nilly, and they'd demand federal protection.

    It's also one of the reasons the Harry Potter series is kind of crap.

    HP failed not only because it wasn't thought in detail enough, but each book got more "adult" to grow with its readers. Having a more serious tone made the audience/readers notice the plot holes easier, something that wouldn't have had such scrutiny in the earlier books.

    Harry Potter was a narrative failure for lots of reasons, I think we can (or should) all agree. The biggest flaw was simply writing a 3400-page tale to tell a really simple story.

    Agreed. Stretching out the Voldemort arc into 7 books was a mistake. It may have been better to have other big bad's once he's dealt with or simply end the series with a trilogy. That and it got too over complicated in the last book.

  • KyouguKyougu Registered User regular
    Yeah, granted I didn't nearly give it as much thought but the world of Hunger Games is pretty belieable for the most part due to the reasons mentioned.

    Now the third book? That's when things really go offrails and bananas. Entertaining none the less.

  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    RT800 wrote: »
    ~70 years is a single life-time.
    I don't find it hard to believe that it would take that long for a second rebellion to build itself up, especially under such controlled conditions. Especially when most of the people during that period would have been alive to remember how the first rebellion got put down and put down hard.

    It's one lifetime, but it's 3.5 generations. There are kids whose grandparents were born after the last rebellion. In fact, the kids who are (probably, depending on how old people were when they started having kids, which is historically pretty young in high-labor-low-technology cultures) the central characters of the story are the children of parents whose parents weren't alive when the bombs fell. So parents who were, themselves, raised by people with no memory of the events leading up to the games are sending their kids off to die for the amusement of the lords and masters.


    Anyway, I'm going to go see the movie because my wife wants to see it. It certainly won't be the worst movie I've seen this year.


    Speaking of bad movies: I rented Three Musketeers. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, really. Ridiculous, but none of the acting, special effects, or fight scenes were even as bad as anticipated. I don't imagine the original work is anything to go on in terms of this movie, but I really don't understand the reason for Milla Jovovitch's character's existence. It seems like the movie could have worked just as well without her existing at all and it just being the Musketeers vs. England and the Cardinal (or whatever he was; the French Catholic guy).

    PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    Speaking of bad movies: I rented Three Musketeers. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, really. Ridiculous, but none of the acting, special effects, or fight scenes were even as bad as anticipated. I don't imagine the original work is anything to go on in terms of this movie, but I really don't understand the reason for Milla Jovovitch's character's existence. It seems like the movie could have worked just as well without her existing at all and it just being the Musketeers vs. England and the Cardinal (or whatever he was; the French Catholic guy).

    Lady DeWinter is a character from the original Three Musketeers novels. She's a villain there. That said, this character appeared because Milla Jolovich wanted to be in the movie. Her husband is the director IIRC.

  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    History is full of warlords and dictators who maintain control of the oppressed populace through force of arms alone eventually being overthrown when the number of loyal soldiers becomes too small in comparison to the number of dissatisfied commoners. You only need to look as far as modern-day Africa and North Korea for concrete examples of why the situation described in The Hunger Games is ridiculous (at least as I understand it). The Kim Jong dynasty has worked hard to convince North Korea that loving their leader and starving to death for the glory of North Korea is the morally right thing to do. And it keeps working. Meanwhile, a rotating array of African despots keep fighting civil wars because their reign is exactly as long as it takes for the populace to become so desperate that taking a bullet seems like an okay trade-off for one more day of living their current life.

    Imagine a population where it was broken down into Manhattan, Orlando, and some run down villages in mexico, and they were all next to each other. Manhattan rules this country, orlando produces the food and the villages do manual labor (like coalmining and other band jobs) Then manhattan says you don't have to coal mine if you work for us a police, and join other police from manhattan and orlando. In fact, you get to move out of mexico and instead of eating shit, you get the good orlando food. All you have to do is keep the other mexicans in line.

    Also, mexico and florida and manhattan have huge defenses against talking to each other. Each village cannot interact with the next one.

    In the book it's not just tech, it's numbers and organization. It'd be like Africa trying to rebel against the US without the internet.

