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I'll second the score complaint. For a movie they dumped millions into + the extra post time they had when they moved the release back, they should have a much better score.
Bottom line, though: It was fun, and I'll be seeing the next one.
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quote:I don't see what the big deal is with "investing" in a new timeline.
What other storylines have you enjoyed in your life? Which of those have been taken and completely rewritten? [/QB]
I don't really see what the big deal is either. I understand why they're taking the safe road and calling this an "alternate reality" rather than a full out reboot, but even if the powers that be wanted to steamroll continuity it's not like they can erase it from your mind, or your DVD collection, or bookshelf, etc.
After all, "all the stories are fiction. What matters is what fiction you believe." Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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That especially includes history; ie ya hafta be high to believe such obvious fiction thinly veiled by true names&dates&locations written by sycophants out to amuse their patrons.
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I don't mind rewrites, retreads, retcons, and bad adaptations for precisely that reason - it isn't like all the copies of the original material have been destroyed.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: I see your one of those people who handwaved Enterprise out of existence.
According to paramount anything on screen is canon no matter what we the fans think of the matter.
No, I'm one of those people who refuses to accept TAS being handwaved out of existence. And since Robert April as the first captain of the Enterprise appeared in The Animated Series, I'm afraid it's canon as well.
Enterprise was a poorly written historical novel authored by someone in the 25th century.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I won't go as far as Lisa with my indignation. There is definitely a fun element to the new movie that has been missing over the years from what I have read about and seen. However, as a Star Trek fan that goes back to the original and animated series (even if in syndication before ST:TNG), this "reboot" is very troublesome. Much of it for the same reason that Enterprise was hard to watch; unbelievable incongruities. As Lisa said, "I'm one of those people who refuses to accept TAS (and ST:TNG and ST:DS9 for that matter) being handwaved out of existence."
I can understand how people who are NOT "invested" in the Star Trek universe can ignore the gaping chasms of storytelling. A good story is just that. However, for those of us who have enjoyed the show for vast amounts of years to suddenly see it all ignored (a la Enterprise and this new Star Trek) is preposterous. It simply is NOT my Star Trek any more than a step mother is a biological relative after having grown up with the original. The biological mother isn't going to be easily forgotten just because someone took her place. You can have the new Star Trek and I won't have a problem with it; and I might even watch it for what is good. But, it will forever be a tainted product of lesser value.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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That's the point - I think the orginal Star Trek universe is done. There was the original series, the next generation, the outpost, the space station, the prequel...it's been sucked dry.
The original team had a fantastic dynamic, but that story is finished. It's all been told.
I have no problem with starting with something new, an alternate timeline. The choice isn't between an alternate timeline and more stories in the same timeline - the choice is between an alternate timeline and oblivion. The show is over completely.
All good things must end. The original Star Trek universe is over, and the original Kirk/Spock teams et. al. is DEFINITELY over. This is, in fact, something new, and that's fine. It's been two generations - it's time.
To continue Occ's distasteful analogy, the original didn't die in its prime, too soon - it creaked to death after a good, long life and after months on life support until it finally expired over the age of 100. In other word's, this isn't made for you, Occ. It's made for other people who don't want their dashing adventurers to be senior citizens with spoken word albums.
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"In other word's, this isn't made for you, Occ"
. . . As I have acknowledged. Just don't expect me to want to participate in the new world. If the old one is dead then I will live with its memories.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Two points about the general scientific constraints on time travel.
(1) There can be no "Grandfather Paradox," because that would, at some point, require future cause to produce effects in the past. i.e. the effects of killing your own grandfather would move forward in time to the point when you travelled back in time, but then the effects would have to follow you back through time. The flow of cause and effect can never be reversed like that. The crucial consideration here is that when you travel into the past, you first have to step outside of the timeline, and when you do that, you become cut off from the cause and effect of your previous timeline, and basically become independent; i.e., your own original cause.
(2) There can be no parallel or alternative universes, because too much energy would be required to create an entirely new universe. In fact, the mere fact that it requires INSTANTANEOUS CREATION of a whole new universe is prohibitive. Theoretical physicists will just have to come up with some other explanations for certain curious quantum effects.
