Slashdot Mirror
Impossible Movie Stunts?
ThousandStars asks: "After watching Spider-Man, I noticed some miraculous physics like Spider-Man falling faster than a girl to save her and the girl catching the cable car at the end. It reminded me of a list of 12 problems with the plot and science of Independence Day, which brings me to my question: What are the most implausible, impossible and sheerly rediculous science-related things you have seen in movies?"
Well, the "light bending around corners" scene from Blade 2 immediately springs to mind...
the need to explain everything with fake science.
I'd much rather the quick-and-glib-and-then-ignore it science of how spiderman or the hulk etc got their powers than, for example wait for the fourth movie and then decide that the force is a microbe.
Get the EULA T-shirt
The Open University in the UK had a series of short programmes called "Hollywood Science", which checks out the scientific credibility of scenes from films, presented by Robert Llewelyn (of "Scrapheap Challenge" aka "Junkyard Wars" fame).
They have a website here with information from the shows.
The simulation of Paul Newmans stomach in "Cool Hand Luke" was particularly gruesome...
-Baz
Geeks throwing a party and getting laid.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Anything in this movie .... Total disregard for the laws of physics - that motorcyle scene was ridiculous.
Favorite generic one: Explosions have no shrapnel, they only hurl the hero to where he needs to be.
Uber-geeks all use macs...
If you drop a hammer and a feather in an atmosphere, the hammer will win. Also note in the movie, when Spider-Man (don't forget the dash (tm)!) dove after Mary Jane, he did so in a nice Olympic-approved diving form - Mary Jane was falling in a nice frat-party-got-her-drunk type crouch. He probably had a much lower coefficient of drag. Plus, didn't he shoot her with webbing and pull her to him, then shoot webbing above to divert their fall? I can't remember if he did both web shots or just the latter one. Too fast, too many action scenes for me to remember the picky details of each one. And I missed Lucy Lawless in the movie - but didn't know she was in it until afterwards, so wasn't looking. *shrug*
:) Plus, let's face it, Kirsten Dunst has it all over realistic physics, any day of the week.
Still, much more realistic than M&M's floating in a nice double helix!
He falls faster than MJ because she's laying flat, and he's in a diving posture, causing less air resistance. Also, if neither had hit terminal velocity, and when he jumped he did something to push himself downwards, he could be able to move downwards faster than her, initially, until they both reached terminal velocity and stopped accellerating. Like if I were to drop a call and fire a gun into the ground. The bullet would reach first, because it started moving downwards faster.
At least that's how I want to think of it, I liked the movie.
`Lex - Find Me Here: Text Appeal
Some 12-13 year old girl knowing how to manipulate a multi-billion dollar Dinosaur complex using UNIX...
And not just because it was a dodgy film, either. There was one sequence where they had brought some freshly-cast gold bars from the 1800's into the generic-near-future era where all the time travelling was taking place from.
All very well and good, but during the debriefing sequence, a scientist type person proudly exclaimed that they had determined the age of the bars by carbon dating them.
Ignoring the fact that the gold bars were inorganic, and thus unable to be carbon dated, (I'm not entirely sure about the process, so I'll let them get away with that one), they screwed up big time...
The gold bars DIDN'T AGE when they were brought into the future, so how could it have been dated as 100+ years old when it had technically only existed for a couple of days?
And while I'm at it... Terminator 2. (Electric Boogaloo?) How the HELL did the T-1000, being made of molten metal alloy, get through the time displacement unit, when it was previously established that only organics could pass through? They could at least have had the T-1000 appear in a ball of synthetic flesh, then ooze out to become Robert Patrick. Would have spoilt the 'surprise' that Arnie was the good guy this time, but there's still undiscovered tribes in the Peruvian rainforests that know about THAT clever plotting device.
Disclaimer: Yes, I know they're just movies. And I'm prepared to accept Time Travel paradoxes at face value, as long as they're consistent.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
On a second thought, there might be a tiny, winy bit of unbelievable things in there, like the Heisenberg compensators making the transporters work. There is your neighbourhood dysons-sphere conveniently built around a sun to harvest energy (Next generation episode: Relics).
We shouldn't really get into discussing warp speed, everybody knows that Stephen Hawking is working on it. There are smaller things in Trek that go by hardly recognized. E.g. the weather control systems that are only mentioned when failing.
Force fields are mentioned so often in Scfi-Fi we just have to believe in the possiblity. There seem to be working experiments with magnetic "shields". Metaphasic shields on the other hand are something completely different, although they have become as common as cloaking devices in the Star Trek universe.
