Unrealistic Conflicts

[emeraldrafael]

Thats another point. Wouldnt the fact that you're wise make you the better choice?

Tolkien used "wise" to mean either intellectually or socially elite. So he used hobbits as the device to make a point about the moral superiority of the relatively* humble and small. And fat. And complacent.

(* "Relatively" because virtually every major character in LOTR comes from royal or noble pedigree. He doesn't emphasize it much but that turns out to include Frodo and friends, with the exception of Sam, who is sort of Frodo's Sancho Panza.)

So its exaclty what every book like it is. A stab at the society of the time because the guy who wrote it had a bug up his ass about things like it?

No, bad me. I shouldnt say that, but thats what i mean. Its unrealistic because he wants the hero to be someone down to earth and relateable when in reality you should just give it to the all powerful guy and be done iwth it in about 300 pages.

But I'll move on, like i said I'm an outsider to this. But here's a question. How did the jedi lose? I mean, i get they were snuck up on, but you look at the stuff Galen Marek can do (and i ahve played these games, i just forget how to spell his name), and you think hey, give me about a squad or regiment of him and we could destroy the world in a matter of three days. I mean, the lightsabers, the force (god powers really for what you can do with the force), and they had a ahnd in everything in the universe. the only thing that kept them from domnating was the fact of the numbers and that they were peace keepers (yes I'm going to refer to Mace Windu's speech about how the jedi werent an army just peacekeepers), but all that can be ignored when you look at the fact that none of them were appearantly as poweful as they could be, since Sith lords could cheat death, Jedi could hold their hands up and deflect blaster rifle shots (go watch cartoon network';s the clone wars, the five minute episode ones and you'll see Obi won doing it), and had fucking Lightning that they could shot fromt heir hands!

 

[The_ModeRazor]

Yeah, I never quite understood why didn't the idiots just borrow a bunch of muggle assassins and kill everyone close to Voldemort. And him too. (he may be unkillable, but repeatedly getting shot in the head 24/7 with a sniper rifle has got to slow you down)

 

[I'mANinja]

There are ways that magic can stand toe to toe with modern tech, just not in Harry Potter. In some fantasy there's spells that can be like nukes, plus a necromancer could raise an army, or some evil guy could summon demons and stuff, or like in Dresden Files he has a bracelet that can shield him from bullets.

OT: Star Wars, Empire versus Rebels, I MEAN REALLY, just smite them with SSD orbital bombardments. I don't care if your big round space station got destroyed, YOU ALREADY HAVE A FLEET OF SHIPS THAT CAN PRETTY MUCH DESTROY PLANETS -_-

 

[Geekosaurus]

Fundamentally this seems like a bad idea, given that going to open war with a group that has spent the last century building a stockpile of weapons that could sterilize every continent ten times over with wands that take several seconds to cast something that will kill 1 human.

Are you saying that the humans would win? They're up against magic...

Magic is so much better I'm finding it hard to provide a decent example.

 

[Kurokami]

I'm wondering, I just heard about how in the Harry Potter series, the evil wizards begin attacking the muggles. Fundamentally this seems like a bad idea, given that going to open war with a group that has spent the last century building a stockpile of weapons that could sterilize every continent ten times over with wands that take several seconds to cast something that will kill 1 human. After thinking on this, I figured to make this thread. So my question is this:

Has there ever been a conflict in fiction that was one sided in a way that didn't make sense?

Considering magic has no real limitation and that they could just as well control those weapons you're talking about I don't know where you got the idea we'd come out on top.

Well, even if we talk in terms of WWI era technology, millions of fighting men with rifles and machine guns will eventually shoot every wizard.

While the wizards may be elusive and powerful individually, they are also frail and way too weak in numbers.

Okay, well I can get that I guess, but how will muggles know who the wizards are? And why is it unrealistic to imagine that magic will have some weapon of mass destruction up its sleeve as well? That thing with magic is that everythings possible, even if they have to find the ____ of ____(<-enter bullshit there) in order to accomplish whatever.

Switching sides by the way, I just realized that the evil wizards also targetted half bloods or whatever they called em, (half muggles/wizards) so magic on the side of peoples too.

 

[Squarez]

And there;s another thing. How does an all powerful character like gandolf not just destroy the ring himself. he's God from what i've been told and then thats the argument of why he cant do anyhting.

