Nimzabaat said:
I have been playing Destiny and one thing that I find a little disappointing is the weaponry. A lot of Science Fiction films and games have weapons that are only as dangerous as the ones we have now. As such, I felt like talking about that for a bit.
Disclaimer: I liked most of these movies, I am only interested in pointing out that we need to be a bit more creative with our science fiction weaponry. Also, these are only my opinions and they may not align with yours.
Some Bad
Star Wars: Blasters in Star Wars turn out to be as effective as the projectile firearms we use, not even today, but at the time the film was made. They are actually less effective because every weapon fires the equivalent of tracer ammunition and tracers point both ways. Princess Leia is shown getting shot in the shoulder and it is only a minor injury. Lightsabers are pretty cool but, since Jedi seem to be awful at multi-tasking, a fully automatic weapon or area of effect is all you need. It is terribly convenient that nobody uses those in Star Wars. Don't even get me started on Stormtrooper armor, though I once had an idea of re-writing Star Wars and making the white Stormtrooper armor refractive so only a direct hit in a black area would hurt them.
Starship Troopers (the movies): Once again, it is the future and mankind has failed to come up with anything better than we have today. In fact they have lost a lot of technology we have like; mines, tanks, APCs, grenades, though they did get small nuclear weapons... which they should have used more often. I still think the book would have made an awesome movie though.
Some Good
Star Trek, TNG, DS9, Voyager (I normally don?t count Enterprise because it was outside of the Star Trek continuity): When Star Trek TNG debuted, they had phasers that fit in the palm of your hand and could do anything from stunning a single target to blowing the top off a mountain. Now that is a futuristic weapon! Then, well, they weren?t phallic enough so they had to make them bigger for? reasons. The larger phasers did not seem to do anything better than the smaller ones, nobody ever had to reload/recharge but people could not get behind a weapon that small. Anyways phasers are awesome and the only reason you would have to shoot someone twice is if you failed to set it properly.
District 9: When I think of futuristic weapons, I think of over-the-top damage. The ARC gun from District 9 is a great example of that. Only one person is ever shown getting wounded by this weapon and he loses his whole arm. It is just a flesh wound, but it is a lot of flesh. The Repeater shown in the movie is more like a standard firearm, but once again the damage seems to be much higher than most portable weapons that we have. Then there?s the magnetic/gravity weapon that can stop bullets and fire them back at people.
Men In Black: Two words: Noisy Cricket.
Aliens: The M41A Pulse Rifle is interesting because the firearms technology is basically the same as it is today, however the ammunition has advanced. The weapon uses 10mm explosive tipped caseless ammunition (unless you watch very carefully, but that is more of a prop issue). Now the M41A barely makes it in here because we have caseless ammunition technology and explosive rounds today. The smart guns used by Vasquez and Drake were pretty cool because they were set up on a steadicam rig with a smart targeting system. They never showed what any of the ammunition would do to a human, but the Xenomorphs are considerably more resilient and they exploded.
A Bit of Both
Guardians of the Galaxy: Guardians fits into both categories because some of the weapons were just like weapons we have now: A taser that works at a distance, numerous bladed weapons, mounted canons that appear to do less damage than a .50 caliber bullet (the Milano?s guns seemed to be pretty awesome until they showed them taking out the Sakaaran troops with them) and lastly the Hadron Enforcer that was basically a rocket launcher. On the other hand, the sentient arrow that Yondu used was pretty interesting (it even provided plot armor! well, plot stun-lock).
Predator/Predator 2/Predators: The Predators plasma caster fits into the bad category. It looks bad ass, and the three dot laser sight is iconic, but it is about as dangerous as a 7.62 mm bullet. It takes two to kill Blaine and Dutch shakes one off. It is also slow as molasses compared to, well, arrows even. Some other notable mentions are the collapsible spear (ooh look a spear!), the wrist claws (it takes the impact away from your wrist joint). Then again, in Predator 2 they had my favorite, the Smart Disc. That little disc weapon cut through a bunch of frozen cow carcasses and Gary Busey like they were nothing. It also seemed in tune with its users mental state and reacted accordingly, which was an interesting touch.
