Real Genius as we now know is pound for pound the greatest Val Kilmer movie of all time. Go ahead, name a better? Val Kilmer might have entered a different weight class, but try to harken back when he was a young genius with the world ahead of him. A world full of five megawatt chemical lasers and t-shirt wearing boy geniuses. A world full of lovely Jordan Cochrans and sexy Deborah Foremans.
And that leads us to the Wonders of Death Rays:
Mythbusters did an episode that recreated the famous popcorn exploding house scene. But sadly with miniatures. There experiments showed a laser could pop a popcorn kernel, but the expanded popcorn kernels could never burst through glass and wood. Instead the popcorn simply burned. But I don’t have a problem with the popcorn demolished home, or the invention of the 5 megawatt laser (a laser several magnitudes more powerful than any laser in actual existence even today). The only problem I had with it was that it was unsanitary… parents, don’t let your children frolic in strange glass filled popcorn. My problem is from earlier… no, not Jordan’s attraction to Mitch.
What is the quickest path from point A to point B? A straight line… which is exactly the course the laser tore through campus. What I had a problem with was when Val first fired up the laser and it cut a path through the school. The laser cut through the brick target and the wall and building and a statue and a tree, all the way to a hamburger joint on the other side of the quad. Where the wacky gang joyfully ate hamburgers with little regard to the carnage they caused. If a laser can burn a perfect hole through an oak tree or a metal statue, it probably wouldn’t have a problem cutting through a person. How many students had to die to feed Val Kilmer’s ego? Campus security at the very least would have questions about the holes appearing all over school.
They didn’t care about the random students in the path of the laser.
Or the Dean’s prized cockapoo.
Or Ken.
Or even Jordan.
The first thing I would have thought was, I hope I didn’t kill a bunch of people, not I could really use a hamburger. And not only do they not realize that half the campus is dead, but they don’t even realize that they invented a weapon. These were supposed to be geniuses and they couldn’t figure out a laser that burns through a college could be used for something bad. And when they do realize it, what’s the only logical course of action? Blowing up a house with popcorn because as we all know the government really respects madcap hijinks.
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As it would happen, Real Genius is one of my two favorite movies of all time (the other being Barry Gordon’s The Last Dragon of course)…and so I’ve seen it a million times…and while I agree about the ‘duh, of course it could be used for evil’ thing…the laser couldn’t have killed anyone when they fired it off because it was too high up in the air…assuming it’s traveling in a straight horizontal line (since it’s sitting flat on a table that’s parallel with the ground when it’s fired), you see in the scene when they check the tree that they have to climb up quite a bit to see through the hole…and at the hamburger joint the hole is in the sign way above the street…they are careful not to show the laser going through any other buildings (which would really be the only reasonable way that it could have hit a person — well assuming no other geniuses were standing on a random ladder around the campus for some odd reason)…
Anyway – awesome stuff as usual…now I’m off to perfect ice that doesn’t melt…it goes directly to a gassious state (that is if I can just keep it from blowing up!)
don’t know if you’ve done it yet, but you should do a top 10 nerd girl characters. and there should obviously be emphasis on pictures of them looking super-fine
And Doug I have written much on Zooey Deschanel and her charms:
http://www.wolfgnards.com/index.php/2009/07/12/indie-girls-deconstructed
What I like about Michelle is that she’s a formative crush, this is who we base all crushes off of. Yes, looking back on it, she doesn’t hold up, but there’s still something I like about her.
I didn’t have a crush on Michelle, but she was cute and quirky and probably shaped my taste in women. However, I’m still going off the Mary Stuart-Masterson portrayal of Watts as my crush of the 80s. She was hard core and vulnerable, cool and a misfit, lovely face and horrid clothing. Eric Stoltz was a lucky dude.
Furthermore, what’s weird is how the laser burned a hole through such high places. The table was no more than 4-5 feet off the ground and in the basement, I believe. Thus, it’s on a flat surface and possibly at a low elevation. How did it burn through a tree and a billboard at such a high elevation off the ground. It should have been a straight line, almost tripwire like, but for some reason angled upward. It couldn’t have bounced off of anything. The beam was hotter than the sun. It would burn the surface. That’s the confusing part.
Also, Ken was in the room with them when the laser was fired and was bitching about his tracking mirror and not getting the job, so he was safe.
Last, but not least, Jordan was hot and Real Genius is, seriously, one of the greatest films ever.