Floaty Birb
launching my #Monsterdon thread for First Men in the Moon (circa the year of someone else's lord, 1964), which I think I've seen before, but will heroically watch anyway until I get bored!
anyway, monsterdon is the thing where we watch an old monster movie each week and praise its glory, but which I mean, "make fun of it". Join if you want, or mute the hash tag if that isn't your thing and you don't want to see 999+ posts by me and everyone else about it.
RamenCatholic 🐢 🌈
@floatybirb your threads are my favorites 💚 #Monsterdon
Floaty Birb
So I guess our astronaut crew is multinational, because they all have flags on their space suits from different countries, and after they land we cut to a Ticker Tape parade and adoring news broadcasts from multiple countries, including the USA, the USSR and Japan and probably some other countries too.
I'm guessing the moon lander carries so large of a crew because of diplomacy... which... actually is a pretty good reason.
Floaty Birb
Aight so we get a mystery as our modern astronauts are wandering the moon and then they find a British flag, a glove and a plaque from 1899 claiming the moon for Queen Victoria or something.
Realistically, the modern cosmonaut is like "bro the kremlin aint gonna believe this bro", but back on the earth orb, the British people are very excited because it means they did a thing they can say "neener neener we did a moon landing first!" at the rest of the world.
Floaty Birb
Yo do British people say "Neener Neener!"? Or do they say a different thing to mock their enemies?
Maybe they just say "tut tut"?
Anyway, if you are a UK person, willingly or not, feel free to answer this pressing linguistic and cultural question.
Floaty Birb
This #monsterdon movie starts with a realistic looking lander doing a realistic landing on the moon, labelled "UN 1", I think; maybe its a multinational space mission from the good timeline.
The spacecraft looks like the upper stage of a rocket, so I'm guessing that its set up for direct ascent, but then we see the astronauts inside and then they radio a mothership, so I guess this is some kind of lunar-orbit rendezvous setup.
I like space.
Floaty Birb
Okay so I'd like to point out that this spaceship is staffed like a clown car. There's like 42 astronauts in this moon lander. Okay, maybe more like 6, but still a very high number of astronauts.
Anyway, they are all white men, because the 60s.
Floaty Birb
Characters so far:
Playwright - fancy guy, has aristocratic debts, early adopter of car technology
The Girl (tm) - fancy lady, pragmatic salesperson, hospitable, has giant hat
Science Mustache - a respectable eccentric
Future Astronauts (irrelevant)
Future British People (also irrelevant)
Floaty Birb
"Army Surplus Boots from the Boer War" is a pretty good randomly generated trade good.
Floaty Birb
Okay, so the fancy boy explains that he might have to sell his nice cottage because debts, which makes the fancy girl he's engaged too mildly worried.
We then encounter our third character, a bald mustached scientist who arrives, as all scientists do, on a cross country bicycle. I guess this is the guy who they find in an attic later.
Displaying hospitality, the fancy lady makes the scientist tea; he offers to buy the cottage so he can have a secret research lab.
Floaty Birb
Anyway, after drinking some tea, the scientist starts shouting "oh no the furnace the furnace!" and runs screaming into the hills. I think I shall start doing that after drinking tea now.
Floaty Birb
Okay, so after Terf Island is excited that its on the map again for a doing a moon landing in 1899, they find an old mustached guy in an attic and he's like "yeah i was in the moon, it was 1899... I was involved in a failed business venture let me tell you about it." and then we flashback to 1899 where a lady in a gigantic hat is driving an infernal contraption, which most boomers would call a "car", to meet her fancy fiancee who is writing a play in a fancy house I think.
Floaty Birb
The playwright is very happy his friend the scientist has invented the magic antigravity material, because he is motivated by comfort and also money. The scientist wants to take the orb ship to the moon, because he is motivated, probably, by curiosity. He wants the playwright to go with him, but the playwright doesn't want to go until the science master is like "bro there's gold on the moon!" and then the playwrite is like "i'm in."
Floaty Birb
I very much like how we just need a furnace and a garage to build a spaceship. This is some survival crafting game level rapid tech tree progress.
Floaty Birb
new favorite character: the greenhouse geese who chirp but, according to the scientist, are just like dogs.
someone should take some geese to the moon someday.
