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T H E S U N T H E S U N T H E S U N T H E S U N T H E S U N T H E S U N

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Posts

  • ThirithThirith Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, because I really don't think the first film makes much of a point about science. There's precious little sciencing happening. Where you argue that the EPA subplot is just there for a few jokes, I'd argue that science is there for little more than a few jokes: Sure, Egon is a science nerd, but Venkman subverts the scientific process to flirt with a girl and Winston is explicitly not a scientist. I have to admit that I don't remember all that much about Ray, but I think he's mainly a paranormal historian in the first film, right? Not exactly what people mean by modern science. (By the way, I don't consider professional plumbing and modern science as incompatible, but neither do I see four plumbers as particularly representative of science.) I would agree with you that the film isn't a particularly deep reflection of, or comment on, Reaganomics - it is a paranormal comedy, first and foremost, and I don't think it's thematically deep in any respect - but if you argue that there's more in the film about modern science vs superstition than there is about small business vs bureaucracy, then we've been watching a very different film. Again, I don't even see superstition coming into the original Ghostbusters: there really are ghosts in the film, Gozer really is a deity, there's barely any discussion of anything metaphysical, and I'd even say that by putting the ghosts and deities into a pseudo-scientific context (they can be detected, measured and fought with tech thingamijigs), they become something distinctly other than superstition. Your argument to me seems to dismiss what's actually in the film (the EPA subplot, the Reaganomics thread) in favour of things that I barely see present in the film to begin with (science vs superstition).

    Anzekay on
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    "Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
  • SatanIsMyMotorSatanIsMyMotor Fuck Warren Ellis Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Yeah I'm not sure what part of the scientific method involves covering the Statue of Liberty in ghost-goo and marching it through NYC while blaring "Higher and Higher".

    Observation: Judge yells angrily at the ghostbusters, slime reacts and explodes

    Hypothesis: Maybe this slime reacts to negative reactions?

    Prediction/Experiment: Yell at the slime to see if you can reproduce the results. It does.

    Okay, so new question: Does this slime only react to negative emotions, or can it react to positive emotions as well? Does it only respond to actual people, or would it respond to recordings as well?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qTsB3qfNUk

    Yes, obviously mood slime doesn't exist in the real world. But that's not the point of this scene. The point of the scene is, "If mood slime WAS real, then how would scientists react to it?"

    "Ergo, let's cover the Statue of Liberty in this ghost goo, blast some Howard Hunstbury, and go to town!"

    Your argument here is like saying Drive is about fixing cars because there's a scene with garage talk.

    Anzekay on
  • XaquinXaquin Right behind you!Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    well it worked!

    Anzekay on
  • KupiKupi Registered User regular
    edited April 19
    We're probably all collectively past the point where fixing nuisances with Circle of the Moon will help anyone, but the AGDQ run just revealed (to me) a hilarious glitch with the spellcard system that mitigates the problem of having to farm the cards.

    So, before you can use your spell-cards, you have to activate them by pressing the button to turn the effect on. Doesn't matter what effect you're getting, you have to toggle the cards on.

    Well, it turns out that the way the game is coded, the check for whether you have the cards is only performed when you press the "activate cards" button. So if you put the cursor over a pair that includes a card you don't have, you can't activate the pair. And any time you change your card pair, you're automatically changed to the "cards off" state. But the pair doesn't actually activate until the "activate cards" animation finishes playing out. See where this is going?

    As long as you have any pair of cards (including the first two), you can push the "activate cards" button, pause the game while you're doing the flourish to activate the cards, switch to any arbitrary pair of cards, and when you hit the end of the animation, you'll get the effect of whatever pair of cards you switched to. You won't know exactly what you're getting if you haven't played the game before, but all the effects are trivially available as long as you have any pair at all. :lol:

    Anzekay on
    My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.

    I'm "kupiyupaekio" on Discord.
  • EnlongEnlong Registered User regular
    edited April 19
    Yep! The DSS glitch is dead-easy to use, and lets you do some bullshit, which is my favorite thing to use glitches for. It's a lot of fun, albeit tedious to activate if you're doing it repeatedly.

