6 Fictional Technologies That Are Completely Inefficient

Originally pitched to Cracked.com:

Much of the history of mankind has been marked by advancements in technology. We as a species are constantly trying to imagine new ways to make life a little bit better and a little bit easier for ourselves and the rest of our fellow humans. But a lot of the time reality can limit the abilities of our technology to be all it can possibly be. But it the world of fiction, one does not need to be limited to any sort of rules set forth by the world. You can make technology as great as you like. In simple fact, the only reason technology is flawed in fiction is for the purposes of the story, and not for any sense of reality in the world of the story.

1.)           Cloning for body parts (from The Island)

The concept behind Michael Bay’s film The Island is a rather gruesome one when you think about it. A society of people, thinking they are the only survivors of a global plague, are in fact all clones of people living in the real world. The clones live in a health spa like existence waiting for the day when they will be picked to go to the titular Island, a magical place where the plague never happened. In reality, they are being harvested by the person they were cloned from for whatever body part he or she happens to need at the time.

Now as the film explains (by the character played by Sean Bean, who is SURPRISE SURPRISE a bad guy), cloning just a body part doesn’t really work. Something about needed the spark of life or something to make the whole process work is required. So that explains why all the clones in the movie have to be walking and talking humans. Otherwise there would just be a bunch of bodies in jars like a fetal pig in a middle school science classroom. But it must cost a fortune to purchase one of these clones because you have to clothe them, feed them, clean up after them (all the reasons why parents don’t want to get their kids a puppy) and then keep them entertained while waiting to cut them up.

And the cutting up seems to be the real area where there is a lot of waste. Judging by the story of the film, harvesting from a clone is a one shot deal. They take the heart or kidney or baby (seriously, this film shows someone who had a clone just to be a surrogate parent) and then they dispose of the clone. Well what about all the other organs? True the whole point of having a personal clone is to insure a genetically perfect match, but lots of people can get organ donation without the match being 100% perfect. It’s why when you get a driver’s license they ask you to be an organ donor. So we don’t have to end up with a world full of fake clones living underground.

2.)           The Cloaking Device (from Star Trek shows and films)

"They'll never find us!"

The Star Trek franchise has many different technologies associated with it. Teleporters, holodecks, replicators, etc. And at one point in any given Star Trek TV episode or movie, a story revolved around a particular piece of technology breaking down (nearly half a season could be put together of Next Generation episodes in which holodeck characters come to life). But technology failing doesn’t necessarily make it inefficient. Unless of course if that technology failing COMPLETELY NEGATES the purpose of that technology.

"Oops."

The Star Trek device that seems to happen to most is the cloaking device. The cloaking device appears to be the best tactical advantage ever conceived. A device that renders your ship invisible to all forms of detection. Except it doesn’t! Cloaked ships are constantly being detected by the Federation in any number of episodes and movies. Star Trek VI, the last of the films to feature the original Star Trek cast, had a cloaked vessel as one of its central plot points (a Klingon bird of prey that can fire its weapons while cloaked). During the final battle the ship is targeted by tracking its exhaust fumes. Essentially a high tech version of Axel Foley shoving a banana in a car’s tailpipe (Uhura even says “Well the thing’s got to have a tailpipe.”).

3.)           Mega laser (from Real Genius)

The movie Real Genius makes the idea of being super smart really fun. Honestly, this college seems like Hogwarts except no one has a magic wand. And like Hogwarts, of course it turns out one of the Professor’s is evil (in fact, the only Professor we even see, except the one who replaces himself with a boom box). And instead of trying to resurrect He Who Must Not Be Named, the evil Professor uses the brilliant students at his disposal to create a super weapon for the military.

Now it is when the students find out what they have been doing that the main plot of the story gets going. Before then they had been goofing off and playing pranks and doing things that we all assume smart people do all the time. The students break into the army base and program in new coordinates to the super laser, using it to destroy the evil professor’s house with a giant popcorn popper (apparently the evil Professor hates popcorn, though he really only says so in passing). And here is why the mega laser is inefficient. Because it is used to make popcorn. Not just blow up the professor’s house. This is supposed to be a doomsday weapon that can eliminate an enemy from space and it takes multiple minutes to pop a tray of Jiffy Pop (a giant tray, which shows that classic aluminum bubble we all know and love and remember fondly).

