The Movie Thread Reloaded

[jhkim]

It is interesting to compare "Chernobyl"with "The Days". In the former, the Soviets think that they can avoid a nuclear catastrophe through lies and patriotism. The Japanese have protocols for any kind of contingency - except when they don't know that they haven't... Warmly suggested.

Bleah. The real-life Chernobyl was a horrible tragedy, but the HBO Chernobyl miniseries was full of fiction to dramatize it as much as possible - and every outlandish fiction is about playing up the danger of radiation.

For example, they made a big subplot where Legasov asks for volunteers for a "suicide mission" to go under the plant to turn valves to drain the pools. This becomes a thrilling scene in darkness, and it is implied that they die of radiation poisoning. In real life, the divers were alive decades later, and they weren't volunteers - they were the people who were on-shift at the time and were just following orders. Here's a description from one of the divers:

https://www.hindustantimes.com/tv/real-life-chernobyl-diver-reveals-what-really-happened-we-walked-quicker-had-no-oxygen-tanks/story-XcexueUl379vFv3viCTvEI.html

This sort of fiction is typical for a lot of movies "based on a true story" -- but when dramatizing nuclear accidents, it has a huge political effect of misinforming the public.

[Reckall]

It is interesting to compare "Chernobyl"with "The Days". In the former, the Soviets think that they can avoid a nuclear catastrophe through lies and patriotism. The Japanese have protocols for any kind of contingency - except when they don't know that they haven't... Warmly suggested.

Bleah. The real-life Chernobyl was a horrible tragedy, but the HBO Chernobyl miniseries was full of fiction to dramatize it as much as possible - and every outlandish fiction is about playing up the danger of radiation.

Agreed. Absolutely NO ONE in Europe was worried when radiations levels spiked from Scandinavia to Italy. People thought that there was a nuclear war going on or such and moved on. Pripyat, today, is a bustling metropolis.

For example, they made a big subplot where Legasov asks for volunteers for a "suicide mission" to go under the plant to turn valves to drain the pools. This becomes a thrilling scene in darkness, and it is implied that they die of radiation poisoning.

That misssion didn't look like the comic relief part of the miniseries to me. Anyway, they didn't blindly "follow orders": they were promised that, were they to die as a consequence of the mission, the State would have provided for their families. So, "death" was at least considered as a possible outcome.

And they confirmed how they were lucky to find almost at once reference points down there which allowed for them to go in and out fast. This stroke of luck wasn't a given - it was just that, luck.

Lastly, the series doesn't say that they died. Actually, the last time we see them is when they come out exulting, amid the cheers of their friends.

This sort of fiction is typical for a lot of movies "based on a true story" -- but when dramatizing nuclear accidents, it has a huge political effect of misinforming the public.

Before the war in Ukraine, the Chernobyl area was one of the main touristic attractions in Europe, with millions of visitors every year. You could visit Pripyat and see how people lived there in 1986, and then do a tour of the nuclear station, see the famous "Elephant Foot" from three meters away and even - if you were quick - take a piece of graphite and put it in your pocket as a souvenir. Let's hope that they will reopen the tour soon.

[jhkim]

For example, they made a big subplot where Legasov asks for volunteers for a "suicide mission" to go under the plant to turn valves to drain the pools. This becomes a thrilling scene in darkness, and it is implied that they die of radiation poisoning.

That misssion didn't look like the comic relief part of the miniseries to me. Anyway, they didn't blindly "follow orders": they were promised that, were they to die as a consequence of the mission, the State would have provided for their families. So, "death" was at least considered as a possible outcome.

And they confirmed how they were lucky to find almost at once reference points down there which allowed for them to go in and out fast. This stroke of luck wasn't a given - it was just that, luck.

Lastly, the series doesn't say that they died. Actually, the last time we see them is when they come out exulting, amid the cheers of their friends.

Here's how the series portrayed it - from the script. In a fictitious scene, Legasov asks permission from the leader of the Soviet Union.

LEGASOV: Of course we'll need your permission.
GORBACHEV: Permission for what?
LEGASOV: The water in these ducts-- the level of radioactive contamination--
KHOMYUK: They'll likely be dead in a week.
LEGASOV: We're asking your permission to kill three men.
GORBACHEV: Comrade Legasov. All victories inevitably come at a cost. Sometimes we count this cost in rubles. Sometimes we count it in lives.