    One hilarious form of it is to turn on the combo that transforms you into a skeleton (which you normally need a card from the bonus boss rush hallway to do). You die in one hit, and you just throw bones. But you'll randomly (and not too rarely) throw a giant bone that deals the max damage a single hit can deal.

    Anzekay on
  • SchrodingerSchrodinger Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Thirith wrote: »
    I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, because I really don't think the first film makes much of a point about science. There's precious little sciencing happening. Where you argue that the EPA subplot is just there for a few jokes, I'd argue that science is there for little more than a few jokes: Sure, Egon is a science nerd, but Venkman subverts the scientific process to flirt with a girl and Winston is explicitly not a scientist. I have to admit that I don't remember all that much about Ray, but I think he's mainly a paranormal historian in the first film, right? Not exactly what people mean by modern science.

    That's like saying that real world smart phones aren't an example of modern science because the vast majority of people who use these phones have no idea how they work. The great thing about science is they don't have to. I drive a car on a regular basis, but I'm not a mechanic, and I have no idea how to repair one. As Neil deGrasse Tyson said, "The good thing about Science is that it's true, whether or not you believe in it." When I think of "science," I don't automatically picture a DeLorean. That doesn't mean that Doc Brown isn't supposed to be a real science just because he chooses that form for his time machine. Marty is a non-scientist who has no idea how the flux capacitor works, who has no idea how hoverboards work, has no idea how holographic technology works, etc. But that doesn't mean these things aren't a depiction of future science.

    The thing that makes this science rather than fantasy isn't "Does everyone understand how this works?" It's, "Could people understand how this works if they really applied themselves?" For instance, in "Star Wars," none of the best scientists have any idea how the force really works, so that's an example of fantasy. Mastering the force is all about letting go and having faith.
    (By the way, I don't consider professional plumbing and modern science as incompatible, but neither do I see four plumbers as particularly representative of science.) I would agree with you that the film isn't a particularly deep reflection of, or comment on, Reaganomics - it is a paranormal comedy, first and foremost, and I don't think it's thematically deep in any respect - but if you argue that there's more in the film about modern science vs superstition than there is about small business vs bureaucracy, then we've been watching a very different film.

    You're completely ignoring the context of the 1980s, during the era of Satanic panic superstition and Reagonomics. The movie takes a clear stand against the first, while simply internalizing the second. For instance, Aykroyd's "Trading Places" makes a clear stance on racism and classism, but it doesn't really question the underlying capitalist structure in general.

    There's a big difference between actively challenging the status quo vs. passively following the status quo. The stuff about using science to combat the supernatural is the former, the stuff about the EPA is the latter. Reagan was hugely popular back then, winning 49 states out of 50, and he campaigned on the idea of "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." So the depiction of Reagonomics in Ghostbusters is similar to the depiction of homophobia in Spider-Man. A problematic reflection of the era without a lot of thought.

    OTOH, can you think of any movies before Ghostbusters that deal with the supernatural the same way that Ghostbusters did? In any other movie, the Peter Venkman character would either converted by the end of the movie, or killed off for refusing.
    Again, I don't even see superstition coming into the original Ghostbusters: there really are ghosts in the film, Gozer really is a deity, there's barely any discussion of anything metaphysical, and I'd even say that by putting the ghosts and deities into a pseudo-scientific context (they can be detected, measured and fought with tech thingamijigs), they become something distinctly other than superstition.

    That's basically exactly how overcoming superstition with science is supposed to work. By taking the mystery out of the mysterious.

    For instance, Egon specifically says that "The structure of this roof cap is exactly like the kind of telemetry tracker that NASA uses to identify dead pulsars in deep space." In other words, Shandor is simply a scientist who's way ahead of his time. The people who were alive in Shandor's time might assume his designs were ritualistic and magic, but a NASA engineer living today would understand how it works.

    Anzekay on
  • Snake GandhiSnake Gandhi Des Moines, IARegistered User regular
    edited April 12
    Thank you @Schrodinger for making the argument I wasn't equipped too.

