Jump to content

JB0

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    13241

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by JB0

  1. JB0
    I too have an affinity for the original, but acknowledge it was going to be a hard design to sell to modern children. Thankfully, they didn't reinvent it as a big ball of bayformers-inspired scrap. And there is one thing I feel is a legitimate improvement. The red across the chest of the original lion Voltron tends to flow into the red lion and make it appear more important than the rest. I feel like removing that red from the chest removes that emphasis and makes them appear more equal.
  2. JB0
    That... that is a lot of steel. And a useful frame of reference.
  3. JB0
    That sounds right. Honestly, I think I like the new head unit(can I call it a pilder? Please?). It is appealing to a more modern anime aesthetic than the curvy Gypsy 1.0 head, but it works. And the straight "wings" work better for me than the old "over the shoulder" pieces.
  4. JB0
    So are you saying Isamu's presence CAUSES wars to break out? Because I would totally believe that.
  5. JB0
    Yes, it is.
  6. JB0
    Me too. I'm that jerk that always preferred Vehicle Voltron.
  7. JB0
    That is kind of how I feel about the Madking one, which really answers your question. I'd argue(and I believe I have previously) that the SoC doesn't make the Madking obsolete because they cater to completely different subsets of the market. One is for people that want the original toy, just with better proportions, more detail, and maybe some poseability if it isn't too much to ask. The other is for people that want a more stylized and modern re-imagining of the iconic robot. The Madking one will be obsoleted by a SoC of Legendary Defender Voltron.
  8. JB0
    So you're saying that body of water the ship was parked in might have been less of a lake and more of a septic tank? ... EWW.
  9. JB0
    I noticed the lack of ' as well. I was just too busy worrying about poor art direction to drop the grammar hammer, #go/go
  10. JB0
    No apologies necessary. I laughed. I'm just sure that featuring all the rangers could be done less... chaotically. The Avengers posters weren't the most exciting things in the world, but they did manage to fit everyone in without looking like an explosion in a Skittles factory. While I'm thinking about it... I PROBABLY would've gone for an homage to the original Power Rangers movie poster, with the side-view of all the ranger heads. It is simple, but it worked. And they are banking heavily on name recognition and nostalgia here. They can afford to do a simple poster, especially one that is such a strong callback to "the good old days". Alternatively, I'd follow up on the teaser posters the new movie had out earlier. Instead of a bunch of posters each featuring one ranger on a portion of their respective zord, put all five rangers on top of a portion of the megazord(much like the teaser posters, JUST ENOUGH robot that you can tell what they're standing on). And because I am an old fart, throw in that rainbow effect from the Star Trek Beyond: The Motion Picture poster, which actually makes SENSE for a Power Ranger poster. However, I definitely agree with the marketing campaign's move to keep the new megazord design a secret. It is, of course, already a failure thanks to the toy line, and was never going to last past the first screening, but... It is almost certainly going to be the climax of the movie and deserves to be seen first IN the movie. It shows a respect for what ought to be an awesome moment. I like that, and appreciate that they didn't decide to just break out the big guns for this poster. Also appreciated: The new poster isn't pushing "GO GO" as their marketing slogan anymore. That was an awkward choice from day one, and was largely a failed homage. "It's morphin time" works FAR better, even if it is hard to arrange prettily around a stylized lightning bolt*. I'm glad they laid that down in the one piece of clear space that poster has(and lined the T. Rex and pterodactyl heads up so they effectively underline it!). *And it doesn't escape my notice that "Power Rangers" feels pretty lopsided around that lightning bolt, especially as the text is styled. While it could be balanced better, that was always going to be a hard sell, aesthetically.
  11. JB0
    Trufax: I have a naked cart of Cosmo Genesis(US name: Star Voyager) that I bought just because I thought the label looked cool. http://www.mobygames.com/game/nes/star-voyager_/cover-art It is no Ninja Gaiden, but it looks nice on a shelf. Original NG games are all pretty sweet.
