221–230 of 388 posts
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I have never watched the directors cut of any movie. This will be my first.
Director’s cuts and Director’s (and actor’s) commentaries are a good reason to still buy physical media.
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> The part that I could never get over is that the discrimination against the main character actually made sense. He's trying to hide his heart condition to go in an important space mission. That's the part I also couldn't ever get over. He's shown to have a serious heart condition, and then cheats his way onto a space mission? Yes sure, discrimination bad and all that but— that's a human judgement. In actual fact, h…
Those are great points. To follow the argument: is a lion selfish when she kills a gazelle? To me, the story is about individual struggle. Even if his behaviour is selfish, his life is richer than if he accepted the imposed limitations by others (imagine how boring that story would be, why is that). In a way, he is following nature‘s rules (survival of the fittest), instead of the arbitrary deterministic society rule…
no he isn't, he is merely exploiting the compassion of the society of the fittest that temporary allowed the less fit/ gifted /engineered to still live / work near them and infiltrate at the right time
-- it's got a bit of that a heist/noir of criminal cat and mouse
Vincent uses criminal connections to pull the entire scheme off (the german), just like a bank heist in a film it feels fun for reasons that don't work without a movie's magic 'genre' control of tone/sympathy/agency etc.
similar to other problems we have today where 'compassion' politics actually harms the fittest members most
An old homeless loony stabbing a brilliant healthy young person today isn't a show of the former's fitness, it's because (there are other incentives for the) the fittest of society (elites) choose to not wipe out/exile/enslave the unfit for various reasons (inextricable from the society itself--labor dynamics, crime and fear being useful, christian virtue, etc)
Gattaca in the opening even says it's only because he was born in the 'early stages' of the transition
Actual 'meritocracy' safety and other values require ruthlessness and violence, which we already have as all states do, just distrubuted in one configuration (gattaca) versus another configuration (chaotic US today, versus say the safety of singapore, or dictatorship of north korea, or some other gattaca 2.0 where the Vincents aren't born at all because fertility is managed)
A society can distribute its coercion/violence/reward structure in different ways, vincent is just a defector in a trust game
Always reminds me of that lame smug 'Feynman negging woman at a bar' anecdote, how is defecting on social norms clever? that's literally the point of lying/cheating/stealing/littering etc, one individual wins a temp game at the harm of the environment / culture long term. Once a few men are rude / cads, reputation of the place declines and fewer girls show up, or only certain types and not others, etc. A higher status guy like F can avoid/internalize the social ding of resentment from others who lose out of the good vibe/meeting someone cool while he's there, but can't tell him off.
Managing mini social games everywhere is 'culture' and essentially the reason infinite invisible class norms are so 'stifling' and invisible at once, it excludes the riff-raff and keeps those included people on their toes, behaving in a way that makes the place/group/experience "rich" rather than the vincent-like 'richness' of just maxing his own experience at cost of group.
(essentially why costume dramas are so fun to watch for girls (me included, I just don't lie to myself lol) as a guilty pleasure that doesn't feel like a guilty pleasure (you claim it's high status reasons -- the set design, jane austen, the history, so well written!!! etc) -- But the ideology of the genre of the movie itself does all the heavy lifting on cost of the 'nice things' you're not allowed to advocate for or admit to yourself you want as an elite experience missing from our lives today (the fantasy of *extreme social exclusion* so only the very pretty, very rich, and very witty girls can join the tea party-- as well as enjoy the courtship dance pre-filtered by only worthy rich/pretty/witty men :) Genre expectations let you relax, they 'hold the space' ideologically. Real life is social chaos of competing norms and suspicion and low trust, that's the price... But I digress
Once they find out Vincent's fraud, next years space program is gonna have to be even more draconian, annoying rules for all coworkers because of him... Maybe all the fellow blue-collars will get fired too.
'we live in a society'
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I never understood that. I don't think the movie is clear exactly what happens, but he... does swim back, right? Or does he just flounder and rely on his brother bringing him back?
Also, he quite likely _does_ die in space. Which figuratively but very directly represents not leaving anything for the swim back. There is room to square the main message of the movie about transcending limits with Gore Vidal's line (something like) "No one exceeds his potential... It would simply mean we had failed to accurately assess it in the first place." Maybe he makes it back, maybe he doesn't, but he goes, d…
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"I am not sure why you would associate eugenics with genocide." Historically eugenics has included some mistreatment of those with undesired traits, upto and including genocide.
Historically chemistry has been used to produce Zyklon B. Doesn't mean chemistry is bad.
Eugenics… well, we can see the theoretical benefits of things like ending sickle cell anaemia outside malarial regions, but we're starting from really huge negative points because it turned out that racist people found it to be a really convenient justification for genocide, and sadly genocides get attempted so often[0] that it's probably not going to be possible to dissociate the two.
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I watched the cinema version and found it outstanding. What are the changes in the director's cut?
The main reason director's cut is recommended for first-time viewers is theatrical version having an intro that reveals many elements. That said the list of all the differences is quite extensive: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/alternateversions/ .
This happened accidentally with Memento [0], it it became an incredible film. Without all that setup in the first scene, you exist with the protagonist as he discovers his world.
I've tried it with other films and they give away too much information, you the viewer are practically handed the whole script.
Give it a shot, you might like doing it that way.
I though about this movie a lot going through IVF with my wife. Particularly when selecting the embryo to implant. For those that don’t know: With IVF, the doctor harvests as many eggs from the woman as possible. Then after taking the make sample and cleaning, selecting the semen with best modality , fertilize each embryo. Then let the embryo grow for a couple of days then freeze the embryo until it’s ready to be imp…
https://www.businessinsider.com/pronatalism-elon-musk-simone...
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TOS had famously low budget fake "high school theater" quality sets. They are only tolerated because the story is good.
Keep in mind people originally watching TOS were likely doing so on black and white TVs with a 10"-13" screen ten feet away. The sets looked no worse than Forbidden Planet, a theatrical release from a decade prior. Modern high definition scans of the original film looks hilariously bad on modern TVs. It looked far less bad on TVs contemporary with the original broadcasts.
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The one I didn't really understand was "It's too late for that. We're closer to the other side."
I thought it was a large lake or inlet, and it would take less effort to keep swimming to the land at the other side than it would to turn around and swim back to the start.