Then in front of a crowd of workers, they ask for volunteers. They're told that it will give them a lethal dose of radiation. Scherbina then gives a rousing speech.

SHCHERBINA: This is what has always set our people apart. A thousand years of sacrifice in our veins. And every generation must know its own suffering. I spit on the men who did this. And I curse the price I have to pay. But I am making my peace with it. You make yours. And go into the water. Because it must be done.

Three men volunteer. The script describes them after.

Three men. Ready to die for what must be done.

Everyone looks at them like they're heroes. Because they already are.

The speeches clearly say that they receive a lethal dose of radiation. ("We're asking your permission to kill three men" and "They'll likely be dead in a week"). It does not imply that they survive the week, let alone live long lives.

---

Along similar lines, Aleksandr Yuvchenko is a mechanical engineer who was working that night. In the movie, he is the one who dramatically walks out to where the reactor has exploded and looks up to see the stars overhead. He then walks back and starts spontaneously bleeding through his uniform all over. his body, and when asked if he needs help, he says "It's over." That's the last we see of him in the series, which clearly suggests that he dies.

I just read a 2004 interview with him. He had major health problems and was over a year in recovery, but he survived.


Again, I'm not saying that it wasn't a huge and harmful disaster. But the series has a ton of blatant fictions about what happened - which are all about making it seem even worse than it was.

It was a huge disaster that killed lots of people. But the movie dramatizes always to make everything worse. Why not use the actual facts for this?

[Reckall]

It was a huge disaster that killed lots of people. But the movie dramatizes always to make everything worse. Why not use the actual facts for this?

You may find useful to listen to the official podcast, where they answer to your very question:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO79iP69FaZPKaMDoSPAtGdoa3wd3lp9n

Anyway, I stopped using the sentence "I read on the internet..." with my friends in 1996, when the novelty wore off. However "'Chernobyl exaggerates the risks of a nuclear power station going BOOM!' is worth a resurgence.

[Brand55]

The speeches clearly say that they receive a lethal dose of radiation. ("We're asking your permission to kill three men" and "They'll likely be dead in a week"). It does not imply that they survive the week, let alone live long lives.

You're right that the series makes a lot of changes--many small, some not--for drama and clarity, but the end of the last episode does address this point, at least. The show mentions that the men were expected to die but survived, and two of them are even still alive today.

[Reckall]

The speeches clearly say that they receive a lethal dose of radiation. ("We're asking your permission to kill three men" and "They'll likely be dead in a week"). It does not imply that they survive the week, let alone live long lives.

You're right that the series makes a lot of changes--many small, some not--for drama and clarity, but the end of the last episode does address this point, at least. The show mentions that the men were expected to die but survived, and two of them are even still alive today.

When you have to adapt a storyline when a lot of things either go wrong or can go wrong, and you don't want to lose the narrative focus, you choose some events and make them scarier. This for two reasons first, to convey the amount of pressure that the events put on a lot of people at every level; second, to convey the scariness of the situation. "This was almost scary" doesn't cut it when you have a crisis a minute. "Chernobyl" makes these narrative choices to put the viewer in the state of mind of the people on the field back then - not of the people who now have all the answers.

"Thirteen Days" is another example of pimping up some scare instead of rushing around. No mention is made of the Soviet submarine that was this close to fire a nuclear torpedo against the American fleet chasing it near Cuba. So, they show the low-flying recon missions being fired upon - even if they weren't. Once again the point is to show how a single mistake, or misunderstood event, could have had catastrophic results - while preserving at the same time the paranoia inside the White House that the army people were looking for a war.

Anyway, after each episode of Chernobyl you could listen to the very informative podcast where they explained what they had changed, why, and what happened for real. About sone events they had to make a choice, as they are debated even today. As someone who was a kid living in Europe during the accident I can say that the fear, the lies coming out from Soviet Union (only when the radiation level spiked in places like Scandinavia they admitted that they had "some tiny problem" with a nuclear reactor...) and the idea that something was out of control is Soviet Union are spot on.

Regarding the gravity of what happened, when the Russians invaded Ukraine in February, 2022, they traversed with their tracked vehicles the Chernobyl area and even started to dig trenches there. The radiation levels immediately spiked. Interestingly enough, it seems that the Soviet privates were oblivious of the effects of, you know, throwing dust in the atmosphere near Chernobyl... Maybe they saw the miniseries and thought that they had exaggerated things.