4.)           Rag Dolls (from 9)

"This will save the world… somehow."

Be completely honest, none of this movie makes sense. How a bunch of living potato sacks are supposed to repopulate and save the human race is never explained. True the little potato sacks (the movie really doesn’t give them a particular name, so “little potato sacks it is) do defeat the evil computer eye thing that wants to absorb their souls. But there are no humans left and (SPOILER) more than half of the potato sacks die.

5.)           David (from A.I.)

It makes complete sense that such a flawed movie would have at the center of it such a flawed piece of technology. David is a little android boy designed to replace a real child for parents who might have lost their child (a very morbid concept in and of itself). David’s programming is so complex that it even has the ability to love its owners. But in truth it doesn’t. David is programmed to imprint on someone when they say the correct sequence of code words. WHICH IS NOT HOW LOVE WORKS. Had David shown affection towards his “parents” without those words being entered then we the audience could believe that he genuinely loved them.

Also, David is supposed to be a substitute for a child. But David is an android. He is permanently locked in the form of a kid. Which negates his entire purpose if he is supposed to be a substitute for having. The joy of children is watching them mature and grow and learn. To teach them and prepare them for the world. Parents get joy from seeing their child go through milestones of life. If David is perpetually a boy, then his parents get no such joy of watching him grow. Even dog owners get the satisfaction of seeing their puppy learn a new trick every now and then.

No going off to college, no getting married, no grandchildren. Just a creepy kid that never gets older and can’t take care of you when YOU get old, and that you have to take care of forever because the thing never breaks down (honestly, they show David being unfrozen thousands of years in the future working fine). And since it is programmed to be a child which means it has the ignorance and naiveté of a child, permanently. The robot child actually thinks Pinocchio is a true story and spends most of the movie looking for “the Blue Fairy.”

6.)           T-800 (from the Terminator films)

After four Terminator films it seems pretty obvious that all T-800 robots look like Arnold Schwarzenegger (although he wasn’t in Salvation they screen grabbed his face and digitally placed it on another actor for a brief scene). Now there is no denying the lethal ability of a these killer robots. In brief scenes in both the original Terminator film and T2 showed scenes of robotic exoskeletons gunning down humans in a brutal death march to victory. But the point of the T-800 is not to be a just a mindless killing machine. It’s meant to infiltrate the human ranks and then take out a particular target.

Now it may not seem like the humans have the most organized military communications system but I’m pretty sure they could pass a message among their ranks, “Hey, if a big Austrian guy tries to get into your base, kill that dude.” Which is what any sane person would do if all the enemy soldiers trying to sneak into your camp looked EXACTLY THE SAME. Plus it’s a big six foot muscular guy who is pretty easy to spot in a crowd and doesn’t understand basic human behavior and mannerisms. 

Granted the Terminators in The Sarah Connor Chronicles suggest that Terminators come in all shapes and sizes (Every fanboy out there would gladly let a Summer Glau robot murder them) but as far as the movies are concerned the basic Terminator looks like Arnold. There was a deleted scene from Terminator 3 that explains why all the terminators look like Arnold (and sound like him in a bizarre act of ADR) but none that explains why that is a good idea. Because it isn’t.

5 Kids Movies Whose Central Premise Is Not Meant for Kids

Originally submitted to Cracked.com: 

Certainly no legitimate critic of film and television really believes that films and television have a negative affect on children’s minds. There was war and violence long before there was appointment television and The Wachowskis. But just because children aren’t affected doesn’t mean that some of the entertainment children are exposed to doesn’t bring up uncomfortable questions for parents. That seems to be the real problem with entertainment. It leaves parents having to actually talk to their kids and no parent wants to uncomfortably try to explain concepts like death to their children. So as a public service, parents might want to avoid showing the following films to their children.

1.) Bedknobs and Broomsticks

If you’re not familiar with the story of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, it’s about a trio of orphans who go to live in the country during World War II (as was common practice at the time to avoid bombings and the horrors of war) with a mysterious woman who takes the children on a series of adventures. Oh, We forgot to mention that the woman they go to live with is an apprentice witch who is trying to master magic spells in an attempt to assist in the war effort. Despite the adventures and trips to Portabello Road and the Isle of Naboombu (a magic island where animals talk) the crux of this story is Witches versus Nazis. NAZIS! In a Disney movie. And not some allegory for Nazis which is sometimes seen in films for kids (the Hyenas in the Lion King ring a bell) but actual swastika wearing SS uniform Nazis.

