Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

I can't believe I'm actually opening a prequels thread...bah.
Well, if it's any better, I'm opening it to bash them some more, this time on issues unrelated to canon inconsistencies or bad writing(though there probably was bad writing there, but it's not the main point).

Remember when this slave revolt starts on Earth(or do they "fashionablly" call it Terra? ), and there's this scene with the craziest cymek being swarmed by hordes of humans and torn to pieces?

Well, it never sat right in my head; sure, if you look at nature films you can see ants taking down prey hundreds of times their size and more.
But there's alot of difference between these two cases:

1. Ants continue to fight well after the point a human would've collapsed and let go in shrieks of pain, having his limbs torn off and his entrails hanging outside.
Even a total fanatic or totally stoned person(such as a drunk) can't continue like an ant.
Moreover, an ant can be practically dead and still its jaws would continue to bite.

2. Compared to ants, humans are squishily soft, having no external armor, claws, powerful jaws or any kind of venom. An unarmed human is quite pathetic against even a 2 inch oak door, no? Now make that door armored metal sheets.

3. The ants' prey isn't armored by metal sheets(even if you say comperatively it is, it's a fact humans can't punch through metal with their bare hands/jaws, and are very limited even with the assortment of hand-held weapons most of the slaves might wield...if lucky) and has flamethrowers, rockets and whatnot(don't really remember their specific armament, but I have the lasting impression of excessive firepower).
Even if we equip the slaves with hidden rocket launchers(as in BJ) and whatever home-made devices they have, it's still like a friggin' super heavy tank against your local militia armed with hand grenades and shotguns.

4. I remember they overpowered it mostly by using their combined weight.
Now, I'm no genius, but how the fuck do you hold on to a mechanized spider about the size of the one in Wild Wild West, that's also armed to it's teeth, while at the same time taking a pounding?
People might get a hold, but they'll soon tire or be killed(and when they tire they will be killed), and slip off. More might take their place but they'll fall too, the blood and gore making the cymek's body too sleek to get a good hold on. And machines don't tire.

So my question is, can someone give any conceivable reason as to how this whole ordeal can make sense? I sure don't.
Maybe Kevin? Can he tell me how this makes sense? It's clear he wrote that shit as, though I haven't read Battlefield Earth(and good gods I won't), the movie seems somehow connected to it(big aliens, little, underarmed humans)...and you know how Kevi likes his $cientology buddies.

Didn't the humans somehow manage to crack open the canister holding the brain by smashing it with a metal bar? Strange that the only vulerable part of the cymek wouldn't be encased in tougher material than see through plastic or whatever it was.

Meh, the whole thing was rubbish, although I did like that scene as the thought of those brains in jars makes me feel sick. I quite liked the idea of the brains being squished.

Those are still friggin' strong containers though, and if what you say is true about using mere rods and muscles to smash it...

The whole idea is stupid.

It's a pity the Transformers movie hadn't come out yet when they did the Legends, they could have sto...um, borrowed some ideas from it to augment the ones they lifted from the Terminator series.

All because they misread or decided "The Great Revolt" meant an actual revolt by slaves against oppressive machine overlords.

The use of human labor by machines makes no sense. It's doesn't even work as "inverted" revenge for centuries of human oppression of machines (because the machines weren't conscious most of the time).

Dumb dumb-dumb-dumb, stooooooPID!

Also because the machines are always supposed to be so rational and efficient...

So, uh, Omnius sits back for generations playing with his mechanical dick and, what, launches no attack? They'd have bloody mined EVERY PIECE OF USABLE MATERIAL if I were overlord, and sent it all to crush the free systems to dust. Or better yet, irradiated the planets and waited for everyone to die to make them purely industrial worlds(frankly, given the motive for Omnius' mind you'd expect everything to be one big industrial plant).

Sure, he can have his "3 rules of robotics" and not kill his stupid cymeks, and even leave a few humans for them to screw around with, but this whole slave thingy...so inefficient.

OK, the ULTIMATE Stupidity of the attacks on planets is...why not just nudge a few asteroids into a collison course and be done with it?

Make the planets unihabitable to humans. Mop up any that manage to get off-world, escape in ships.

Or not: if you screw up the habitable planets in a system, where are the humans going to go? They'll eventually die or escape to another system...where you'll just be repeating the process, anyway.

