Lets create a Sci-Fi action movie

[Zor]

Inspired by the "lets create a Zombie flick" we had a while ago. Lets throw around some ideas for an awesome sci-fic action flick...

1-There is a USMC General and Royal Navy Admiral played by R. Lee Irving and Patrick Stewart respectively
2-The main team in the movie uses suits of Power Armor toating heavy machine guns with underslung rocket launchers
3-The movie starts off with a scene about an idyllic small town in america about to be bulldozed by a heartless corperation for some reason, over the next couple of minutes they rally a protest to sand against the evil corperate thugs in there bulldozers and just as there about to start singing there protest songs, Zombies come out and attack everone and in the chaos, the main team is introduced and proceed to obliterate the entire town, which the team leader then claims to the General that there was some "unavoidable collateral damage"

Zor

[LadyTevar]

I think you mean R. Lee ERMEY of MailCall (amongst other things). But he's no general... he's just a Gunny.

[Zor]

I think you mean R. Lee ERMEY of MailCall (amongst other things). But he's no general... he's just a Gunny.

Sorry about the first part, but he PLAYS a General.

Zor

[Hotfoot]

So let me understand this right....your idea of an awesome sci-fi action flick is a sci-fi zombie flick?

Wow. Just wow.

And fucking powered armor versus zombies? Unless these are some badass zombies, that's so much overkill it isn't even funny.

I mean, I'm all for R. Lee in a badass role in Sci-Fi, but let's give him something good, shall we?

How about starting with a pan of a massive space battle. Burning hulks venting air and dead crew into the void. Cold, dead bodies, cut in half by pieces of shrapnel float past the camera, frozen droplets of blood scattered about. As the camera continues, you see a few damaged but still functional ships are duking it out when finally some new ships jump in, the battle commences. The commander of the reinforcements mop up the remaining resistance and immediately launch transatmo fighters and dropships. There's something on the planet below that could turn the tide of the war. They have to hurry, as enemy reinforcements are only a few hours/days away.

From there, there's a focus on the ground battle. We see initial bombardments taking out anti-air sights while the transatmo fighter/bombers clear a landing zone for the dropships. Then the fighting begins on the ground, and our heroes start to kick ass and take names. What they're looking for is in some well-defended location that can't be nuked, since they need what is inside.

And we go from there.

[Zor]

The idea about the Zombies vs powersuits was to start the movie with some Killing and to wipe out some cliché Wholesome Small-Town Folksy People. It does not have to be Zombies but you get the idea.

Zor

[dworkin]

You do understand that powersuits run counter to the media?

In visual media you have to see the actors' faces.

Why? Because you have no other vehicle into their physche. Because there is no interior monologue!

This is why movie adaptations of books with full helmets (Dune, Starship Troopers) ignore such requirements and go with an outfit that allows full facial expressions.

Even in the awful Matrix:Revolutions scenes with power armour vs robots scenes. You needed to show despiration and fear on the warriors faces. A closed suit and radio chatter just isn't as effective.

Yes, there are other ways to impart such drama and the Walchowskis should be flayed alive for not employing them does not detract from the problem.

Anyways, I would have a remake of the movie Starship Troopers Klendathu scene (a beach-head landing that goes wrong) as an opener and then a drama of army vs navy over how to conduct said war. Make the redshirts non-actors and have the meat and potatoes over the conflict between the commnaders and their respective strategies.

You can always highlight various amounts of starship porn towards making those points. It needn't be talking heads.

[spongyblue]

For a true, great Sci-Fi action movie, you have to start off with things that are inherantly cool

Aliens
Pirates
Robots
Ninjas
Zombies

Roll it into to one; Alien Zombie Robot Pirate Ninja's from Outer Space on a detructive rampage stealing gold, booze, chicks, and nuclear weapons(for the climactic nuclear explosion of the enemy headquarters)

Thats all you need.

[Hotfoot]

You do understand that powersuits run counter to the media?

In visual media you have to see the actors' faces.

Why? Because you have no other vehicle into their physche. Because there is no interior monologue!

This is why movie adaptations of books with full helmets (Dune, Starship Troopers) ignore such requirements and go with an outfit that allows full facial expressions.

Even in the awful Matrix:Revolutions scenes with power armour vs robots scenes. You needed to show despiration and fear on the warriors faces. A closed suit and radio chatter just isn't as effective.

Yes, there are other ways to impart such drama and the Walchowskis should be flayed alive for not employing them does not detract from the problem.

Blah blah blah. All you need is something like the new Battlestar Galactica Viper Helmets or what they did in the Starship Troopers cartoon and you'll be fine. Alternatively you can go the PiP route and have a totally CG machine with occasional shots of the pilot's face.

Anyways, I would have a remake of the movie Starship Troopers Klendathu scene (a beach-head landing that goes wrong) as an opener and then a drama of army vs navy over how to conduct said war. Make the redshirts non-actors and have the meat and potatoes over the conflict between the commnaders and their respective strategies.

