The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King- Fly Like An Eagle

Normally, No Spoiler Tags finds tiny flaws in otherwise solid movies and harps on them relentlessly until the whole film falls apart. But, today we flip the script and defend The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King for a perceived logical flaw that isn't a flaw at all.

Talk to someone who hasn't read the books about The Lord of the Rings and they will inevitably ask you this question, "Hey, you remember those eagles that picked up Sam and Frodo at the end of Return of the King? Why did I have to sit through fourteen hours of hobbits walking when they could have just flown in and wrapped things up in ten minutes?" The short answer: This...

That is called a Fell-Beast and to a Fell-Beast giant eagle tastes a lot like chicken. (A giant chicken, I tell you!) Had they tried to fly into Mordor, they would have had Nazgul all over them before they crossed the Black Gate. Tolkien was explicit about this in the books while Peter Jackson never chose to broach the subject probably because he felt it was mind-numbingly obvious.  After all, it was pretty clear that the hobbits only made it to Mount Doom because they were able to travel inconspicuously. But one should never underestimate the stupidity of the movie-going populous, how else can you explain the fact that they are making a Transformers 4 (or the fact that I will probably go see it). So, the eagle question persists.

Let me put this in terms of Where's Waldo, as that is likely the reading level of the people who cleverly think they found a huge flaw in this movie. Trying to find two four foot tall hobbits walking through Mordor while wearing Invisibility Cloaks is like trying to find Waldo in this picture.

Whereas, flying elephant sized eagles through the skies of Mordor is like finding Waldo in this picture.

If you are thinking, maybe they could have gotten in anyway may I remind you of the humongous, orange glowing eyeball constantly searching Middle-Earth for the One Ring. The Eye of Sauron is not going to miss it if the One Ring buzzes the Tower of Barad-dur on a symbol of Mexico larger than Rhode Island. (It was also explicitly noted in the novels that nothing, but the Fell-Beasts fly in Mordor, so the eagles would stand out even more.)

Well, time is slipping, slipping, slipping into the future, so take us out Steve Miller.

Update: I have gotten into several conversations lately with people who had trouble getting into these films/novels because they found the Ring of Power underwhelming as a MacGuffin. What's a MacGuffin? I'm glad you asked, guy I made up as a literary device. Here is a couple lines from the MacGuffin Wikipedia page explaining what it is and the views of two influential directors: In TV interviews, Hitchcock defined a MacGuffin as the object around which the plot revolves, but as to what that object specifically is, he declared, "The audience don't care". In contrast, Lucas believes that the MacGuffin should be powerful and that "the audience should care about it almost as much as the dueling heroes and villains on screen". I have to agree with Lucas on this one. If the audience doesn't care about the MacGuffin, it means they aren't invested in the story. I also agree with the people who found the Ring of Power unimpressive, but only because the novels did a poor job explaining the true power of the One Ring (and the movies did it even worse). So here is the clear cut explanation Tolkien and Jackson didn't give you: The primary power of the One Ring is not invisibility, it is an amplifier of magical/spiritual powers. In the movies/books, we only ever see the ring used by hobbits so it's essentially just multiplying by zero, but if the ring was on the finger of someone with real power like Sauron or Saruman, it would become a powerful weapon. So that's why it was worth the fourteen hour walk.

Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home- It's Just A Jump To The Left And Then A Step To The Right

Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home begins rather unsurprisingly with a voyage home. Upon reaching Earth, they find an alien probe destroying the planet because of the lack of extremely large krill eating aquatic mammals. Let's just pretend that makes sense and move on. (The film did.) So to solve the problem, Kirk does the Time Warp again. (They did it in the series.)

It's just a flight to the sun.
And then a spin right.
With your ship in warp.
You can change the night.
But it's the calculus.
That really comes from Spock's brain.
They did the Time Warp again.
They did the Time Warp again.

The problem of course is that it's a way too easy time travel devise, just like the Time Turner. I will now make a brief list of when the ability to travel through time would have come in handy: every movie and every episode of every series. But this flaw goes much deeper than the Time Turner flaw in the Harry Potter series, because while the Time Turner was clearly a rare, if not one-of-a-kind devise,  warp capable starships, which are all that's needed to activate Time Warp, are extremely common in the Star Trek universe. They are used by the Federation, Klingons, Borg, Romulans, Ferengi, Dominion, Cardassians, Xindi, and pretty much everybody else. The series Enterprise occasionally had episodes dealing with something called the Temporal Cold War, but logically if time travel was so simple in the Star Trek universe, the Temporal Cold War would have permeated every bit of the franchise.