This is all just my own opinion, of course. But I think it would be very hard for anyone to discount the reasonableness of these points.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Yeah, I have no problem seeing other people enjoy Star Trek. Go ahead and enjoy this new adventure. The action and special effects are good, the characters are great, the dialogue is witty. I hope the sequel is just as good for everyone.
But it's not my Star Trek. Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Blayne Bradley
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quote: Fans are clingy complaining ******** who will never ever be grateful for any concession you make. The moment you shut out their shrill, tremulous voices the happier you will be for it.
quote:This is all just my own opinion, of course. But I think it would be very hard for anyone to discount the reasonableness of these points.
I'll agree with you on Grandfather Paradoxes, but I don't see why the creation of a new universe necessarily requires the input of energy from this one.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: I see your one of those people who handwaved Enterprise out of existence.
According to paramount anything on screen is canon no matter what we the fans think of the matter.
No, I'm one of those people who refuses to accept TAS being handwaved out of existence. And since Robert April as the first captain of the Enterprise appeared in The Animated Series, I'm afraid it's canon as well.
Enterprise was a poorly written historical novel authored by someone in the 25th century.
Except of course your clearly wrong, Enterprise made perfect sense SOMETHING had to happen between 2060 and the events of TOS. They even made a stable time loop to explain the Borg incursion.
Never seen TAS and doesn't matter if Paramount says its canon then its canon if its not then no matter how much we want it to be canon it never will be the best you can get is maybe a Continuality Nod or a tie in if its good enough.
According to Paramount it seems Robert April IS considered canon as having served prior to Christopher Pike however that would only make him first captain of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 Archer is still the first official Captain of a Warp 5 or above Capable starship having served on the NX Class Enterprise.
Enterprise comes many years BEFORE the events of either TAS or TOS, I don't see the contradiction here.
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Blayne Bradley
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The easiest way to put this is that Star Trek is NOT Babylon 5.
What would've been nice is if a reference to Florida was mentioned, that way we could accomplish two goals 1) it could be argued that the events of the movie are a result from the Xindi attack and 2) fanboys would have be given a chance to put all of the blame onto Enterprise and leave the new franchise alone to those of us who don't feel like rewatching old shows.
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Canon schmanon. We're not dismissing Enterprise because it didn't adhere well to established canon. We're dismissing it because it was poorly-written shite.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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Having had the weekend to rethink it, I am still very satisfied. I like the alternate timeline explanation, since it allows for all the TNG/DS9/VOY eps to have an exisistence (still unsure about ENT. It had some great moments. But the continuity issues were just pure laziness. That being said, their Borg episode was quite good...)
Katharina put it best. The TOS-Paramount universe is done. Finished. There are no more stories to tell (or that will be allowed to be told) in a visual medium (TV and movies) in that universe. So this is the best way to move on. And it's not like the originals have been erased. I have them sitting on my shelf at home.
I guess had felt kind of nostalgic because, in a way, it appeared to be saying that those voyages never occurred, those struggles never happened, those people never lived. Yes, in reality, they're all fictional people and events from a non-existant future. But there is this place in my mind where the truest stories are all kept and their literal reality has no bearing on their power to move me. The more internally consistant and self-contained they are, the more 'real' and powerful those stories become. Conversely, the more contradiction and ridiculous elements in the stories are, the less power they have. For me, anyway.
quote:Originally posted by Tarrsk: Canon schmanon. We're not dismissing Enterprise because it didn't adhere well to established canon. We're dismissing it because it was poorly-written shite.
Really I would more charitably say that its more a matter of the franchise in general as having a crappy gimmicky formula that the writers of early Enterprise maintained wholsale for better or worse, stop me if any of this sounds familiar:
The Enterprise just having to be the closest ship to a nearby disaster.
The enemies always being the same 2 to 3 at times predictable races and motivations?
Always having to fight at some point a big space monster that the Enterprise just sorta stood there firing maybe 1 fish at a time at it.
Somehow through incomprehensible technobabble defeating it?