    Spoilered nerd-wankery about speculative geopolitics
    Okay, but for Mexico to produce enough food and coal to supply Orlando and Manhattan - while maintaining a low enough level of technological penetration to keep your technological advantage in the cities - the population of Mexico has to be enormous.

    So now you have a horde of pissed-off Mexicans with axes and pitchforks on one front and a smaller horde (because they're going to have to be fairly populous if they're acting as your technical-labor-and-police infrastructure) of Canadians armed with (presumably) something like AK-47s to Manhattan's Laser Rifles or whatever. And while I am trying, I can't think of a way to isolate Canada and Mexico in this example from communicating with one another. Especially since both NY and Canada are getting food from Mexico and Canada is providing a police force to keep the Mexicans in line.

    Now Manhattan is left with a populace where probably nobody under the age of 40 has ever had to face a combat situation (since Orlando does their dirty work), outnumbered by angry, low-tech Mexicans and less-angry-but-still-not-happy-about-the-child-murder, medium-tech Canadians. Perhaps the Manhattan Laser Robots are enough to stop the Mexicans or the Canadians individually in a frontal assault, but they're not going to do much good when the Canadians stop repairing them and the Manhattanites can't very well eat their Laser Robots when Mexico starts sending them tainted crops, or burns all of their crops that the Mexican populace don't take with them into underground tunnels. And if any degree of communication at all is possible (which, again, I just don't see how it couldn't be; humans are ingenious at collaborating to fuck people over... the fortune cookie was invented for that purpose) then the combo Canandian/Mexican forces could just roll over them. And Manhattan can't very well nuke their food source if they have any intention of long-term survival.

    A question, though, for folks who have read the books since I haven't seen it addressed in the places I've read plot synopses of the books: what's the rest of the world up to? Did everyone just sit out the American War and are now just chilling on the other continents watching those crazy North Americans commit ritual murder? Or was there some kind of global nuclear holocaust that left enough of humanity in one place for there to even be 13 independent vassal states?

    Also: every area of nerd fiction is subject to this level of examination. It's kind of what nerds do.

    PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    Speaking of bad movies: I rented Three Musketeers. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, really. Ridiculous, but none of the acting, special effects, or fight scenes were even as bad as anticipated. I don't imagine the original work is anything to go on in terms of this movie, but I really don't understand the reason for Milla Jovovitch's character's existence. It seems like the movie could have worked just as well without her existing at all and it just being the Musketeers vs. England and the Cardinal (or whatever he was; the French Catholic guy).

    Lady DeWinter is a character from the original Three Musketeers novels. She's a villain there. That said, this character appeared because Milla Jolovich wanted to be in the movie. Her husband is the director IIRC.

    Ah, that makes sense, then. Normally I'm a fan of her appearances in movies (though not for her acting talent) but she just felt completely superfluous in Three Musketeers.

    PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
  • Linespider5Linespider5 ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGER Registered User regular
    Speaking of bad movies: I rented Three Musketeers. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, really. Ridiculous, but none of the acting, special effects, or fight scenes were even as bad as anticipated. I don't imagine the original work is anything to go on in terms of this movie, but I really don't understand the reason for Milla Jovovitch's character's existence. It seems like the movie could have worked just as well without her existing at all and it just being the Musketeers vs. England and the Cardinal (or whatever he was; the French Catholic guy).

    Lady DeWinter is a character from the original Three Musketeers novels. She's a villain there. That said, this character appeared because Milla Jolovich wanted to be in the movie. Her husband is the director IIRC.

    I've always wondered about those sorts of working arrangements augmented by marital considerations. It's just gotta be so fucking surreal, especially when things get ugly.

  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    Speaking of bad movies: I rented Three Musketeers. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, really. Ridiculous, but none of the acting, special effects, or fight scenes were even as bad as anticipated. I don't imagine the original work is anything to go on in terms of this movie, but I really don't understand the reason for Milla Jovovitch's character's existence. It seems like the movie could have worked just as well without her existing at all and it just being the Musketeers vs. England and the Cardinal (or whatever he was; the French Catholic guy).

