I assumed he was because Jim called it a Mel Gibson movie, but I see he just wrote and directed it. Somehow this doesn't fill me with an appreciably larger desire to watch it.

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Science is like sex. Sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.
-- Richard Feynman

Magnetic shoes. I think the novel even mentioned that the Russians used them.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

They're not acting like they have magnetic shoes, they're acting like there is gravity. Leaning against a console, or sitting in the parts storage corridor with your shoes up, like Floyd does, kind of shatters the illusion of magnetic shoes.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

I didn't say they did it well.

And don't forget that parts of the ship did have spin-gravity, for a while.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

The first scene with the two astronauts walking on the pod bay door wall is great, but the only part of the Discovery that has spin gravity normally is the centerfuge, and it isn't shown at all in 2010 (obviously because it would have been too expensive a set to reconstruct - pitty).

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

You are being ironic, right???

Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome was kind of fun, but it's mostly a rehash of Mad Max II: The Road Warrior. The best things about MM III were Tina Turner and, well, the Thunderdome.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

"Two men enter! One man leaves!
Two men enter! One man leaves!
Two men enter! One man leaves!"

That's some fine, grade-A cheesy '80s cinema there, and it has aged to perfection.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

For that matter, try to compare the movie A Clockwork Orange to the novel, Kubrick and Burgess also have wildly different ideas about what it is to be human.

Ok, it didn't help that he based his script on the American version of the novel where the last chapter had been left out, so he invented his own ending which helped to make it look like he had totally misunderstood the novel.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Even if you dismiss 99.9% of the run from the movie, the fight sequence in Thunderdome still ranks WAY up near the top as one of the most original and best choreographed fight sequences in any movie.

Heck, I doubt Darth Bonebrain lighting off his double ended glowbat managed to unseat it.

Of course, to me, Thunderdome was probably the most candy-butted of the series, much less raw than the previous two. What with the kids and all, it felt like a post-apocalyptic Disney movie...

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Was that the thing with the bungees?

It's been many years since I saw it. In my memory it was just a generic arena scene - which struck me as implausible at the time because the audience seemed unconcerned that any one of them (including the boss man) might get killed in the course of the fight.

Next time it's on I'll check it out - perhaps I failed to give it due appreciation. But I certainly don't feel that my life has been enriched by the film.

That made no impression either. I haven't even bothered to watch the third prequel.

Yes.

To point #1 (doing it this way, because the lack of stack quoting on this forum makes responses difficult without losing context): Yeah, that was it. As for the danger, consider the environment. Civilization is on its last legs, people aren't exactly impressed by the value of their own lives anymore, they just want a little excitement before they die.

To #2: Don't blame you. These scenes don't exactly appeal to the higher brain functions.

To #3: Well, we agree on that, at least.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

I meant the Russian ship (forgot the name, it's been a long time since I saw either one)

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

The Leonov has gravity problems too. People on the bridge act as if it has full gravity throughout the movie except for one scene where Floyd suddenly puts a pen in mid-air and it stays there.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Yeah, we just talked about that a few posts back.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I just watched it tonight (2001). When I first saw it I was 11 years old. But after reading the book as an adult, I understand it. I consider it the best science fiction movie ever made.

Star Wars, IMHO, is not science fiction, it is a space opera that was based on a Kurosawa 1950s samurai movie called "The Hidden Fortress"

According to Lucas, it's also largely based on the old movie serials, and having seen more than a few of those, I'm inclined to believe him. That said, if it's got FTL travel, it's science fiction.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

So if I write a story about a giant swan that can fly to another star in a few minutes, that's FTL travel and I've written science fiction?

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Depends how you handle it. Asimov's story "Pate' de Fois Gras" was about a goose that laid golden eggs.

On the other hand, imagine goose droppings from here to Alpha Centauri.

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

I just call Star Wars mythology and live with that.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

I think it's pretty obvious Star Wars is basically a fairy tale with a flashy setting. After all, it begins with "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away."

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Presumably the bridge had the same grip shoe technology that was widely shown in 2001.

Leonov had spin gravity, but in the form of modules on the end of rotating arms, possibly a kroe ptractial arrangment than the wheels in 2001.

Jon

I'm going to have to go watch the movie again, but I seem to remember actors leaning against things and even papers lying on the briefing table, which is why it was so startling to me when Floyd just puts a pen in mid-air.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

I haven't seen it in a long time either. But I seem to remember that he drops his glasses onto the table just before he floats the pen. Strange thing that zero-gravity.

LOL. That's definitely not true! Heywood Floyd is only seen wearing glasses on Earth.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Oh cripes, here comes the "real" science fiction crowd...don't clip your nose on the airlock hatch.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Space operas are science fiction.

I have a pretty inclusive definition of science fiction. If it has advanced technology--doesn't matter if it's actually possible--it's sci-fi. Doesn't matter if there's The Force, magic, or whatever on top of that; it's still science fiction, but, if that's the case, it's also science fantasy.

I consider superhero stuff to be sci-fi--at least those whose fantastical elements aren't magic.
Superman can fly because he's Kryptonian? Sci-fi. G'vorn the Terrible can fly because he's a sorcerer? Fantasy.

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If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

Alright, I've looked at my DVD of 2010 again. The problems with the scene are:
Floyd runs onto the bridge (or at least a good trot). That doesn't seem likely with magnetic shoes in zero-g.
Then he leans on consoles throughout his conversation with the russian captain.
Then he picks up the two pens to represent the Discovery and Leonov from where they were lying on a console in the middle of the bridge, without any visible effort to "detatch" them from the console.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

If a story just has the trappings of science fiction, but the story could be told without them, I wouldn't consider it science fiction. For instance, if instead of a horse, a guy uses a spaceship, and if instead of a six-gun he has a ray-gun, and if instead of going between towns in the "West" he goes between towns in different solar systems, it's still a Western.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Now, I'd call those both fantasy. "Kryptonian" is just another way of giving someone fantastic powers with no real explanation. Then again, I don't consider Skiffy ("sci-fi") to be science fiction either. Mind you, there is fantasy I like. It's like the discussion of Steampunk: That's fantasy too.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser