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So I was watching Independence Day, campy classic alien invasion film I think we all know it. It occurred to me while watching the movie that they sure got lucky that not only did this random guy in New York figure out the signal was a countdown, they got insanely lucky he actually knew someone important and could warn them, and preposterously lucky that the aliens apparently don't license plates or some equivalent for their ships and didn't find one lost 50 years before the plot coming back a tad suspicious.

If Jeff Goldblum's character wasn't a walking magic lamp, humanity would probably have been wiped out cause half the main cast would have been killed when DC got blown up.

So this got me thinking and I wonder if others have had these moments. Lucky tends to be a big thing in lots of plots, but sometimes it can go to really insane heights! Anyone else got some films, books, and shows where the heroes got so lucky it begers belief?

Q from James Bond should rebrand as a Prophet, given his latest gadget pretty much always is the very dab needed to save the day.

At least as far as the Area 51 ship goes, I just assumed that they would widely spread disposable scouts among the stars to prospect on planets. It's entirely possible that the crashed one DID actually send a message, but it took the Mothership that long to make the travel to Earth. Even as crazy as the sequel was (and it was bat-gak crazy), it took two decades for the Super-Mothership to respond to the emergency distress beacon that they retconned the ship in the first movie to have sent.

I'm more confused about how they are living in a universe where the command and control systems of an alien ten-mile wide ship can be taken over in moments by a virus sent by a laptop, even if you assume the tongue-in-cheek joke that the laptop was created using their technology as a base, it evidently was really easy to hack their wifi password, and that their tech is stagnant enough that nothing changed in 50 years, especially for a command-and-control ship, of all things. That there in combination beats Jeff Goldblum's luck in deciphering the sent code (which apparently wasn't sent on a secure bandwidth, at all), hands down.

Earth's luck is that they were invaded by a predatory species as dumb as the one from Signs, whose weakness was the mother of all luck.[b]

No amount of cinematic good luck IMO can ever possibly compare to the odds against the Star Wars Episode 3 "Just As Planned" outcome for palpatine.

I'm not sure why anyone was surprised by Palpatine's just handwaving a fleet of star destroyers into existence in Rise of Skywalker, we already know that he was essentially omniscient and omnipotent based on how he pulled the plot of the prequels off...

Just finished up the Dragon Prince on Netflix. I was bothered enough by various Deus ex Machina moments in the first two seasons, but the climax of the third is literally... wtf?

The entire plot of the whole show is the epic journey into Xadia (elfland continent) that takes more time than walking into Mordor (which... they explicitly reference, even with Boromir's little ring hand gesture from the LotR trilogy). They run into all sorts of dangers, delays, soul destroying deserts, massive ancient dragons and various nonsense along the way, with apparent weeks of travel time (including a boat that no one else used, and a short cut across said soul-destroying desert that would explicitly take a week to go around).

Yet somehow, not one, or two but _three_ armies get there in roughly... a couple days? Just after the heroes do. None of which left at the same time, and the last won't couldn't even have _assembled_ when the first one left. But they somehow all arrive to throw a recreation of the Battle of Five Armies at the convenient plot location. Which doesn't even make sense, because no one, including the guy leading the first army, even knows where they were going or what they were doing until absurdly late in the journey.

Then the villain is at the top of the mountain for the climatic showdown because... um. How did he get there? Nevermind, season needs to wrap.

 LordofHats wrote:
So I was watching Independence Day, campy classic alien invasion film I think we all know it. It occurred to me while watching the movie that they sure got lucky that not only did this random guy in New York figure out the signal was a countdown, they got insanely lucky he actually knew someone important and could warn them, and preposterously lucky that the aliens apparently don't license plates or some equivalent for their ships and didn't find one lost 50 years before the plot coming back a tad suspicious.

If Jeff Goldblum's character wasn't a walking magic lamp, humanity would probably have been wiped out cause half the main cast would have been killed when DC got blown up.

So this got me thinking and I wonder if others have had these moments. Lucky tends to be a big thing in lots of plots, but sometimes it can go to really insane heights! Anyone else got some films, books, and shows where the heroes got so lucky it begers belief?

Well, humanities technology stagnated from time to time.
Maybe theirs did.

I try to give films and books the benefit of the doubt, because essentially you have to be watching the 1-in-a-million universe where the hero exists and did the thing, because in the other 999,999 universes they lost, bad guy won, everyone dies, plot over (which generally isn’t interesting). But is does get taken too far sometimes (random Star Destroyer fleets with no explanation, setup or prior hint for example; Chekhov’s gun exists for a reason!)