It should be noted at this point that according to the Theory of Relativity, any wessel capable of traveling faster than the speed of light is also capable of traveling through time. However, it is at least implicitly clear that the warp engine operates in such a way that it ignores relativistic effects and is not capable of time travel unless it's in the plot.

Now, let's discuss the serious flaw in their plan. They needed a humpback whale to save the planet and could have gone to any time to get one. Humpbacks have been around for a long time, possibly as long as 10 million years ago; however, Spock sets course for 1986 when the human population of the world was 5 billion, they were capable of detecting their spaceship, and the whales they were hunting were facing extinction. He could have just as easily gone back before the invention of radar during World War II and eliminated their chance of electronic detection and with 4 to 6 billion less eyes on the planet the odds of being sighted would also be significantly reduced. Even better, they could have gone back to before the onset of large scale commercial whaling in the 1600s to make it easier to find a whale. Better still, had they chosen a date before Columbus set off the Age of Exploration, the chance of setting off any temporal paradoxes by being sighted while flying over the Pacific drops to almost zero.

Now, you might be thinking that if they had gone back much earlier than 1986 they couldn't have gotten the materials for the whale tank and that's true, but the tank wasn't really necessary. After all, beached whales can survive for several days and when they eventually die, it is from a combination of dehydration, starvation, and sun exposure none of which should be a significant problem in the cargo hold of a Klingon Bird of Prey in the hour or two it would take to fly to the sun and back.

As it turns out, their poor planing works in their favor as they need to find a nuclear wessel to get back to the future. (Doc Brown's Pro Tips: Always keep your plutonium in your time machine and watch out for Libyans.) They are able to find a nuclear wessel and everything else they need through the magic of product placement with the Yellow Book ad being both a solid comic moment and a great example how avoiding a generic non-realism through product placement can make a movie better.

Chekov is captured and injured during his hunt for a nuclear wessel. And thus, Chekov's stupidity leading to his capture, questioning, and near death becomes both alpha and omega to the Genesis plotline. Six, Chekov, all you had to do was count to six.

Tag Key

An explanation of the tags used on this site:

3D- Discusses the 3D trend.
A long time ago in a movie far away...- Star Wars posts.
A Wrinkle in Time- Problematic cinematic time travel.
Accidental horror- Scary implications of something which wasn't supposed to by horrifying
Accidentally profound- The film makes an interesting philosophical point which is usually exactly opposite of the one it tried to make.
Adaptation comparison- What it sounds like.
Bait-and-switch marketing- A movie that was very different from what was I expected in a negative way.
Boldly going to the cinema- Star Trek posts.
Disney- About a certain movie studio.
Favorites- I loved writing these posts and I think you'll enjoy reading them.
Films- This motion picture is a film as defined in the welcome post.
First viewing log- A list of every movie I've seen for the first time since late September 2011.
Generic non-realisms- Use of a generic term that breaks the suspension of disbelief. Complete definition in the Tron post.
Glaring logic errors- Something that doesn't make sense in the reality of the movie.
Good concept/Poor execution- It was a good idea, they just didn't pull it off that well.
Good Movie/Bad Ending- A good movie ruined by a terrible ending.
Harry Potter and the Adaptation of Rowling- Harry Potter posts.
Movie rules- How I, someone with no film making experience who is not a professional critic and has never even taken a film course, think movies should be made or watched because I totally know better because I have a blog.
Movie-bending- My film adaptation outline of the TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Movies- This motion picture is a movie as defined in the welcome post.
MPAA sucks- Comments about the actions of the Motion Picture Association of America
No Complaints- A good movie which isn't hurt by whatever the post is about.
Pixar- Glowing praise for a studio which has done no wrong. (Statement valid until Planes comes out in 2013. [Update: So it looks like Pixar is going to let Disney take the blame for what is sure to be a terrible mess.])
Planning Paradox- A plot too detailed to plan, but too detailed to work without planning. Skyfall is a good example.
Politics- Warning: Exposure to political content can be hazardous to your soul.
Read This First- The welcome post which you probably should have read before I ruined that movie for you.
Reality fact-check- Something doesn't make sense in the reality of reality not explained away by the reality of the movie.
Recursive commentary- Commentary about commentary.
Scott's Razor- Unnecessarily elaborate murder plots. Defined in Skyfall. Perfected by Goldfinger.
Self-help section- Actual advice that can be actually used in actuality.
Stupidity Awareness Moments- Moments of utter inanity which cause you to become hyper-aware of any other flaws in the film. Definition in The Hunger Games post.
Sudden endings-.
Tag Key- Click this link and you will divide by zero and destroy the universe.
The Bond Villain Guidebook- Every villain in Bond history (and many non-Bond characters) have violated at least two rules listed in the Skyfall post. Make sure your evil plots are compliant with these rules.
The Forky Problem- A continuation which has no storytelling reason to exist. Defined in The Offical Pixar Rankings.
Traditional animation rules- About the innate superiority of hand-drawn animation over the computer generated stuff.
Warning: Science content- Discussions about science which may or may not be humorous.
Weird omissions- Something missing from the film that really should have been there.