    I'm actually stuck trying to think of many other film that takes Ghostbusters tack of 'fighting the supernatural with science'. Because every movie that involves the supernatural in a normally mundane world almost always goes with the idea that you need magic to fight magic and that science is useless against it. You always need to find the right book with the right spell or destroy a amulet or whatever that equates to only being able to deal with supernatural threats with supernatural means.

    Blade and John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness are the only other ones that come to mind.

    Anzekay on
  • SchrodingerSchrodinger Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    "Ergo, let's cover the Statue of Liberty in this ghost goo, blast some Howard Hunstbury, and go to town!"

    Your argument here is like saying Drive is about fixing cars because there's a scene with garage talk.

    You asked how scientific method applies. Then you complain when I showed you how it's explicitly demonstrated in the movie. If you're not asking questions in good faith, then maybe you should refrain from asking them.

    Is the scene with the Statue of Liberty silly? Sure. It's also silly when I see clips on Youtube of people using science to propel rocket cars with diet coke and mentos. In the context of the ghostbusters universe, making the statue of liberty walk with music and goo is science.

    Likewise, it's silly to see a time machine in the form of a DeLorean. And unlike Ghostbusters, we never actually see the process in making that happen. But that doesn't mean that Doc Brown isn't supposed to be depicted as a scientist in those movies. That's different from, say... "Hot Tub Time Machine." Which is also silly, but the time machine is entirely the result of unknown mysterious forces, and therefore a form of fantasy.

    Anzekay on
  • KrathoonKrathoon Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    They basically went a little too far with the Statue of Liberty, but they were kind of desperate for options. They needed something for the city to get behind that would be positive enough to break the slime barrier.

    They did establish that the slime could do strange, impossible stuff with inorganic matter like the toaster. The toaster produced toast out of nothing.

    Anzekay on
  • edited April 12
    This content has been removed.

  • KlineshrikeKlineshrike Commonly known as Klineshrike! Registered User regular
    edited April 19
    Oh yeah I remember using that on my original playthrough of cotm.

    Anzekay on
  • SchrodingerSchrodinger Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Krathoon wrote: »
    They basically went a little too far with the Statue of Liberty, but they were kind of desperate for options. They needed something for the city to get behind that would be positive enough to break the slime barrier.

    They did establish that the slime could do strange, impossible stuff with inorganic matter like the toaster. The toaster produced toast out of nothing.

    If you look closely, you can see the bread is already in the toaster before they put slime in it.

    Anzekay on
  • SatanIsMyMotorSatanIsMyMotor Fuck Warren Ellis Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    "Ergo, let's cover the Statue of Liberty in this ghost goo, blast some Howard Hunstbury, and go to town!"

    Your argument here is like saying Drive is about fixing cars because there's a scene with garage talk.

    You asked how scientific method applies. Then you complain when I showed you how it's explicitly demonstrated in the movie. If you're not asking questions in good faith, then maybe you should refrain from asking them.

    Is the scene with the Statue of Liberty silly? Sure. It's also silly when I see clips on Youtube of people using science to propel rocket cars with diet coke and mentos. In the context of the ghostbusters universe, making the statue of liberty walk with music and goo is science.

    Likewise, it's silly to see a time machine in the form of a DeLorean. And unlike Ghostbusters, we never actually see the process in making that happen. But that doesn't mean that Doc Brown isn't supposed to be depicted as a scientist in those movies. That's different from, say... "Hot Tub Time Machine." Which is also silly, but the time machine is entirely the result of unknown mysterious forces, and therefore a form of fantasy.

    I did not ask that sir. You said the movie was about the scientific method trumping superstition and I pointed out that's a bit silly.

    Anzekay on
  • Steel AngelSteel Angel Registered User regular
    edited April 19
    cloudeagle wrote: »
    SyphonBlue wrote: »
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    I still don't understand NFTs. Probably never will.

    I understand companies trying anything for a profit, and NFTs seem like a low effort way to make some money. The thing I don't understand, is why people buy them. Don't people know that anything digital A) Cannot truly be owned, B) Can be copied / screenshot / archived, C) Only exist as long as the servers are running in the case of video game NFTs.

    You might "own" the "rights" to the NFT Magic Helmet of Doom, Blockchain code 37Bj03wuTT83903r, but as soon as the game servers for that game go down, your "ownership" ceases to be.