You've been told wrong, basically. Gandalf is just an incredibly clever wizard. He managed to be bested by Saruman, so chances are that Sauron's even more powerful than Saruman. So Gandalf couldn't destroy it. Even then, it's explained in the book and film "it was forged in the fires of Mt Doom, only there can it be undone" or words to that effect.

Here's the thing though, right... He can summon those eagle guys and the ring bearer can ride em, other than about 7 or however many of those wyverns there are it would still be considerably easier/quicker to ride one of thems and drop the ring into the Volcano, no?

Even Sauron cannot beat the all-mighty power of the Plot Hole.

 

[Falconcry]

Gargamel vs. the smurfs seems pretty unrealistic i mean they're tiny why doesn't he just stand on them.........

 

[Naheal]

I have one more thing to say on the whole "magic vs tech" argument.

That is all.

 

[WanderingFool]

Gargamel vs. the smurfs seems pretty unrealistic i mean they're tiny why doesn't he just stand on them.........

Gargaml is th mastr of incompetent... that and he cant find their fucking village...

 

[fullbleed]

ooh, just remembered something, I once remember having a heated debate with someone as to why Space Marines would have no problem dealing with wizards.. that's something I'd like to see, a super-macho space marine planting a chainsword into that little potter kid, or even better just stepping on him..

Oh no question about it, that would be the easiest fight ever! Especially since the Imperium basicly has it's own form of magic and they can do far more things with it than they can in Harry Potter. Plus they have the technology, tactics, Space Marine chapters, Orders, and sometimes natrual human abilities to counter act Magic.

But scaling things back a bit, even in present day the wizards would be easily outmatched by the humans. The wizard world go to incredible efforts to hide itself from humans out of fear, it's clearly not the humans hiding themselves and protecting themselves from wizards. Humans outnumber the wizards by far. Only a few spells are actually lethal and must be learnt and studied before they can be actually used to any effect. Even with guns, without any physical training you can still pick one up and use it to some limited effect. Plus an assault rifle can have an effective range of 300ft, what's the effective range of a spell?

 

[Hawk of Battle]

I'm wondering, I just heard about how in the Harry Potter series, the evil wizards begin attacking the muggles. Fundamentally this seems like a bad idea, given that going to open war with a group that has spent the last century building a stockpile of weapons that could sterilize every continent ten times over with wands that take several seconds to cast something that will kill 1 human. After thinking on this, I figured to make this thread. So my question is this:

Has there ever been a conflict in fiction that was one sided in a way that didn't make sense?

Considering magic has no real limitation and that they could just as well control those weapons you're talking about I don't know where you got the idea we'd come out on top.

Well, even if we talk in terms of WWI era technology, millions of fighting men with rifles and machine guns will eventually shoot every wizard.

While the wizards may be elusive and powerful individually, they are also frail and way too weak in numbers.

Okay, well I can get that I guess, but how will muggles know who the wizards are? And why is it unrealistic to imagine that magic will have some weapon of mass destruction up its sleeve as well? That thing with magic is that everythings possible, even if they have to find the ____ of ____(<-enter bullshit there) in order to accomplish whatever.

Switching sides by the way, I just realized that the evil wizards also targetted half bloods or whatever they called em, (half muggles/wizards) so magic on the side of peoples too.

I'm assuming that the normal people/muggles know how to shoot people with wands or people flying around on broomsticks. This is especially true when/if the wizards try to use powerful/destructive spells.

I just don't see wizards doing to hot once the waves march towards their homes.

There are only 3 spells in that series that are counted as being so bad they're not to be used by anyone, ever. One for torture, one for mind control, one for murder. They have nothing close to a even a tank shell in terms of firepower, let alone sustained artillery bombardments, airstrikes, or nukes. Nor do they have the manpower or resources to fight in open war. Even a hundred thousands wizards can't stand against the combined firepower of an entire nation whith a military numbering millions, and with enough firepower to level one tiny island, and that's before you get the rest of the world involved, which just gets even more exponentially one sided for the non-magicals. Oh and all of those militaries, they're also experts in warfare of all kinds. The wizards don't even have a standing army. They're outmatched, outtrained and outnumbered in every way.

