No, we're not.

We as the audience do not need to figure out anything, other than the broad strokes you mention, to understand the story we're being told.

If we so desire, we can dig in and discover that the Alliance is the Sino-American Alliance and the result of a merger of our present economic superpowers some centuries into the future. This explains why the characters occasionally curse in Chinese -- but at the same time, we don't need such an explanation. Hell, we don't even need to know it's Chinese. It's just as easy to accept that language will have evolved new vulgarities ("frak") and again, it isn't something that's relevant to the story at hand. It's texture. It isn't necessary to know it to enjoy what you're seeing; but it makes the world feel more real because the creators know it, and it helps them define the rules of the world in which the story occurs.

When it gets in the way of effectively telling the story.

To quote David Mamet, "Backstory is bullshit." As in most things, I think he's oversimplifying, but as in most things I think he knows that.

It's fine to have backstory that comes to light and informs the story. That's often necessary, but unless you're writing a mystery, should be kept to a minimum, since backstory becomes exposition and there's few elegant ways to get it across.

It's also fine to have textural details that enrich the world and define the rules by which it behaves, but which never need to be explained for the story to make sense.

The problem is when backstory/details need to be explained in order for the audience to follow what's happening, and yet the details themselves aren't actually important to the story.

I'll give you a quick example. I read the script for a Star Wars fan film in which there was a scene where the hero plays Sabacc. The Sabacc scene went on for five pages, because the writer had looked into the EU rules for the game and wanted to present a Casino Royale-style scene of cardplaying prowess.

Problem is, no one in the audience is going to know how to play fucking Sabacc. There would be no tension in that scene because no one knows what they're looking at. Now, if you got good coverage you could manage something in the edit just based on how characters react, but that's not going to keep the audience with you for five minutes. And yet the story was going to derail during this scene completely. There's no way for the audience to go along with it without having it explained to them but it would be unreasonable -- and unnecessary -- to detour from the story to present that explanation. It's nice you did the R&D, but no. Find another way to accomplish the plot point.

By contrast, do you know how to play the game in Firefly they were playing at the beginning of "Shindig"? "Plums are tall?" But do you need to? Does it have anything to do with the story? No. It's just a textural thing they're doing.

I guess the difference is -- is it a background detail, or a foreground detail? Be careful that you don't drag the background into the foreground when you don't need to. I want to punch the shit out of fantasy/sci-fi writers who include a goddamn glossary(!) in their books. Okay, you did a lot of work developing this, but that's for you, not for me. Don't beat me in the face with it.

In that case there shouldn't be caustics or God rays at all, as the surface would be too far above for those to reach what we're looking at.

Yes, there are spotlights pointing inward, and further screen-right of those, there are God rays at an angle that does not seem to allow them to reach the surface before intersecting with the glass. Perhaps it's just the camera angle.

The issues that stuck out to me were:

-water is blue. Check out any shot of any aquarium. It's like a giant blue light. There's no blue ANYWHERE in the shots here, and it ought to be the dominant color.

-The criss-crossing God rays don't work for me. Generally a big tank like this they'll just light by leaving it open to the sun, which will have either parallel rays or rays that spread out from a source. I suppose it's feasible to light it that way if you're dealing with artificial lighting above the tank, but aesthetically it's distracting. Some of the rays also appear to be coming from the glass itself, which makes no real sense. Caustics like that come from the surface. They're also flickering too much. It looks less like light shimmering down through water and more like a laser battle.

In the positives, nice shot selection. Wasn't huge on the music but I see why you went with it. What does "Foundation year" mean?

RE: Bill & Ted -- you also have the usual fun timeloop paradox where Bill and Ted have no actual way of knowing Rufus' name because he never tells them. They learn his name when future Bill and Ted show up at the Circle K and give him a shoutout. So they only know his name because their future selves say it, but their future selves only know it because they heard themselves say it in the past.

I think there's a confusion between justifications and magic beans, here. The "Guy wasn't there when the problem happened and wouldn't have known there was a problem to be fixed" example from 6th Day is a bad justification, but the magic beans are "there is clones."

Jumani/Zathura's "board games try to kill people" and Scott Pilgrim's "The world is a video game" are, themselves, the magic beans, not a justification. Let's not get them entangled or the thread will quickly turn to mush.

As spoofed in AUSTIN POWERS, a general vote for "villain creates elaborate killing device for hero instead of just killing him with a gun or something, then leaves the room in the assumption that it will all simply go according to plan" as an example of poor justification for how a hero triumphs.

I want to give extra credit for the exchange shortly later:

"My life will never be complete because I don't have a crazy name like 'Lucius'."
"Your name is Teague."

Also, I've always been annoyed by the title. While some mythologies have terms that mean "the end of the world" -- such as Ragnarök in Norse -- "Armageddon" is not a synonym for "apocalypse." In the mythology, there is a decisive battle during the apocalypse that takes place at Megiddo, a small mountain between Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Hebrew for "Mount Meggido" is "Har Megiddo." Ancient Greek -- the language in which the New Testament was originally written -- renders this "Harmagedon," and the Latin Vulgate translated it to "Armagedon."