You can always highlight various amounts of starship porn towards making those points. It needn't be talking heads.

You can't have a good action movie if you don't spend some time with the action stars. Having brass bitch over what would be the best plan of attack is fantastic for all of five minutes, even if it is starship porn simulations in the background. We're talking about an action movie, which involves a huge amount of shit blowing up and feeling like you're the one doing it because you empathize with the grunts on the ground.

On that note, I will state the following:

No laser blast/bullet/plasma burst/whatever will go slower than half the speed of sound. Period. It is acceptable for missiles to start out at slower speeds (particularly man-portable ones), but there will be no other exceptions. NONE!

There will be a sufficiently awesome and slightly realistic laser effect, in which the air around the beam becomes ionized. In space the only time you will see this is if there is some sort of gas between the two combatants, like the air escaping from a hull breach.

Standard infantry weapons will all be based on the Colonial Marine Pulse Rifle.

People will die. This vision entails a lot of close quarters shit, so there will be traps, ambushes, and people generally biting it. Making the main character die towards the end is even better. The sequel will be about the guy he was breeding as his replacement. THIS MEANS THAT BOTH MUST BE LIKABLE, BUT NOT CLONES!

NO SUDDEN SUPER ALIENS/MUTANTS/BULLSHIT HALFWAY THROUGH! If you're fighting crazy aliens, make that abundantly clear from the beginning. If you're fighting humans, keep the humans. Throw in cool combat robots as needed, but otherwise, keep your surprise bullshit to yourself please. M. Night Slurpadong need not apply.

On that note, NO MIRACULOUS BULLSHIT! No fucking Macs bringing down the mothership, no fucking six year olds haxxoring the gibsons, nothing. Plans A through XXX should be involved and realistic (the final plan, of course, is dying with a smile on your face).

Nukes aplenty. God damn it when you're done nuke the site from orbit and GTFO. Very few things are as awesome as riding off from the nuclear sunset.

I HAVE SPOKEN!

[Molyneux]

An idea I've had bouncing around in my head for awhile...

Alien invasion technique of a sort. Meteor lands, sends spores into the area...causes a standard zombie outbreak (albeit without actual decomposition), but after, say, a week of this the oldest, most successful-in-finding-meat zombies start building an odd structure over the meteor, then start coccooning themselves.

Plan is that the initial zombies act to forage for protein, then those that manage to survive undergo a transformation into larger, much tougher warrior forms, eventually getting up to around the size of a grizzly, but with chitinous armor and some nasty claws.

Squad of light-power-armor troops get sent in to handle the initial outbreak, get caught in the quarantine zone when the tougher forms start showing up...they have to choose between trying to escape and break quarantine, or complete their mission and eliminate the threat by whatever means necessary, despite dwindling fuel reserves and limited ammunition.

[Adrian Laguna]

There's this mental image in my head of massive troop-ships (picture an Acclamator) going down through the atmosphere while there's hundreds of nuclear initiations around them. And as the troops ships go down you see plenty being destroyed by nukes that initiated too close to them. The radio chatter is filled with the cries of wounded ships going down in flames, people screaming, and the controllers calmly listing casualties.

There's no piddly little transatmo strike-craft, because those can't survive when the enemy has turned their own airspace into a bubbling brew of plasma and high-energy radiation.

[Uraniun235]

I want a nuclear barrage, followed by a massive supersonic aerial dogfight twisting through the rising mushroom clouds.

Fuck realism, I think this would be awesome to see.

[Batman]

A supersonic dogfight is either going to be impossible to make out in the first place or impossible to tell from a NOT supersonic one other than for the speed of background features blurring past.

[Hotfoot]

Okay, seriously, what is with the fucking zombies? Braindead rednecks can handle zombies for fuck's sake. A highly trained military force with motherfucking powered armor is overkill. Give them a threat worth using the armor with! This is sci-fi! We can have hovertanks, mecha, aliens with fucking dicks for noses! Zombies have their place but it is not here!

Adrian, while nukes on that scale might seem cool, let's be somewhat realistic about this...who the fuck would nuke their own planet that badly? That many nukes going off in atmo would be an extinction-level-event.

[Big Orange]

Adrian, while nukes on that scale might seem cool, let's be somewhat realistic about this...who the fuck would nuke their own planet that badly? That many nukes going off in atmo would be an extinction-level-event.

I think he's talking about an futuristic version of Pacific island hopping with the planet being useless anyway but enemy forces are using it as an expendable military outpost, so they wouldn't care if they nuke half the planet and light the atmosphere on fire to get rid of the invading forces.

[Yuri2356]

Of course!

We can't have an epic Sci-Fi war film without at least one WWII analogy.

[Phantasee]

There's this mental image in my head of massive troop-ships (picture an Acclamator) going down through the atmosphere while there's hundreds of nuclear initiations around them. And as the troops ships go down you see plenty being destroyed by nukes that initiated too close to them. The radio chatter is filled with the cries of wounded ships going down in flames, people screaming, and the controllers calmly listing casualties.