Yeah it’s a cute and fun tale for kids but if that concept were pitched to a studio today, this would be a hardcore horror movie produced by Sam Raimi or Roger Corman (or anyone who likes putting buckets of blood in their films). Instead of turning people into rabbits, kindly Miss Price (played by Angela Lansbury in the original but probably recast as Megan Fox in today’s version) would just straight up explode people’s heads. Same with the suits of armor she enchants to scare the Nazis. They would be hacking and slashing Nazis left and right. The only thing that makes this seem like a children’s movie is the animated animals, who would easily be replaced with CGI.

2.) The Black Cauldron

One of the lesser known Disney films, the Black Cauldron was made in 1985 during that period in between where Disney had hit classics based on fairy tales but before its resurgence with The Lion King, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. As such there was a lot of experimentation with this film. At least with its animation. A lot of the story elements are pretty standard. A young farm boy, an evil king, a princess, a magical pig (yes, a magical pig that can see the future), and a wacky funny sidekick.

Oh yeah, and an army of zombies. The goal of the villain in this movie (The Horned King who is pretty terrifying without an army of the undead) is to find the titular Black Cauldron (which is why he needs to find the magic pig) and use it to raise an army of the dead. And these are not cartoonish looking deadfolk. They are skeletons with flesh rotting on their bones. AMC’s The Walking Dead would proudly cast some of these zombies (ignoring the fact that they are in chain mail and would be wildly period inappropriate for modern day Georgia). Adding a cherry to the not meant for kids sundae, the funny sidekick commits suicide in order to stop the army of the dead, flinging himself into the Cauldron.

3.) Balto

From dead soldiers to dying children. Balto could have been a cute story about a boy and his dog and the dog being accepted after being seen as an outcast, but the story adds a ticking clock when the children of this small isolated Alaskan town come down with a deadly virus and a dogsled team needs to be put together in order to get medicine. Now since this a ticking clock, the stakes need to be reminded to the audience constantly. Children in this town are dying. It’s a great story of heroism.

But it’s also an animated movie. With music. And talking animals. And dying children. While not shown specifically on screen it is highly suggested that some of the children actually do die throughout the film. We see parents grieve and motionless little child hands. Very disturbing stuff. Eventually we are only left to care about one girl, Rosy, who owns Jenna who is the dog Balto is in love with. So as long as that one sick child doesn’t die the story has a happy ending. Of course every other kid in the town can bite the dust and that doesn’t matter.

4.) Corpse Bride

Death seems to be a common theme in kids’ movies but Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride adds a completely new element to expose children to. Necrophilia. Granted there is no actual sex in the film, but man does end up marrying a dead woman (the titular Corpse Bride). Not just dead, but rotting. One of the characters in the movie is a worm that is living inside the Corpse Bride’s skull and eating away at her rotting brains.

And if we expand the definition of necrophilia to include someone who wants to be with a corpse then the protagonist of this film, Victor (voiced by long time Burton collaborator Jonny Depp) then it completely fits the definition. Victor chooses to stay with the Corpse Bride, even when he gets the opportunity to escape. And when the Corpse Bride comes looking for young Victor she brings along all the other dead humans she was sharing the afterlife with. These walking undead then proceed to reunite with their loved ones in the town, renewing their previous relationships. One woman even is reunited with her skeleton husband. Certainly we can infer these two lovers still have romantic feelings towards each other.

5.) The Incredibles

Super heroes are a rife source of things that are tough for a child to understand. There are tons of stories of some kid breaking a bone because he jumped off a roof trying to fly. But that’s not what the problem with the Incredibles is. The problem with the Incredibles is suicide.

