One of the best things about the NFL season starting again is that it also means there will be new weekly TUESDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK columns by Gregg Easterbrook. But Mr. Easterbrook is a well-rounded individual, a man after my own heart as it were, and doesn't limit his writing to sports alone. He also takes occasion to opine on politics, science, TV and films- and in today's column, he writes a paragraph about the Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer movie (which I still haven't seen...), and it's quite amusing:
Many moments in the flick made no sense even if you're willing to accept superpowers. For instance, Sue Storm looks at star charts and announces that a planet orbiting Rigel was destroyed eight days after the Surfer appeared there. Rigel is 800 light years away -- the Surfer would have had to visit that system eight centuries ago for the light to be reaching Earth now. Mr. Fantastic's flying car traveled from Manhattan to Siberia in about 15 minutes. Even assuming super-rapid acceleration and braking, that would have required a speed of about 30,000 mph -- escape velocity for leaving this planet. But though capable of 30,000 miles per hour, Mr. Fantastic's flying car has no canopies! The Four's heads would not have stayed on, let alone their hair. My favorite moment of the movie: as the crawl announces "BLACK FOREST, GERMANY," our hero The Thing encounters a grizzly bear. Grizzlies are found only in North America. Maybe the bear was a Kodiak -- the scene was brief -- but you can guess the only place Kodiaks are found. Even brown bear, once indigenous to the Schwarzwald, have for generations been unknown there, although they are being reintroduced in Italy and Switzerland. See this Der Spiegel article about the national sensation caused in 2005 when a brown bear was spotted in a forest near the German border.
He also goes on to comment about the recent SF film Sunshine as well. Go HERE for the complete column.
Of course, the above is copyright ESPN or Easterbrook or both.
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