[Eirikrautha]

'Chernobyl exaggerates the risks of a nuclear power station going BOOM!' is worth a resurgence.

Yep.  A better sentence is "Communism/socialism greatly increases the risks of a nuclear power station going BOOM!"

[Reckall]

'Chernobyl exaggerates the risks of a nuclear power station going BOOM!' is worth a resurgence.

Yep.  A better sentence is "Communism/socialism greatly increases the risks of a nuclear power station going BOOM!"

Technically we also had Three-mile Island and Fukushima, so that's two to one for Capitalism. Unless we count the K-19 too.

[jhkim]

I can talk more about the fictionalizations of the series, but I think a big part of this is about different views of what the reality is.

As someone who was a kid living in Europe during the accident I can say that the fear, the lies coming out from Soviet Union (only when the radiation level spiked in places like Scandinavia they admitted that they had "some tiny problem" with a nuclear reactor...) and the idea that something was out of control is Soviet Union are spot on.

I believe that as a child, you were very afraid. When I was a kid, I also had a lot of nuclear fears as well. However, I feel that now, nearly 40 years later -- it is important to collect true facts and base our future plans on what actually happened -- rather than trying to recreate the fears and misunderstandings of the time.

As I grew up, I went from having nuclear fears to eventually getting a PhD in particle physics. I had no fear of what was happening in my lab, because I understood it, but even back then in the mid-1990s, I still thought nuclear power worries were roughly reasonable -- because I assumed that the media reports were a little biased, but they wouldn't blatantly lie.

Later on, particularly after Fukushima, I at first was taken in by the panic. However, then I started reading more critically, and I was stunned at how much blatant misinformation and sensationalizing was happening in the media around nuclear power. A nuclear accident was a goldmine for selling people clickbait stories, and the more I read, the angrier I got. That prompted me to go back and read up more on the rest of nuclear power reporting, and I found that they were also riddled with blatant lies.

For me, the biggest misconceptions that I had were about the levels of radiation being discussed and what the health effects really are. As a physicist, I understood a lot about how radiation worked - but I used to still fall for stories that played up dangers.

Regarding the gravity of what happened, when the Russians invaded Ukraine in February, 2022, they traversed with their tracked vehicles the Chernobyl area and even started to dig trenches there. The radiation levels immediately spiked. Interestingly enough, it seems that the Soviet privates were oblivious of the effects of, you know, throwing dust in the atmosphere near Chernobyl... Maybe they saw the miniseries and thought that they had exaggerated things.

As with almost any war reporting, I would be very careful in the stories one gets. In this case, the reports of Russian soldiers digging trenches and falling over from radiation sickness are based on Ukrainian state agency reports. They also reported that the Russian military panicked and almost rioted in an effort to get out of there.

"This morning, the invaders announced their intentions to leave the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to Ukrainian station personnel. It was confirmed that the occupiers, who seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and other facilities in the Exclusion Zone, marched in two columns towards the Ukrainian border with the Republic of Belarus."

The company said Russian soldiers built fortifications in the nearby Red Forest, referring to the area as the "most polluted in the entire Exclusion Zone."

"So it is not surprising that the occupiers received significant doses of radiation and panicked at the first sign of illness. And it manifested itself very quickly. As a result, almost a riot broke out among the military, and they began to gather from there," the statement reads.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2022/03/31/ukraine-russian-soldiers-leaving-chernobyl/1071648751478/


I don't have objective information on what happened here, but I can clearly see that a Ukrainian state agency has reason to portray Russian soldiers as incompetent, getting sick, panicking, and almost rioting. I would consider this result very low reliability for that reason.

---

I feel like the charged politics around Chernobyl cause massive controversy over this, and people often get misconceptions about the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The most obvious source about the effects of living there is the people who have done so.

While the exclusion zone was subject to an evacuation, there were over a thousand residents who moved back to their homes in defiance of the evacuation order - mostly older women. There was a 2015 documentary by Holly Morris called "The Babushkas of Chernobyl" who interviewed these women. Morris suggests that anecdotally, the women who stayed in the exclusion zone have generally outlived their neighbors who stayed away -- not that they haven't suffered any health effects, but it's possible that the health effects of uprooting people from their lives was worse. There aren't enough statistical controls for them to be a good scientific sample, but it's enough to dispel some myths, at least.

