Star Wars & Sc-Fi Talk

vesicles said:

Another interesting alien invasion story is "Falling Skies" on TNT. The story starts out like any other alien invasion story, but is morphing into a very unique one. It first talks about humans allying with the aliens in attempts to better control Earth, but then potentially aliens allying with humans in attempt to rebelling against alien overlords. So there are multiple alien species: some evil and trying to control everything and others from conquered planets, being controlled and manipulated just like humans. The latter, previously seen by humans as evil, is trying to form an alliance with the humans so that they can defeat the overlord and get their own planets back... Cool, IMO...

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Yeah I saw the the first 2 seasons of Falling Skies and gave up on it. The concept is interesting and started out ok. But the then the garbage lines they wrote for Noah Whilie on military and insergency history got too Euro/American centric. They only make refrences and analiges to the American Revolution and WW2 Europre which were not particularly close to the situations they were facing in alot of the episodes. The character is supposed to be a history teacher but never mentions any of the other more recent and sometimes successful insergencies of the 20th century like Vietnam, The Long March, Iraq and Afganistan. The charcter is a terrible history teacher!

In Space Above and Beyond at least they refrenced all of human military expirence. When they lauched a bombing raid in the capured alien bomber they made reference to the Doolittle Raid on Japan. While in the same episode those going on the mission called it a kamikaze mission and then clipped and collected their nails as the WW2 kamikaze's did before they went on their mission.

bladerunner said:

Outside of the LOR and Hobbit, Jackson's love is making horror and splatter movies. and he draws much of his movie making inspiration from directors who have made their name in this kind of genre. So its hard to say how it would turn out. However hes on record as saying he admires Kubrick's work so maybe it would look like "Space Odessey"

Have a look at the Jackson remake of "King Kong" which is slightly removed from genre of film he had been making till then, and see what you think.

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Maybe because I had recently saw the Hobbit but Jackson always likes to read and refrence the books of Tolken to make LOTR and Hobbit. But also the great effort to better define totally alien cultures of Tolken's charcters as well as the attenion to detail of props in the extras of LOTR Jackson said he did not want people to see the movies and say they could find things like cups and plates in stores.

I wouldn't mind seeing the Henson do some of the creature designs the Henson stuff is amazing.

I guess this is a sign Shatner is not in the next Star Trek movie which was rumored very early on giving him the same treatment Leonard Nimoy had in the first one.



I think the universe would collapse onto itself if Shatner appeared in Star Wars movies.

ABC78 said:

Yeah I saw the the first 2 seasons of Falling Skies and gave up on it. The concept is interesting and started out ok. But the then the garbage lines they wrote for Noah Whilie on military and insergency history got too Euro/American centric. They only make refrences and analiges to the American Revolution and WW2 Europre which were not particularly close to the situations they were facing in alot of the episodes. The character is supposed to be a history teacher but never mentions any of the other more recent and sometimes successful insergencies of the 20th century like Vietnam, The Long March, Iraq and Afganistan. The charcter is a terrible history teacher!

In Space Above and Beyond at least they refrenced all of human military expirence. When they lauched a bombing raid in the capured alien bomber they made reference to the Doolittle Raid on Japan. While in the same episode those going on the mission called it a kamikaze mission and then clipped and collected their nails as the WW2 kamikaze's did before they went on their mission.

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It is an American TV series aimed at domestic audience mostly afterall. Nobody will know anything about Battle of Chongping, etc. Plus, they did mention his specialty is American history, which makes sense when he kept quoting battles fought in America. And the people he spoke with in the scenes were largely less educated. So it makes sense that he mainly cited famous battles fought in America or by Americans.

It's all about the targeted audience. How many Chinese TV series mention American Civil War? There have been a flood of Chinese TV series about WWII. How many of them actually mention a single word about what was happening in Europe?

There are only 2 seasons of the show... Season 3 is on the way...

A lot of Americans don't even know their own history, so don't be surprised they would care less to learn anyone elses. Look at the movie 300 and how the right-wing adopted it as their own to compare it with their struggles in the world today. I saw a historian on TV say the Spartan culture at that time was actually proto-communist. So the Spartans portrayed in the movie... were they actually like that or did Hollywood do what they normally do and add narcissism so Americans can identitfy with the struggle in the movie?

