Universal Translators in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy vs Avatar vs Atlantis The Lost Empire
Question: In "Atlantis: The Lost Empire", the Atlanteans could remember French and English, yet forgot most of their language. Does this bother anyone?
My response:
They only forgot how to read it. It's not like they're normal people, it's shown and implied they have all sorts of advanced technology. The king could have used mind control. He has an everlasting mountain-sized robot that destroys ships for him maybe without remote drone pilots. The premise of the film actually implies that he has influence over the thoughts of everyone in the world. Especially if you read Tab Murphy's draft scripts [ he recently posted to the Empireposting facebook group ]. ... But plot holes usually don't bother me because they can be excused by making reference to symbolism. Films are big works of collaborative art. ... In the story, they could speak French and English because their language is "a root dialect, like The Tower of Babel". Which is like ideas from beliefs, folklore, religions. It's like Babel Fish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it lets the actors speak English. ... How what's interesting is that Avatar had them all just speak the Na'vi language the whole time, subtitled ... and somehow, the audiences loved it all. But ATLE came out in 2001 and this was before Apocalyptico and whatever else was a forerunner of the language situation in Avatar. @Mark Gardner @Joseph Kent Dittmer @David Gallo @Ashley Pereira @Bryan Tassara
The movie also implies that the Atlantean language never changes. Which is unlike any known language, they're totally different about every 500 years. ( But making three different Atlantean languages for the film would take more time. Though maybe not that much time, mostly sound changes and semantic shifts. ) Maybe this is part of their technology. The books that come out with the movie explain that the crystals slow down time for things near them or something like that. This is how the Shepherd's Journal is 3000 years old and looks so good. @Mark Gardner @Joseph Kent Dittmer @David Gallo @Ashley Pereira @Bryan Tassara
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This thread was inspired by a post to the Empireposting facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3506644 ... 991788062/