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Do You Enjoy Movies That Have An Irrational Premise

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My favourite tv show growing up was Irwin Allen's "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea". Impossibly illogical absurd science in several of the episodes. I still watch it now that the whole thing is out on DVD and I think I still enjoy it just as much, no matter how absurd the science in it. My only issue is with the constant re-use of stock footage and props, sometimes two episodes in a row.

On the other hand I HATED HATED HATED the movie Transformers, yet my friend Thomas who is the most rational person I know loved it (while not liking Amadeus, one of my favourites).

-PKD

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Mozart was portrayed as a horselaughing idiot savant, he was not--he was very capable and not just as a musician. Apparently (according to music historians) Salieri was unjustly maligned as well. There are also a number of other historical problems (again according to the historians), alas I cannot remember what they are.

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Mozart was portrayed as a horselaughing idiot savant, he was not--he was very capable and not just as a musician. Apparently (according to music historians) Salieri was unjustly maligned as well. There are also a number of other historical problems (again according to the historians), alas I cannot remember what they are.

And there's no such thing as the Force or Darth Vader, yet Star Wars managed to be entertaining. ;-) If the historical inaccuracy bothers you, that's fine. But it doesn't make the plot retarded. While it's true they portrayed historical figures inaccurately, well, it's still a very well written movie with memorable characters and riveting performances.

Plot wasn't bad either. ;-)

-PKD

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I thought Amadeus was great as well. The film is a terrific concretization of "the impotence of mediocrity and second-handedness" theme.

Ditto. :wub:

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Mozart was portrayed as a horselaughing idiot savant, he was not--he was very capable and not just as a musician. Apparently (according to music historians) Salieri was unjustly maligned as well. There are also a number of other historical problems (again according to the historians), alas I cannot remember what they are.

I didn't interpret Amadeus as a historical documentary, although I can see how people could think it was.

To reiterate what others have said, there's nothing wrong with a "what if..." movie. In fact, those can be some of the most rewarding.

What's important for me is that characters behave in consistent ways. Alien and Shaun of the Dead both show characters acting courageously and rationally in the face of disaster, and consistent with their personality before everything went horribly wrong. It drives me nuts when characters in movies just get all emotional for no reason, because the script needs a big fight scene here, or because we suddenly Need A Hero.

Occasionally, though, a movie will push things so far I just give up. I couldn't sit through "Wanted" although I know several people who loved the movie. Shooting bullets around corners was just too much for me to swallow for some reason.

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And there's no such thing as the Force or Darth Vader, yet Star Wars managed to be entertaining.

Mozart existed. Darth Vader was made up.

Put it this way, if you watched some movie where George Washington or Ayn Rand was depicted as a dipsomaniac lightweight, you'd probably find the movie pretty hard to take.

Even looking at it as the "Impotence of Mediocrity...." as West put it (which is *certainly* a worthwhile message)-- did they have to insult the great man as much as they did while doing it?

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Mozart existed. Darth Vader was made up.

Put it this way, if you watched some movie where George Washington or Ayn Rand was depicted as a dipsomaniac lightweight, you'd probably find the movie pretty hard to take.

Even looking at it as the "Impotence of Mediocrity...." as West put it (which is *certainly* a worthwhile message)-- did they have to insult the great man as much as they did while doing it?

I think I don't have the expectation that a Hollywood screenwriter would get the facts right. My grandfather is a pretty famous historical figure and they never got him right so I don't bother. I sit back and enjoy the ride, knowing that the version of historical figures Hollywood can offer are about as real as Darth Vader.

And since you brought up Ayn Rand, what did you guys think of that "The Passion of Ayn Rand" movie?

-PKD

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I think I don't have the expectation that a Hollywood screenwriter would get the facts right. My grandfather is a pretty famous historical figure and they never got him right so I don't bother. I sit back and enjoy the ride, knowing that the version of historical figures Hollywood can offer are about as real as Darth Vader.

And since you brought up Ayn Rand, what did you guys think of that "The Passion of Ayn Rand" movie?

-PKD

Who is your grandfather?

As for "The Passion of Ayn Rand" -- it was pure melodramatic pap.

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The new Star Trek is a great example of a movie that has not a lot of basis in science (Time travel, artificially creating singularities) that are still supremely interesting by themselves and serve the plot quite well.

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Mozart existed. Darth Vader was made up.

Cyrano De Bergerac, arguably the best play to ever have been written, is based on a real historical figure. I wouldn't even think of calling the play an unscientific piece of crap because it treats a character from history as far more of a hero than he was in reality. One has to treat the piece as its own universe, despite being inspired and even perhaps derived from real historical events.

Put it this way, if you watched some movie where George Washington or Ayn Rand was depicted as a dipsomaniac lightweight, you'd probably find the movie pretty hard to take.

Even looking at it as the "Impotence of Mediocrity...." as West put it (which is *certainly* a worthwhile message)-- did they have to insult the great man as much as they did while doing it?

I think they presented the essence of the character (what we know to be factually true) well--that his music was so phenomenal and his talent so great that he earned the characterization of being the voice and sound of God. One could say that the drunken debauchery and childish behavior is a denigration of his character, but the context is not a documentary; it's purpose is not to convey exact historical duplication. It's a piece of art, a universe contained within itself.

When you look at the film qua art, it's not a piece about Mozart (I think the title is a bit of a misnomer). The "protagonist" is really Salmieri. To put it into perspective, the film is like The Fountainhead through Keating's eyes. We see the collapse of Salmieri's spirit through his failure to capture the product of Mozart's essence--his music--and "triumph" through a fraud on a viciously evil level. The film demonstrates that Salmieri, and every second-hander for that matter, is impotent and cannot triumph by these means. The last few lines of the film affirms this metaphysical value-judgment: Salmieri, in a tone that suggests a recognition of his defeat, accepts that he is "mediocrity's patron saint" and we are again reminded that Mozart's "God-like" qualities will live on in perpetuity.

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As for "The Passion of Ayn Rand" -- it was pure melodramatic pap.

Agreed. And I really LIKED the book, which seemed an honest attempt at a biography, including tons of first-hand interview material. It's been a while, but the movie came across as an attempt to smear Rand while exorcising Barbara Branden's personal demons about the affair.

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