ALL SCI-FI

[MetroPolly]

I started this discussion in the CHFB, but I wanted to give it a shot here.

I've noticed that there aren't many movies involving giant people lately. It used to be kind of a trend in the 50s.

I was just wondering why. I can't help thinking with CGI being good now, one could do a fairly "realistic" job.

Now, I don't mean comic book movies, ok?

At one point, I had asked about a serious giant movie, but I realize one can't do it serious because everybody knows it's impossible.

Really, I guess I'm just asking for other views on this.

[orzel-w]

Three recent titles that come to mind:

Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)

Wrath of the Titans (2012) (cyclopses)

Trollhunter (2010 - Norway)

Then there are the XXL characters appearing in many of the superhero movies. Granted, these giants aren't your oversize man-on-the-street type people. That's probably too tame for today's moviegoers, who hunger for the fantastic. Oversize ordinary people would be just too easy. That may be why Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1993 remake) scored only 3.8 out of 10 on IMDb.com.
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WayneO
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[MetroPolly]

You certainly have a point there. And you give good examples. But I'm trying to avoid kids' fantasy stuff.

What's bothering me is that studios have been remaking and rebooting everything under the sun lately. Makes me wonder why they haven't done a giant movie yet.

Not counting comic book stuff or fantasy.

[MetroPolly]

I wanted to revise that last comment. I meant skip the kids' fantasy. If you leave out fantasy, giant movies would be confined to horror or scifi. And that to me seems a bit too restricted.

[Bud Brewster]

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Au contraire, ma'lady. There's a plethora of "size plus" guys in sci-fi.

Behold!
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The Cyclops





The Amazing Colossal Man





War of the Colossal Beast





Village of the Giants





Land of the Giants


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

[Bud Brewster]

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Oh . . . .

Uh . . . I meant the upcoming remakes of these movie. Naturally.

Anyway that's one way to keep a thread alive, eh?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[MetroPolly]

Yeah, nice save bud. I know I'm not making a load of sense in this thread, but this has just been nagging at me lately.

BTW. if they do end up remaking any of those, at least the FX will be better (crosses her fingers).

[Bud Brewster]

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You brought up an interesting subject — just the kind we love to ponder!

And my reply (a tiny bit misplaced though it was), certainly proved your point concerning how common those movies about giant were in the 1950s and 1960s.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[MetroPolly]

I appreciate that,bud. I honestly like a good straight discussion. Now, I have a little science to add to this...

For those of you who are fans of the Amazing Colossal Man, and the 50 ft Woman, I should tell you that if anybody is waiting for a sequel involving a 100 ft person, don't hold your breath.

See, the maximum height for a living thing is determined by 2 main factors. Physics dictates that due to the weight load on the skeleton, the tallest a person can achieve is 60 ft. Amazingly, comic book writers got that right.

However, biology won't even let you get that far. A giraffe, for example, is tall, but is also has really high blood pressure.

Now, taking into account the human cardiovascular system, even for somebody in great shape, the maximum height would be no more than about 30 ft before one would suffer major problems.

Mind you, this mostly applies to land animals. Whales, for example, don't have to worry about gravity pulling on their skeletons, so their size is limited by other factors, I imagine. Insects, on the other hand, are mostly restricted in their size by gravity somewhat, but mostly by the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, as the fossil record can prove.

So, any budding mad scientists thinking of making it "big" in the world (sorry), I would think of something else, and leave that stuff to the movies.

[Bud Brewster]

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Wow, great post! Very few people like to examine the science behind the smart movies, much less the not-so-smart ones!

Good job.

Ironically enough, The Amazing Colossal Man was said to be suffering from the fact that his heart was NOT growing larger as rapidly as his body was.

But in reality, even if his heart had grown at the same rate as the rest of him, he would still have been in trouble long before he ended up as big as he finally got!



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[MetroPolly]

What can I say? I'm a geek. And if you really like me doing close examination of film physics, I have the feeling that the 50 ft woman might have been exaggerating a bit, judging by her height compared to other objects, namely her husband.

Feel free to argue.

[Bud Brewster]

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Allison Hayes was 5' 8", which is about 1/9th of 50 feet. Therefore, the 50 ft woman was 9 times bigger than Allison.

According to Wikipedia, high tension power line towers range from 49 ft to 180 ft, which means that in this scene —





— Allison was at least 50 feet tall. But she certainly might have been presented as a bit smaller in other scenes. All movies with giant people and monster are guilty of doing that.

But at no time in the movie was she ever this tall. Unfortunately.


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[MetroPolly]

Okay, we'll chalk that up to continuity issues. It's just I was doing some comparisons using myself as a base (I'm 5'4")and I noticed that when she got a hold of Harry, the size looked off

By my estimate, she would've been around 25 ft, or roughly 4 times as tall as him (assuming he was 6')

before you ask, I did the comparison with paper dolls, and discovered that if you keep the proportions right, then a 6' person would come up to the knee or so of a 25-30' creature.

Who knew I actually learned something in math class!

[Bud Brewster]

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I did a few enhancements on my jpg of the great poster for this movie (boosted the color, sharpened the detail, etc.), and while doing so I started wondering about something the artist did.

Notice the multi-car pile up directly below the giant lady. That's seems a bit illogical. The drivers on the highway would see the giant woman straddling the highway from a mile away, so the multi-car pile up would have taken place long before they reached the point where we see it happening in the poster.

My question is this: why are these people stopped dead in the road directly beneath the giant lady wearing the world's largest miniskirt?

I mean, it just doesn't seem logical, you know?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)