My experiences as a snake owner and as a snake enthusiast. With a healthy potpourri of other stuff...




Monday, August 9, 2010

Super-Hero Arachnid

I went to see "Salt" on Saturday. It was surprisingly good. I expected the same type of movie that Angelina Jolie always does, so I was pleasantly surprised at the story line's twist and turns.
Her acting was fine, not Oscar worthy, but then I wasn't really expecting that either.
The only negative comment, and I know I'm being a bit of a nitpicker, is a lack of research when it comes to spiders. Let me explain.
Jolie's husband in the movie is an arachnid specialist and he keeps some specimens in their apartment. Early in the film, Salt goes to pick up some things and she stashes one of the spiders in a container to take with her. It's obviously a venomous spider, but she picks it up with her bare hands without any type of precaution. OK, that's problem number one. The next one is that she puts this poor spider in her backpack. She then proceeds to scale the walls of her apartment window in freezing weather, to run like a maniac through the streets, to jump off a bridge onto a passing truck, to propel herself from that truck onto many other vehicles, etc. You get what I'm saying: she did a lot of risky, very physical stuff. She then went to a hotel, took out the spider that looked perfectly fine and drained it of it's venom. That's where I have a problem. The spider could not have survived all of that. They are quite fragile, and the poor arachnid's exoskeleton could never have sustained the blows that Jolie's backpack received. She would not even have survived the cold (that's why you always see pet spiders in tanks with heat lamps).Even in the container that she was placed in, which looked like a simple plastic jar, it's impossible. There, that's my issue. Other than that really trivial problem, the movie was fun, go watch it.

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