TheCheshireCody

TheCheshireCody t1_je22lv9 wrote

Really depends on the show. Lost's finale was a little disappointing, but the journey overall was awesome so I'll still rewatch it.

Falling Skies, on the other hand, had such a prolonged descent - four seasons!!! - into an absolute utter shitshow of plot armor and every season throwing out the rules and continuity from the previous ones that it was just an absolute hate-watch to the finish line. Being part of /r/FallingSkies during that time was very interesting, because I'd never seen a fandom so unified in ripping apart a show they'd all previously loved.

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TheCheshireCody t1_jderi1p wrote

The first time I saw BR it was the theatrical cut and I hated it. Years later I watched the Final Cut on a much better TV with a better sound system and absolutely fell in love. A huge part of BR is its presentation, both audio and visual. It is cinema-as-art to a big degree - like a lot of Kubrick's work, so many scenes from it could be taken out of the film and hung on your wall as artwork. Watching it on a small TV, or a laptop/phone really saps that beauty.

Additionally, it is at its heart a Film Noir, and having an understanding/appreciation of that genre definitely helps here. FN is deeply invested in tone, developing the "feeling" of a scene through scenery and lighting, and making you feel the grittiness of its environments. Think of how visceral the streets of the city are, or J.F. Sebastian's loft. Feel how the constant rain would put a chill into your bones all the time. Contrast the way Deckard lives - cramped quarters, grubby conditions, poor lighting - with Tyrell's giant windows, high ceilings, and big dramatic lights. The pacing of BR is also classic Film Noir - slow rollout heavy on worldbuilding, the protagonist/hero getting his call to action, the Femme Fatale who complicates not only his mission but his life, and (sometimes, definitely here) the revelation that makes him question everything he thought he knew either about the situation or even his whole life.

I also recommend checking out this quick essay speculating on certain elements of Blade Runner, which may change the way you view what you saw, but at least should give you a glimpse at the deeper themes that can be explored.

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TheCheshireCody t1_j8nwxle wrote

The two can be used interchangeably to a degree, but an em-dash more effectively serves as an interjection into a sentence. Usually that interjection is sandwiched between two parts of the sentence, but it doesn't have to be.

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TheCheshireCody t1_j2a199z wrote

More mass means higher gravity. Higher gravity requires more speed required to escape the atmosphere. More speed requires more fuel, or more fuel efficiency, or a lighter rocket. We can't reduce the weight of the rocket itself too much because of the materials we're working with. We can't make the fuels we're using much more efficient because that's just the way chemical combustion is. So the only way to get more power is more fuel, which means more weight.

We can currently juuuuust balance the amount of fuel (and how much force that fuel can generate) against the weight required to lift that fuel and the rocket and a payload. The Saturn V was the biggest rocket we could make at the time of the Apollo launches, and we needed every bit of it to get to the Moon. In sixty years we've not been able to make massive advances in rocket tech, so the SLS is very close to the Saturn V in overall specs, relatively speaking. If we're just ahead of breaking even on that now, you can see how an increase in the requirements would put us behind the curve.

That doesn't mean a 50% larger Earth would result in us never leaving it, though. What it would mean is we'd need to come up with better solutions to one of the above variables - better materials that weigh less, more-efficient fuels, or a better design than igniting a ton of fuel and pointing the exhaust at the ground.

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TheCheshireCody t1_iuiuvr8 wrote

"Spielberg just makes high-budget B-Movies"

You come off as just someone reaching to be edgy. Like, reaching so hard it's as if you think you'll get a prize. Close Encounters and E.T. aren't movies about aliens. Jurassic Park isn't about dinosaurs. Jaws isn't about a shark. All of these, and his other films, are about human reactions to various circumstances. Spielberg's biggest hits tend to be Sci-Fi oriented or have trappings of Sci-Fi, but that's just the frame on which he hangs his stories because it's something he enjoys.

Re: Fight Club: just because you completely missed what are staggeringly obvious themes in the movie doesn't mean it lost its power as a film. And when I say "staggeringly obvious" I mean my eleven-year-old son got them on his first watch. You just thought you were getting something out of it that wasn't there because you were looking for something that wasn't there and blind to what the movie was really saying. You were a Space Monkey. Also, satire =/= comedy and if you think FC is a comedy then holy shit you're still missing the point.

The rest of it I'm just gonna shake my head at and walk away.

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