"Neeum Zawan" <fee### [at] festercom> wrote in message
news:87z### [at] festercom...
> "somebody" <x### [at] ycom> writes:

> Eh? It's rarely been /in/ fashion. Both in recent history and long term
> history. People have been disposable in the past. I fail to see any
> fundamental reason for that not happening again.

It's one thing to routinely dispose of employees by firing them, it's
another to literally dispose them into the garbage chute. The latter, if you
have noticed, is not all that common.

> I'm sure 99.9% of people surveyed will say lots of things are
> unethical. Yet, when the opportunity arises, that number drops. Or
> rather, they claim an exception.

And it's the moviemakers' responsibility to convince me that that
opportunity (& more importantly, the motive) arose. That the company
operates on the moon instead of on earth is not enough excuse for me to buy
that.

> After all, are clones really people?

The movie was too simpleminded to go into that.

> > It's an observation, and a very trivial one. I know you like being
contrary,
> > but surely even you are not going to argue that the robot (among many
other
> > things) is not a direct rip off from 2001? And I am sure opening the
scene
> > with an astronaut on a threadmill was also a coincidence.... etc

> Frankly, I'm beginning to doubt that you've read much SF.

That has precious little to do anything with the amount of "borrowed"
material in this movie.

> > It's a movie. It's self contained. And it's sufficient information. If
I'm

> Movies are self contained?

Sure (or they should be). There's a definite start, and a definite end to a
movie. You call what goes in between the movie. You can *speculate* on your
free time about what the director *did not* put in a movie, but that is not
part of the movie.

> Well, not relevant to the *story*. If I made a movie about a company
> that mistreats its workers, you're suggesting it's my duty to point out
> the details of what the workers actually /do/?

In that case, no. We *know* that workers are needed for our companies and we
know more or less what workers do in a typical business. I don't know that
humans are needed on the moon moving a caniester from point A to point B,
much less why human *clones* are needed. It's a premise unfamiliar to the
viewer (or to me at least, you may have more firsthand experience with moon
operations), and that is why an explanation is in order. One doesn't need to
explain the mundane, but extraordinary claims deserve extraordinary
evidence. It's where a lot of movies (sci-fi or not) fail, for they take
suspension of disbelief for granted. It's typical Hollywood attitude to
assume that the audience will eat with a spoon whatever is put in front of
them. When you ask an innocent "why" or "how", the whole storyline collapses
like a house of cards. Avatar was like that too. Spectacular technology, but
ultimately hollow inside.

> And I just can't see Earth-like gravity and faster than light
> communication as being relevant to the plot of the story. Along with a
> lot of your other complaints. Sure, with some of them, one /could/ have
> come up with an interesting story, but it would likely be a different
> one.
>
> You know, it's OK to simply say you didn't like it. You don't have to
> construct a whole theory of story-telling and SF to defend it.

No, I don't have to. But isn't it better to back one's viewpoint?

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