Quote from: Kelgaard on Jul 04, 2015, 02:46:52 PM
The pov shots can't be taken too literally. They're mostly meant to just look cool and provide a feeling of paranoia. Ooooh, something is watching them! If you're wondering how predators move about given just what we see on film, then you're overthinking it.
They
should be taken literally, IMO. In the same way as the HUD from the '
Terminator' films should be. That's the whole point of showing it. We see the exact same symbology and voice analysis the Predator does. It's
designed by the film-makers to be literal.
QuoteThe creature in Predator 2 could obviously identify individuals and stalk them without much effort. He observed Harry during the opening shootout and it probably wasn't the first time he noticed him. He followed Harry to the cemetery and left Danny's necklace to taunt him. He followed him to the meeting with King Willie and subsequently killed the voodoo leader. All this proves that he can not only find and identify individuals, but he understands their status and relationships.
But this is my point. It becomes a circular argument in the absence of
any way for it to have happened. The Predators are tracking Harrigan and anyone he knows because... They're doing it.
It's like if a character suddenly turned up at the bottom of the sea without any way to have got there. OK, so the character's there. The writers clearly want us to assume that. But
how did the character get there? And if it was impossible, the potential of them being a twin/clone/hologram/whatever becomes
just as valid - if not more so.
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
It's a very superficial film, but the moment we try to apply the whole Occam's Razor principle, it becomes
more likely that the run-ins have to be coincidental, not less.
I know that's not the intent of the writers, but as I can't see any way for the Predator(s) to have been tracking Harrigan, much less
also his friends...
QuoteIt wouldn't take much "detective" work to find Harry either; just stake out the office where he reports for work every day.
But that's not how it would work. The moment he gets in a vehicle with other people (as he did to visit the drug baron), they lose track. Hell, every time he goes into a public lavatory, they lose track! There are a
lot of people who are going into that police station, every single minute. Any time he goes into somewhere like that, their heat-tracking system is screwed - and that's assuming every building he goes into only has
one exit.
Anyone coming out of the vehicle/building he's just gone into, of the same general proportions, could be him, unless you're way up close and personal. That problem is magnified
hugely when you also realise the Predator isn't monitoring him 24 hours a day - most of the time it's nowhere near his physical locations. It's
not tracking him.
QuoteThe Predator clearly saw Harry as his lion. The film wanted us to know that.
Agreed. The problem is, they don't have any obvious way for them to have tracked him.
Nor did it really show him doing anything particularly worthy of needing to be stalked over many long days... Even El Scorpio showed a bit more ferocity than he did.
Quote from: Engineer on Jul 04, 2015, 03:31:02 PM
Yes, "too literal" is exactly what I was trying to say...
... Here's another way to explain it. I'm fond of analogies, and I think this is the best analogy for this; think about it like a language. You can have multiple languages and some translate back and forth really well, and some don't translate well at all with a lot of the core message being changed or lost. Vision is the same way. When you look at an image in Infra red or ultraviolet or something, you're not actually seeing in that spectrum, you're seeing a translation of it into the visual light spectrum. Thermal vision or infra red is one of those things that does not translate very well to the visual light spectrum and a lot of the details get lost. As cool as the predator point of view is to see, the truth is that's NOT what the world actually looks like to the predator and you'll never actually know what it's like to see in infra red.
We're seeing whatever they see. That's the point. Even if you're saying there might be slightly different colours, the bottom line is that they don't have enough detail for adequate facial recognition -
especially over miles and miles of city.
Thermal is great for locating hot things, in general. Not so great for identifying and verifying individual human beings at excessively long range. Hopelessly useless if you're trying to figure out which train someone is on, down to the exact carriage.
QuotePin pointing a target from far away really isn't a problem either. We can do it. US military pin points targets in the middle of the desert in Afghanistan with some effort; why wouldn't a technologically advanced species like the predator be able to? In fact, it should be easier for them since they see in infra red and every organism would give off a heat signature as unique as a finger print.
The military isn't relying on thermal for the same situation as locating and tracking Harrigan and his few associates. They use a whole lot of methods on top of it.
If there was some kind of signal location device showing up on their HUD, that would at least be something, but there isn't. Even when they have him in
view, it's not like the internal computer is specifically highlighting him, Terminator-style, as a priority target.
QuoteOne last comment about their ability to distinguish individuals. The ability build a star ship must take some cooperation among individuals. If they can tell each other apart visually or otherwise, why not us humans? We can clearly see them cooperating with each other and identifying one another as individuals at the end of predator 2. Otherwise, how would they know who was the clan leader? How would they know to stand back and watch the "city hunter" duke it out with harrigan? Or how would they have know it was harrigan, the "city hunter's" lion, and not some other random intruder?
We never saw Predators in one another's HUDs calmly interacting with one another. It's quite possible there could be all sorts of things going on when they do. All we can go by is Harrigan's ridiculously generic blob of heat colour.
Also, they don't have to figure out where one another are over miles of cities.
They can go up to one another at close range. That isn't an option when they're trying to track Harrigan/Jerry/whoever at an incredibly long range.
QuoteIf you still don't buy this, then I leave you with one last argument. To quote Keyes: it's "a f@*#%$g ALIEN!" That's probably the most common argument used on these forums, and borderlines on cliche at this point, plus it's a lazy explanation, but there you have it... :-)
Well, sure! It's best regarded as a plot-hole, really. It
can be debated, but never satisfactorily, because it breaks down when you try to analyse it, like the '
Alien 3' egg.