There's no piddly little transatmo strike-craft, because those can't survive when the enemy has turned their own airspace into a bubbling brew of plasma and high-energy radiation.

How would you hear radio chatter if there are loads of nukes going off? Wouldn't the radios be full of interference? So I suppose at first you could hear some people freaking out, but eventually you'd get nothing but static. Or so I would think. And I like the visual I get from "turned their own airspace into a bubbling brew of plasma and high-energy radiation." I get goosebumps.

[Molyneux]

Okay, seriously, what is with the fucking zombies? Braindead rednecks can handle zombies for fuck's sake. A highly trained military force with motherfucking powered armor is overkill. Give them a threat worth using the armor with! This is sci-fi! We can have hovertanks, mecha, aliens with fucking dicks for noses! Zombies have their place but it is not here!

Adrian, while nukes on that scale might seem cool, let's be somewhat realistic about this...who the fuck would nuke their own planet that badly? That many nukes going off in atmo would be an extinction-level-event.

Hey, my zombies get the ability to toss around cars after a few months.

[Vegi]

For a true, great Sci-Fi action movie, you have to start off with things that are inherantly cool

Aliens
Pirates
Robots
Ninjas
Zombies

Roll it into to one; Alien Zombie Robot Pirate Ninja's from Outer Space on a detructive rampage stealing gold, booze, chicks, and nuclear weapons(for the climactic nuclear explosion of the enemy headquarters)

Thats all you need.

You forgot Nazis.

[Hotfoot]

Hey, my zombies get the ability to toss around cars after a few months.

Oh here we go...

[Zor]

Howabout having space battles that involve massive missile spamming and massive point defense spamming?

Zor

[Battlehymn Republic]

How about vampires or werewolves? And then it'll be like that one new Image comic.

[Lord Relvenous]

I think its a given that any space battle that will resonate with viewers must be silent. There can be noises in the ships, and noises of impacts, but no noises when our POV is in space, GOD DAMNIT! I am speaking to you George Lucas! Anyways, how I would conteract this silence is to have a kickass score. And not some pussy rock "current hit" shit. Think about it, if you have shuips being blown apart, men dieing, missles detonating- all silently- there is nothing better than a Russian opera. Massive space battle with tons of ship porn, all set to Russian opera, with the opera carrying over into the background when we see the inside of the spaceships. Beautiful, beautiful.

[Hotfoot]

I think its a given that any space battle that will resonate with viewers must be silent. There can be noises in the ships, and noises of impacts, but no noises when our POV is in space, GOD DAMNIT! I am speaking to you George Lucas! Anyways, how I would conteract this silence is to have a kickass score. And not some pussy rock "current hit" shit. Think about it, if you have shuips being blown apart, men dieing, missles detonating- all silently- there is nothing better than a Russian opera. Massive space battle with tons of ship porn, all set to Russian opera, with the opera carrying over into the background when we see the inside of the spaceships. Beautiful, beautiful.

Sir, I salute you. You have entered a thread filled to the brim with FAIL and injected a much needed dose of WIN.

[Karza]

Alright, no goddamn zombies, werewolves, ninjas or assorted idiocy.

Grunts. Starship porn. Enormous explosions. And for once, I'd like to see the tradition of must-see-heroes'-faces thrown out of the window. If it makes sense for them to wear face-covering helmets, then do so. Let them have some frivolous art on their battlesuits to distinguish them or something, but no goddamn plexiglass visors. Those are for riot police, not soldiers.

And for the spacebattle with Russian opera: I love you. I truly do.

[Lord Relvenous]

Man I've been throwing that idea at people for ages and nobody listens. They must not understand the complete uberness of it. If I ever, ever, ever get involved in anything remotely space battle-ish, that's my first interjected comment.

Returning to designing a good sci-fi movie, a Russian opera comes close, but does not a hit make. Make the ground battle scenes a desperate fight till the last man with heroics, cowardness, burnt out soldiers that just give up, captains leading troops, panic, and confusion and I think we might be getting somewhere. One of my favortie grounds fights is actually the opening to Starcraft: Broodwar see here.

Since the ground battle has to be just as uber as the space battle, I would have to think hard fought battle, but not on some meaniless field that has no strategic value, and is used purely for epic battle shots, nope. Fight the battle in terrain that has meaning or a purpose, say in the mountains. Personally, I would like to see a gunfight in a mountainous forest when an army is moving through a mountain range. The infantry would be on edge, impeded by bush and trees, and mechanical support would be less effective than normal. Loss of unit cohesion and vision would impart an even more frenzied feel to the battle, and distance shots of mid-post battle could feature burned stumps and carnage. Move the battle to a river fjord, or land bridge between two large island masses and you have a reasonable, believable reason for a desperate and hard fought battle and plenty of intersting aspects.

And none of this "here is my line, here is your line and we charge at each other face to face till we are five feet away from each other and we all die" crap. Have flanking manouvers, retreats, rallies, and all the basic movements of a real battle.