Category Archives: Movies

The most logic-defying sequence in movie history

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I’m a die-hard James Bond movie fan. And Goldfinger ranks up there as perhaps my all-time favorites James Bond film.

At least it was until I watched it again recently. I’m now thinking of downgrading it a bit.

Yes, it still has all the iconic scenes that remain so indelibly imprinted in my mind. But watching it again, I was struck by how much of the movie makes absolutely no sense from any logical perspective. And I found it impossible to ignore this, even accepting the idea that the movie is basically an escapist fantasy.

I won’t bore you with a complete list of all the ridiculousness in the movie. Instead, I want to focus on just one sequence; a sequence that so defies logic that I believe it could well be the #1 all-time most logic-defying sequence in movie history. I’m talking about the scene that begins with the assembled hoodlums inside Goldfinger’s Kentucky ranch.

For starters, in the meeting room, Goldfinger unveils an elaborate hidden control panel that he uses to show the assembled group his big plan. However, the show consists only of a simple map and a 3-D mock-up of Fort Knox, also concealed until he presses the buttons to reveal them. Even granting that these items may have had some use beyond displaying them to his criminal associates, it’s hard to imagine why such an expensive and elaborate setup was needed to conceal and reveal these two items. Couldn’t he just keep them in a locked room? Okay, Goldfinger is super-rich and can afford it. But still.

Anyway, we’re just getting warmed up. Next, Goldfinger kills off the entire group by mechanically sealing off the room and spraying nerve gas into it. Are we to believe that he kills people off this way with such frequency that he decided to install a permanent setup just for doing so? Surely, there are many simpler less elaborate ways he could have taken care of this matter. Again, I can pretty much forgive this. James Bond movies, after all, are all about elaborate schemes.

But now, we enter into the realm of the unforgivable. If he always intended to kill everybody (as seemed to be the case), why even bother giving them the dog and pony show about how he was going to raid Fort Knox? Why not just kill them as soon as they were all in the room. Again, I understand that the movie needs to reveal the Fort Knox plot to the audience. But couldn’t the movie makers find a way to do it that doesn’t require that you be halfway in a coma in order for you not to notice how preposterous it all is?

Even if you are willing to suspend disbelief and accept all of the preceding, there remains the coup de grace of the entire sequence:

One of the criminals, appropriately named Solo, decides to opt out of the Fort Knox deal. He wants to take his promised money and leave. Goldfinger agrees and sends him on his way. Given that even he is going to be killed anyway (shot by Oddjob, as we soon find out), why let him leave? Why not just have him die in the room with the rest of the hoodlums? Goldfinger could have easily come up with an excuse to leave the room before letting Solo exit.

Okay, so Goldfinger passed on this opportunity. A lapse in judgement perhaps. But why not then shoot Solo before he ever leaves the property? Ah, that would still be too easy. Instead, Goldfinger puts Solo into a limo, ostensibly with instructions for Oddjob to drive him to the airport. And yes, there’s the payment of a million dollars in gold bullion in the trunk!

Solo never makes it to the airport — to no one’s surprise. Oddjob shoots him in the car along the way. Oddjob then dumps the body in some remote location, drives back to the ranch, and takes the gold out of the trunk, right? In your dreams. Why do anything that makes even the slightest sense when there is a much more complicated and totally idiotic way to accomplish the same goal?

What actually happens is that Oddjob drives to an auto junkyard that has machinery to crush and compress cars into nice compact cubes. And then, after compressing the limo (with the dead Solo still inside, of course), he places the resulting cube on the flatbed of a truck, somehow conveniently waiting for him, which he then drives back to the ranch. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?

If you have not yet turned your brain off by this point, you may be wondering: Why take the compressed car back at all? Ah, you forgot about the gold. The million dollars in gold is still contained within the now heap of metal and human body parts — and needs to be extracted. Holy smokes, why didn’t Oddjob just remove the gold from the car before he compacted it? That would have saved Goldfinger from the ugly extraction task. In fact, it would have eliminated the need to take the compacted car back to the ranch at all. Ah, but then we wouldn’t have been able to have the witticism, spoken by Bond and Goldfinger in different scenes, of Solo’s “pressing engagement.” Oh yes, what does a total absence of any sense matter, when there’s a witty remark at stake?