    Why are consumers allowing themselves to be scammed?

    There is absolutely no evidence that anybody is actually buying these things.

    True, a number of transactions are people selling NFTs to themselves, but there is some people buying. Not many, though.

    I think the prevailing theory is that the small but very loud NFT market is due to people having a ton of cryptocurrency they can't easily cash out, and so they want to spend them on something. Plus if they're into crypto, they're likely to believe the hype.

    To get back on topic, the various NFT attempts by video game companies have been loudly booed so far, so I wouldn't expect it to be a long-term thing.

    People also just collect all sorts of weird and dumb things. The wealthy are no exception. It's also just a trendy tech thing, like blockchain in general some years back. Investors who were not tech-savvy pumped up companies that said anything about blockchains without any real explanation of what they would do using it. Now here's a trend that game companies have tons of assets that could let them jump in on it.

    While this pivot has been booed by the gaming community, this is also specifically Konami. They're already used to being booed from when they "revived" Castlevania and Metal Gear into pachinko machines. I actually had to look up whether they'd released any new games the last several years besides Soccer and other sports related titles.

    Anzekay on
    Big Dookie wrote: »
    I found that tilting it doesn't work very well, and once I started jerking it, I got much better results.

    Steam Profile
    3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
  • KrathoonKrathoon Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Krathoon wrote: »
    They basically went a little too far with the Statue of Liberty, but they were kind of desperate for options. They needed something for the city to get behind that would be positive enough to break the slime barrier.

    They did establish that the slime could do strange, impossible stuff with inorganic matter like the toaster. The toaster produced toast out of nothing.

    If you look closely, you can see the bread is already in the toaster before they put slime in it.

    Darn. It did toast the toast without electricity!

    Anzekay on
  • Snake GandhiSnake Gandhi Des Moines, IARegistered User regular
    edited April 12
    Peter straight up asks Egon if he was sleeping with the slime and all Egon could do was look guilty. Obviously there was some freaky stuff going down at the firehouse.

    Anzekay on
  • NitsuaNitsua South CarolinaRegistered User regular
    edited April 19
    Kupi wrote: »
    We're probably all collectively past the point where fixing nuisances with Circle of the Moon will help anyone, but the AGDQ run just revealed (to me) a hilarious glitch with the spellcard system that mitigates the problem of having to farm the cards.

    So, before you can use your spell-cards, you have to activate them by pressing the button to turn the effect on. Doesn't matter what effect you're getting, you have to toggle the cards on.

    Well, it turns out that the way the game is coded, the check for whether you have the cards is only performed when you press the "activate cards" button. So if you put the cursor over a pair that includes a card you don't have, you can't activate the pair. And any time you change your card pair, you're automatically changed to the "cards off" state. But the pair doesn't actually activate until the "activate cards" animation finishes playing out. See where this is going?

    As long as you have any pair of cards (including the first two), you can push the "activate cards" button, pause the game while you're doing the flourish to activate the cards, switch to any arbitrary pair of cards, and when you hit the end of the animation, you'll get the effect of whatever pair of cards you switched to. You won't know exactly what you're getting if you haven't played the game before, but all the effects are trivially available as long as you have any pair at all. :lol:

    Yeah, I used this glitch to actually complete this game with a lot less stress involved. Was incredibly helpful.

    Anzekay on
  • TalithTalith 変態という名の紳士 Miami, FLRegistered User regular
    edited April 19
  • SchrodingerSchrodinger Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    I did not ask that sir. You said the movie was about the scientific method trumping superstition and I pointed out that's a bit silly.

    Except you're not actually refuting the idea that the characters use scientific method, or that they're using it to trump superstition. You and others are simply basically that this can't be the intent because it's not what you would have done. i.e., "When I think of science, I don't think of plumbers, so therefore the idea that this movie is a metaphor for science is wrong."

    For instance, if I wanted to invent a story about xenophobia or adolescent puberty, it probably wouldn't look anything like "The X-Men." But that doesn't mean that the X-Men isn't a parable for xenophobia and puberty. The idea of being able to shoot beams of concussive force from your eyes is undeniably silly and has no basis in the real world, but it's supposed to be a metaphor for the fact that people go through changes they can't control, it's not supposed to be literal.

