One such "troper" (as people on the website like to call themselves) brings up an interesting question: during the winter, the sun sets in New York roughly an hour before closing time proper, and many of the exhibits are either too stupid or too aggressive to stand still and make like exhibits, which then brings up the question: how did no one notice anything weird? Someone else answers with this:
- Sunset may not literally be the activation point for the tablet, but instead simply a bit of poetic license to indicate the general timeframe in which it will usually start working. It's just easier to judge by sunset than say "When the third star of the fifth constellation is at thirty degrees from the horizon of the sea."
Which is an interesting take on the matter, to be sure. But this is a tough nugget to chew on, and it comes with the territory of all sorts of such similar movies. For instance, for the past week I've been discussing any and all things The Mummy (starting around the late '90s), and it has come to my attention that no one but the main characters notices that mummies and reanimated terracotta soldiers are running out and about doing God knows what and trashing everything in their wake (except in Tale of the Mummy, where there's a whole police investigation into the matter which takes place throughout the entire movie and makes headline news multiple times). People in American renditions of such things tend to be perfectly oblivious to the strange and awe-inspiring all around them, which is completely unrealistic compared to real life. Trust me, if weird shit goes down, people will take notice.
Another troper asks about what on Earth happened to Brunden, to which I say, sir, damn good question.
What about the mess at the Smithsonian? Well, that's also a really good question, because it's not like you can explain away the disappearance/potential permanent alteration of priceless, timeless, classic exhibits without somebody getting arrested/jailed for life/fined their entire life savings and 401k/any combination thereof. Either the guards are clueless or the janitors are good, but one must also factor in that this is Washington, D.C., so...
Someone else ponders why Larry was slow to show interest in Amelia, only to have it pointed out that Amelia, a wax figurine forever and for always, has no scent, thus no pheromones, which led to another discussion: why were they so worried about Jed being trapped in an hourglass? In all fairness, in my knowledge of these movies, Jed's imprisonment in an hourglass is the first exhibit-on-exhibit attempted murder that we know of. Sure, Cowboys and Romans spent fifty years fighting, but it was more of a turf war than anything else ("This here giant's on our land."). There was no actual life threatening occurrence before this one. Given it's new territory, nobody had any idea what would happen. Thus, they actually were convinced that Jedediah would (or could) die.
Which is a nice-ish lead in into the questions about where in the living H-E-Double Hockey Sticks pi came in. There are a variety of opinions on this matter: one which states that by the time of Ramses the Great, the Egyptians already had something that was within 1% of the actual value of pi; another states that it was sheer accident, because that's what would've happened anyway if you measured everything off with a wheel; and then there's the question of the decimal system, which is never really resolved (as I recall, the decimal point itself was removed, and according to the commentary, they only needed enough digits of pi to fit onto an ATM keypad-esque type thing). There's a third movie coming out, so hopefully all will become clear (or there will be new mysteries to chew on, one of the two).
There's also this nice little bit concerning what does and does not come to life, which shows a clear and implicit understanding of Egyptian mythology:
- Most of the stuff that comes to life are things that either were or represent living beings. As far as I recall, the gates don't start moving on their own, the furniture doesn't start scampering through the hallways, and the trash cans don't start calling "Feed me!", so it doesn't just imbue everything with life and motion. As planets aren't alive in the same sense a Pharaoh or a Tyrannosaurus Rex or Teddy Roosevelt were alive, they don't get animated.
And finally there's an interesting question about where the replacement night guard was, met with two interesting suggestions: 1) the guy had the days of renovation off, and 2) the guy spent the entire time in his office because the exhibits could behave themselves (which is something the exhibits apparently disapproved of, hence their discontent with Larry's having left).
There's plenty more on that page to ponder if you like, but I hope I provided a summation of the more interesting, thoughtful stuff.
Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Tomorrow night, it's Wild Mass Guessing night! See which fans hit and miss and which might have a point. That's next.
Countdown: 281 Days to NATM 3
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