Then the story ending with some kind of Aesop that has been building up to a Checkov's Gun moment to somehow save the day or at least push someone else to save the day?
And all of this or a combination there of in every single episode interchangeably with no real over arching story or plot?
That is TOS and TNG in a nutshell for probably the majority of the serieses.
Oh and there's always a planet of hats.
Enterprise started very TNG like, the whole interchangeable episode by episode plot with maybe one or two casual mentions of the Temperol Cold war that the producers had no idea what to do with, then season 2 we finally have our season wide arc. Season 3 saw the end of it as poor ratings and a somewhat meh plot made it so it had to be killed and purged with fire and salt, hmm, an arch plot that only develops in tiny insignificant increments only to be solved in the end almost deus ex machina style sounds familiar yet? Practically all seasons of Voyager.
Season 4 was the best of the series as it had 2-4 episode story arcs, the characters actually accomplished stuff like the Enterprise should be and the characters weren't being guided by either God, an Alien that thinks its God (Q) or a Time Traveler.
Sure, Enterprise could have been better written but thats like asking Star Trek in GENERAL to be better written, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.
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Tom, you said: "I'll agree with you on Grandfather Paradoxes, but I don't see why the creation of a new universe necessarily requires the input of energy from this one."
I did not say the energy has to come from this universe to create another one. But if not, then you are left with a new universe being created ex nihilo--out of nothing. How difficult or easy does this sound? Especially to people who have so far been reluctant to concede that this universe was created ex nihilo.Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Ron, The idea that there are parallel timelines and Universes all of which arose from the big bang is perfectly consistent with the laws of physics as we know them. It does not violate the laws of conservation of matter and energy. I know its not intuitive, but nothing about quantum mechanics is intuitive.
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what did scotty release so they didn't get sucked into the black hole? rudy mcrude people behind me were talking and I didn't hear the explaination. thanks
Posts: 204 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by paigereader: what did scotty release so they didn't get sucked into the black hole? rudy mcrude people behind me were talking and I didn't hear the explaination. thanks
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Two points about the general scientific constraints on time travel.
(1) There can be no "Grandfather Paradox," because that would, at some point, require future cause to produce effects in the past. i.e. the effects of killing your own grandfather would move forward in time to the point when you travelled back in time, but then the effects would have to follow you back through time. The flow of cause and effect can never be reversed like that. The crucial consideration here is that when you travel into the past, you first have to step outside of the timeline, and when you do that, you become cut off from the cause and effect of your previous timeline, and basically become independent; i.e., your own original cause.
(2) There can be no parallel or alternative universes, because too much energy would be required to create an entirely new universe. In fact, the mere fact that it requires INSTANTANEOUS CREATION of a whole new universe is prohibitive. Theoretical physicists will just have to come up with some other explanations for certain curious quantum effects.
This is all just my own opinion, of course. But I think it would be very hard for anyone to discount the reasonableness of these points.
I think both of these points could be addressed by the idea that there are infinite parallel universes existing at every point in time, and traveling to another universe (which in this case was traveling "back" in time) allows you to change events such that they play out differently in that universe than they did in the one you came from. If that makes sense.
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Also, it's a Star Trek movie. Conservation of energy is the least of its problems, scientifically. Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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BryanP, if there are "infinite parallel universes existing at every point in time," as you suggest, then you are saying every finite point is infinite. Maybe it's only semantics, but that is too much of a contradiction to sound very likely to me.
You appear to be implying that the universe was created with infinite alternatives at the very beginning. Sort of a universe squared. If you wish to postulate that God can create this one universe out of nothing, then I suppose you can postulate that He did not stop there, but created a universe squared. But it sounds to much to me like postulating that God could not make up His mind. It would be more fun to allow there to be true freedom of choice.
Some people might wish to leave God out of the equation. But then we are left with this one universe just somehow creating itself out of nothing, which in turn implies that a universe squared just created itself out of nothing. How that could come about is another exercise in impossibility. You cannot appeal to the operation of random chance, because random chance cannot operate without time. You cannot say something might happen if you give to it ten billion years for it to happen--if there is no time at all. Those ten billion years do not pass by, so nothing can happen, ever.