  12. JB0
    "Hybrid Emulation" Yeah, they are gonna have to define what that actually MEANS if they are gonna make grand claims.
  13. JB0
    Ugh. That is a terrible poster. So darn cluttered.
  14. JB0
    That chunky Prime looks, well, armored. A rare case where painting him white and calling him Ultra Magnus would be forgivable.
  15. JB0
    Man, I'm afraid to put the stickers on mine because I might get them crooked, and you're takin' your's out for a night on the town...
  16. JB0
    Funny, I was just watching Aika. It is a notably solid show for something sold on its pantyshots per minute ratio.
  17. JB0
    Helium coming out of your reactor would be a very poor heatsink on account of it being already full of heat. The heatsinking you were likely reading about was using supercooled liquid helium to strip away heat. A task at which it WOULD excel. Several real-world rockets already do something similar, wrapping the fuel and oxidizer lines around the engine. The liquid hydrogen and oxygen have to be preheated, so they take advantage of waste heat from the engine to do that instead of adding in a heater.It reduces complexity and engine temperature both in one shot. I see no reason a VF couldn't do something similar.
  18. JB0
    Honestly, I'm not sure how much more articulation you could add to the design without fundamentally altering the look. The design being an assemblage of big chunky blocks was always going to limit articulation. At some point, you just have to ask if you want a toy that looks like Voltron or a toy with best-in-class articulation, and I think they fell on the right side of that line.
  19. JB0
    Yeah, and it wasn't enough. My toy's box still had a dented corner. I would be upset if I collected MISB, but ... cardboard is cardboard, no damage to the actual toy. Of course, the outer Voltron sleeve is classy as heck. If I were gonna start making a big deal out of boxes, this is the box.
  20. JB0
    Terminator 2 said they had the skull, too, and though the internals were damaged, they learned a lot from it. Incidentally, a cut scene from the original film had a factory employee showing his boss a chip they pulled from in the debris, then a pan up to a sign over the factory that said "Cyberdyne Systems", so the idea was actually there from the start. That said, the arm was far from worthless. A compact, precise, durable, AND high-power electric motor would be far more useful in the short term than the computer stuff, especially for the era the original film was set in. To be honest, I think the servos in the T-800's hand are still ahead of modern electric motors. (Also, I like to imagine the T-800 ran on a garden-variety Motorola 6502, because I am weird. )
  21. JB0
    Actually, a lack of time to prepare is the implied problem, as weird as it sounds when you have a time machine. They make it clear in the first film.. the resistance had already breached Skynet's final defensive lines. The machines had effectively lost, it was all over but the killing. The time attack was a last-ditch gamble, and the humans took the time machine shortly after Skynet used it. There simply wasn't an opportunity to create a care package(also why Arnold doesn't have the parts for a plasma rifle stored in his fleshy gut). My impression is that Skynet was unaware of the causal loop, and thus didn't see the need to create itself by sending a terminator back. And lacking knowledge of the loop, it was ALSO taking a huge gamble that sending an omnicidal robot back in time to murder everyone named Sarah Conner and everyone that gets in the way would not somehow prevent the creation of Skynet. But enemies breached the gates, dead anyways, nothing to lose. Of course, if it DID know it needed to father itself, that would ALSO be a good reason not to nuke the entire town. (John Conner, by contrast, DID know about the causal loop thanks to Sarah. There are several statements by Kyle that, when put together, tell the viewer John knew Kyle was his father and was actively grooming him for the job... which is SUPER CREEPY.) My assumption with Terminator 2's setup is that the T1000 was loaded into the time machine immediately before or after the original T800, that all the time travel was done very rapidly on the future's side. And the last-ditch gamble shows again, as it was an unstable prototype.
  22. JB0
    Ditto. Mine arrived this morning. And I swear FedEx was trolling me. It made three stops before it moved south at all(I'm in Texas). And then they gave it to the USPS on friday night so it would sit in a warehouse all weekend.