Let's face it, fellow trekkers: Most of this stuff is unreachable and will remain so for a long time, if not forever. ;(
Now off for a cup of tea, Earl Grey, hot, freshly converted from dilithium generated energy to matter by a food replicator ...
Line 9: Argument of type SIGNATURE expected.
Like, nobody who knew both of them could figure out that Clark Kent and Superman are the same guy?
That's not bad science - that's totally re-inventing human powers of observation!
Something about the field generated by a living organism. I don't know tech stuff.
That's why Arnie came through naked in both films. The organic material covered the T-800 endoskeleton, permitting time travel. See, there's plot justification. It's not as if they were all nudists in the future.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
If you noticed, spidey had his arms pulled in and his legs straight to achieve a low drag coefficient. MJ was flailing about with her extremedies all over the place. Spidey would fall faster. Skydivers use this to make formations. Now would spider-man have fallen fast enough to catch her? No. Would the plot have sucked if she died? Probably.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Large parts of the story. I realised this was going to be a "switch your brain off and enjoy" type of flick when the helicopter was in exactly the right place to catch the ejecting pair from a Jumbo jet flying at mumble miles per hour. After that, I quit analysing science and stuck to analysing the angels in order to be able to enjoy the film.
You mean besides being bitten by a spider and gaining super powers?
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
Cool film, but anyone remember the intro sequence? How Bond escapes from the base?
:-)
Essentially, to get away from a fight, he tries to take off in a light aircraft but has to jump out. Plane keeps on going down the runway and off the end and over a cliff into a pretty fast vertical dive. Meanwhile, Bond has stopped the problem, jumped onto a motorbike, charged down the runway after the plane and gone over the end. He then skydives at the plane, climbs into it, pulls it out of a vertical dive and flys off to safety.
Something in that doesn't seem quite right
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
...has to be the single most atrocious movie in this respect. (Not to mention the completely farcical characters in the first place)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The bus jumping over the gap in the freeway? Bucking up like that from a flat piece of road?
;-) it would have dropped 7-8m in that gap.
Last time I watched that film (good fun, bad science) I did some quick mental maths. Memory says that, assuming no air resistance and no invisible ramp to make it kick up like that
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
even the smallest light seems bright.
One newly added english word, "Bullet-Time" (tm)
besides that, trying to make Keanu into a decent actor, but that has proved impossible for studios and special effects teams who just cant seem to pull it off...
#include sig.h
the computer fixed the technology or figured out how to synthesize the field in liquid metal. As for what the other guy said about the resistance's time machine, I understood that they fought their way into the computer's time machine base.
Movies aren't supposed to be real. As someone pointed out allready, "isn't the fact that Peter Parker was bit by a radioactive spider and turned into spider man impossible?"
Movies only attempt to reflect reality when convenient and/or feasible. Lets look at the X-Men. A great film. Are any of the stunts possible if you're not some kind of a mutant?
Now, I get really pissed off every time I see a computer in a hollywood movie and it looks like they just made up some wierdo TV-like screen and pretend its a computer, if only to satisfy some director's need for artistic clarity. I yearn to see real PC's be they linux or windows or whatever, just because it is so easy to represent PC's accurately, and hollywood never does.
But my favorite physics challenged stunt? That would be how they managed to the lovely rewrite Lt. Yar in STTNG back into the script by having her killed, sent back in time through a portal in an alternate universe, and having her half-romulan daughter who some how is in the present time the same age that Yar would have been and looks exactly like Yar even though she is half-romulan. Man, that's a stretch.
But looking for reality amongst the tale-spinners is at best a nebulous task. It is better to look for reasons that a movie makes us want to look the other way at those cheezy comuter screens, the conveniant plot devices, and even something obvious like how fast an object will fall to the groud.
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
With the helicopter flying into the tunnel... very realistic indeed.
you have half a transporter.
Deep space = No air -> No sound
( in case you didn't know
RFC1925
Enemy of the State. 'nuff said.
I agree.
And for light reading, here is a Science Review.
The Holodeck. It had no rules even in the script. It got out of hand.
This site is dedicaterd to the topic of infamously bad science in movies.
Look no further for humorous reading.
Me.
My favorite Hollywood cliche is the huge Nixie tube countdown clock, usually on a bomb so we can have the tension as the hero does whatever he has to do before the clock hits 00:00.