On the Gandalf thing; Gandalf is not a god people, he's a Maiar spirit, a demi-god at best. So are Sauron, Saruman and even Bombadil. They were forbidden by the REAL gods from waging direct war with each other. Not that they'd win against Sauron anyway, seeing as he was once 2nd in command to Melkor, the original evil, who he was just as bad as and in fact who he surpassed in sheer levels of destruction he wrought.

And Gandalf didn't just self ressurect, he was sent back by the gods because he fucked up and needed a retry.

 

[Megalodon]

Here's the thing though, right... He can summon those eagle guys and the ring bearer can ride em, other than about 7 or however many of those wyverns there are it would still be considerably easier/quicker to ride one of thems and drop the ring into the Volcano, no?

The eagles thing has always bugged me. I mean yes, you can say they were off protecting their roosts or whatever during most of the books, but the fact remains that if they happen to be on hand to spirit the hobbit heroes away from certain death at the end, maybe they could realistically have helped cut down on some of the hoofing along the way.

A lot of the magical elements of LOTR seem to crop up as obvious narrative conveniences, with only thin explanations in the story itself. The other thing this is noticeable with is the Ringwraiths, who seem to noticeably "level up" with the heroes during their journey like monsters in a MMORPGer.

The Ringwraith thing is explained, throughout the books, Sauron's power is building. The wraiths are basically manifestation's of Sauron's will and power, so as Sauron's power grows, so do the wraiths become more powerful and geared for war instead of hunting hobbits.

 

[Trivun]

I'm wondering, I just heard about how in the Harry Potter series, the evil wizards begin attacking the muggles. Fundamentally this seems like a bad idea, given that going to open war with a group that has spent the last century building a stockpile of weapons that could sterilize every continent ten times over with wands that take several seconds to cast something that will kill 1 human. After thinking on this, I figured to make this thread. So my question is this:

Has there ever been a conflict in fiction that was one sided in a way that didn't make sense?

Wizards have much more power than that, their leader can't die unless all the artifacts he's hidden are destroyed in such a way that they can't be fixed by magic (and a decent Reparo spell can still repair something destroyed by a nuclear explosion, by the way). There are shield spells that would be able to defend against bomb and missile attacks, since shield spells like Protego deflect physical stuff as well. So yeah, the defences are okay. Plus, humans aren't going to wipe themselves out for the sake of dealing with a few who can use magic. So yeah. Very one-sided, isn't it?

(note: no it isn't!)

Well a fire spell at a gas station would kill some serious shit, but that's not really the point.

Anyway, Avatar. A few hours after the climactic battle the planet would have been orbitally bombarded into a pile of goop ripe for the mining. "Bad" guys take minor losses, Na'vi are extinct.

The humans were just miners and engineers and stuff, an exploration/resource gathering company. The only soldiers were a private defence group, and didn't have anything. It's actually been explained elsewhere before, and by Word Of God, that they used what they had in the fight. They didn't have orbital bombardment weaponry. And it'll be at least eight years (four years one way, four to get back to Pandora) before humans can get the weaponry to attack again. Which gives the Na'vi time to prepare, or hide. So also, not exactly one-sided.

Maybe in a sequel, then yes. But in the first Avatar film, such tactics weren't even possible, so there's no way you can justify that your argument even makes sense.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Star Wars: Clone Wars. You expect to win a war for the ENTIRE GALAXY using 1 MILLION troops fighting using WW2 infantry rush tactics.

Also, you have ships which can decimate entire continents from orbit, and you land troops to take the planet.

On the gaming side: Gears of War.

Why the hell did the Locust even BOTHER to attack the humans? Humans were doing a pretty good job of wiping themselves out without Locust intervention for centuries, while the Locust were happily living underground.
So, the Locust get fed up with the humans banging away upstairs, and they decide to evict the new tenants. All they manage is to end up uniting the humans, and getting nearly their entire species pushed to the brink of extinction because they couldn't let the humans kill each other. And that's not even counting the mutant Locust Lambents created by the human's lightmass bombing.

If they had left well enough alone, the Locusts wouldn't be as fucked as they are.

For Avatar: Just set fire to the fucking forest! They're psychically linked to everything on the planet, just put them into shock by burning the whole fucking place.