The same can be said for any of these alien invasion narratives. If you go by Hollywood, aliens only want to conquer the US and the West. They don't bother with anyone else. It's the same mentality of those that think China is plotting to invade the US. Realistically, why would China bother? The US is half way around the world. It's a logistical nightmare and impossible for China. Yet people still want to believe it. Why? Because they like to think people will go to great lengths just to have what they have. In other words they have something of value that everyone else even advanced high tech aliens from another planet will travel across the galaxy at great expense just to get it.

Realistically, If I were an alien and wanted humanity destroyed, all I'd do is make public contact with any major country that wasn't Western and say I'm going to gift humanity with the cure to all their problems through my advanced technology and this country here will be my representaive and manager of the process. And then I would sit back and watch the nukes fly.

Yeah but as an American Tv should not be dumb down for people with narrow veiws of the world and not everyone in the US are wasps.

vesicles said:

It is an American TV series aimed at domestic audience mostly afterall. Nobody will know anything about Battle of Chongping, etc. Plus, they did mention his specialty is American history, which makes sense when he kept quoting battles fought in America. And the people he spoke with in the scenes were largely less educated. So it makes sense that he mainly cited famous battles fought in America or by Americans.

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That's why I wasn't impressed with your. idea that Americas make Asian period drama for the Asian market. Because IMO American knowledge of history outside of their own is terrible. Look how they made a war movie on how they recovered the Enigma Coding machines during WW2 when it was actually the British who retrieved it from a damaged uboat 110 .
However they did make a period drama called Shogun? i think staring Richard Chamberlain decades ago. I dont know how successful it was though.

The storyline of aliens wanting to come to earth and participate in a cooperative development has been done before.

bladerunner said:

That's why I wasn't impressed with your. idea that Americas make Asian period drama for the Asian market.

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They can certainly invest in Asian movies. One thing they can absolutely do is to have Asian characters in their movies. In fact, that was my main point when I suggested "my idea". You don't need to talk about Asian cultures specifically.

bladerunner said:

The storyline of aliens wanting to come to earth and participate in a cooperative development has been done before.

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I never said this was a completely new idea, just something that is not visited by the mainstream syfy often.

ABC78 said:

Yeah I saw the the first 2 seasons of Falling Skies and gave up on it. The concept is interesting and started out ok. But the then the garbage lines they wrote for Noah Whilie on military and insergency history got too Euro/American centric. They only make refrences and analiges to the American Revolution and WW2 Europre which were not particularly close to the situations they were facing in alot of the episodes. The character is supposed to be a history teacher but never mentions any of the other more recent and sometimes successful insergencies of the 20th century like Vietnam, The Long March, Iraq and Afghanistan. The charcter is a terrible history teacher!

In Space Above and Beyond at least they refrenced all of human military expirence. When they lauched a bombing raid in the capured alien bomber they made reference to the Doolittle Raid on Japan. While in the same episode those going on the mission called it a kamikaze mission and then clipped and collected their nails as the WW2 kamikaze's did before they went on their mission.

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C'mon man.. the TV show's primary audience are Americans. They have to at least somewhat stay on dialogs which can captivate the American TV viewers. You think the avg Joe Sci-Fi Blow is going to be fascinated or interested in parallelism with counter insurgency operations conducted by Ho Chi Minh, Muqtada al-Sadr, OBL himself etc..

heck most Americans can't even point to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan on a map.

kwaigonegin said:

C'mon man.. the TV show's primary audience are Americans. They have to at least somewhat stay on dialogs which can captivate the American TV viewers. You think the avg Joe Sci-Fi Blow is going to be fascinated or interested in parallelism with counter insurgency operations conducted by Ho Chi Minh, Muqtada al-Sadr, OBL himself etc..

heck most Americans can't even point to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan on a map.

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Exactly!

Plus, the heroes in these shows would be the insurgents, same roles played by Ho Chi Minh, OBL, etc in that they try to fight off a superior occupation force (ignore who is right or wrong...). Is it ever possible for the American public to accept such implication, that Ho Chi Minh/OBL might be heroes?

It would be much safer and less controversial to keep the Americans as heroes, like the American revolutionary war, civil war, etc...