Why I won't be seeing the A-Team movie, now or ever

[unixronin]

Howard Tayler writes as an aside in a mini-review of new spy thriller Salt,

[...] unlike The A-Team, this movie can’t afford to ask me to put on my industrial strength Suspenders of Disbelief.  It’s odd but completely accurate when I say that I can believe the A-Team flying a tank using the main gun, surviving a water landing, and then driving the tank out of the lake, [...]

...OK, Howard.  Thanks for the heads-up. That one sentence about flying tanks into lakes just completely eliminated any possible remaining shreds of temptation I might still have had lingering around to ever even CONSIDER watching the new A-Team movie.  Because when you get to that kind of complete bullshit, it's no longer even a Laughably Improbable Stupid Action Movie, it's crossed the line into a Warner Brothers cartoon with real humans ... except without the funny.

Comments

[robhansen]

I always took the 125,000-round number as evidence of their skill, actually. At some point even the most clueless idiot will hit something downrange by accident. It would take a shooter of genuinely superlative skill to put 125,000 rounds downrange and hit nothing at all. :)

[unixronin]

You do have a point. :)

[vetpsychwars.livejournal.com]

Uh... and the original wasn't a cartoon exactly how?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Who said it wasn't? Truth to tell, I never watched the original either.


I was amused to learn that someone went through the entire first season of A-Team and counted up every shot fired. They went through an eighth of a million rounds of machine-gun ammunition, and never once hit one single damned thing. These people were supposed to be former members of an elite military unit? The only earthly reason I can imagine them ever managing to complete a mission is that their opponents were all rolling on the ground helpless with laughter at what incompetent boobs they were.

[vetpsychwars.livejournal.com]

That's not entirely true. They hit a lot of *things* but they never hit (with weapons) any people. You can easily rationalize it to say it's one thing to be on the lam for a crime you didn't commit, but actually shooting someone is yet another story.

As the original show is on Hulu, if you're going to comment about it, you really ought to watch it so that your comments (about the original) can be taken seriously.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

OK, I should rephrase that ... "I never watched the original past enough short bits of the first few episodes to become entirely certain that it was complete rubbish." I never managed to watch a single episode all the way through. It was that bad.

[shadowcat48li.livejournal.com]

They went on to serve as Imperial Stormtroopers in a later life...

the russians did use a flying tank in tests for that matter, it was a glider tank
T-28 or T-70 I think

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

from seeing the trailer...

i'm thinking they aren't FLYING it... more like shifting weight to affect the parachute drop (i think also they are on a platform)...

so, they aren't purely in tank freefall, they are chuting in... so surviving the water landing? sure, why not?

and if the tank was designed to be amphibious, well... sure, it's going to drive out (stored air for gas/diesel motor, or it could be the newer generation with electric assist/hybrid)

also, iirc, they are using the tanks smaller guns to fend off attack ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTVtRnacok8 1:30 in this video shows some of this...

and this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2ppORflYXw&feature=related
about 1:39 in... some more bits.

don't know about the driving out of the lake part though :)

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[ithildae.livejournal.com]

The original was grating in some ways too. The used a .22 sound for every shot fired, annoying. The best part of the show was Dwight Schultz being crazy. (He played Barcley in Star Trek: TNG) I love watching crazy done fun. Christopher Loydd in Taxi was another fun character. It takes serious talent to pull of a role like that. Schultz has it to spare.