Floaty Birb
Okay, so the science master who name is Cavor or something, has invented a Special Magical Material which is called Cavorite and is anti-gravity, so he wants to use it to make a moonship, but not like a rocket moonship but like a hollow orb that uses antigravity to levitate itself to the moon. Which he is building in his garage or garden shed or something.
Floaty Birb
I am appreciating the bumbling quality of this space expedition, where the amateur astronauts aim themselves at the wrong celestial body, yell at a surprise chicken, screw on a diving helmet and then get drunk on oxygen. It's kind of relatable actually.
Floaty Birb
Okay, so because we suck at navigation, we're headed toward the sun instead of the moon which is bad, but then I guess we get on course because a chicken flaps around the space orb.
Cavor reveals that he loves geese and hates chickens, and is mad at the chicken because he's a bird racist.
Floaty Birb
So I guess to land our knobby space orb we have to somehow adjust it to counter the gravity of the moon and slow down, but the landing sequence mostly involves us holding on to the ropes as the ball rolls across the moon and bounces violently before settling to a stop.
I think I did a landing on the Mun like that in Kerbal Space Program once.
Floaty Birb
Also, I super like the mountainous lunar landscape they have here. Very unearthly and neat.
Floaty Birb
The British people are not playing against stereotypes when they walk out of their moon orb and decide it will be a nice colony as they claim the moon for Queen Victoria and the British Empire.
Floaty Birb
Also, the whole time this relationship / logistics drama is happening, Cavor is running back and forth freaking out because Kate keeps opening doors and threatening to upset the Cavorite furnace temperature and being vaguely misogynistic about it, in what I guess is an eccentric 19th century guy sort of way.
Floaty Birb
So while Kate is pouting in her cottage waiting for the playwright to come back, she is visited by the bank that reports that they actually own the cottage, which angers her.
Her boyfriend has apparently chosen lunar wealth over love, and is chilling with Cavor in the space orb.
Cavor is more thoughtful and frees his geese before going on a moon mission.
Floaty Birb
As they are getting ready to launch their moon orb, Kate decides to yell at Bedford (the playwright, see I can learn names sometimes!) because of the financial ruin they are in. Unfortunately, the moon orb takes out so they have to drag her inside as the orb accelerates into space.
Cavor finds out they aren't married and says "Well then kindly leave the room!" which everyone thinks is funny and then they have a laugh.
Floaty Birb
Okay, so the moon orb is kind of fun. From the outside it looks like a cross between a polyhedral dice and a Japanese paper lantern, only with knobs coming out of it.
From the inside, it has old timey portholes to look out of, but the rest of the inside is like... green velvet? It also has ropes inside so you can hang on to something while being yeeted through space, which seems like a good design feature.
Floaty Birb
I like how the cavorite makes a goopy bouncy sound when the professor applies it to the side of his spaceship with a literal paintbrush.
Floaty Birb
After being upset, Kate (the fancy lady) decides to help, by gathering useful foraging supplies for the moon expedition. These supplies include:
* live chickens (for fresh food)
* a giant elephant gun
In her defense, if you asked a 19th century person what supplies people would need for a moon expedition most of them would probably include "live chickens" and "giant guns" on that list. At least she's not handing him a Maxim gun to shoot the moon natives.
Floaty Birb
After passive aggressively handing him thoughtful moon supplies (chickens and guns, the machinery of life and death, respectively), Kate decides to give the playwright an ultimatum where she can either go with the science weirdo and probably die or stay with her.
So, you can have either love or cool moon adventures, but not both!
Floaty Birb
The science master managed to break the greenhouse testing his antigravity material, which causes an understandable neighborhood consternation. This incident, and the scientist gushing over his diving suits that he wants to use as space suits, reveals the moon plot to the fancy lady, who thinks going to the moon is a dumb idea that will kill her husband/fiancee/boytoy, so she is upset.
RamenCatholic 🐢 🌈
@floatybirb I, too, would jump around and get stuck in a giant moon rock. #Monsterdon
Floaty Birb
So we manage to find our helmet, but then we also find some moon people, which we call "Selenites" because that sounds more scientific than "moon people".
They look like little bug eyed green guys with horns and kind of an elephant nose, sort of like a cross between Greedo from Star Wars A New Hope and a goblin.
Floaty Birb
Perhaps wisely realizing that the British have come here to fuck with them, they decide to swarm the two boys and capture them; even though they are armed with some kind of sticks (maybe spears?) because they are bad at warfare the two bumbling boy astronauts repel them.