    If COVID-19 had happened 250 years ago, most people would have attributed to some sort of supernatural cause, and resorted to prayer and exorcism and other form of superstition. Plagues aren't supernatural, but they could certainly seem that way to people who don't know any better. Now we know better, and scientists were able to quickly study the virus and come up with a vaccine in record time. And that's effectively what the ghostbusters did in New York. They observed the ghosts as a scientific phenomena, rather than a religious phenomena, and dealt with it accordingly.

    Likewise, there's lots of fear around Satanism and the occult back in the 1980s. There were lots of people who legitimately believed that D&D was a gateway towards channeling the actual devil. Televangelism and Faith Healers were a much bigger deal. People were a lot more superstitious back then, and Ghostbusters symbolized the ability to overcome these superstitions with science. In the real world, this is figurative, using science to destroy the myths. In the movie, this is literal, because movies are meant to be metaphorical.

    People point out that Venkman isn't a real scientist in the movie. But even as a fake scientist, Venkman is there to demonstrate that ESP is bullshit, that there's a simpler explanation for the type psychic phenomenon people observe in the real world (Like the fact that the person holding the cards is simply lying). And Peter is fired from the university for bad science once they catch on. That's an example of how real world science can win over superstition in the real world.

    ESP and ghosts are both examples of supernatural phenomenon, they both have believers and skeptics. The difference in the movies is that one of those things has passed empirical observation and testing. Peter likely assumed that Egon/Ray were either frauds or delusional prior to the library incident.

    Anzekay on
  • KrathoonKrathoon Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    They did go from the mentality of ghosts being pests. I am sure there are friendly ghosts too. Imagine if someone wanted them to capture a friendly ghost and send them to ghost prison.

    Anzekay on
  • SchrodingerSchrodinger Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Krathoon wrote: »
    They did go from the mentality of ghosts being pests. I am sure there are friendly ghosts too. Imagine if someone wanted them to capture a friendly ghost and send them to ghost prison.

    Apparently they were planning a scene where the ghostbusters could look inside the containment unit. But in addition to costing lots of time and money, they concluded that it would have been way too depressing.

    Anzekay on
  • SchrodingerSchrodinger Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Krathoon wrote: »
    They basically went a little too far with the Statue of Liberty, but they were kind of desperate for options. They needed something for the city to get behind that would be positive enough to break the slime barrier.

    They did establish that the slime could do strange, impossible stuff with inorganic matter like the toaster. The toaster produced toast out of nothing.

    Thanks for bringing up the context of the story, I got a little sidetracked. The entire point of the statue of liberty is that they needed a symbol for the city to rally behind. Making the statue walk is silly, but it's supposed to be silly. It's supposed to be an impossible spectacle that the Ghostbusters made happen through the power of science, so that the New Yorkers would be full of hope. For instance, if the Ghostbusters had simply presented a Macy's parade balloon version of the statue of liberty, that would have been much more scientifically realistic, but it also wouldn't have achieved anything in the movie because no one would have cared.

    This is also why it's ridiculous for Callie to think her dad is a fraud. Because the entire point of the event was to get people to believe in their work, so for his own family to turn completely memory hole him for no reason makes no sense. Sure, you can invent a character that has a valid reason for not telling Phoebe about her grandfather, but that's not the character we were presented with.

    Anyway, when I say that the ghostbusters demonstrate scientific method in their universe, I mean they can reproduce their results. If people think that Peter's ESP is a fraud, they can ask him to repeat the experiments with someone looking over his shoulder. If they think his cards are marked, they can bring their own deck.

    Making the statue of liberty walk might seem silly, but in the context of this universe, it's entirely reproducible. If people want Egon to prove that he really made the statue of liberty walk, then he can do that. If they want him to prove that ghosts are real, he can release one from one of his traps. That's very different from Ghost Hunters in the real world, who aren't able to do the same.

