Astro-Boy: Temporary INT Drain
Posted October 30th, 2009 by Howard TaylerWhen the Astro-Boy movie first introduced us to “positive blue energy” and “negative red energy” I decided to dumb myself down enough not to care. Unfortunately, this set a precedent. I really wanted to enjoy the film, and I’m afraid that by the end of it I had shed enough I.Q. to grant full sapience to a cage of guinea-pigs.
(No, I didn’t actually go see that movie this summer.)
Drooling idiot that I had become, I was delighted with the film by the end and could find nothing wrong with it. The final battle between the blue-charged Astro-Boy and the red-charged Peacekeeper was heaps of fun, the plot twists at once surprising and chilling, and the moral lessons were both timeless and timely.
I’m not suggesting that you have to be stupid to enjoy this movie, nor that those of you who loved it are lesser minds. Far from it! If you liked this film, you’re smart enough to have installed an I.Q. Attenuator dial on yourself.
If you dial it far enough back you can probably watch television news without wincing.
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October 30th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Watch out though: if you dial it back *too* far, you become too stupid to work the dial.
October 30th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
LOL, at BOTH of you. :)
October 31st, 2009 at 12:03 am
I have faith in you in most things, Howard, but I’m afraid I simply cannot accept the concept of watching the TV news without suffering brain damage.
October 31st, 2009 at 1:28 am
Yes, to properly appreciate TV news, you must have negative numbers on your dial.
Also, be sure you have a spouse or other person you trust to turn it back up once you are done watching. Usually right after the drooling starts.
October 31st, 2009 at 1:38 am
’s OK, while you’re smart you can design in automatic controls, so that for example, you have a setting for TV news which auto-resets to what passes for “normal” after say half an hour.
And whatever you do, don’t have an over-ride for the auto-reset.
This all reminds me of the peril-sensitive sunglasses from HHGTTG.
October 31st, 2009 at 6:28 am
“If you dial it far enough back you can probably watch television news without wincing.”
Will I need a respirator?
October 31st, 2009 at 7:10 am
You hit the wrong dial, Howard. Although in this particular case it had a similar effect.
You needed to use the WAYBACK dial, setting your expectations to those that existed in the cartoon/anime world at the time of the original cartoon, where such things as red and blue/good and evil/smooth and chunku energy were perfectly normal.
I use the WAYBACK dial a great deal so that I can read Doc Smith with the same enjoyment I did when I was 12, or the Oz books, rather than find myself critiquing them based on today’s standards.
October 31st, 2009 at 8:19 am
I think you hit it, Wasp.
Setting the ‘operating environment’ properly has a massive impact on the final results.
Due to too-early exposure to some authors, I now tend to drop into ‘auto-nitpicker-mode’, which can easily ruin books I’ve always enjoyed.
October 31st, 2009 at 8:21 am
“while you’re smart you can design in automatic controls, so that for example, you have a setting for TV news which auto-resets to what passes for “normal” after say half an hour.”
So you’re saying we should set the dial to auto-tune the news?
October 31st, 2009 at 9:37 am
I’m generally pretty good at figuring out where to set the dial so that I can enjoy movies.
TV news, however, I can’t manage.
October 31st, 2009 at 10:17 am
*cough* Star Wars…lightsaber and blaster colors *cough*
October 31st, 2009 at 11:50 am
Aw, man…that must be the secret to watching old episodes of the Space Ghost Saturday morning cartoons…*shudder*
October 31st, 2009 at 1:47 pm
@ishidan Similar, yes, but until you’ve seen Astro-Boy you won’t know how far short the comparison falls.
On a related note, if you’ve got kids go ahead and take them to this film with my blessing. You’ll all have fun, I’m sure, and that’s the important thing with movies.
October 31st, 2009 at 4:46 pm
“Negative red energy?” Bah! Every electrical engineer knows that Red is positive! All kidding aside, I’m looking forward to this movie just to see how faithful it is to the original I saw when I was in third grade. Yes; we had TV back then, but it was in black and white and any colors were what we were told they were.
October 31st, 2009 at 11:13 pm
And speaking of Weapons Technology, and the Unintended Side Effects Thereof: Has anyone ever related to Piebald the story of the Libyan anti-tank mines, and what happened when the Chadians ran over them with Toyota pickups? (Hint: The mine was designed to kill something which weighed 60 tons — and moved at 20 MPH; the pickups were moving upwards of *70* MPH….)
I bet *no one* out there *ever* expected someone to be able to tie *this* line of discussion with the current (11/01/09) comic…. ;)
November 1st, 2009 at 2:12 am
I’m not looking for the highest form of entertainment when I go see a movie about a robot who has machine guns installed in his aft hatch.
That being said, I pretty much had to go see it once I learned that they did incorporate this piece of equipment from the days of Astro Boy yore.
November 1st, 2009 at 4:56 am
That there was the best part of the trailer, “I have machine guns? In my BUTT?!?”
Makes my kids laugh every time.
Okay, I admit, I giggle too.
November 1st, 2009 at 11:02 pm
I find it hard to believe a weapon designed to destroy improvised armor would kill LOTA. He’s smart enough to take precautions against any kind of assasination attempt.
November 2nd, 2009 at 12:17 am
“_Astro Boy_: Giving new meaning to the phrase ‘weapons out the ass’.” ;)
Comic: Wow — he’s in a LOTA pieces…. >;)
November 2nd, 2009 at 1:08 am
richv: His torso’s probably more-or-less intact. The rest of him was a bit improvised, though. And he didn’t have to be stupid to trust the Toughs not to try to assassinate him – although not expecting them to assassinate him by accident was a bit of an oversight.
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:06 am
I think there’s some negative red energy in the archive function, last weekend appears to have gotten such a hangover from it that it refuses to show. That must have been one good negative red energy comics party.
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:07 am
LOTA’s head is still intact, as we can see, so LOTA could simply be inconvenienced by a lack of LOTA’s body, which will leave LOTA free to complain.
November 2nd, 2009 at 7:24 am
But as soon as LOTA recovers from the shock, LOTA is going to dump a LOTA sheet armor on the deck, causing a LOTA problems for Tagon’s Toughs.
November 5th, 2009 at 7:11 am
An IQA widget can be a wonderful thing, but don’t forget the default back-up system: the ’suspensionofdisbelief’ bungee [elastic limit may vary...].
richv: remember that even in the far, far future, the ‘aw shit’ corollary of Chaos Theory is still in effect: mayhem and comedy may ensue.
November 5th, 2009 at 7:55 am
I would like to enter this awesome drawing contest!