On a side note, the ridiculous, dumb, ID4 sequel did introduce one great idea; I would very much like to see the central African insurgency campaign against the landed alien army, that has the potential to be an awesome film/TV series. Also one of the many, many problems in that sequel is side referring to an idea that is much more interesting than the film you actually made. I was literally sat there thinking “I’d much rather watch that than this garbage...”

 Jadenim wrote:


On a side note, the ridiculous, dumb, ID4 sequel did introduce one great idea; I would very much like to see the central African insurgency campaign against the landed alien army, that has the potential to be an awesome film/TV series. Also one of the many, many problems in that sequel is side referring to an idea that is much more interesting than the film you actually made. I was literally sat there thinking “I’d much rather watch that than this garbage...”

Someone call that guy that really likes making gritty sci-fi movies set in Africa and see if he's got any openings after his "I, Robot But A Die Antwerd Vanity Project How Was This Good" movie.

the_scotsman wrote:
No amount of cinematic good luck IMO can ever possibly compare to the odds against the Star Wars Episode 3 "Just As Planned" outcome for palpatine.

I'm not sure why anyone was surprised by Palpatine's just handwaving a fleet of star destroyers into existence in Rise of Skywalker, we already know that he was essentially omniscient and omnipotent based on how he pulled the plot of the prequels off...

Yeah, it's a shame that they couldn't have made him some sort of evil space wizard that can tell the future or something...

Eh I found Episode 7 far more full of convenient encounters than anything else. Falcon sitting in a random scrap heap on a random world that a random key girl was on with no connection between the two of them; beacon active moments before Han and Chewy are conveniently in the system where their crew were conveniently killed off by convenient monsters.

For me its not so much when or how it happens its the scale of it happening in quick succession. Small events spaced out in a film work ok, but when they happen one ontop of the other very quickly is when its a problem.


IT's why Q works in James Bond. His gadgets do work great wonders, but they are often spaced out as to when Bond uses them. He's not using one then the next then the next then the next in quick succession. Also a good few of them are generic type gadgets - laser in a watch. Rather than very specific objects that would only have worked in a given instance.





Of course then you get to pure abuse like the current Dr Who series where ever since the reboot its very convenient that the sonic screwdriver basically solves almost anything and everything (it should be renamed - Dr Screwdriver)

 Compel wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
No amount of cinematic good luck IMO can ever possibly compare to the odds against the Star Wars Episode 3 "Just As Planned" outcome for palpatine.

I'm not sure why anyone was surprised by Palpatine's just handwaving a fleet of star destroyers into existence in Rise of Skywalker, we already know that he was essentially omniscient and omnipotent based on how he pulled the plot of the prequels off...

Yeah, it's a shame that they couldn't have made him some sort of evil space wizard that can tell the future or something...

Sure, but the sheer list of things Palpatine needs to be able to see and manipulate in the future for the plot of the prequels to work makes him appearing as essentially a god in ep 9 basically inevitable. Palpatine has to be able to conceal his dark side-ness from the ENTIRE jedi council, all of them, for the entire movie, he has to have total mind control over Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Jar Jar, and numerous other named characters to the point where the entire prequel trilogy is rendered into an elaborate puppet show, and the only logical conclusion that can come from that is "Well, then the OT must have been a puppet show as well, because there's no way an essentially omniscient omnipresent psychic entity like Palpatine could have let himself get Kobe'd into the space dumpster by a 25 year old who plays with model spaceships in his mom's basement and his dad who he's had total control over for 2 decades"

Just examine any one of Palpatine's brilliant plans:

In order to ensure that the Republic accepts a clone army controlled by him to fight a puppetshow war with a droid army also controlled by him, a manipulation CRITICAL to every aspect of Palp's plan, he hires a bounty hunter to hire a bounty hunter to use a robot to release poisonous centipedes to kill a lady who again is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to ANOTHER of Palp's plans, but because he's so good at planning he knows that Anakin will kill the centipedes, jump on the robot, engage in a flying car chase, and catch the second bounty hunter so that, just as planned the FIRST bounty hunter will kill her with a dart that he knows Obi-wan will be able to bring to a cook at a 1950s space diner to point him to the planet where he'll find the clone army.