    Lady DeWinter is a character from the original Three Musketeers novels. She's a villain there. That said, this character appeared because Milla Jolovich wanted to be in the movie. Her husband is the director IIRC.

    Ah, that makes sense, then. Normally I'm a fan of her appearances in movies (though not for her acting talent) but she just felt completely superfluous in Three Musketeers.

    Haven't seen the film yet but I'd have liked to see her play a villainous DeWinter. She is an excellent actress that's why I'm not angry when she appears in her husband's films.

  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    Speaking of bad movies: I rented Three Musketeers. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, really. Ridiculous, but none of the acting, special effects, or fight scenes were even as bad as anticipated. I don't imagine the original work is anything to go on in terms of this movie, but I really don't understand the reason for Milla Jovovitch's character's existence. It seems like the movie could have worked just as well without her existing at all and it just being the Musketeers vs. England and the Cardinal (or whatever he was; the French Catholic guy).

    Lady DeWinter is a character from the original Three Musketeers novels. She's a villain there. That said, this character appeared because Milla Jolovich wanted to be in the movie. Her husband is the director IIRC.

    Ah, that makes sense, then. Normally I'm a fan of her appearances in movies (though not for her acting talent) but she just felt completely superfluous in Three Musketeers.

    Haven't seen the film yet but I'd have liked to see her play a villainous DeWinter. She is an excellent actress that's why I'm not angry when she appears in her husband's films.

    Eh, she is sometimes. She was good in the Joan of Arc movie, and I've thought she did a pretty good job in the Resident Evil movies. I guess she did a good job of acting like she didn't have a personality or the ability to speak in Fifth Element. Her performance in Three Musketeers was probably the weakest of the cast, though, Ultraviolet was an abortion, and the last couple of other things I've seen with her in them have been sufficiently forgettable that I don't really remember anything about them besides that I was unimpressed.

    In any case, she's sort of villainous in Three Musketeers. I imagine that they could have made a reasonably good movie wherein she was the villain and it was her vs. the Musketeers. Or a movie about the Musketeers vs. England and the Church without her in it. As it was, the movie was primarily them vs. Team EnglandChurch while she bounced around the edges and background. Removing the scenes where she does something badass just because or contributes in a largely unnecessary way to the rest of the plot would have freed up more time for sword fighting.

    PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
  • OremLKOremLK Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Sentry wrote: »
    Also, and sorry for double posting, for some reason my edit button is blocked, the books remind me more of Stephen King's the Long Walk then anything, which may be why I have a soft spot for them, since that's my favorite King novel... although I haven't read Battle Royale.

    The Long Walk is the book I thought of when my wife told me the premise. I hope it's less depressing.

    I haven't read The Hunger Games, but the basic premise being discussed... We humans have a lot more barbaric stuff than that in our past, for stupider reasons. When was the last time human societies needed an excuse to be sadistic and frivolous when it comes to human life?

    Hell, if I'm remembering right there was even an occasion or two when Rome used children in the gladiatorial arena.

    OremLK on
    My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    History is full of warlords and dictators who maintain control of the oppressed populace through force of arms alone eventually being overthrown when the number of loyal soldiers becomes too small in comparison to the number of dissatisfied commoners. You only need to look as far as modern-day Africa and North Korea for concrete examples of why the situation described in The Hunger Games is ridiculous (at least as I understand it). The Kim Jong dynasty has worked hard to convince North Korea that loving their leader and starving to death for the glory of North Korea is the morally right thing to do. And it keeps working. Meanwhile, a rotating array of African despots keep fighting civil wars because their reign is exactly as long as it takes for the populace to become so desperate that taking a bullet seems like an okay trade-off for one more day of living their current life.

    Imagine a population where it was broken down into Manhattan, Orlando, and some run down villages in mexico, and they were all next to each other. Manhattan rules this country, orlando produces the food and the villages do manual labor (like coalmining and other band jobs) Then manhattan says you don't have to coal mine if you work for us a police, and join other police from manhattan and orlando. In fact, you get to move out of mexico and instead of eating shit, you get the good orlando food. All you have to do is keep the other mexicans in line.