Chronicle- Of A Death Foretold

Chronicle hit the theaters without much fanfare or promotion. I went in not expecting much and what I got was one of the best superhero origin stories I've ever seen. It was far from perfect. The acting simply wasn't very good and the found footage style sometimes got in the way (although it was the best part of the film when it worked). The movie was very predictable, but in a good way. There are too many movies that let unnecessary plot twists get in the way of telling a good story.  (Head over to the Cypher post for one example.) Chronicle gives you exactly what the trailer advertised: a found footage film of some kids given psychic powers starting with a series of pranks while one of the kids slowly becomes Carie.

Since I first saw American Beauty, I have thought it might be interesting to try constantly filming my life. The opening of Chronicle explains why I never followed through with the plan as Andrew is accused of being a creep, beaten up and generally harassed multiple times in his first day with the camera. (I also thought that I would find that my life is truly boring on film.) It's through this opening and Andrew's later confession that he wanted to be a barrier between himself and the world that the found footage style becomes less of a gimmick and actually integral to the story.

I've seen The Specials, but you know what? I do want to hear your origin story. The fact watching how someone got super powers, learned to control them, made a choice of how to use them, and then taking on the fight against evil is intrinsically more interesting than watching one super being representing good fighting another super being representing evil. But the only thing resembling a twist in Chronicle is that it's not really a superhero origin story, it's a super-villain origin story. Andrew is the most complete, realistic and empathetic character in the film. (His character feels especially resonant as I am writing this from the Columbine Valley, home of the most infamous high school in the world.) It's not until very late in the movie, after Steve dies (Yep, the black guy dies first. I told you this movie was predictable.) that the focus starts to shift to Matt who is presented as the heroic character.

Early on, Matt is obsessed with with philosophy. In the first 15 minutes, he references Schopenhauer, Jung and Plato, but after they are granted their powers he goes oddly silent on the subject. This is very weird given that they have become Nietzsche's Superman. In fact, Chronicle could be considered a sci-fi adaptation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (A man granted extraordinary abilities begins to view the rest of humanity as a lessor species deserving of contempt.) in the same way that The Matrix is a sci-fi adaptation of The Allegory of the Cave. Andrew's new found powers amplify his innate hatred and contempt for the rest of humanity until he loses total control, while Matt and Steve who are capable of maintaining healthy relationships before their super powers are able to stay grounded and rational.

Chronicle was very realistic in how the kids would behave if granted super powers. Think about it. If you got super powers would you go out and fight crime right away. You might say so, but what you'd really do is what the Chronicle boys did. You'd start by testing out your abilities in increasingly elaborate ways probably pulling a few pranks along the way. (These pranks were delightfully hilarious and nicely balanced what could have been a very dark film.) Then, you'd use them for greedy purposes represented by Steve and Andrew's sexcapades (Steve was reportedly very successful off-screen. Andrew's results were not as good.) and Andrew's eventual turn to crime. Finally, Andrew's freak out forces Matt to take action to defend the innocent.