However, this might have been enough to repel imperialism, because the two boys then decide the Selenites will come back with reinforcements and decide to leave.
Floaty Birb
Wandering out of the moon tunnel, the boys discover that the sphere is gone, and conclude that the girl probably touched the controls. Then they are like... "wait no... there's some skid marks here, so the Selenites probably dragged it back to the moon." They follow the tracks and find a giant door, that the moon people dragged their spaceship to. Somehow it opens easily and there's more air inside.
Floaty Birb
I also like the shot of the earth over the mountainous lunar landscape in this movie. That was pretty cool.
Floaty Birb
Okay, so while bumbling on the moon we encounter civilization, in the form of a giant skylight that opens revealing a long tunnel going deep into the moon, and some air is blowing out of it, which seems like a waste of air.
The two boys decide to go down because one of them dropped his helmet down the tunnel (which has air) it but they don't tell the girl first so she probably doesn't know where they are.
They find a shiny rock prism and some bubbling slime soup.
Floaty Birb
As the boys start wandering through a tunnel, we cut to the space orb, which the moon people have dragged into a cave and are crawling over it and trying to open it like a giant puzzle box. Kate is scared by this and so grabs the elephant gun and tries to deter them by shooting it.
This noise alerts the boys, who start moving toward the orb through a fields of crystals and cave mushrooms, whence they are ambushed by a giant stop motion caterpillar.
Floaty Birb
So I also like this interior moon cave set with the weird mushrooms and weird crystals. That seems appropriately unearthly to me.
I also like the giant stop motion caterpillar that chases them... it's not a modern special effect and is chopped into the scene oddly but it is a very detailed looking monster.
Floaty Birb
From how easy it is for two earth astronauts to open a giant bulkhead door on the moon with their bare hands (what?), I am forced to conclude that the moon people need more secure door technology.
Floaty Birb
Turns out the sun down was just an eclipse, after which the machine turns back on and the Selenites wake up.
In a bit of foreshadowing, we see a lens directing the sunlight to the machine.
Floaty Birb
So far the Selenites seem actually rather chill about the alien visitors from Earth. They take them to their city, learn how to talk to them and then just... kind of let them wander around unsupervised.
Like the worst they've done is dismantle their spaceship a little bit.. but they don't really treat the astronauts as enemies really, at least not yet?
Floaty Birb
The moon people have apparently stripped the dead caterpillar of meat, leaving a giant caterpillar skeleton behind. While caterpillars don't have skeletons, this is a space caterpillar so I guess its fine.
Kate and the Professor are given a self-guided tour of the Selenite city, where they discover a huge solar powered goo machine that generates oxygen... I guess its like a tree with extra steps. They also find the Selenites are taking their spaceship apart, which upsets them.
Floaty Birb
Having played X-Com before, the moon people know that reverse engineering alien technology is a good way to deal with invaders and so are melting the cavorite to try to figure out how to synthesize it.
They also freeze some of their workers when their jobs are done, by putting them into some kind of cocoon that Cavor rudely messes with. He thinks this is a good way of handling unemployment, while Kate points out that they might freeze them later also, which scares her.
Floaty Birb
So Bedford finally catches up with the more interesting Earthlings, only as the sun goes down, freezing the giant oxygen creating glowing rock cactus and also freezing all the Selenites in place. I'm guessing that they also expected that the Earthlings would freeze, since they didn't take any precautions to detain the humans or otherwise stop them from potentially messing with stuff in their city.
Floaty Birb
Action sequence:
giant caterpillar chases puny humans, breaking some rocks in the process.
this leads puny humans to wander into a force of moon people armed with sticks, who capture them.
the moon people use their green lightning guns to subdue the giant caterpillar.
I guess the selenite arsenal consists of A) sticks and B) lighting guns. Maybe the sticks shoot lightning sometimes and I just missed that detail?
Floaty Birb
correction... only the professor guy was captured, we don't know where the playwright is. Anyway, the girl was captured offscreen, and the selenites are analyzing her in their erratically lit laboratory. Their scientific equipment includes:
1) an xray screen which lets them observe Kate's skeleton
2) some a glowing crystals that I guess are a universal translator that is studying English
3) a pointy control crystal, which is an interesting choice of user interface.
Floaty Birb
I rather like how the universal translator thing doesn't work automatically but the Selenites have to spend some time programming it by getting Kate to scream at them in English and talk to the Professor for a while.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.