My main objection to the multiple (and especially to the infinite) universe theory(ies), is that they do away with moral responsibility. There can be no right and wrong, good and evil, because every possible choice exists in some universe.
Rabbit, the fact that the multiple universe theory is not presently claimed to contradict known laws of physics, does nothing for it to prove the theory is correct. I am aware of the scientific experiments that have been claimed to suggest that multiple universes exist. But this is only a theoretical explanation. What I am saying is that some other explanation should be sought, because the multiple universe theory is so obnoxious.
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Blayne Bradley
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Dude wheres your degree, at some point your just gonna have to take someone word for it.
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quote:Originally posted by paigereader: what did scotty release so they didn't get sucked into the black hole? rudy mcrude people behind me were talking and I didn't hear the explaination. thanks
Standard Trek last Resort #97:
EJECT THE WARP CORE
I never go anywhere without a few extra warp cores, just in case I find myself getting trapped by a singularity or a tractor beam.
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Actually, Ron Lambert, QuantumMechanics demands that particles arise ex nihilo. And given enough time out of an infinite amount of time, enough virtual particles will separate by characteristics into aggregates that recognize each other over long distances, and thus over long periods of time. Hence the virtual will be(come) the real.* The real question is why there appears to be a 60 orders of magnitude shortage of mass/energy from what the Universe's vacuum state appears to require. Alternate universes could be at least part of the answer.
* At least that's how I interpret Narlikar and Hoyle imposed upon a reversed Hawking cosmology.
quote:Originally posted by paigereader: what did scotty release so they didn't get sucked into the black hole? rudy mcrude people behind me were talking and I didn't hear the explaination. thanks
Standard Trek last Resort #97:
EJECT THE WARP CORE
I never go anywhere without a few extra warp cores, just in case I find myself getting trapped by a singularity or a tractor beam.
I find it's easier just to pack a deflector dish. No matter what polarity it's currently set on, you can always reverse it.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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The whole time travel argument boils down to the fact that Star Trek has not been internally consistent in its use of time travel. Sometimes, time travel has been shown to create alternate timelines, with uncountable variations between universes (TOS: Mirror, Mirror; DS9: all dark universe episodes; TNG: that one episode with Worf married to Troi and crazy-Riker)
Other times, temporal phenomenon cause the timeline to be changed, resulting in a massive shift of which no one is aware (except Guinan, of course). This happened in TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise", for instance, but a similar phenomenon occurred with many other time-travel episodes.
This isn't like in OSC's "Pastwatch", where the characters unleash pages of exposition and debate over the nature of time travel and that the result of an intervention is the nullification of the timeline after the intervention. This is both a blessing and a curse.
The Original series was NEVER about being internally consistent with it's "science". TNG, DS9, etc. was almost obsessively so, but still managed to flub enough that books have been written on these issues (Nitpicker's Guide for ... Trekkers).
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quote:Originally posted by paigereader: what did scotty release so they didn't get sucked into the black hole? rudy mcrude people behind me were talking and I didn't hear the explaination. thanks
Standard Trek last Resort #97:
EJECT THE WARP CORE
But this almost never works. Typically, the same mechanism that caused the warp core to NEED ejection also causes the tube to be stuck inside the ship, which is Standard Star Trek Plot Device 98a.
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quote:I think both of these points could be addressed by the idea that there are infinite parallel universes existing at every point in time, and traveling to another universe (which in this case was traveling "back" in time) allows you to change events such that they play out differently in that universe than they did in the one you came from. If that makes sense.
That's really not necessary from a quantum mechanics perspective.
quote:Rabbit, the fact that the multiple universe theory is not presently claimed to contradict known laws of physics, does nothing for it to prove the theory is correct. I am aware of the scientific experiments that have been claimed to suggest that multiple universes exist. But this is only a theoretical explanation. What I am saying is that some other explanation should be sought, because the multiple universe theory is so obnoxious.
The multiple Universe theory is not simply something that isn't currently contradicted by the laws of physics. Its is a common way of interpreting the highly non-intuitive results of one of the laws of physics we have discovered, i.e. quantum mechanics. You aren't the first person to find quantum mechanics obnoxious but that does make it untrue. The concept isn't one of Universe squared, its a fundamentally different way of understanding the flow of time and matter.
Let me make a quantum mechanical analogy. Suppose you flip a coin and catch it on your arm covered by the opposite hand. What quantum mechanics would say is that until you lift your hand to observe whether it is heads or tails, the coin is neither. It's heads-or-tails-ness is a wave function representing the probability that it is in one of those two states. Once you lift your hand and look at the coin, the wave function collapses and becomes either heads or tails. The point is that it is not simply that you don't know whether or not its heads or tails until you lift your hand, it isn't either one until you look. This is very counterintuitive. One of the most rational ways to understand how this can possibly be is the parallel universe theory. Essentially it says that both heads and tails happen but in parallel universes. The time line in those Universes in which the coin comes up heads diverges from the time line in the Universes in which the coin comes up tails.
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The Parallel Universe idea has been part of the StarTrek canon since TOS. I think it found its way one way or another into all the shows. I particularly like the TNG show where Warf keeps jumping between different Universes.
All that considered, rebooting StarTrek in a parallel universe seems like a logical evolution of the ideas within the show. They've tried going both forward and backward in time from TOS, why not make a lateral pass?
I must say I'm not at all surprised that many Trekkies don't like it. I remember how TNG was received when it first came out and how most Trekkies were very slow to embrace it. But as the series got better and better (the first couple of seasons really were rather abysmal), even the hard core TOS Trekkies came around. If they are able to write and produce compelling stories in this new parallel Star Trek universe, die hard Trekkies won't stay away.
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Feel free to ignore me . If you really liked the film, don't read my review, because you will get mad . I just want to balance out the positive reviews.
Interestingly, most of what Chris Bridges liked about the film, I don't have that much of a quibble over. I thought McCoy was the best "newbie", for example. It's just the things that were bad far outweighed the things that were good for me.
quote:Originally posted by Tarrsk: Edit: One thing I forgot to mention - I hated the score. The main theme was insipid at best, which wouldn't have been such a big deal except that the composer apparently couldn't be bothered to write any other melodic ideas. He repeats that one crappy theme for every single moment in the movie. Action sequence? Brassy rendition of the theme. Sexy sequence? Slinky rendition of the theme. Sad sequence? Solemn, string-led version of the theme!
That's something you can get away with if your main theme is as good as the one in "The Dark Knight," but when it's a generic bit of "Adventure... in SPAAAAAACE!!!" fanfare, all you're doing is making my hackles rise during what should be emotional or exciting moments. Bad, Composer. Very bad!
Yes. This times a million. It was the very first thing I found jarringly wrong with the film.
The second? Hello, my name is Lens Flare, and I'll be taking over your movie.
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The music I didn't mind, and the lens flare I didn't either, the first time. The second time, it was all I could see.
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quote:Originally posted by Tarrsk: Edit: One thing I forgot to mention - I hated the score. The main theme was insipid at best, which wouldn't have been such a big deal except that the composer apparently couldn't be bothered to write any other melodic ideas. He repeats that one crappy theme for every single moment in the movie. Action sequence? Brassy rendition of the theme. Sexy sequence? Slinky rendition of the theme. Sad sequence? Solemn, string-led version of the theme!
That's something you can get away with if your main theme is as good as the one in "The Dark Knight," but when it's a generic bit of "Adventure... in SPAAAAAACE!!!" fanfare, all you're doing is making my hackles rise during what should be emotional or exciting moments. Bad, Composer. Very bad!
Yes. This times a million. It was the very first thing I found jarringly wrong with the film.
In retrospect, it really annoyed me how the underlying chord progression doesn't even change. I mean, how hard is it to switch from a major to a minor key underscore the difference between an exciting action sequence and a sad character beat?
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Tarrsk, good point.
BryanP, if there are "infinite parallel universes existing at every point in time," as you suggest, then you are saying every finite point is infinite. Maybe it's only semantics, but that is too much of a contradiction to sound very likely to me.
