Movie Madness

Sorry for the absence, but I've been on vacation.  I'm trying to put out a new article once a week, so hopefully I can keep it up with all the writing I have to do.

I love movies.  It’s nice to sit back and relax in the fantasy of a good story.  Problem is: I have all these silly facts floating in my head from lots of education, and they tend to detract from the experience. UGH!

Let’s start with one of my biggest pet peeves: timelines, that annoying nonsense that gets in the way of a Hollywood story.  Take the Lone Ranger from Disney.  The premise of the whole film was the personal feud between two pair of brothers, one nefarious (Cavendish) and the other lawmen (Reid) surrounding the events of the Transcontenental Railroad (May 10, 1869).  Let’s start with a few minor issues.

1. Bass Reeves (Texas Ranger who is thought to have inspired the Lone Ranger stories) wasn’t a Ranger until 1875.

2. A corrupt US Army officer, Jay Fuller, massacres a village.  The only one I can find that remotely happened around that time, occurred around Christmas of 1868 (6 months before, not days), and in Oklahoma NOT Texas.

3. Tonto was supposed to be the only survivor of his village after the Cavendish brothers massacred the village 27 years earlier. No record of such a mass killing exists.

4. Tonto was given a cheap pocket watch from Sears, Roebuck & Co. in 1842 in exchange for information on a silver deposit.  Sears, Roebuck wasn’t founded until 1893.

This leads us to the next bone of contention: Location continuity.  As much as I like to see Utah’s film industry get a nod, it’s a little disconcerting to see Utah become Texas in every way possible.

1. The Golden Spike (last spike) was driven in Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869. Promontory, UT is almost 800 miles (as the crow flies) from the area in Texas that this was depicted in maps in the movie.

2. The Texas does not have Delicate Arch, or Monument Valley.  It doesn’t have anything close to that.  No matter what a certain Texas themed steakhouse chain wants you to believe.

3. Comanche territory in Texas was nowhere near the size that the maps in the movie portray (taking up most of the area of Texas to North Dakota).

Then my last beef: Bad science.  Some of the science in movies is just plain awful, and downright dangerous.

1. No helper engines.  Trains are heavy, and require at least one helper engine to make it up steep inclines.  This is especially true for steam locomotives in the 19th century.

2. Handling nitroglycerin like any other liquid.  Let’s be honest here.  Nitroglycerin is a HIGHLY volatile chemical.  Manufacturing was so hazardous that its inventor, Alfred Nobel, insisted on having NO machinery or anything to cause vibration in his factory, and even lost an assistant when an explosion blew it up.  The point being that you would NEVER put it near the railroad, let alone on it.  That’s why Nobel invented Dynamite.  It was nitroglycerin in a stable form for easy transport. 

3. Guns + dynamite = huge explosion.  Unless you’re using it against said liquid nitroglycerin, you would need Tannerite (yeah, not around then).

4. Silver makes a terrible ballistic material.  It’s terribly expensive, valuable, and less than half the weight and density of Lead.

When movies do get things right I have to cheer.  Star Trek: Into Darkness did a lot of things right, but even then I was a little disappointed.

1. Kirk and gang never experience ANY time dilation when going warp speed = Bad.

2. When at warp the light is red shifted, so you see microwaves and radio waves as white light = Good.

3. Space ship damage leaves debris field = Good.

4. Enterprise enters earth’s atmosphere shortly after engaging in battle near the moon = BAD! (3 day trip for Apollo mission).

5. Transporting people from Earth to Kronos = BAD!  Doesn’t that make the whole starship thing moot?

6. Bat’leth vs phazer = don’t think Klingons are stupid enough to take a knife to a gunfight.

7. Kirk getting in trouble for violating The Prime Directive = Good, but wouldn’t a court-martial be held.

8. Seatbelts! = Good.  Finally, someone got the hint to install seatbelts on a moving vessel.

9. Handling a radiation victim without a suit = BAD!  One of the first victims from a core meltdown was so radioactive they had to bury him in the ambulance he died in.  It was only for the homage to Wrath of Khan, and a set up for a cheesy KHAAAANNN!!!

10. Flying in arcs = Good.  When Kirk and Khan are launched out of the garbage chute, they travel on a curved arc instead of a straight line.

I’m sure there’s more I could nitpick, but I think you get the idea.  I guess there must have been more to enjoy with Star Trek than Lone Ranger, because I’ve seen Cris Pine kick holy behind 4 times in the theater, and I’m never going to sit through Lone Ranger again.  It wasn’t the actor’s faults.  Both had decent talent that acted well, but Trek did more things believable and right than Lone Ranger.  Despite the fact that not all the Enterprise crew rate seatbelts.