Archive for the ‘Critique’ Category

Review: Caprica

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
review-caprica

*Sigh*

I heard bad things in the reviews, so I avoided it, but a friend recommend I watch it anyway.  Mistake.

As you probably know if you are reading this, I HATE (HATE HATE HATE) the movie Transformers on several levels.  This is on the same list.

I’ll break it down fact by fact:

According to the show, for five years teenagers have been using an unregulated holographic simulator to simulate sacrifice, orgies, and other amoral acts and parents let their kids use them: she had to be “grounded” from it, implying she is allowed to the rest of the time.

Not only can they log into this system, they apparently have administrative rights to create a highly sophisticated AI with in it.

This AI is programmed by a monotheistic (which would be considered occult in this setting) teenage girl, whose very principals are in direct conflict with the creation of artificial life, as it would be “playing God.”  Her entire character is a contradiction of itself.

Her equally teenage boyfriend somehow has access to military grade G-4 (remember it’s called that in Galactica) plastic explosives and detenation equipment.

Entire planets are apparently stereotyped to a few functions: Tauron is apparently the farming/mafia planet.  Gemenon is apparently the religious one (again, Galactica supports this with the “Gemenese” who are portrayed as real world Christian Scientists-rejection of medical treatment).  I wonder if Cancer is the Bank planet and Leo is the Amusement planet?  It would have taken real writers to have all the planets be as diverse as Earth I guess.

I sat and watched Graystone and Adama not talk about anything in the street and at the coffee shop.  Complete waste of time.  Throughout the movie, they mostly just starred at each other.

The school headmaster knew Zoey was a monotheist, but despite meeting in private with her friend that wussed out getting onto the train, she didn’t tell her until later that she was also a monotheist.  Instead she actually preaches Athena to her.  This is just contrary and does nothing for the story.

Adama is apparently too stupid to realize that because he doesn’t have a copy of his daughter in the computer she is only parts and pieces so she would of course not be functioning as well as Graystones daughter who was uploaded right before she died.

A Cylon prototype tried to shoot at a clearly superiorly designed robot with advanced 360 maneuverability and much higher speed than any of the Cylons found later in the series.  If you mount a gun on one of those domed robots it would be 1000x more effective in combat.  Basically: they already have a good/better fighting robot.  There AI was also quite advanced, as the show proved with the Graystone butler robot.  Cylons are inferior in design, even in Galactica to those robots.

Computerized Paper = More advanced technology than anything anyone possessed in Galactica.

“The human brain contains roughly 300 Megabytes of Information.”   HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!   BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  This is the stupidest line ever spoken in science fiction.  Ever.  EVER!

If you steal a proprietery microprocessor from another company, you can just slide it into your robot and it will work.  Dumb dumb dumb…

There are no legal ramifications to stealing the microprocessor (they LAUGH at the accusation near the end) and mass producing it yourself will also not be an issue despite not having the same equipment or science team to create it in your own company.

When you upload your daughter’s consciencousness into another place, you “move” it, not “copy” it.  Ya’ know, because if something goes wrong you don’t need a backup.  DUMB DUMB DUMB…

Apparently Zoey Graystone has combat training, as after being uploaded into the Cylon body, she is flawlessly accurate with a machine gun in a new body.  (His own programming was already proven to not be good enough to do the same, so no, he did not just ADD it himself…)

When you leave a highly complex AI in a room by itself, be sure to give it a cellphone so it can call their teenage friends…

Okay, I’ll stop.

This movie was awful.  Possibly one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.  I’m sorry, and I really wish I could get my $14 back from iTunes.  I will not be watching the series.

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Okay Okay! What I thought about Battlestar Galactica…

Monday, March 23rd, 2009
okay-okay-what-i-thought-about-battlestar-galactica

***Extreme SPOILER Alert***

I’ve been asked by damn near everyone what I think, and I’ve been giving neutral answers, which I think is actually pissing everyone off, so I decided to make a post giving my breakdown of how things ended.

The Good

The Rescue Operation – I didn’t think they could make a cooler action sequence than the rescue on New Caprica.  The Galactica dropping down toward the surface and launching Vipers while burning in the atmosphere.  It was awesome.  They managed to find a way to impress me by having the Galactica execute a really cool plan, using Cylon technology against them and then just ram the frakking thing to get troops inside.  The action was great.

