Ben Hur

[den]

Today I bought the DVD of Ben Hur, and sat down to watch the Chariot Race. As you do! Why else would you buy Ben Hur?

The 14 year-old son of a friend wandered in, watched it for 30 seconds, and said:

"That's just a rip-off of the pod race in Phantom Menace."

I laughed at him, long and hard. He still doesn't get it.


(this marks a return to my innocuous and empty journalling style.)

Comments

[tatterdemalion.livejournal.com]

well posted that!

8-)

[tygermoonfoxx.livejournal.com]

*sighs* That's rather sad, actually.

I grew up on a variety of medium, including the classics. I'll bet the kid doesn't know who John Wayne is either and has never watched "Singing in the Rain".

[apel.livejournal.com]

LMAO

There's a time travel story in there somewhere.

Why I hate spoilers

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

Odd but true story:

When Phantom Menace first came out, there was the pre-release
media blitz. All the toys came out, the picture books, the
novels and everything. I tried to avoid looking at ANY of it
before I saw the movie.

So, I was standing in line at the grocery store, and there
was a model of the pod racer sitting on the candy shelf
(must have been put there by a customer who changed his/her
mind.)

I looked at the design and thought: "Gee, that's a *weird*
design."

I tried to ignore it and got my stuff.

At 3AM a few days later, I was having trouble sleeping and
my mind went back to the pod racer, only this time I was
thinking, "Gee that's a stupid design."

The engines don't appear to be permanently attached, or
certainly not very well attached. Transmitting the thrust
from the engines to the pod would be difficult, and consume
power that would otherwise go to the thrust. On top of that
it's got these ultra huge turbines, big enough to take it
supersonic like the British Thrust SSC Supersonic Car, *but*
it's an open topped vehicle so it can't go supersonic!

I then, sensibly, told myself that these designs were not
turned out by engineers, but by artists who probably had no
inkling or interest in making a cool design that made sence,
they just wanted a cool design.

But why could they want a cool design that looks like that!
It's like one of those silly Anime designs that's supposed to
look like something historical, like instead of a sensible
robot tank, they design a 50 foot tall combat robot that's
dressed in a Samurai suit.

Okay, so why the heck would they want to design something
that looks that way.

Then it hit me. It's a chariot. They're going to rip off
Ben-Hur's chariot race.

I groaned. I rolled over, and I didn't get any more sleep
that night.

And that's why I hate spoilers. ;)

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Kids today. ;)

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

You didn't enlighten the idiot child that the movie you were watching is decades older than Episode I? I'd have taken great pleasure in pointing out a number of obvious ways to tell that the movie was older, myself.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

I did! I told him it was made in the 60s and the special effects he was seeing were not computer generated. He was somewhat impressed but more embarrassed at being wrong.