[Ghostmaker]

'Chernobyl exaggerates the risks of a nuclear power station going BOOM!' is worth a resurgence.

Yep.  A better sentence is "Communism/socialism greatly increases the risks of a nuclear power station going BOOM!"

Technically we also had Three-mile Island and Fukushima, so that's two to one for Capitalism. Unless we count the K-19 too.

Three Mile Island isn't even in the same ballpark in terms of 'disaster'.

Fukushima is an example of 'when Mother Nature decides to scratch, you better not be in the way of her fingers'.

Chernobyl was the direct result of the Soviet system deliberately suppressing dangerous flaws in the RBMK reactor design.

[Eirikrautha]

'Chernobyl exaggerates the risks of a nuclear power station going BOOM!' is worth a resurgence.

Yep.  A better sentence is "Communism/socialism greatly increases the risks of a nuclear power station going BOOM!"

Technically we also had Three-mile Island and Fukushima, so that's two to one for Capitalism. Unless we count the K-19 too.

Three Mile Island isn't even in the same ballpark in terms of 'disaster'.

Fukushima is an example of 'when Mother Nature decides to scratch, you better not be in the way of her fingers'.

Chernobyl was the direct result of the Soviet system deliberately suppressing dangerous flaws in the RBMK reactor design.

Yep.  But that won't stop the pearl-clutchers from needing their fainting couch...

[Reckall]

'Chernobyl exaggerates the risks of a nuclear power station going BOOM!' is worth a resurgence.

Yep.  A better sentence is "Communism/socialism greatly increases the risks of a nuclear power station going BOOM!"

Technically we also had Three-mile Island and Fukushima, so that's two to one for Capitalism. Unless we count the K-19 too.

Three Mile Island isn't even in the same ballpark in terms of 'disaster'.

Fukushima is an example of 'when Mother Nature decides to scratch, you better not be in the way of her fingers'.

Chernobyl was the direct result of the Soviet system deliberately suppressing dangerous flaws in the RBMK reactor design.

Yep.  But that won't stop the pearl-clutchers from needing their fainting couch...

As long as the pearls are made of potassium iodine...

[Lurkndog]

So, I finally got a chance to watch Guardians of the Galaxy 3.

Short review: Good, but not as good as 1 or 2.

This one starts out with Peter wallowing in his unrequited love for Gamora, whose timeline got reset in Avengers: Endgame, and came back in "hate everyone" mode. Then Nowhere is attacked by a returning character from GOTG 2 and we spend most of the movie doing a series of flashbacks to Rocket's origin story, which is unpleasant. Finally everything comes together and the Guardians spend the last reel kicking ass on the High Evolutionary, the big bad and Rocket's creator.

Putting Rocket Raccoon into The Space Island of Doctor Moreau in Space makes the latter better, because Rocket is awesome, but it doesn't make it good.

Paradoxically, focusing the movie on Rocket's back story gives us less Rocket, because he spends most of the movie suffering through his origin.

When the movie is firing on all cylinders it is as good as any of the Guardians movies, but it just isn't firing on all cylinders the whole movie through. Also, there is a ton of creepy nightmare fuel, so maybe don't bring the kids. Seriously, this one probably deserved an R rating.

I'm not sorry I watched it, and I plan to buy the blu-ray, but there were things I could have done without.

[Trond]

Have you guys noticed the recent reactions to Sound of Freedom?

I saw it over the weekend. It's very well made, possibly the most effective movie I've seen covering such a dark topic as child kidnapping and trafficking.

But several media giants (or former giants) such as CNN, the Guardian, and Rolling Stone decide to focus on "links to Qanon", based mostly on the fact that the makers are conservative Christians, the main actor possibly believing a bit in the conspiracy fringe in some ways.

But oh boy, this does not paint the media in a good light, and you have to wonder what made them take this route.

[Eirikrautha]

Have you guys noticed the recent reactions to Sound of Freedom?

I saw it over the weekend. It's very well made, possibly the most effective movie I've seen covering such a dark topic as child kidnapping and trafficking.

But several media giants (or former giants) such as CNN, the Guardian, and Rolling Stone decide to focus on "links to Qanon", based mostly on the fact that the makers are conservative Christians, the main actor possibly believing a bit in the conspiracy fringe in some ways.

But oh boy, this does not paint the media in a good light, and you have to wonder what made them take this route.

There's a reason saying "OK, groomer!" gets you an instant ban on most social media.  Because they are...