    Anzekay on
  • The WolfmanThe Wolfman Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Did Callie think her dad was a fraud? The whole thing seemed pretty simple and clear cut to me. Girl's father ignores her for science. Girl grows up hating science.

    Anzekay on
    "The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
  • SchrodingerSchrodinger Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Did Callie think her dad was a fraud? The whole thing seemed pretty simple and clear cut to me. Girl's father ignores her for science. Girl grows up hating science.

    I just assumed she did because she doesn't think twice about any of the creepy shit she deals with throughout the movie. Even if she hated science, that's still not a reason not to tell Phoebe about him. And they missed a huge opportunity to display this side of her character when she starts dating a geologist.

    Anzekay on
  • The WolfmanThe Wolfman Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Did Callie think her dad was a fraud? The whole thing seemed pretty simple and clear cut to me. Girl's father ignores her for science. Girl grows up hating science.

    I just assumed she did because she doesn't think twice about any of the creepy shit she deals with throughout the movie. Even if she hated science, that's still not a reason not to tell Phoebe about him. And they missed a huge opportunity to display this side of her character when she starts dating a geologist.

    It's not a good reason, but it's a reason nonetheless. You can replace "science" with "basketball" and it doesn't change anything, even if her grandfather is Michael Jordan. She simply doesn't want a thing to do with it or the man involved. Now not sharing who Phoebe's grandfather is when she has a clear taking to science is... yeah, she's not winning mother of the year here. But it's completely believable. Honestly... too believable.

    Anzekay on
    "The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
  • AlphaRomeroAlphaRomero Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Rewatched it today, I'm impressed with how bad the CGI is on the very few ghosts that appear outside of Gozer and co. The effects in the older films actually looked better, whether that is a byproduct of using physical items to make the effects or them being put against night settings I don't know, but Muncher and the eye ghost look terrible and completely divorced from the people in the scenes.

    On the repeat viewing, I still quite like how Gozer looks and the voice, still doesn't justify the dogs not doing anything to help her while she's busted, and I am surprised they didn't take the opportunity to remove the Starbucks line, which I'm not sure if that makes it a paid product placement or not. Not like they were shy about being shameless with that.

    It's flawed through and through but it's decent. I hope if there's another film they only bring back Phoebe though.

    Anzekay on
  • KrathoonKrathoon Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Yeah. I hope this is not just a swan song and there is no follow up. They got it setup for Winston to start up the business again.

    Anzekay on
  • SmokeStacksSmokeStacks Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Krathoon wrote: »
    They did go from the mentality of ghosts being pests. I am sure there are friendly ghosts too. Imagine if someone wanted them to capture a friendly ghost and send them to ghost prison.

    Apparently they were planning a scene where the ghostbusters could look inside the containment unit. But in addition to costing lots of time and money, they concluded that it would have been way too depressing.

    They explored what the inside of the containment unit is like in The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters cartoons. Quite a few times, actually - stuff that belongs in the containment unit getting out, or stuff that belongs out of the containment unit getting in, was a common recurring theme. Usually its depicted as a void filled with floating platforms made of rock, or as a void filled with weird non euclidian techno buildings and machine tentacles.

    Anzekay on
  • KrathoonKrathoon Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Krathoon wrote: »
    They did go from the mentality of ghosts being pests. I am sure there are friendly ghosts too. Imagine if someone wanted them to capture a friendly ghost and send them to ghost prison.

    Apparently they were planning a scene where the ghostbusters could look inside the containment unit. But in addition to costing lots of time and money, they concluded that it would have been way too depressing.

    They explored what the inside of the containment unit is like in The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters cartoons. Quite a few times, actually - stuff that belongs in the containment unit getting out, or stuff that belongs out of the containment unit getting in, was a common recurring theme. Usually its depicted as a void filled with floating platforms made of rock, or as a void filled with weird non euclidian techno buildings and machine tentacles.
    Krathoon wrote: »
    They did go from the mentality of ghosts being pests. I am sure there are friendly ghosts too. Imagine if someone wanted them to capture a friendly ghost and send them to ghost prison.

    Apparently they were planning a scene where the ghostbusters could look inside the containment unit. But in addition to costing lots of time and money, they concluded that it would have been way too depressing.