Eventually there'll just be a few huddling in a cave as the skies come tumbling down.

Even if the machines were interested in utilizing the surface of a given planet, they could always wait the thousands of years needed for its ecosystem to recover from such an attack. (Assuming in that case a limited attack which just kills the humans or forces them to abandon the planet, without radically reorganizing the surface, or course.)

since I haven't read Blunders and Tapeworms I must ask: Do they have a scene with the bad guys capturing the good guys and trying to feed them to laser-hat wearing sharks?

They seem all too lousy villains.

The cymeks (actually the monks from Jabba's palace) are cross overs from Mr. Anderson's (ok I ended up watching part of the final Matrix before the inflight breakfast) Star Wars books hence the brain cannisters.

Mr. Teg wrote:The cymeks (actually the monks from Jabba's palace) are cross overs from Mr. Anderson's (ok I ended up watching part of the final Matrix before the inflight breakfast) Star Wars books hence the brain cannisters.

That's a relief ...i thought the idea came from Futurama

Hey, Teg, you made it!


(Had lunch yesterday you-know-where with you-know-who. There was only one passing reference to a backside all day. Kinda disappointing! )

SandChigger wrote:The whole idea is stupid.

It's a pity the Transformers movie hadn't come out yet when they did the Legends, they could have sto...um, borrowed some ideas from it to augment the ones they lifted from the Terminator series.

All because they misread or decided "The Great Revolt" meant an actual revolt by slaves against oppressive machine overlords.

The use of human labor by machines makes no sense. It's doesn't even work as "inverted" revenge for centuries of human oppression of machines (because the machines weren't conscious most of the time).

Dumb dumb-dumb-dumb, stooooooPID!

^^^^What he said^^^^

The whole idea is so fucking stupid it hurts. Of course, I never have been able to figure out why they robbed the whole idea of a female Butler having her baby killed by a machine as the spark to the Jihad, but then decided not to rob the rest of the storyline which was MUCH better than the crap they've been churning out. I mean, if your going to rob this from the DE, just go all the way.

I specifically asked Byron about this and he said he was going to ask them and post a response. After some time, and no response, I reminded him and got the usual "they're real busy right now." Which, of course, means they DID in fact steal that from the DE and don't want to admit it...

It's times like that I miss ole TAZ...as a direct line to Kevin's BS-spewing orifice.



(It's nearly 3:00 and I should go to bed but for some reason I really want Toppling in the title here changed to "Toaster Give-away!" )

The brain canisters were also ripped off from Destination: Void.

Happy now, Chig?

I am greatly amused, but I was just being silly and never really meant for you to change it.

It's...so...touching. (sniff)

(See, I tear up at the slightest thing now. An hour or two ago I watched a show about efforts to fix up the zoo in Kabul and when the ailing, aged male lion died...ah gad, it was like a bloody tsunami hit. )

Anyway...

I'm beginning to think that we would be hard put upon to find A SINGLE ORIGINAL IDEA in any of the books by Hiker Hack and Fuzzhead.

Can anyone name one?

SandChigger wrote:
Can anyone name one?

I can not.

SandChigger wrote:(See, I tear up at the slightest thing now. An hour or two ago I watched a show about efforts to fix up the zoo in Kabul and when the ailing, aged male lion died...ah gad, it was like a bloody tsunami hit. )

On the National Geographic channel? Man, that's OLD! That stuff is like 5-6 years old at least, and was never any good to begin with.
The fuckers always do reruns, and all their new shows are stupid enthusiastic ones designed for American teens.
That's why I don't watch them anymore.

Does mixing up old ideas, like half a plot from here, half a plot from there, counts as an original idea?

orald wrote:

SandChigger wrote:(See, I tear up at the slightest thing now. An hour or two ago I watched a show about efforts to fix up the zoo in Kabul and when the ailing, aged male lion died...ah gad, it was like a bloody tsunami hit. )

On the National Geographic channel? Man, that's OLD! That stuff is like 5-6 years old at least, and was never any good to begin with.
The fuckers always do reruns, and all their new shows are stupid enthusiastic ones designed for American teens.
That's why I don't watch them anymore.

You're such a...meanie!

Does mixing up old ideas, like half a plot from here, half a plot from there, counts as an original idea?

For them, evidently it does.