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Monday, January 9, 2012

The Tyrant Lizard King (New Moon Chapter 16)

Despite the fact that the movie is almost 20 years old and contains some factual errors Jurassic Park still holds up in modern scrutiny. Amazingly, the movie's CGI is still as impressive as it was when I saw it in the theaters. I don't know if they were just way ahead of the curve but they still look better than the giant robots in Transformers. The factual errors that it possesses are tricky to categorize, the velociraptors in the movie were larger than the real creatures and they didn't have feathers. The discovery of the Utahraptor after the movie came out actually legitimized the exaggeration of the dinosaurs, and the feathers weren't discovered until after the movie came out either. These two errors are forgivable, sure Spielberg took some liberties by making the raptors more fearsome but it worked out in the long run and it's a movie not a documentary. The trouble in the movie lies not with scientific errors but toward the end.

Our surviving humans are trapped by two angry Velociraptors that have developed a taste for man flesh. The one raptor squats down getting ready to pounce when out of nowhere she (remember they are all female) is snatched by the jaws of the T-Rex. Where previously the T-Rex was announced by the impact tremors of its walk, now it has appeared unnoticed inside the atrium of the Jurassic Park visitor's center. It's a plot quibble, but an important one because it violates an important plot point from earlier in the movie. Although perhaps with all of the running and hiding from the raptors they didn't notice the tremors, it's a possible explanation.

What can't be explained is how in the world Bella hasn't drowned. Last week we left off with her cliff diving then carried off by a riptide. Her last words were "goodbye, I love you."

We pick up this chapter with her describing being banged off of rocks, which doesn't make that much sense since she ought to be being dragged out to sea, although she did mention something about the ocean bottom so there's probably rocks there. Then we get this, "Breathe!' a voice wild with anxiety ordered..."

So what happened here? Did the riptide pull her out of to sea into the path of a boat. Take a good look at the last part of chapter 15, she was screwed. Done for, kaput. She punched her own ticket there, but now someone has rescued her. Fine, but it better not be someone that we know is somewhere else. "Breathe, Bella! C'mon' Jacob begged."

As we say on the internet, GTFO. Nevermind the insane description of "the waterfall pouring from my mouth" to describe the drowning which is actually the opposite of drowning or the odd fact that Jacob's arm is hot in the water (again in violation of everything we know about thermodynamics). He CANNOT be there. She dove off the cliff, she was alone, the riptide carried her off. This is absolute bullshit. A random person in the water carrying her to shore where Jacob is would be implausible yet still possible. This is impossible. Don't give me the wolf thing either, because it's clearly human Jacob that is doing this.

Jacob and Sam are there on the beach. Sam wants to know how long she has been out, "A few minutes? It didn't take long to tow her to the beach." From our perspective here is what happened: Bella dives off the cliff surviving, even though she has no experience with doing so but some people just get lucky. The riptide carries her off. At the same time, Jacob could have only known that Bella was "at the beach" saw her in the water, swam out, grabbed her, swam back, then administered CPR. How long could that have taken? She ought to have brain damage.

As Jacob tells it, he was half-jogging toward the beach and found the tire tracks from the truck. Apparently there are no roads on the reservation. He heard her scream and then chased her out to sea. My whole issue with any of this is that it ignores what carried her out in the first place, Jacob apparently didn't have any trouble fighting the current. Since Bella made the point of describing to us that she was underwater the whole time she ought to have brain damage at the very least. I mean real brain damage from cerebral hypoxia, although the initial symptoms of mild hypoxia are interesting: poor judgment and uncoordinated movement. She's had that the whole time.

Could this whole book be explained by oxygen deprivation?

After rescuing her, we find out that Harry Clearwater--a character we've heard about but never actually met--has had a heart attack. I'm trying to figure out why I am supposed to give a shit, but then I remembered that we are getting toward the end of the book so we need a way to get rid of Charlie. I'm still wondering why he is even in this book.

Then we are "treated" to several pages of Bella opining on Romeo and Juliet and Paris. It's pretty lame and the obviousness of the metaphor Meyer is trying to force on us is about as subtle as an amputation. She wonders if Juliet (Bella) had just married Paris (Jacob) what would have happened?  May be Romeo would have moved on, or maybe the original gangsta would have up and dropped the young count. Bella/Meyer is right about one thing though: Paris only exists to give Juliet a confrontation, but Meyer ignores context again. Paris is only engaged to Juliet after she has married Romeo and Romeo has murdered Tybalt.

We find out that Harry has died. That's about it.

Jacob wakes up and worries about Bella, "don't worry about me.' I croaked."

Really!? She died? Awesome, although it's weird that it was written in the first person. It's like how Moses allegedly wrote Exodus but somehow was able to mention the place and time where he died. Although she's not dead, this was just another instance of Meyer over using the Thesaurus. Croaking would mean that she burped while talking? How appropriate.

The death puts things into perspective for her though, and she finally realizes that maybe attempting to commit suicide was a bad idea. She finally realizes that her life might have an affect on other people that care about her. Her solipsism might actually be disappearing at this point, oh character development where have you been.

Jacob drives her home where she laments upon the fact that she just might have to get over her ex-boyfriend. Could she betray her "absent heart to save my pathetic life?" I don't know what the phrase "absent heart" means, but I guess she's deciding on settling with Jacob. Yes, it's settling for her because she finds him attractive, enjoys being around him, and he treats her like a person. In almost every way he's equal or superior to Edward. I'm not weighing in on Jacob versus Edward as far as the movies are concerned, I'm weighing in on the fact that Jacob doesn't psychologically abuse her. Jake could be distant and unemotional but that would still make him superior because, again, the lack of abuse.

As Bella is thinking about this, she hears Eddie's voice in her head. This means her spidey sense is tingling and then Jacob scents a vampire. Jacob goes into war mode but before he can Hulk out he has to make a decision, "phase or get her out of here?"

We get his decision because we know what happened to Sam's wife, but "phase" is a noun. This is just bad writing, I get that she's trying to avoid using the same word over and over again but she hasn't used any synonym of transformation in twenty or so pages. It wouldn't be repetitive, plus it would avoid her sounding like an idiot for using a noun where a verb ought to be.

Jacob decides to drive away, but Bella sees the car and recognizes it as a Mercedes S55 AMG, Carlisle's car. Of course, it could be anyone's Mercedes but somehow she knows that it is Carlisle inside. Jacob doesn't understand, he's a straight Blood and Bella wants to go back because the Crips are back in town. Bella pleads with him, because she knows that the Cullens are back and that's more than she ever hoped for.

She's straight trippin', "Jake, it's not a war!"

Yes, actually it is. They have territories, treaties, everything. Jake gives up on her fleeing into the woods to get his pack, because there are new vampires. Curiously he remarks that he can't be caught on their territory. This doesn't make sense because haven't they been patrolling their territory ever since they discovered Victoria and Laurent a few chapters ago?

We get another non-sequitor wherein Bella remembers seeing an orange color in the water before she lost consciousness. That color must have been Victoria's hair. She was in the water the whole time too! I don't want to call bullshit again, but if she was there and the vampires have the advantage in the water (contradicting another myth about vampires and water) why didn't she just pull her down? End of book, end of misery...for me.

Inside her own house, the light turns on and someone is there waiting for her. I guess we have to wait until next week to find out...screw that: it's Alice.

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