GRcade

Moggy wrote:

Alvin Flummux wrote:

Moggy wrote:I’d go back to the early 70s and kill Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

What would movies be like now without Spielberg and Lucas?

Worse.

You think? Spielberg is an amazing director and Star Wars/Indiana Jones wouldn’t happen without Lucas, but they did usher in the age of the blockbuster. Their imitators (and Lucas himself) have been responsible for some utter gooseberry fool.

Without Jaws and Star Wars creating the modern blockbusters, would we have seen the late 70s and 80s become an era of indie/thoughtful films and those movies continuing to be more commercially viable?

I believe that improving cinematic technology made the modern blockbuster more or less inevitable - if not Lucas and Spielberg, it would've been someone else. Maybe the process would've taken more time, but it would've happened by now.

Lucas' films in particular made demands of theaters to use better technology, and I think without that, we wouldn't have the visual or audio fidelity we enjoy at the theater today.

Corazon de Leon wrote:

Alvin Flummux wrote:3. Prevent the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar, allowing him to bring the rest of Europe and the Caucasus region under Roman rule.

2. Expose the entire Culper Ring of spies during the American War of Independence. Without eyes behind enemy lines, the rebels are blinded. Without the ability to interfere with British naval communications, Yorktown becomes another British victory, and the war carries on.

1. Send the Duke of Wellington to America during the War of 1812. With his expert generalship, Britain stands a chance of winning.

That’s a very imperialistic of list of changes.

To go into more detail, I am curious to know what the US would be like today if it had had the Canada treatment - achieving independence of the British government's own volition in the mid-19th century.

And for that matter, if it didn't win its independence, would the British government have shifted focus to India if it had still had America firmly in its grip? How would the other Imperial powers have behaved in that situation; could we have seen French colonial domination of India?

As for Caesar, my interest lies in what Europe would have looked like over the centuries if it had all fallen under Roman rule. Would Cyrllic exist? Would there have been more organized states in the east to resist Mongol incursions? And so on.