For Harry Potter: It was a seriously missed opportunity to include Muggles into the fray. In the sixth novel, the Wizard Prim Minister goes to visit Tony Blair and warn him of the coming war. Then, nothing. No mention of any precautions being made by muggles or anyone in the non wizard world. And it was kind of stupid to see Voldemort's take over the world plan limited to Great Britain.

 

[Nickolai77]

Star Wars in general really...i mean, i've seen more tactical sophistication in a children's play fight. But i won't even go into that...

If storm troopers can be clobbered to death with flint axes, why on earth do they bother with blasters and armour at all? Those things squirt of a shot every five seconds, a WW1 infantryman could do better with his bolt-action rifle. And half the time they don't even hit the target!

A small platoon of well-trained and equipped marines could decimate an entire regiment of storm troopers! A well placed MG42 machine gun team could easily rack up a higher kill count than a jedi...an SAS team could take out the deathstar...Out of all the fictional armies i've come across, the storm troopers seem the most hopeless.

 

[Scylla6]

Well a fire spell at a gas station would kill some serious shit, but that's not really the point.

Anyway, Avatar. A few hours after the climactic battle the planet would have been orbitally bombarded into a pile of goop ripe for the mining. "Bad" guys take minor losses, Na'vi are extinct.

Well, not so much...since it took them a great deal of effort and time to bring ONE SPACESHIP worth of marines and equipment there, and then ANOTHER with the main character and replacements on board, they probably don´t have orbital bombardment capabilitys.
And since they actually ARE a mining-corp, I think that they don´t even have the means to do so even if they wanted. Remember that they had to somehow improvise the means to bomb the place to hell in the climax of the movie, with an armed cargo-ship deploying random explosives strapped together as a "bomb"...

That always bugged me. They were a mining ship, either they had enough explosives to blow the crap out of a mountain (which makes their strapped together crap useless) or a laser. Now I live near a quarry, those explosions you can hear from miles away. They are no bigger than your fist. Imagine a bomb designed to rip through a mountain, one the size of a truck. The Navi were pretty much screwed.

 

[johnnyLupine]

Are people actually saying we wouldnt be completly screwed if there were zombies roaming the streets? The undead ive come across in films and games had been created and spread by means of infection, not sure about resident evil i think it was some sort of genetic experiment or something but thats besides the point as genetic modification relies upon altered viral cells and their ability to hijack other cells.

Unless a significant proportion of the golbal population was immune the world as we know it would be doomed. The idea of the walking dead really screws with my head..

I suppose in order to keep with the theme of the post i should write about something about an unrealistc conflict rather than just leave it as post for putting down other peoples ideas. Give me afew hours, ill think of something. You guys can cut to the generic clock face showing the passage of time now, Im going to be a while.




















Any film/game/book in which the underdog actually wins? which is prety much ANY film/game/book. If the antagonist organisation actually had any brains at all theyd use their monoploly properly and just wipe out the small band of heroes, that doesnt mean the plot isnt well written of course, infact if the antagonist was so perfect then the plot would end at page one, not to mention that these enemies tend to be driven by those same qualities that lead to their downfall, they may even see these imperfections as valuble assets instead of something to be fixed..

 

[Tharwen]

Humans vs. Zombies.

They're slow and we have guns. They don't have the slightest chance of winning.
Even mosquitos are more dangerous than zombies.

But the characters written in zombie films are almost always phenomenally stupid. That's where the zombies have the advantage.

 

[New York Patrick]

It would have all been fun and games, until the Japanese Wizards attack the US...

Awww.... this guy...

I see that my reputation precedes me...

 

[Chrinik]

That always bugged me. They were a mining ship, either they had enough explosives to blow the crap out of a mountain (which makes their strapped together crap useless) or a laser. Now I live near a quarry, those explosions you can hear from miles away. They are no bigger than your fist. Imagine a bomb designed to rip through a mountain, one the size of a truck. The Navi were pretty much screwed.

If I remember correctly, the thing they put together was described as pretty strong. And also take into account that Mining Corps get the high Explosives prepacked into several charges of specific strengh...so them strapping together a bunch of those charges makes sense.
And them using it all at ONE TRIBE would have been pretty useless...also they would then have to wait an unknown time for replacement, to continue mining.
Otherwise, James Cameron movie logic...don´t question it, it will hurt your brain XD