    Also, mexico and florida and manhattan have huge defenses against talking to each other. Each village cannot interact with the next one.

    In the book it's not just tech, it's numbers and organization. It'd be like Africa trying to rebel against the US without the internet.

    Spoilered nerd-wankery about speculative geopolitics
    Okay, but for Mexico to produce enough food and coal to supply Orlando and Manhattan - while maintaining a low enough level of technological penetration to keep your technological advantage in the cities - the population of Mexico has to be enormous.

    So now you have a horde of pissed-off Mexicans with axes and pitchforks on one front and a smaller horde (because they're going to have to be fairly populous if they're acting as your technical-labor-and-police infrastructure) of Canadians armed with (presumably) something like AK-47s to Manhattan's Laser Rifles or whatever. And while I am trying, I can't think of a way to isolate Canada and Mexico in this example from communicating with one another. Especially since both NY and Canada are getting food from Mexico and Canada is providing a police force to keep the Mexicans in line.

    Now Manhattan is left with a populace where probably nobody under the age of 40 has ever had to face a combat situation (since Orlando does their dirty work), outnumbered by angry, low-tech Mexicans and less-angry-but-still-not-happy-about-the-child-murder, medium-tech Canadians. Perhaps the Manhattan Laser Robots are enough to stop the Mexicans or the Canadians individually in a frontal assault, but they're not going to do much good when the Canadians stop repairing them and the Manhattanites can't very well eat their Laser Robots when Mexico starts sending them tainted crops, or burns all of their crops that the Mexican populace don't take with them into underground tunnels. And if any degree of communication at all is possible (which, again, I just don't see how it couldn't be; humans are ingenious at collaborating to fuck people over... the fortune cookie was invented for that purpose) then the combo Canandian/Mexican forces could just roll over them. And Manhattan can't very well nuke their food source if they have any intention of long-term survival.

    A question, though, for folks who have read the books since I haven't seen it addressed in the places I've read plot synopses of the books: what's the rest of the world up to? Did everyone just sit out the American War and are now just chilling on the other continents watching those crazy North Americans commit ritual murder? Or was there some kind of global nuclear holocaust that left enough of humanity in one place for there to even be 13 independent vassal states?

    Also: every area of nerd fiction is subject to this level of examination. It's kind of what nerds do.

    It's the downfall of any major society built upon the backs of others, from ancient Egypt and Rome to modern-day Dixie.

    If you're dependent on forced labor and foreign resources, one day that will utterly and totally fuck you over.

  • wanderingwandering Russia state-affiliated media Registered User regular
    Ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire were around for a really long time.

    Also Voldemort is kind of a maguffin I think. You read Harry Potter so you can vicariously attend wizard school.

    Also Milla Jolivich went from Luc Besson to Paul W.S. Anderson? I guess she's going to marry Michael Bay next, followed by Uwe Boll.

  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    Speaking of bad movies: I rented Three Musketeers. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, really. Ridiculous, but none of the acting, special effects, or fight scenes were even as bad as anticipated. I don't imagine the original work is anything to go on in terms of this movie, but I really don't understand the reason for Milla Jovovitch's character's existence. It seems like the movie could have worked just as well without her existing at all and it just being the Musketeers vs. England and the Cardinal (or whatever he was; the French Catholic guy).

    Lady DeWinter is a character from the original Three Musketeers novels. She's a villain there. That said, this character appeared because Milla Jolovich wanted to be in the movie. Her husband is the director IIRC.

    I've always wondered about those sorts of working arrangements augmented by marital considerations. It's just gotta be so fucking surreal, especially when things get ugly.

    Beckinsale met & married the director after leaving Martin Sheen during Underworld, whom she had a daughter with. That must have been awkward.

  • belligerentbelligerent Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Well, egypt is a great example. How long were the jews enslaved?

    Also, It was
    wargames.jpg

    This is the map:
    ZZ64600890.jpg

    belligerent on
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