Relationship with a computer.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Compare it with a masterpiece such as Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you can see why I called it "crap". Which is amusing, because I see this film was called by some a "satire of 2001".

I think poor production values destroy this film. But this also may be said of many mid-70s films.

I made it a point to watch A Space Odyssey when it first showed in theaters and fully expected to be dazzled. But it was mostly a huge disappointment for me... it didn't exactly rock my world to see those bits about the monolith, and the astronaut evolving into an embryo floating in space. I was an impressionable (easily dazzled) teenager, but even so that film came across to me as being pretentious... and I was surprised by my own reaction, because I knew I didn't have the same experience and knowledge as most adults. I was a science and science/fiction fan boy like a lot of boys were, but that grand exalted feeling I was supposed to experience never happened. What I felt instead was just the opposite... I actually felt somewhat embarrassed to be there in that theater.

I can give some pretentious self indulgence in a film a pass, as long as it's just a little bit and doesn't go on for too long. But in Space Odyssey it just seemed to go on and on and on... like the way propaganda films are designed to target the emotions, and get the viewer to experience some kind of euphoric high. I watched it again a few years ago on TV, and my opinion of that film hasn't changed.

Dark Star on the other hand managed to come across to me like a low budget film that was actually entertaining, but maybe that's just me. They managed to put together a bad (low brow?) film without it actually being all that bad. The 50 Foot Woman and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes were low budget films that were more deserving of being called bad films...

Anyway, as my wife is fond of saying whenever I express my opinion, "There's no accounting for taste." 🙂

Originally posted by Suzianne
Compare it with a masterpiece such as Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you can see why I called it "crap". Which is amusing, because I see this film was called by some a "satire of 2001".

I think poor production values destroy this film. But this also may be said of many mid-70s films.

2001 is one of the most tedious films ever made. Dark Star is brilliant. In this scene one of the crew talks bomb 20, a smart "thermostellar" bomb which launched incorrectly and is still connected to the ship, out of detonating on the basis of existential philosophical argument - luckily it's a smart bomb. Brilliant.

YouTube

Edit: Now that I've checked this is the same scene lemon lime posted. Should have checked.

Originally posted by DeepThought
2001 is one of the most tedious films ever made. Dark Star is brilliant. In this scene one of the crew talks bomb 20, a smart "thermostellar" bomb which launched incorrectly and is still connected to the ship, out of detonating on the basis of existential philosophical argument - luckily it's a smart bomb. Brilliant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch? ...[text shortened]... k

Edit: Now that I've checked this is the same scene lemon lime posted. Should have checked.

Dark Star was made in 1974, so bomb 20 (although fictional) could be deemed the very first smart bomb. 😀 Ha ha, little joke there, because bomb 20 was much smarter than the smart bombs we have today. But that was actually the problem with bomb 20... he was too smart.

The crew member managed to talk the bomb out of detonating by getting it involved in an intellectual discussion. And he was relieved when the bomb decided to give it more thought, but the crew member made the mistake of thinking the problem was solved... because the bomb hadn't actually decided not to detonate, it only decided to put off detonating until it was done with its intellectual pondering. (I could have sworn they were calling bomb 20 "Bob", so I'll have to listen to it again)
The last 8 minutes of the movie shows how this all plays out:

YouTube

So bomb goes back up through the bomb bay doors and continues to think about it, and does what a lot of us do if we get too caught up in philosophical meanderings... he reasons his way into justifying what he intended on doing in the first place. Granted, the reasoning rapidly becomes weird and disjointed, but it's somewhat realistic because who hasn't seen philosophical discussions go traipsing along down some weird looking rabbit holes? Not me, I haven't not seen that...

Anyway, while a crew member is trying to reason with the bomb one of the guys piloting the ship gets the bright idea to shoot out the pins holding the bomb to the ship. But the paranoid alien beach ball caretaker next to him freaks out and stops him, because he thinks he will miss the pins and shoot the bomb instead. But that solution probably would have worked, because the bomb was going to detonate no matter what.

I don't think the film was specifically a parody of 2001, because there were too many other themes being parodied... you had the alien (of course), you had the dumb paranoid guy who wasn't even supposed to be on the ship (Lost in Space), banter between crew members, crew members showing signs of boredom, etc. etc. I've forgotten most of the themes I had at one time identified...


I'm talking myself into watching the whole thing again on youtube. 🙂

Originally posted by OdBod
Given that progressively more people are conducting relationships on line, and computer programs are becoming increasingly more sophisticated, might there come a time when a relationship with a positively(supportive,creative non judgemental etc) programmed computer personality would be better for the human partner than a negative (judgemental,critical etc) "real" person?.

If a sophisticated enough android could be made where it could outwardly replicate everything a human can do (at least everything meaningful, which for most would exclude things like the ability to urinate), I could see people gravitating toward such a program.

If a relationship feels real enough to the point that we couldn't tell that it isn't real without being told, then I think for many people, such a relationship would be better than having one with a human.

Originally posted by DeepThought
2001 is one of the most tedious films ever made. Dark Star is brilliant. In this scene one of the crew talks bomb 20, a smart "thermostellar" bomb which launched incorrectly and is still connected to the ship, out of detonating on the basis of existential philosophical argument - luckily it's a smart bomb. Brilliant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch? ...[text shortened]... k

Edit: Now that I've checked this is the same scene lemon lime posted. Should have checked.

I believe the Star Trek TV series is the most entertaining of the science fiction.