Roslin and Adama – Their story ended perfectly.  She didn’t miraculously get cured, he didn’t give up, he got to say goodbye to his ship (which I was also very glad never got destroyed in battle), and their story was actually touching and did it without all the religious undertones the rest of the characters in the show did.

Romo Lampkin – Including him in the end was a great service to the fans.  I don’t think anyone that has seen the show didn’t think his character was awesome.  The fact that he was President of the Colonies for about 12 hours was a nice touch too.

Anders – No miraculous recovery for him either, he got what he wanted and we got what we wanted out of him.

Dr. Cottle – Great character to the end.  The President’s final line to him about “just grumble something and go smoke” was priceless.

The Bad

All the Final Five except for Anders – Okay, so they stick there hands in this goo and get all their memories and connect with each other and learn all the truths.  Hm, wait a minute: Didn’t Tyrol help get Hera kidnapped in the first place?  How about the eleventy-billion sexual encounters Ellen Tigh had behind Col. Tigh’s back?  How about her essentially killing his baby by confronting Caprica Six alone?  Why the frak is the only person upset Tyrol with Tory since she killed Callie (who he didn’t actually love) and save the baby (which wasn’t actually his)?  Tyrol should have been strung up for getting Hera kidnapped (basically getting them into the mess they are in) and Ellen was evil, even when she got her memory back.  She killed Col. Tigh’s baby!  Tigh and Anders were the only ones of the final five that deserved to live.  Col. Tigh and Adama needed a scene for closure between the two of them.

Gauis Baltar – Gauis is a terrible person, who plays a big part in the annihilation of the humanity, and despite every thing that even begins to look like redemption, he never, even to the end, ends up doing anything that deserves forgiveness.  He was evil for the whole show.  The last speech could have been said by any of the characters in that room.  He should have received justice.  He wasn’t a hero in any capacity.

The Head Baltar/Six – WTF?  They are angels?  Seriously that means that an angel encouraged Gauis Baltar to give a nuclear weapon and kill a huge chunk of the existing population of humans, and several other acts that basically hurt humanity.  Those are some frakked up angels.  Oh well, no wonder, look who the next angel turns out to be:

Kara Thrace – There was a really good SciFi way to go about doing this, and they took the spiritual route instead, which is what I expected from these writers and directors.  But dammit, a blackhole, time/space properties, there are several ways to explain why there is a body of hers on the planet yet she flew back out of the black hole safely.  The angel thing was pretty much just a lame cop-out.  So was she the “harbinger of death” for the Cylons only basically?  By the way, that angel is a dis-respective slut.

Apollo – Meh.  He should have ended up with Starbuck, but they made her a slutty angel instead.  Without other characters to interact with (i.e. Starbuck, his father, the president, Romo, Dualla, etc.), his character isn’t interesting.  I honestly found myself not caring what he did afterward.

Athena shoots Boomer in cold blood in front of her child.  You remember that episode about two weeks ago where Hera was begging for Boomer to come back since they were connecting emotionally.  Yeah.  This whole scene was frakked up.

Helo, Athena, and Hera – So, Athena left Helo for dead (but he didn’t die, no explanation), they rescue Hera who serves…what purpose now?  They risked everything for this girl and got nothing for it.  Hera represents absolutely no solution to anything.  The new earth had a population that was already compatible with both species.  Hera’s significance was absolutely lost in the very episode that it should have been pivotal.

The Opera House – Weak.  Galactica being the Opera House is weak.  The only cool thing was Gauis looking up at the Final Five in formation.  The Opera House sequence was a huge buildup for seasons of the show and it was just so weak when it was finally happening.  The significance of that event were minimal at best.

A couple more WTF’s

Seelix?

Daniel?

I seem to recall Gauis Baltar running a “Cylon Test” on Ellen Tigh.  In fact, the episode ended with him smirking and saying he would “never tell” whether or not she was a Cylon.  He knew she was the fifth of the Final Five since season one.  I’m serious.  What the frak?

Overall - I give it a 6/10.  They did what I expected, they did some really cool things and at least tried to touch on every character that was left.  It just got a little too spirity.

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