Referring to the entire apocalypse as "Armageddon" is akin to referring to the entire Civil War as "Gettysburg." And then, on top of that, titling a war movie that takes place in the modern day Middle East "Gettysburg," because that means "war," right?

I still haven't shown the guys THE ROOM. I have to be there when it happens, and actually Ryan has also forbade me from screening it for them without him. The first time is a special thing.

That being said, while I will join the conversation if the others really want to do it, I would agree with Jeffery that it's not an ideal DIF picture. While it would seem to be prime material, since a lot of what we do is talking about where movies went wrong, THE ROOM is a special case. It lives in a rarefied realm of so-bad-it's-awesome, and talking about what went wrong would be akin to doing a commentary on a comedy, in which we did nothing but explain all the jokes. We could only make it less funny by doing so.

I'm still not sure I like PRIMER. I thought I did but now I think I don't. I need to see it again to decide but I'm kind of not interested which to an extent seems to indicate a decision.

Meh.

It's our contention that if this is what you take away from the film, you've missed the point entirely.

This isn't so much a movie reference -- at least not an intentional one on my part. It's more akin to urban legends of the Phantom Hitchhiker. Usually the story involves taking a hitchhiker to his/her destination only to find that the passenger has vanished once they arrive and turns out to have been a ghost.

Some versions of the story invert the trope and have the protagonist hitching a ride from a ghostly driver. Examples of this are the Stephen King story (and 2004 adaptation) RIDING THE BULLET, and the "Large Marge" sequence from PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE.

The variation I'm riffing off became part of my mental folklore collection most probably from the story "The Guests" in the original Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark:

A couple traveling through the woods at night stay with an elderly couple in their secluded cabin and have a lovely time. In the morning they leave an envelope with some money on the dinner table and continue on their way. In the next town the owner of the restaurant where they have breakfast is shocked by their story and informs them that the house burned down and the elderly couple died in the fire. The couple returns to the house only to find a charred shell, and among the ashes finds the envelope of money they left that morning. *TWILIGHT ZONE MUSIC*

Perhaps ironically, this has never been the subject of a Twilight Zone episode, at least not so far as I can tell by going through the Wikipedia episode guide. The 80s revival episode "The Call" perhaps comes closest, and you could make an argument for "Kentucky Rye." There are a number of episodes where characters confront ghosts and situations from the past, but what distinguishes them from this particular legend is that they know they're dealing with ghosts from the get-go.

Bringing over the conversation from the DR. STRANGELOVE thread:

Of course it is. It is exactly a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

"No Christian would send death threats or harass anyone."
"What about the Crusades?"
"No TRUE Christian..."

Certainly you have a point, up to a point, that there is such a thing as definitional requirements. Someone cannot identify as an atheist but claim to believe in a god. It's not that "no true atheist" would do that, it's that by definition if you do that, you aren't an atheist.

But when it comes to Christianity, it's far less cut and dried. What's a True Christian(TM)? Roman Catholic? Coptic? Anglican? Lutheran? Methodist? Baptist? Anabaptist? Presbyterian? Episcopalian? Calvinist? Puritan? Greek Orthodox? Pentecostal? Congregationalist?

See, here's the problem. You say "New Testament teaching" as if it's some clear, agreed-upon thing. It's not. The whole reason we have so may sects is that they all disagree on what the teachings of the New Testament precisely are, and in particular what their order of priority is. You can argue that New Testament teachings lead one to oppose gay marriage and find scriptural support. You can argue that New Testament teachings support gay marriage and find scriptural support. You can argue that New Testament teachings lead to pacifism and find scriptural support. You can argue that New Testament teachings lead one to be a warhawk and find scriptural support.

"Following New Testament teachings" is so vague as to mean whatever you want them to mean, and as a result everyone thinks they're the True Christians and anyone who disagrees with them is somehow a False Christian, because the True Christian interpretation of scripture is self-evident. Therefore any behavior that disagrees with your idea of what a Christian ought to be can be dismissed as behavior that "no real Christian" would engage in.

You talk about certain things fitting certain categories by definition. As such, you argument fits "no true Scotsman" by definition.

Christ would be surprised to learn that he superseded Judaic law.

"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." -Matthew 5:18-19.

It was Paul -- a Gentile who never met Christ during Christ's life (though supposedly did in a vision years later, conveniently with no one around) -- who began teaching that Judaic law no longer applies. Which, according to Christ, means Paul shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

If we're going to get pedantic.

So, who should we believe? What would a True Christian do?

Wait wait wait. Let me see if I understand this timeline.

JU-ON comes out and is a big hit in Japan.

American studio wants to remake it in America and hires the original director for the remake.

They then release the remake back in Japan, essentially re-releasing JU-ON to the original audience but with white people and subtitles.

I guess it never occurred to me that, of course, an American remake of a film will be released worldwide including in the origin country. And thinking about it seems insane.