    They explored what the inside of the containment unit is like in The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters cartoons. Quite a few times, actually - stuff that belongs in the containment unit getting out, or stuff that belongs out of the containment unit getting in, was a common recurring theme. Usually its depicted as a void filled with floating platforms made of rock, or as a void filled with weird non euclidian techno buildings and machine tentacles.

    Yeah. It is like it is another dimension or something.

    Anzekay on
  • AlphagaiaAlphagaia Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Rewatched it today, I'm impressed with how bad the CGI is on the very few ghosts that appear outside of Gozer and co. The effects in the older films actually looked better, whether that is a byproduct of using physical items to make the effects or them being put against night settings I don't know, but Muncher and the eye ghost look terrible and completely divorced from the people in the scenes.

    On the repeat viewing, I still quite like how Gozer looks and the voice, still doesn't justify the dogs not doing anything to help her while she's busted, and I am surprised they didn't take the opportunity to remove the Starbucks line, which I'm not sure if that makes it a paid product placement or not. Not like they were shy about being shameless with that.

    It's flawed through and through but it's decent. I hope if there's another film they only bring back Phoebe though.

    The demon dogs are shown hurting when the streams hit Gozer, so that seems the explain that inconsistency.

    The Starbucks line is tougher, and I'd wish it wasn't in the movie, but I'd imagine if Winston bought back the Firehouse, Starbucks should make sure to remove anything that connects to it's brand and Winston wanted everything cleared out? I mean, the firehouse looks torn open, but s if it's never been cleaned for the last 20 years. Still doesn't explain why no one touched the Ecto containment Unit though.

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  • SatanIsMyMotorSatanIsMyMotor Fuck Warren Ellis Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    I did not ask that sir. You said the movie was about the scientific method trumping superstition and I pointed out that's a bit silly.

    Except you're not actually refuting the idea that the characters use scientific method, or that they're using it to trump superstition. You and others are simply basically that this can't be the intent because it's not what you would have done. i.e., "When I think of science, I don't think of plumbers, so therefore the idea that this movie is a metaphor for science is wrong."

    For instance, if I wanted to invent a story about xenophobia or adolescent puberty, it probably wouldn't look anything like "The X-Men." But that doesn't mean that the X-Men isn't a parable for xenophobia and puberty. The idea of being able to shoot beams of concussive force from your eyes is undeniably silly and has no basis in the real world, but it's supposed to be a metaphor for the fact that people go through changes they can't control, it's not supposed to be literal.

    If COVID-19 had happened 250 years ago, most people would have attributed to some sort of supernatural cause, and resorted to prayer and exorcism and other form of superstition. Plagues aren't supernatural, but they could certainly seem that way to people who don't know any better. Now we know better, and scientists were able to quickly study the virus and come up with a vaccine in record time. And that's effectively what the ghostbusters did in New York. They observed the ghosts as a scientific phenomena, rather than a religious phenomena, and dealt with it accordingly.

    Likewise, there's lots of fear around Satanism and the occult back in the 1980s. There were lots of people who legitimately believed that D&D was a gateway towards channeling the actual devil. Televangelism and Faith Healers were a much bigger deal. People were a lot more superstitious back then, and Ghostbusters symbolized the ability to overcome these superstitions with science. In the real world, this is figurative, using science to destroy the myths. In the movie, this is literal, because movies are meant to be metaphorical.

    People point out that Venkman isn't a real scientist in the movie. But even as a fake scientist, Venkman is there to demonstrate that ESP is bullshit, that there's a simpler explanation for the type psychic phenomenon people observe in the real world (Like the fact that the person holding the cards is simply lying). And Peter is fired from the university for bad science once they catch on. That's an example of how real world science can win over superstition in the real world.

    ESP and ghosts are both examples of supernatural phenomenon, they both have believers and skeptics. The difference in the movies is that one of those things has passed empirical observation and testing. Peter likely assumed that Egon/Ray were either frauds or delusional prior to the library incident.

    It's totally fine that your interpretation is that the movie is a treatise on science overcoming superstition. I'm saying I'm doubtful that was the intention of Aykroyd and Raimis in writing this film - especially considering that Aykroyd is a pants-on-head crazy superstitious/I've seen UFOs guy and has been for his entire life.