One parting question of complaint: why didn't the cops shoot Andrew? During his rampage, Andrew probably kills dozens of people (no clear on-screen deaths, but his intent was murderous and it is improbable that no one died) and does millions of dollars in damages. The cops had clean shots on multiple occasions, but they never fire a shot. Maybe bullets wouldn't have hurt Andrew, but it couldn't hurt to try. (Except for Andrew, it might have hurt Andrew to try.) The cops are also surprisingly aware that the other guy flying around wreaking the city is on their side.

(Parenthetical Statements: I used way to many of these in this post. (This is getting meta. (I'm going to stop. (Eventually. (Maybe. (It seems to me that maybe pretty much always means no. (So don't tell me I might just let it go. (I'm done.))))))))

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan- And The Number of The Counting Shall Be Six

Before we jump into Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, a few words about the original TV series. It was for a large part responsible for creating modern-day sci-fi and every space tale since its premier owes a debt of gratitude to Gene Roddenberry. There was simply nothing like it on TV before it came out, but what is truly remarkable about the series is this...

Today, multiracial casts are commonplace. In fact, a show which doesn't include minorities is bound to be called out for it. But, Star Trek hit the air in 1966. The Civil Rights Act wasn't even signed until 1964. And, four key cast members are members of a repressed group. When Sulu, the Japanese man, first took the helm, it was 21 years after World War II. Uhura is both black and a woman. During the third season, Kirk kisses her for the first televised interracial kiss. Spock is mixed race when many states ban interracial marriage. And, the world is terrified of the nuclear threat from the USSR, when Chekov, the Russian, joins the cast for the second season. This inspired casting was what the series was all about.

Unfortunately, Chekov was a moron and he really proves it in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. When the story begins, Chekov is serving as the first officer on the Reliant looking for a lifeless planet to test the Genesis device and they think Ceti Alpha Six is a good candidate. During the series, Kirk dropped Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan off on Ceti Alpha Five. Chekov was on the Enterprise at the time and remembers the incident clearly. Between that episode and this movie, the real Ceti Alpha Six blew up making Ceti Alpha Five uninhabitable and adjusting its orbit so that the Reliant mistakes Ceti Alpha Five for Ceti Alpha Six. (We won't discuss the physics of planetary explosion, its subsequent effects on planetary motion, or the convenient timing of such events other than to say it strains credulity.) Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-deep breath-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan takes advantage of Chekov and his captain's mistaken visit to the surface to escape and get wrathful.

All Chekov had to do to prevent all of this was to successfully count to six. Spock and all those researchers die because Chekov is incapable of counting numbers that require more than one hand. Ceti Alpha Six wasn't Pluto. This wasn't some technical change in designation. There used to be six planets in the Ceti Alpha system and now there are five. There should have been debris from the explosion as well. If they had just noticed something odd and rather obvious, like the fact that there was a missing planet, they would have proceeded with more caution and Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-gasp-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-snack break-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan wouldn't have had his opportunity.

Of course, this isn't the only movie were single digit counting has proven problematic...

Paper Clips- I Feel So Bad For This

I feel incredibly guilty criticizing this film, but they left me a huge opening and I would feel re-missed if I did not give it some very serious and legitimate criticism. Paper Clips is a documentary about a middle school in Tennessee that collected paper clips as a symbol for those that died in the Holocaust. It like one of my favorite children's books, How Much is a Million, except much sadder. As someone who works with very large numbers everyday and spent most of the past decade specifically training to understand them, I can tell you the human mind is really not capable of understanding how much a million actually is. So when the millions of paper clips, each one representing a human soul dead because of hate, are being poured, making a sound I may never forget, into the cattle car memorial at the end, it is a jarring and unsettling image.

The project began with the goal of collecting 6,000,000 paper clips to represent the Jews which died in the Holocaust and the number 6,000,000 is mentioned dozens of times during the film. Where this movie deserves to be criticized, is its single mention of 11,000,000, the total number of victims of the Holocaust. And when this single mention occurs it sounds like, "We collected 29,000,000 paper clips, but 29,000,000 doesn't have anything to do with the Holocaust. Let's use 11,000,000. That has some meaning." For a film primarily focused on tolerance and acceptance for people who are different, this single passing mention of the 5,000,000 non-Jewish Holocaust victims seems extremely disrespectful.

Now that the serious criticism is over, some dark humor:
-Collecting all those paper clips (human souls) required a lot of meticulous record keeping.
-At one point, the principal said the students were "very selective" about which paper clips (human souls) they rounded-up and put into a cattle car where they will rest stacked high on top of one another for all eternity.

