"Eraser"
Latest Reflections from the Guild
(I haven't personally seen this movie yet so I haven't written a plot summary or done any brash reflections but you're welcome to add you nits and comments to the ones below.)
Reflections from the Guild
[Note from Phil: I have not verified these but they sounded good to me!]
Brian Lombard: "The first time we see Vanessa Williams, she wears a broach that is really a spy camera. She has it on her left lapel. In the next scene she's walking down a hall, and the broach now appears on her right lapel.
"Not really a nit, but the actor who played the colony leader in 'The Masterpiece Society' has a role in this film. He's a mafia union leader named Sal." (Note from Phil: I do this all the time. I see an actor and think, "Where have I seen them before? Where have I seen them before?" Nine times out of ten, I remember them from Star Trek!)
Phil Rutschman: "When the bartender (Eldon from Murphy Brown?) is taking off his vest before he goes to help Ahnold, there's a major continutity problem; first he's taking off the vest, then it's back on entirely, then it's back off."
Mike Trudell and Jeni Gordon: "1)When Arnold releases the door of a 727, the crew should have noticed the explosive decompression before the fire. The Oxygen masks should have been dangling in front of them.Also, a door warning light should have been illuminated. And, I'm surprised that more stuff didn't go flying out that door.
"2) The fire bottle discharge buttons for the fire bottles are below the fire lights, not above them in a Boeing 727.
"3) Emergency parachute rigs only have ONE parachute in them.(The container where arnold grabs the rig from is labeled " emergency parachute".)
"4) Ok, as two active skydivers and pilots, what would we do if we were at altitude, and a 727 was pointed at us? Woule we take the time to get our gun and shoot the dual paned windshield? NO. We would cut away, go into freefall, and pull again when we were lower, maybe when we were at 1000 or 2000 feet above ground. Experienced skydivers know what the ground looks line at 1000 and 2000 feet above it.
"5) Ok, so arnold's canopy goes through the rush of flame and lives. Still, he doesn't cut away, but gets instead into a wrap. (The canopy is wrapped around him) He has no hook knife to cut lines, and doesn't get big when the wrap first goes around him ( This is what I was taught to do when a wrap occurs as a canopy relative worker) He then gets the canopy off of him, struggles manfully with the reserve, even though this is a single operation system -- one handle to cut away AND deploy the reserve. Under this systen, there is only a brief delay between the main saying bye bye and the reserve saying hi. We were talking how to take a delay with a SOS systen, and the only way that we could think of is to only pull out the cutaway handle part of the way, release the main, and then pull it out the rest of the way to release the reserve. Are you really going to know how far to pull out the cutaway handle to only release the main when canopy is wrapped around you?
"6) And the best one of all, arnold lands under his MAIN, not his reserve. On a vector rig, which is what he was wearing, the main risers are the ones on top, with the yellow cutaway cables in them. So the rig that he was wearing was a two handle system. with different handles to cut away the main (It has the yellow cables that are so visible) and deploy the reserve. Also, in a vector rig, the reserve is the canopy on top, and when arnold faces the children, you can see that the top of the rig is full with a canopy. Besides, that landing looked like it HURT. Would he be walking, or would an ambulance be called?
Joseph Pintar: From what I saw, nobody caught the most obvious nit about the weapons at the center of the story. These weapons are supposed to travel at about the speed of light. I've heard that the film's producers insist that these weapons are real. When Siskel and Ebert reviewed this movie, they didn't believe it for a minute. Supposedly they think that bullets could not go at that speed. Let's say for a minute that these bullets can go at the speed of light. Arnold Schwarzenegger dodges these bullets with little difficulty. Either the bullets are slowing down just for Arnold or Arnold can move at the speed of light! I guess that's why he's getting $15-$20 million a movie. Another thing, why is Arnold putting a witness (the guy in the gay bar)in the protection program in clear and present danger? Isn't he needed for testimony? "
Alexander Shearer of Berkeley, CA: Well, the guns have more of a problem than just Arnold dodging lightspeed rounds. Conservation of momentum, for instance. If these weapons are accelerating a projectile (even a fairly small one) to near C, then that gun is going in the other direction (taking the gunman with it).
Also...what exactly are those scopes? They can see through everything except refrigerators - pretty cool.
Something I'd need someone with a bit more ballistics knowledge to confirm, but...can one or two handgun rounds really completely shatter thick, multilayer plexiglass of the kind used in high-volume water tanks (i.e. the alligator tank)?
Back to the guns - what was supposed to be powering them? Accelerating those aluminum (that's what they were, right?) rounds to near C would require quite a bit of energy. Modern rail guns, which already do extreme amounts of damage at much lower velocities, have big energy requirements.
Guns again - they don't do anywhere near enough damage. Rounds fired at rail gun velocities (or much, much faster if you accept the near-C premise) convert to plasma in transit, and are, regardless, loaded with kinetic energy (1/2mv^2 and all that). Even if the rounds are just little needles, they should be creating massive shockwaves on their entire flight path (as they go way past the speed of sound) and converting a whole swath of their impact area to plasma, shrapnel, and sickening combinations of the two.
I don't really remember anything else, as I've only seen the movie once. Awful thing.
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Copyright 1996 by Phil Farrand. All Rights Reserved.