Okay. I know James Bond movies aren’t meant to be taken seriously. And I will more than willing to accept some lack of logic in the name of fun. You’d be hard pressed to find an action movie that doesn’t have at least a few such minor lapses. But there comes a point when it all gets too much. For me, the Goldfinger movie surpasses that point several times over. I guess I was more forgiving when I watched it when I was younger. But I am not now.

Perhaps I am more harsh now because I see a bigger problem lurking. I believe the success of these early James Bond movies laid the groundwork for most of the hundreds of action movies that followed. The Bond franchise showed movie makers that you don’t need an intelligent script, or even one that makes any sense, for a movie to be successful. Throw in enough fight scenes, chase scenes, special effects, and explosions — and the audience will pay for a ticket and ignore the fact that there is no coherent plot to the movie.

That’s why I am almost always disappointed now in each new action movie that comes out. I hope the day may yet come when, in describing a movie, the words intelligent and action need not be mutually exclusive. I see some glimmer of hope here with movies such as 2005’s Batman Begins. But they are still more the exception than the rule. The vast majority of this summer’s movie blockbusters, sadly, appears to be sticking to the old formula.

Hollywood: Give up on DRM

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Check out this ars technica article. It describes the lengths that Hollywood is more than willing to go to prevent piracy of its movies from Blue-Ray and HD-DVD discs. For example, to prevent such content from being copied when played on a computer, decrypted video cannot “be present on any User-Accessible Bus in analog or unencrypted, compressed form,” because users might otherwise find a way to record such content. And that’s just one of several DRM (Digital Rights Management) “robustness rules” with which Hollywood wants to burden companies such as Microsoft and Apple.

I fully expect that the end result of this (as has been the case with previous Draconian DRM measures) will be that legitimate users get punished more than any potential pirates. We users will be punished via the increased cost of the hardware and software needed to enforce these rules as well as the increased inconvenience of the restrictions that prevent us from accessing the content in ways that are or should be perfectly legal.

Hollywood folks aren’t even willing to entertain (pardon the pun) the idea that maybe, just maybe, after I have purchased the VHS version of a movie, purchased the DVD of the same movie, and then purchased it again to get the special “Criterion” edition, I should be entitled to some discount when I purchase the Blue-Ray version. But that’s another story.

It has long been my contention that, if I purchase a DVD, I should be able to do whatever I want with it, as long as it does not include providing the content to others. So, if I want to copy the movie to my iPod, make a back-up disc, or whatever else, I ought to be able to do so — without any hassles or impediments.

Clearly, the entertainment industry disagrees. It’s not so much that they disagree in principle with my position. It’s just that to allow what I want would make it too easy for pirates to make illegal copies. This cannot be allowed in their view. To prevent this abuse, something must be sacrificed. So what gets destroyed are the rights of the legitimate users.

I have thought about this a good deal recently. I have tried to put myself in the shoes of the Hollywood executives. I am an author of several books. How would I like it if my books could simply be copied as easily as copying a Word file…and that such copies could be freely shared, given to people who never paid for the book? I would not like it. I would prefer that this not be the case. I would welcome copyright laws that say this is prohibited. Beyond that, there is not much else I would do.

The truth is that this situation already exists for my books. You can get my most recent book as a PDF file. Once purchased, you can copy it and give it to others. The same situation is also true, of course, for CDs. It is also the situation for anyone who has ever photocopied an article from a magazine to give to someone else, rather than buy another copy of the magazine.

I am sure that, if it were not so easy to do these things, more copies of books, CDs, and magazines would be sold. But so what? Times have changed. This is the technology that we live with. Despite these capabilities, publishers are still making money publishing books, artists are still making money recording and performing music, and magazine subscriptions are still a thriving business. Some of this “illegal” copying probably spurs sales. For example, after you read that article from the magazine, you may like it so much that you wind up getting your own subscription.