You appear to be implying that the universe was created with infinite alternatives at the very beginning. Sort of a universe squared. If you wish to postulate that God can create this one universe out of nothing, then I suppose you can postulate that He did not stop there, but created a universe squared. But it sounds to much to me like postulating that God could not make up His mind. It would be more fun to allow there to be true freedom of choice.
Some people might wish to leave God out of the equation. But then we are left with this one universe just somehow creating itself out of nothing, which in turn implies that a universe squared just created itself out of nothing. How that could come about is another exercise in impossibility. You cannot appeal to the operation of random chance, because random chance cannot operate without time. You cannot say something might happen if you give to it ten billion years for it to happen--if there is no time at all. Those ten billion years do not pass by, so nothing can happen, ever.
My main objection to the multiple (and especially to the infinite) universe theory(ies), is that they do away with moral responsibility. There can be no right and wrong, good and evil, because every possible choice exists in some universe.
Rabbit, the fact that the multiple universe theory is not presently claimed to contradict known laws of physics, does nothing for it to prove the theory is correct. I am aware of the scientific experiments that have been claimed to suggest that multiple universes exist. But this is only a theoretical explanation. What I am saying is that some other explanation should be sought, because the multiple universe theory is so obnoxious.
I don't know how "likely" it is for a multiverse or infinite universes to exist, but it sounds hardly more fantastic to me than the universe we already live in, so, like, whatever. From a philosophical/moral standpoint I don't see how it does away with free will or morality since each universe is, in a way, a different choice made by each possible chooser. Or something. But why that should do with away with right or wrong, good and evil I don't understand, maybe some universes are objectively more "good" than others.
Rabbit, I don't know exactly what you're referring to by saying "That's really not necessary from a quantum mechanics perspective." At any rate, I'm not trying to devise a solution that jives with quantum mechanics (which I understand not in the slightest), but something in which the time travel in the film makes some amount of sense. And since I like the idea of a multiverse, my theory sounds good to me Posts: 326 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Tarrsk: Edit: One thing I forgot to mention - I hated the score. The main theme was insipid at best, which wouldn't have been such a big deal except that the composer apparently couldn't be bothered to write any other melodic ideas. He repeats that one crappy theme for every single moment in the movie. Action sequence? Brassy rendition of the theme. Sexy sequence? Slinky rendition of the theme. Sad sequence? Solemn, string-led version of the theme!
That's something you can get away with if your main theme is as good as the one in "The Dark Knight," but when it's a generic bit of "Adventure... in SPAAAAAACE!!!" fanfare, all you're doing is making my hackles rise during what should be emotional or exciting moments. Bad, Composer. Very bad!
Yes. This times a million. It was the very first thing I found jarringly wrong with the film.
In retrospect, it really annoyed me how the underlying chord progression doesn't even change. I mean, how hard is it to switch from a major to a minor key underscore the difference between an exciting action sequence and a sad character beat?
Not very hard at all? Is that what you were going for?
When I listened to the music as the Title Screen appeared I immediately thought, "Sad, I won't be able to recall the theme at all after this point." Star Trek is usually so good about main themes.
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quote:Originally posted by Tarrsk: Edit: One thing I forgot to mention - I hated the score. The main theme was insipid at best, which wouldn't have been such a big deal except that the composer apparently couldn't be bothered to write any other melodic ideas. He repeats that one crappy theme for every single moment in the movie. Action sequence? Brassy rendition of the theme. Sexy sequence? Slinky rendition of the theme. Sad sequence? Solemn, string-led version of the theme!
That's something you can get away with if your main theme is as good as the one in "The Dark Knight," but when it's a generic bit of "Adventure... in SPAAAAAACE!!!" fanfare, all you're doing is making my hackles rise during what should be emotional or exciting moments. Bad, Composer. Very bad!
Yes. This times a million. It was the very first thing I found jarringly wrong with the film.
In retrospect, it really annoyed me how the underlying chord progression doesn't even change. I mean, how hard is it to switch from a major to a minor key underscore the difference between an exciting action sequence and a sad character beat?