The movie starts with a scene of Mr. Incredible doing the things that super heroes do. He saves a cat from a tree, he stops a bank robber, and he catches a man falling to his death. Except we learn that the man falling to his death wanted to die and would have succeeded were it not for the intervention of a super hero. This is a Pixar film and a man wants to take his own life.  Maybe that’s not too traumatic if a kid just watched the Corpse Bride and thinks the man would come back as a dancing skeleton. But more likely this will bring up all sorts of uncomfortable questions about depression and mortality. Especially when you see Mr. Incredible later in the film in a mental state probably not all that dissimilar to the man who jumped at the beginning of the film. 

Muslim Super Heroes

Recently in the news, Marvel comics announced that its new version of Ms. Marvel was going to be a young Muslim American girl. Needless to say, the media seemed to lose its mind. Some were hailing this move “as the first Muslim Super Hero” or the “first female Muslim Super Hero.” Basically the news media treated Marvel publishing a comic book about a Muslim character as the most groundbreaking event in human history. Sadly, like most things, the Media was extremely late to the party.

Dust from X-Men

Now before I go into depth about this subject I would just like to say, I am happy the new Ms. Marvel is Muslim. Comic books are a beloved source of entertainment for many people and the heroes in those books should be just as diverse and varied as the audience that loves them. My problem is the reaction people are having. I won’t even bother acknowledging the racists who I’m sure are screaming about her being “a terrorist” or any number of other slurs and insults. I already wrote an entry about racist comic book fans (see here). Frankly, those fans are beyond help. My problem is the people who see this as some novelty that they can exploit to write stories about “The First Muslim Super Hero.”

Night Runner

The truth is, there have been Muslim super heroes in comic books already. Quite a few in fact. Dust of the X-Men, a young woman who could turn her body into sand, was portrayed in a traditional burqa (the head to toe garb worn by many Muslim women). Night Runner, a member of Batman Incorporated who operated out Paris, was a parkour style fighter who was approached by Batman to be the Batman of France. There was even a retconning of the Captain America story that depicted a group of African American soldiers being injected with experimental versions of the super soldier serum before Steve Rogers ever was (in the Marvel miniseries Red, White and Black). One of the survivors of that program, Josiah Bradley, had a son who inherited his father’s super powered blood and became a hero named Justice. He also was a practicing Muslim. These are not obscure characters either. These characters appeared in the pages of the two major publishers. All of them long before Ms. Marvel did.

Another reason why I am perhaps miffed by this new Muslim hero is that they are essentially taking the name of a pre-existing hero and giving it to a new hero who fits a different social demographic. This was already done recently by DC comics with the hero Green Lantern. When Hal Jordan appeared to have died, his ring sought out the nearest eligible candidate to replace him. The ring found Simon Baz, a young Muslim American who was at the time being suspected of terrorism. As easily as the ring slipped on his finger, Simon Baz was accepted as the new Green Lantern. The problem is that the super hero identity then overshadows the person. It doesn’t matter who Simon Baz is because he’s just as replaceable as any Green Lantern (of which there are hundreds, six/seven from earth alone).

And there is the problem with calling this new hero Ms. Marvel. Ms. Marvel is a character that has been around for decades. Captain Carol Danvers received super powers from the hero Captain Marvel, an alien who was sent to earth to spy on it for his people but who instead decided to become a hero and protect the earth. Since her powers came from Captain Marvel, she decided to call herself Ms. Marvel. After adopting a couple of other identities over the years (Warbird, Binary), Carol finally adopted the title Captain Marvel and is currently featured in her own weekly title. Other characters have also adopted the name Ms. Marvel, one of them even being a super villain. So essentially this new Ms. Marvel is just one in a long line of heroes, easily replaceable should she not gain the admiration of the fans.

The truth is that I would much rather see a completely original character who is a Muslim American than to see an unused super hero name recycled to cash in on name recognition. And the simple reason is that is easier to sell a comic based on a recognizable name. Rather than come up with a new and original super hero identity for this young girl (which they have with her powers, background and family life), they are merely going to cash in on brand recognition (and perhaps a bit of controversy).

Update

Wow, I realize it has been a long time since I updated this blog. I have a good reason. It is not that I have given up writing, I've just been spending a lot time writing things that could earn me possibly money and/or exposure. Sadly that doesn't seem to be working. So I am going to start posting the articles I wrote for those other things on here. And hopefully get back to a semi-regular schedule of updating and adding entries to this blog.