Oh, yeah, Movie Night happened
Feb. 8th, 2009 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaWe ended up watching Eagle Eye, which was a disposable popcorn action flick, on Thursday. I enjoyed it, in a superficial sort of way, largely because I like Rosario Dawson as an actress and Billy Bob Thornton did a good job with the bully-on-our-side character. (And I have an odd fascination with Shia LaBeouf. I keep thinking someone cloned John Cusack and replaced his clever wordplay and comic timing with better physical reflexes. (Poor trade, IMHO.) Their voices are even pretty close.)
As a plot, it was entirely recycled - three parts WarGames, two parts Portal, and one part 2001. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing original in it, either. I did have two questions, though:
1) The story clearly takes place in, at the farthest, the very near-future - cell phone designs are all contemporary, as are all the vehicles. So why is it that when people find out about ARIA, no one's first reaction is "Holy crap, a Turing-complete AI!" or the equivalent? Everyone takes the fact that the government owns an AI who clearly passes a Turing test for the first third of a film in stride, merely being astonished at her capabilities. Is this a universe where AI has existed for some time? If not, why doesn't the mere fact of her existence blow everyone away?
2) Now, look, I'll ship anything and everything, and I didn't find much shipping potential in the film anywhere, except possibly Agent Perez and Major Bowman. Suddenly a fully-fledged romantic subplot erupts in the last five minutes of the film, completely out of nowhere, between two characters who have shown negative chemistry over the rest of the film. Utterly baffling. Where did that come from? I hope that this is merely some awkwardness between two characters who shared a really intense experience and don't know how to deal with the connection between them that exists because of that shared experience - the language of romantic gesture is all they have for "you spared/saved my life/my son's, and I'm grateful beyond words."
As a plot, it was entirely recycled - three parts WarGames, two parts Portal, and one part 2001. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing original in it, either. I did have two questions, though:
1) The story clearly takes place in, at the farthest, the very near-future - cell phone designs are all contemporary, as are all the vehicles. So why is it that when people find out about ARIA, no one's first reaction is "Holy crap, a Turing-complete AI!" or the equivalent? Everyone takes the fact that the government owns an AI who clearly passes a Turing test for the first third of a film in stride, merely being astonished at her capabilities. Is this a universe where AI has existed for some time? If not, why doesn't the mere fact of her existence blow everyone away?
2) Now, look, I'll ship anything and everything, and I didn't find much shipping potential in the film anywhere, except possibly Agent Perez and Major Bowman. Suddenly a fully-fledged romantic subplot erupts in the last five minutes of the film, completely out of nowhere, between two characters who have shown negative chemistry over the rest of the film. Utterly baffling. Where did that come from? I hope that this is merely some awkwardness between two characters who shared a really intense experience and don't know how to deal with the connection between them that exists because of that shared experience - the language of romantic gesture is all they have for "you spared/saved my life/my son's, and I'm grateful beyond words."