Actually, I recall reading some research somewhere that indicates that one's perception of the mood of music is altered more by tempo (speed) than by mode (major/minor/other). On the other hand, discord definitely has a correlation with tension.
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quote:Originally posted by Tarrsk: Edit: One thing I forgot to mention - I hated the score. The main theme was insipid at best, which wouldn't have been such a big deal except that the composer apparently couldn't be bothered to write any other melodic ideas. He repeats that one crappy theme for every single moment in the movie. Action sequence? Brassy rendition of the theme. Sexy sequence? Slinky rendition of the theme. Sad sequence? Solemn, string-led version of the theme!
That's something you can get away with if your main theme is as good as the one in "The Dark Knight," but when it's a generic bit of "Adventure... in SPAAAAAACE!!!" fanfare, all you're doing is making my hackles rise during what should be emotional or exciting moments. Bad, Composer. Very bad!
Yes. This times a million. It was the very first thing I found jarringly wrong with the film.
In retrospect, it really annoyed me how the underlying chord progression doesn't even change. I mean, how hard is it to switch from a major to a minor key underscore the difference between an exciting action sequence and a sad character beat?
Actually, I recall reading some research somewhere that indicates that one's perception of the mood of music is altered more by tempo (speed) than by mode (major/minor/other). On the other hand, discord definitely has a correlation with tension.
Let me make a quantum mechanical analogy. Suppose you flip a coin and catch it on your arm covered by the opposite hand. What quantum mechanics would say is that until you lift your hand to observe whether it is heads or tails, the coin is neither. It's heads-or-tails-ness is a wave function representing the probability that it is in one of those two states. Once you lift your hand and look at the coin, the wave function collapses and becomes either heads or tails. The point is that it is not simply that you don't know whether or not its heads or tails until you lift your hand, it isn't either one until you look. This is very counterintuitive. One of the most rational ways to understand how this can possibly be is the parallel universe theory. Essentially it says that both heads and tails happen but in parallel universes.
But what if you can tell which way the coin is facing by touch? Posts: 382 | Registered: Jan 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Tarrsk: Edit: One thing I forgot to mention - I hated the score. The main theme was insipid at best, which wouldn't have been such a big deal except that the composer apparently couldn't be bothered to write any other melodic ideas. He repeats that one crappy theme for every single moment in the movie. Action sequence? Brassy rendition of the theme. Sexy sequence? Slinky rendition of the theme. Sad sequence? Solemn, string-led version of the theme!
That's something you can get away with if your main theme is as good as the one in "The Dark Knight," but when it's a generic bit of "Adventure... in SPAAAAAACE!!!" fanfare, all you're doing is making my hackles rise during what should be emotional or exciting moments. Bad, Composer. Very bad!
Yes. This times a million. It was the very first thing I found jarringly wrong with the film.
In retrospect, it really annoyed me how the underlying chord progression doesn't even change. I mean, how hard is it to switch from a major to a minor key underscore the difference between an exciting action sequence and a sad character beat?
Actually, I recall reading some research somewhere that indicates that one's perception of the mood of music is altered more by tempo (speed) than by mode (major/minor/other). On the other hand, discord definitely has a correlation with tension.
Oh, changing the tempo would've been excellent. Or using dissonance to ramp up the tension, as you suggest. Or using counterpoint to meld and contrast character motifs (oh wait, there weren't any). Really, anything other than endless repetition of the Bland Theme would've been lovely. Alas...
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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One thing I've never been clear on (I'm not sure if Rabbit is well versed enough in Quantum Mechanics to explain this to me) -
They often use the coin flip/schrodinger's cat example to explain how unintuitive quantum mechanics is, but I'm never been sure whether those specific examples are supposed to be literally true, or if they are simply a metaphor for how individual particles act at the subatomic level. The latter I have no problem with. The former... bothers me.
What exactly counts as "looking" (in either the quantum or coin level)? As Godric points out, you could theoretically tell by touch, or by sonic vibration, or whatever. So what actually needs to HAPPEN for the coinflip to resolve? Does it actually need to be observed as sensory data by a sentient creature, or does it just need to interact in some minute way with another particle?