Palpatine is SO GOOD at planning in advance that the premise of the trilogy is that HE DIRECTLY CONTROLS BOTH OPPOSING ARMIES IN THE CONFLICT. Boy, it sure is lucky for the heroes that Palpatine decided to play both sides so he always comes out on top instead of sitting up from his stupid game of Pixar Short Self-Chess, slap his forehead and go "DUH, I have both the armies, why don't I just use BOTH of them to take over the galaxy like I was planning on doing in the first place?"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Eh I found Episode 7 far more full of convenient encounters than anything else. Falcon sitting in a random scrap heap on a random world that a random key girl was on with no connection between the two of them; beacon active moments before Han and Chewy are conveniently in the system where their crew were conveniently killed off by convenient monsters.

For me its not so much when or how it happens its the scale of it happening in quick succession. Small events spaced out in a film work ok, but when they happen one ontop of the other very quickly is when its a problem.
)

Doesn't matter. Everything post-prequels in the star wars canon can be explained by Palpatine being an omnicient omnipresent deity manipulating every event, every person and every location. Thats how Live Mas Canada got Lukakinreybiwan's Lightsaber, that's how Luke's hobo island got populated by milk spewing boob muppets to keep him fed and nun muppets to do his laundry, that's how the boy did the broom with the force in the last jedi stinger, it's all 100% canonically accurate and fine because everything that ever happens in star wars can be simply and succintly explained by 'evil wrinkly god did it.'

Palpatine never depended on turning Anakin though. Like....at all.

He simply saw a powerful force user, and from there a useful tool.

Once he becomes Vader, he’s a blunt instrument. An enforcement thug and little more. A big old scary bogeyman to keep Jedi in hiding, and Imperial Officers loyal.

You can see this in Vader’s armour. Consider his suit, and the one Grievous was furnished with. Which seems the better combat frame? Which, if there was only the choice between the two, would you choose? Vader’s one was to give Palpatine greater control, and to keep Vader in constant pain and suffering.

As for his manipulation of the Clone War? For his Empire, he needed a centralised military. Given the Republic was previously actually kinda chill, he needed to change up the status quo. Let the Separatists become sufficient threat to require an armed, centralised response.

Droid armies were the perfect foil for this, as they could be deactivated with pretty decent ease, especially compared to flesh and blood people who wouldn’t necessarily stand down Just Because You Said So.

The Clone Wars covers this really well, including such things as Palpatine seizing control of the banks, ostensibly to put the financial squeeze on the Seperatists, and prevent rate hikes bankrupting the Republic.

His plan is actually surprisingly basic, especially given the Senate had a de facto Presidential position. Once in placed, simply pull the strings of the existing corruption. Grease the right palms, line the right pockets and you can make such corruption dance to your tune. In short, he was a master opportunist.

He directly controls both armies in the conflict. There is zero reason to expend the vast, VAST amounts of resources that palpatine expends to wage an extended intergalactic war. If the jedi are really truly some kind of threat, all Palpatine had to do to get from the end of episode 2 to the end of episode 3 instantaneously would be to send the droid army directly at coruscant, pretend the brand new clone army is going to defend the place, and execute order 66 immediately.

Oh look, I'm now in your capital city and it seems that I have 2 armies to your no armies. Guess I win.

Palpatine is the ultimate "The heroes got really lucky" villain, unless you consider literally every action of every character in every movie to be playing directly in to his grand plan. It just so happens that he just loooooooooooooves wasting trillions upon trillions of spacebucks for no reason.

In fact, the only way any of it may make any kind of sense is if Palpatine's real goal from the very beginning is just to properly cultivate a young body that he can possess and continue to live forever, and intergalactic war and conflict is just a means to that end. Like if he has the ability to Force Meatpuppet someone, but only if he successfully makes them into specifically the second-most powerful force user in the whole galaxy first.

So his initial plan is Anakin, and he pulls all the strings and does all the gak and at the end of the day he STILL tries it even though obi-wan had the fething high ground god dammit, so his second plan is "OK, feth this, I'm going to wipe out ALL the other force users in the galaxy except for one idiot, I'll get that idiot to kill anakin and then I'll meatpuppet him badabing badaboom" and that doesn't work and he gets thrown down the space elevator. So then, from the bottom of the elevator as he's waddling off all flattened like Wil E. Coyote after getting an anvil dropped on him he goes "OK, feth this, this time I'm going back to the immaculate conception plan, but this new one is just going to be the most powerful force user in the galaxy RIGHT OFF THE BAT, and the whole plan is I just. gotta get her. here. That's it. No more schemes! No more plots! I'm going clean!


.....


....OK, ONE giant CGI Andy Sirkis muppet made from the corpse of the old Jedi Council librarian."

In before Lance rants about Nolan's Batman trilogy!


Edit: Which by the way, I completely agree with!