One unanswered question:
What happened to the 18,000,000 paper clips that weren't included in the memorial? Have they been released into the wild? Have I been using office supplies with a human soul bonded to them like their an Elric brother?

For the record: I never made fun of the Holocaust or any of it's victims. I just made fun of some kids making a Holocaust memorial.

Nope, still feel like a bastard.

Cypher- Motive Matters

Cypher is a over-elaborate, high-tech tale of corporate espionage. In this world, large corporations are above the law (a statement which also applies to the world of this movie) and their is a feud between Digicorp and Sunways.

When we meet our main character, Morgan Sullivan, he is a Regular Joe who chooses to take a job as a spy for Digicorp. Digicorp attempts to brainwash him into becoming a better spy, but Lucy Liu shows up and gives him some drugs to stop it. He then convinces Digicorp that he believes he is brainwashed into thinking he is Jack Thursby and they kidnap him and set him up with a job interview at Sunways. At Sunways, Morgan/Jack fails the brain scanning portion of the interview and is found out to be a Digicorp spy. It turns out that Sunways hired this guy Rooks to get them a Digicorp spy that wasn't brainwashed. So, Morgan/Jack gets a job as a Sunways spy pretending to be a Digicorp spy. Realizing that he is screwed, Morgan/Jack contacts Lucy Liu so that he can start working for Rooks, too. Rooks wants him to plant a virus in Sunways' super-secret archive, but on the way to do so he is met by another Rooks operative who says he's actually working for Digicorp. This guy wants him to steal a file instead and since Morgan/Jack hadn't betrayed anyone for a few minutes and going along with whatever plan he's told has brought him this far, he does so. Soon after, Morgan/Jack learns that he was Rooks all along and that this was all planned from the beginning to steal that one file. Morgan/Jack/Rooks is a super-genius, mega-wealthy inventor who invented the brain scanning/washing technology in the first place three years ago (with an implication that he invented them with the intention of subverting them) and Lucy Liu is his lady-friend.

Believe it or not, the movie is going pretty well up until this point, other than the unnecessary twist of getting Morgan/Jack/Rooks to betray Rooks and that no plan with this many moving parts would work in the real world. Where it all falls apart is when we find out what was in that file and worth all this trouble to begin with. Is it a business opportunity worth trillions of dollars or proof of a scandal which will destroy the corporate oligarchy forever? No, that would feel disappointing at this point in the film. It was a Sunways death warrant for his lady-friend. He was doing it all for love. So they could live out the rest of their lives together in peace. How sweet! Unfortunately, it also makes his entire plan incredibly stupid.

First of all, how long did this plan take to plan and execute. Certainly no less than a year and if he invented the various technologies he subverts as part of his plan, it could have easily been over a decade. During which time, Lucy Liu doesn't die. Apparently, Sunways' preferred method of murder is old age.

Of course, to execute this plan Lucy Liu had to put herself in danger multiple times from both Sunways and Digicorp. So, his plan to get Sunways to stop trying to kill her involves getting Sunways and Digicorp to try to kill her. In fact, the person who comes closest to killing Lucy Liu is Morgan/Jack/Rooks himself who fucking shoots her because she was sleeping with Rooks which he learned about during that completely brilliant and necessary twist discussed earlier. Any plan where there is a danger of shooting the woman whose life you're trying to save because she's sleeping with someone who isn't you that actually is you has a few flaws in it.

Then, there is the matter of all the other things he could have done instead. He could have just taken his lady-friend and hightailed it out of town (which is ultimately what he did anyway). He had the money and power to disappear. Sunways is a corporation and all they care about is profit, so he could have tried buying her safety with either cash or technology. Or, alternately, gone to Digicorp to buy security. Fuck, he could have bought and trained his own private army more easily and cost effectively than what he wound up doing. Any of these plans would have been a better way to go.

There are really only three motives in the world: greed, politics and/or religion, and love and/or sex. Everything we do stems from one or more of these motives. While love is a more interesting motive than the other two, it is also the one which fits this film the worst. Had this been an elaborate heist, the credits would have rolled on an entertaining sci-fi flick, but making it about love brings this movie to a sudden screeching train-wreck ending that all but ruins all that came before it. And that's why motive matters.