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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A coin flip is not a good alternative to Schrödinger's cat, in my opinion. The latter hinged on whether a an atom decayed or not. It'd be a rare coin flip whose outcome was hinged on so subtle an event.
That being said, it's a thought experiment about "reality". In as much as the state of an object hasn't yet interfaced with your reality, that state might not be determined. In other words I think it's the interaction with the universe that collapses the wave function, and it definitely has nothing to do with sentient observation.
(I don't think Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment that can be translated to an actual experiment, because we cannot isolate the cat's box from interaction with the surrounding universe. Reality is more real.)
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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That's what I assumed, but I've never had the metaphor explained to me by an actual physics professor who knew what he/she was talking about. Frankly I think it's a really terribly way of explaining quantum mechanics, because the average person gets all hung up on the metaphor itself without understanding what it's actually trying to explain (and the average person who explains the metaphor often doesn't even bother to explain what is being metaphor-ed)
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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Schödinger's cat wasn't ever intended as a metaphor to explain how quantum mechanics works. It was intended to explain in relatively straight forward way the really profound implications of quantum mechanics on what we perceive as reality.
If a beam of electrons passes through a diffraction grating and then through a vacuum until it strikes a phosphorescent screen, you will see a diffraction pattern on the screen that is characteristic of the wave length of the electrons. Here is the interesting part, what happens when you shoot just one electron through the grating? Between the grating and the screen, the electron doesn't have any position or velocity. It exists solely as a wave or more precisely as a probability density function. It isn't simply that we don't know the position or velocity or the electron -- it doesn't have a position or velocity until some event occurs (generally interaction with matter or energy) which requires it to actually be somewhere). Since we are in a vacuum, that won't happen until the electron hits the phosphorescent screen at which point the wave function collapses and one atom located in a definite position on the screen will phosphoresce. If we shoot a billion electrons through the slit one at a time, each one will light up the screen in a single spot. If we record all those single spots, we get exactly the same diffraction pattern we get if we shot them all through at the same time. The diffraction pattern is not a result of interaction between the particles that cause them to move like a wave. Each individual electron can act as both a particle and a wave. That isn't just a thought experiment. You can actually go into a lab and do it.
But here is the rub, it isn't just electrons that have wave particle duality. All matter is both particle and wave. The uncertainty associated with the wave part of that is negligible for nearly all macroscopic events. So we can usually ignore it, but its still there. The implications of quantum mechanics apply to everything. I don't have an exact location, I have only a probability density function, until there is some event in the universe that depends on my location and then I instantly have a location. Its true for everything. The metaphysical implications are enormous and really mind boggling, most notably quantum mechanics eliminates the possibility of deterministic behavior which kind of screws up all sorts of things in physics. The parallel universe theory is one of the most common ways of trying to conceptualize the metaphysical implication of quantum mechanics. The idea is that when there is a quantum mechanical event with more than one possible outcome, all the outcomes occur but in parallel universes. So if you flip a coin and there is a 50/50 probability that it will come up heads and a 50/50 probability that it will come up tales, flipping the coin essentially generates two different universes a heads universe and a tails universe.
Not everyone agrees that it is a correct interpretation of quantum mechanics, but it is a common and widely accept interpretation which is consistent with the mathematics of the theory and the physical laws of the universe.
quote:Rabbit, I don't know exactly what you're referring to by saying "That's really not necessary from a quantum mechanics perspective."
Thinking that an infinite number of parallel universes were created by the big bang is a simple way to think about it but it isn't quite accurate (at least as I understand it). Just as the electron in the experiment I described above doesn't have a position until it strikes the screen, the other universes don't exist until some event occurs that causes them to be distinctly different from some other Universe.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Well that sounds simple enough! Why don't we just tell people that instead of nonsense about dead cats?
Seriously, I think if you're trying to explain quantum mechanics to someone who wouldn't understand the above explanation, you're better off just saying "trust me, the world is just freakishly weird" than giving them the cat example. Their understanding of reality is probably gonna be about the same, and they won't have misconceptions about actually seeing things.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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