    Anzekay on
  • KrathoonKrathoon Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Aykroyd is always a hoot to listen to.

    Anzekay on
  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    edited April 12
    Thank you @Schrodinger for making the argument I wasn't equipped too.

    I'm actually stuck trying to think of many other film that takes Ghostbusters tack of 'fighting the supernatural with science'. Because every movie that involves the supernatural in a normally mundane world almost always goes with the idea that you need magic to fight magic and that science is useless against it. You always need to find the right book with the right spell or destroy a amulet or whatever that equates to only being able to deal with supernatural threats with supernatural means.

    Blade and John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness are the only other ones that come to mind.

    There are a number of low-budget horror movies I can think of but most of them are obviously riffing on the Ghostbusters so I'm not sure they count.
    Spectral, from 2016, is a pretty different take on the concept.

    Edit: I guess I'd also count most vampire movies? Vampires are supernatural. The methods of killing them are generally worked out by some combination of superstition and "scientific" trial. The Underworld movies with their light bullets and shit at least put a heavy shellac of science on it, anyway.

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  • KnightKnight Dead Dead Dead Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    took 102, but i got ch'alter.

    also snagged mizuki and a bunch of la plumas, so all in all i'm happy with how it went.

    Anzekay on
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  • LorekLorek Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Ugh, gross. I didn't have to go to pity but it was close; 200 pulls right on the money.
    Got a full potential La Pluma, an Exu potential, three Mizuki's ( :x ), and finally a Ch'alter.

    RIP EXP and LMD now.

    Anzekay on
  • shoeboxjeddyshoeboxjeddy Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Spent the lot of my saved resources, 1 Mizuki, full potential La Pluma, no Ch'ens. Thanks for the off banner Ceobe... There's still time with daily pulls and such, but this looks bad for now.

    Anzekay on
  • 38thDoe38thDoe lets never be stupid again wait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered User regular
    edited April 19
    Didn't they already release that? I feel like I've seen that before.

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  • EnlongEnlong Registered User regular
    edited April 19
    They did, yes. It's been a fair number of months.

    It is, very simply, a near 1:1 re-creation of Castlevania 1's map and enemies, with Bloodstaind Ritual of the Night assets. Instead of the cross, Miriam has the Ruinous Rood shard. Instead of Medusa, you fight a giant Dulahammer Head with a giant Dulahammer sitting in the background. Instead of Frankenstein's Monster, you fight an agressive Werewolf. And so on, until you face Gebel acting as the Dracula stand-in.

    And the map is very similar. If you know how Castlevania 1 plays, you will recognize it here, stage-for-stage.

    The main difference is that Miriam has Richter's moveset from Rondo of Blood. Specifically she's got his weirdass backflip jump, and the ability to slightly extend and empower the whip with a double-tap forward at the right point in the swing. Though, Classic Mode also offers a mode that removes those abilities, so that Miriam plays exactly like CV1 Simon.


    Personally, I think it's a neat addition, especially for free. But, I feel like Curse of the Moon and its sequel do a better job at really capturing the look and feel of those old-school Castlevanias, with some modern updates.

    Anzekay on
  • 38thDoe38thDoe lets never be stupid again wait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered User regular
    edited April 19
    Oh I just saw the date on the tweet and started wondering if I was having an elaborate hallucination or something.

    Anzekay on
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  • Warlock82Warlock82 Never pet a burning dog Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Soooooo.... I got Ch'en on my 1 free pull of the day. LOL. There goes my luck for the rest of the year. I pulled a little more and got the other two. No extra copies of Ch'en tho. Not sure how much more I'll dip to try for more or if I just call one copy good enough... (I did get a second copy of the other 6* guy who I don't care about that much, though his e2 art is sick)

    Also rip, I thought that "instant upgrade to e2" thing worked for everyone but it's ONLY for 5*s. Ugg. I was gonna use it for Ch'en :/ I ended up using it on La Pluma instead. I'm not sure I would have bought it if I knew it wasn't for 6*s but *shrug*

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