  23. JB0
    I have heard people say they don't like the first movie. And my rule on time travel stories is simple: Pick one set of rules and stick to it, or be fun enough that I don't notice the writers aren't thinking four-dimensionally. From that perspective... The first Terminator film goes for predestination rules, and ruthlessly edits to make EVERYTHING fit that set of rules. There are a huge number of details packed in to reinforce the loop. It is, honestly, the single most consistent time travel story I can think of, and I give Cameron a lot of points for how well everything meshes. If I am going to pick at the first movie's depiction of time travel, I am going to ask what makes living tissue special, since only living tissue and the stuff inside living tissue can go through time(which is obviously a narrative conceit to stop Skynet from sending back a gigaton nuke and vaporizing the entire city to kill ALL the Sarahs). It just seems like a really odd rule. Sure, some people don't LIKE predestination, but it is as valid an approach as anything else until we actually build a time machine and figure the actual rules out. It is actually the LEAST weird way to handle non-mutiversal time travel, as horrifying as that is. Terminator 2 starts with that same premise(Skynet is based on the dead Terminator, and thus Skynet is its own grandfather), and then kicks that loop it to the side so they can create a happy ending by stopping Skynet from ever being created. Unanswered is "if Skynet is never created and war with the machines never happens, then who sent back the Terminators to kill Sarah and John, who sent back Kyle Reese to protect Sarah, who killed all those innocent bystanders, and who got Sarah pregnant with John? And wait, did they just say Skynet was invented BECAUSE it sent a Terminator back in time how does that even work if Skynet was never created because they blew up the terminators Skynet created?" But we don't really care about these questions because "EVERYTHING BLOWS UP TWICE AND DUDE THAT COP ROBOT JUST TURNED HIS ARM INTO A SWORD MADE OF MERCURY WAIT DID HE JUST WALK THROUGH THE JAIL BARS LIKE A PUDDING MAN THIS IS AWESOME!" It is not very consistent and has huge holes, but it is fun enough that no one cares. Terminator 3 takes on the thankless task of making the two movies mesh by applying a modified predestination rule where the details can change but the major points are immutable. It is only partially successful, and it kind of upset a lot of people when it ended with everyone getting nuked because Judgement Day wasn't avoidable. (Trufax: When I saw the movie in the theater, the guy behind me shouted "This is bullsh!t" at the screen when the missiles started flying. It was a memorable moment.) Apparently, Genisys implies that each successive time travel instance connects to a new parallel timeline, which DOES resolve the awkward questions about what happens when you change the future(since any travelers are from Universe Alpha, Universe Beta's future has no effect on them). Quantum physics saves the day! Sort of... See, multiversal time travel ALSO means that you can't really change the future. You are creating a new timeline with a better future, sure, but the old one continues to exist just as sucky as ever(unless the creation of a new timeline destroys the old one, in which case you KILL EVERYONE when you use your time machine). You are doing charity work for another world, and as far as your buddies back home can tell, you got vaporized and died when that alleged time machine activated(if they survive your trip). And no one wants to deal with a multiverse that works the way reality implies it does. The double-slit experiment that implied the existence of parallel universes ALSO implied that they observably interact with our own. THAT gives me more headaches than any time loop ever did(especially when you get into the more complex variants of the experiment, where it starts seeming like the world behaves differently if people are watching it than if they aren't). Time travel is hard to write, but CAN be done coherently. Just saying "continuity is impossible because time travel" is the easy way out, and I'd rather obsess over the details for days on end(which is probably not healthy, but I already know I'm crazy).
  24. JB0
    I prefer the first movie too. It seems to be a minority opinion, though. I suppose the general impression I get is actually less "I didn't like The Terminator" and more "I never saw a reason to watch it when I already had Judgement Day, which is better in every way". It feels like for most people, the franchise simply begins with T2. Which is oddly appropriate, given that the sequels take most of their inspiration from the second film.
  25. JB0
    Yeah, that was a big problem even with The Second Raid. It was depressing as heck, and the cliffhanger ending didn't help matters.
×
×
  • Create New...