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jupiter ascending
So I went to see Jupiter Ascending to celebrate Pi Day.
WHY DIDN'T THE INTERNET WARN ME THAT WAS A HARD SF MOVIE.
Like. Seriously. I got to the point where they explained why the extraterrestrial love interest looked like Channing Tatum and it made sense and did not throw out evolutionary science, and after that point that movie could have betrayed me a LOT and I would have forgiven it, BECAUSE DO YOU KNOW HOW RARE THAT IS, and then it continued to BE SCIENCE-BASED and NOT BETRAY ITS OWN WORLDBUILDING.
DO YOU KNOW HOW RARE IT IS FOR AN SF MOVIE TO NEVER BETRAY ITS OWN WORLDBUILDING AND STICK TO 100% HARD SF CONCEPTS? THAT MOVIE TOOK TWO HARD SCIENCE IDEAS, "GENETIC ENGINEERING IS A THING" AND "SPACE IS REALLY REALLY BIG" AND THEN JUST LET THAT BUILD TO ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSION. IT WAS BETTER HARD SF THAN GRAVITY OMG.
yeah yeah sexy wolf-men with gravity boots whatever but OMG SCIENCE. SHE IS THE CHOSEN ONE JUST BECAUSE THE MATHS WORK OUT THAT EVENTUALLY THERE WOULD HAVE TO BE A CHOSEN ONE BECAUSE WHEN THE NUMBERS GET THAT BIG EVERYTHING HAPPENS. MATH.
There are a bunch of ways I just expect a movie to betray me eventually and watching it is sort of like just counting down until the inevitable betrayal and this movie kept NOT DOING THAT. The internet had warned me about most of them so I was prepared to maybe not be betrayed in the standard ways? BUT NOBODY WARNED ME ABOUT THE SCIENCE. NOBODY WARNED ME THAT THIS WAS A REALLY SMART MOVIE BY PEOPLE WHO REALLY LOVE THE "SCIENCE" IN SF AND TRUST THE AUDIENCE TO ALSO BE SMART. WHY DID YOU NOT WARN ME.
that was a really good choice to celebrate pi day.
WHY DIDN'T THE INTERNET WARN ME THAT WAS A HARD SF MOVIE.
Like. Seriously. I got to the point where they explained why the extraterrestrial love interest looked like Channing Tatum and it made sense and did not throw out evolutionary science, and after that point that movie could have betrayed me a LOT and I would have forgiven it, BECAUSE DO YOU KNOW HOW RARE THAT IS, and then it continued to BE SCIENCE-BASED and NOT BETRAY ITS OWN WORLDBUILDING.
DO YOU KNOW HOW RARE IT IS FOR AN SF MOVIE TO NEVER BETRAY ITS OWN WORLDBUILDING AND STICK TO 100% HARD SF CONCEPTS? THAT MOVIE TOOK TWO HARD SCIENCE IDEAS, "GENETIC ENGINEERING IS A THING" AND "SPACE IS REALLY REALLY BIG" AND THEN JUST LET THAT BUILD TO ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSION. IT WAS BETTER HARD SF THAN GRAVITY OMG.
yeah yeah sexy wolf-men with gravity boots whatever but OMG SCIENCE. SHE IS THE CHOSEN ONE JUST BECAUSE THE MATHS WORK OUT THAT EVENTUALLY THERE WOULD HAVE TO BE A CHOSEN ONE BECAUSE WHEN THE NUMBERS GET THAT BIG EVERYTHING HAPPENS. MATH.
There are a bunch of ways I just expect a movie to betray me eventually and watching it is sort of like just counting down until the inevitable betrayal and this movie kept NOT DOING THAT. The internet had warned me about most of them so I was prepared to maybe not be betrayed in the standard ways? BUT NOBODY WARNED ME ABOUT THE SCIENCE. NOBODY WARNED ME THAT THIS WAS A REALLY SMART MOVIE BY PEOPLE WHO REALLY LOVE THE "SCIENCE" IN SF AND TRUST THE AUDIENCE TO ALSO BE SMART. WHY DID YOU NOT WARN ME.
that was a really good choice to celebrate pi day.
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It's the 'only human' thing that needs explaining. Because there is absolutely no reason people who didn't evolve on earth should even be vaguely humanoid, much less genetically compatible. Usually writers either ignore it (which is okay if you're not going for hard SF) or mutter something about convergent evolution (which might explain 'generally humanoid'. But not 'looks like channing tatum' - look at a thylacine picture sometime, they're a great example of convergent with wolves, but while generally wolf-ish, it's in a very uncanny valley way, and they even started on the same planet) OR 'the earth was seeded ages ago by a pre-existing humanoid race' (which is what, e.g., Star Trek went for.)
The problem with that one is that there is a TON of scientific evidence that humans evolved here on earth from a long line of well-described native earth creatures. So when you blithely go 'oh, well, extraterrestrial colonists' you're not just ignoring science, you're playing RIGHT into the hands of Creationists who really like having a population who is primed to go 'oh we can just ignore that human evolution is REALLY well documented because that's inconvenient for us.' And then Melannen gets pissed at you because you're not just ignoring science you are ACTIVELY playing onto the hands of the enemies of science whether you realize it or not.
And so many sf media lately have gone for that! and I was totally expecting it from JA! And Sean Beein' started to talk about how the human race isn't from earth and I braced myself! But clearly somebody on the writing team said 'look this is SF we can't just ignore the evolutionary record' so he was like 'yeah they found a planet with compatible biochem and then caused a targeted mass extinction and have spent hundreds of millions of years subtlely directing the evolution of the native mammals to make them match closely enough' and I was like OMG THEY WENT THERE WITH OUT INVALIDATING ALL OF PALEONTOLOGY and after that I would have forgiven them a LOT. But I mostly didn't have to!
Eta: and I actually think that's part of the whole 'this feels like every girl's first fanfic' thing? Because, like, idk, have you seen that tumblr post with the AO3 cap about 'everything here is made up except the bit about the newts that was all 100% accurate'? Because hell yes when we write our secret space princess fantasies we do our damn research.
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I'm dead of laughter. You're awesome.
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The bit about making buff shirtless wolfboys.
"Yeah they found a planet with compatible biochem and... OMG they went there without invalidating all of paleontology"
For-real hard SF is soooo rare in movies, and to have it include my favorite branch of science (biology) is making this fangirl weak.
Clearly nerdhusband and I must watch Jupiter Ascending on DVD.
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