Regardless, my bottom line point is that we can’t go back in time to when these technologies did not exist. And we shouldn’t have laws and regulations that act as if we can. We just have to learn to tolerate a certain amount of piracy inherent in this system. We have to hope that there are enough people that are not inclined to break the law that we can still make a buck. We can also try to think of new ways to package these products so as to encourage legitimate purchases rather than illegal copies. Beyond that, leave the user alone and don’t burden us down with DRM rules that ultimately won’t work anyway.

Hooray for Tom Cruise!

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So I see that Tom Cruise has landed on his feet with a new two-year deal forged with Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder.

To which I say: Fabulous. I am so glad.

First, let me say that my view of Tom Cruise’s movie career is something of a paradox.

On the one hand, I have never thought of him as a great actor and I certainly don’t expect him to ever win an Academy Award.

On the other hand, many of the pictures he has starred in are among my favorites (including Rain Man, Jerry Maguire, A Few Good Men, Born on the Fourth of July, The Color of Money, and Mission Impossible, to name just some!). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he is in all these films. He is a big part of what made them great.

So I look forward to seeing him in yet more great movies in the years ahead. Which is also why I continue to be amazed and dismayed at the extent to which Cruise’s off-screen behavior has apparently affected the ticket sales of his movies. Frankly, unless he has done something illegal or grossly immoral, I could care less.

As far as I can tell, the problems with Tom center on three main incidents: (1) his couch-jumping on Oprah; (2) his beliefs in Scientology and (3) his critical remarks about taking anti-depressants for post-partum depression.

To which I reply in turn:

(1) It was a bit weird to watch but, come on, it was just silliness. What does it matter whether he climbs a couch or not?

(2) Scientology is about on the same level as a belief in little green men on Mars. So I think Tom must be ignorant, stupid, or lying when he says he believes it. But many or even most movie stars can be stupid or ignorant on occasion. So what’s the big deal here?

(3) I believe the statement was wrong and offensive. I think less of Tom as a person as a result. But it still won’t affect whether or not I see his movies — unless I were to decide to boycott his films as a form of protest against his remarks (which I am not even contemplating doing).

Personally, I think the public’s interest in and over-reaction to Tom’s behavior is much weirder than anything Tom has done. So I am glad that, despite the public response and Paramount’s decision to dump him, he is going to be just fine.

Of course, with his money, even if he never earned another penny from his films for the rest of his life, he would still have millions more than I (or almost anyone else in the world) will ever see. So it’s hard to feel sorry for him no matter what happens.

On the death of the electric car

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Recently, I saw the documentary movie Who Killed the Electric Car?. I recommend it as a sobering look at how a successful and innovative technology was strangled by forces that feared it would hurt their profits.

When my mind wanders to recollections of the film, the scene that sticks with me the most (well second most; the most memorable scene is all those cars taken away for destruction over the protests of their owners and supporters) is one whose significance is largely glossed over by the filmmakers.

It is at the point where the film is describing how, instead of battery technology, the car and energy industries are pushing for the development of hydrogen fuel cells as a clean alternative to conventional engines.

There is a specific scene, with President Bush, that takes place at a Shell station outfitted with a tank for “refilling” a hydrogen cell. The narrator’s criticism focuses on the fact that hydrogen technology is still at least 20 years away from being a practical alternative (if it ever gets there at all), while the electric car is practical today.

But to me, the most telling point was the Shell station itself. With electric cars, owners “refuel” their vehicles in their own garages at night, with a battery charger. With hydrogen, you still need to go to a Shell station (or equivalent) to refuel.

No wonder oil companies are aghast at the idea of a successful electric car. How many Shell stations would wind up going out of business if people never needed to use them again, because they could get all the fuel they needed from a wall outlet?

If the oil companies get their way (and they seem to be doing so), that future will never happen. At least not as long as their is oil in the ground and money to be made from selling it.