Complaint Department: What's a "cube"?

If you know what this is, please tell me because I have no idea.

In gearing up for the Transformers sequel, I just watched Transformers. Not gonna lie, it's a fun movie. I mean what's not to like about giant robots fighting each other? But the film's still got problems, problems that become even more apparent the more you watch. Big plot holes which I'm choosing to ignore, and little things. You can't argue with the little things.

For instance, they carbon dated the cube. That's not possible. Why? Because you can't carbon date something that's not organic. Also, they claim that Japanese cell phone technology is the best in the world, evidenced by Nokia. Nokia's Finnish. And the Challenger Deep is the deepest part of the ocean, not the Laurentian Abyss. It's stuff like this, more so than bad storytelling, that ruins a movie. I have no problem buying into alien robots, but don't tell me something that just isn't true.

NB: This dating method cannot be used on dinosaurs. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Okay, so maybe not everyone in Hollywood understands the intricacies of radiocarbon dating, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that something has to be made of fucking carbon in order to be carbon dated. As for Nokia and the world's oceans, it takes minutes to look that shit up. Mere minutes!

Recall the movie The Hills Have Eyes 2. In the special features a producer discusses possible shooting locations. She explaines, on camera, that when someone proposed they film the movie in Morocco, everyone balked at the idea because they were afraid of terrorist activity nearby. I like to think the special feature filmmakers were providing us with insight into exactly how stupid some people can be. Instead of confirming Morocco's location by looking at a map, they chose instead to conclude that Morocco is, based on it's non-English sounding name, somewhere in the Middle East.

The bottom line is you should never assume your audience is dumber than you. That's how you end up with forums like this and this. Granted, it's likely unfeasible to fact-check everything in every script, but if you're unsure of something don't just make shit up. Someone will know you're lying.

And will blog about it.

There are no stupid quesitons.