TLDR: What are some of your favorite/least favorite science fiction weapons? Do you have any ideas for some that you would like to share?
Some of this is conceptual.
1. In Star Wars it should be noted that it's a galaxy where there is no real free will, only the illusion of it. The Force controls everything and pretty much guides the universe through cycles of good and evil, with a period of balance in between. Star Wars is the story of an era of light coming to an end, and darkness taking over, but between which there will be balance. The central conceit of the story is that the prophecy explaining this is not understood properly, the Jedi believe Anakin will "restore balance" by bringing peace and order to the galaxy in the face of the new threats, not realizing that with good controlling everything and a nearly utopian civilization where they don't have serious militaries, the only place to go is down. The Emperor thinks "balance" means that it's time for the Dark Side to return, and it's not, this is the period of balance. Hence why at the end of the story Anakin has both destroyed the Jedi order AND he kills The Emperor (everyone is dead, balance achieved). All of the story and emotional stuff is just a way of getting to the bottom line of what was meant to be.
Now, the thing to understand about Star Wars is these cycles mean that things remain stagnant, basically one apocalypse or another eradicates everything, and thus by the time new tech is being developed it's time for everything to be wiped out again. Excepting a few super weapons that get left behind in various sources (mostly non-canon but technically possible if The Force wanted them to remain for it's narrative later) and can be uncovered, everything remains more or less the same. The Force doesn't want to destroy everything so the weapons remain fairly limited in scale, and things like space fighters are on the same basic level even after thousands of years because of this.... I could get into more about it, but the bottom line is that this is a work of "space fantasy" and was based on some eastern concepts of how the universe works (loosely) from things I've read over the years. Basically it's working as intended. The technology is this way because that's how a metaphysical force has arranged things to be.
2. With Predator part of the concept (as it's been elaborated on) is that they are hunters and as such while they carry weapons that are better than their prey, they limit what they can use so their prey has a chance, because otherwise there is no honor in the hunt. In theory the Predators had the tech where they could have wiped out the heroes in any of the stories, or heck, as a race just flat out eradicated earth, but that isn't what they do. When you go into the various side-souces outside of the movies you run into things like primitive tribesman having predator heads on their shields or whatever, the reason being is that if The Predators are going to fight a bunch of dudes armed with spears they are going to bring very limited tech with them. They like to come to earth because humans are challenging. Even in the movies this is implied when a Predator left behind an archaic gun before leaving... the point more or less being that such was a trophy and I believe something from someone else who had beaten them... meaning that for all of Danny Glover's antics, apparently someone took out Predators with a wheel lock at some point.
In the old "Aliens Vs. Predator" comics (long before the movies) and the novels spun off of them they further elaborate on some of these concepts, by the time of "Aliens" humans are advanced enough to no longer be considered prey, but the Predators aren't exactly social. They seed a colony world with Aliens for a hunt, only to find the human colony which was a big "ooops", at which point there is a mutiny on the ship based on whether to have the hunt anyway and cover it up, or do the right thing and take responsibility, their ship being destroyed (by a drunk with a hover bike if I remember) brings things to a hilt, and you wind up with a three way between the last remaining "good" predator and a rather tough corporate girl, the mutinous predators and the aliens. Later on that girl winds is marked as a warrior by the Predators and in the novels visits their home world if I remember.
It should be noted this is in part what makes some of the games viable, by this point the marines and such are very much an effective force by the Predator's standards. Albeit in the stuff I mentioned above the Predators only ran into civilians, they never fought the Marines, and I believe that was explained later as being a big part of the problem (ie if it's found out what happened to the colony, the humans would become suspicious, and then go looking for the Predators who want to remain relatively anonymous and not get into a war... and it would apparently be a war).
I have to run I can answer a few of this later if I remember as I think a couple more can be explained. One last one quickly is the "Starship Troopers" movies are nothing like the books, in the book they use Massively powerful powered armor, and the odds are entirely different (one trooper can easily take out hundreds of bugs... but there are lots and lots of them, not to mention the bugs have servant races if I remember).