In "Daylight" Stallone goes deep into the tunnel ventilation system and through the temporily stopped huge fan to find the clock mounted on the wall ON THE INSIDE telling him how much time he has before the fan starts spinning again. WHO would EVER see that clock where it is?
In "Broken Arrow" and "True Lies" and countless James Bond movies we have the H-bombs which have the clock timer/display and a key pad/key switch to arm/disarm ON THE BOMB which is, of course, usually carried way down in the bomb bay of a bomber. Who is supposed to see the clock, insert the key, and punch in the codes? The crew is some distance away when the bomb is launched and they will want be a LOT further away when the clock hits 00:00.
And the only way you can outrun the blast from a huge explosion is if you can put the blast in slow motion while you're in the foreground running at double speed and even then it's a good idea if you're in a studio far from the blast.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
If you're *really* interested in this, go out and buy a copy of The Physics of Star Trek from your local bookstore. The best $10 I ever spent.
A guy showing a girl how he hacks, her being interested, and wanting to fly to Paris with him!
Just how fast would his webs have to fire to catch the top of New York's tallest buildings while he is falling and only ~40 feet from the ground?
Steve Austin (Lee Majors) a.k.a. the $6m man, prevents a helicopter from taking off by pulling it down. It's clear that it isn't his extra weight that's holding the chopper back, because they play the cheesy "using all his bionic strength" music, and show the chopper being pulled down "in the kind of slow motion that we use to suggest, that yes, he is moving at 60 mph".
That was so implausable that I laughed myself silly when I saw that.
You could've hired me.
I think the most implausible plot element ever would have to be when Jeff Goldblum uses a MAC to send to a "virus" to the alien computer system.
his slicked super-hero hair. That was always the most absurd part of the books and movies. How does he fix his hair up that quick? And where do his clothes go when he changes?
Lowmag.net
Two Words: Flux Capacitor
But the fact that he manages to snatch a girl out of the air by falling faster in a nice tuck position in a latex body suit than the girl fully clothed in a spread eagle position, that bothers you.
Just Checking.
As for me, I'd have to go with Harry Potter, because everyone knows that brooms can't fly.
This is most definately not a problem. Skydivers can choose to fall anywhere between 110 MPH (180 KM/H) and 180 MPH (300 KM/H). It's all about how you shape your body. If you're head down, you've only got wind resistance from your head, you go fast! If you're flat on your belly/back, you go nice and slow. So, definately not an impossible thing.
The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage
Where I learned that light flows like water....
Using telnet to acomplish this is indeed very amusing
CONGRATULATIONS!
Well, that's all I remember, apart from the obvious "hacking into the FBI-server (over the Net..) in 60 seconds while a gorgeous woman blows you"..
-arska
Uh, hello???!! anybody here ever see The Matrix?
What I found more interesting was that the "web goo" seemed pretty thick and substantive, and it seems pretty clear that Spidey is expelling more than his entire body volume in goo in some scenes. [Insert porn-movie joke here.] Maybe he chugs protein shakes or something? Or maybe the goo expands a LOT as it is expelled from his body (accept, of course, that the goo is super-stong and super-sticky). (And of course, the properties of the web goo change from scene to scene and sometimes even within a single scene.)
Of course, we are supposed to suspend disbelief, and accept that the laws of physics can vary around our super-hero and super-villain.
It's a silly movie. Let's get over it.
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
I liked the scene in I think Tommorrow Never Dies when Bond is being chased down a road by a helicopter. The kicker is that the helicopter is pitched about 45 degrees forward, so its blades are tearing up the little market stands lining the road, and yet the helicopter is going about 10 mph. No broken blades, no acceleration, weird.
Spencer Ogden
I seem to recall a long while ago in a James Bond movie something similar to what is being discussed here. Basically it was during a skydiving scene where Bond pulled his arms closer to his body to fall faster. This was before skydiving was as popular as it is now, so most people believed that it was impossible to change the speed at which you drop. Later it was found out that you COULD change the speed at which you fall by changing the surface area of your body, and thus changing the amount of wind resistance against you as well.
:-)
Of course I say this without seeing the scene in Spider-Man. I'm just posting like a good slashdot citizen without reading the article first (or seeing the movie in this case)
-Through the server, over the router, off the firewall... Nothing but 'Net!
Given that movies are usually not realistic, it seems more appropriate to ask the question "Which movies were particularly impressive in their attention to reality or current scientific thinking?"
I was always impressed, for example, with the opening scene in Contact. Despite the film's other flaws, I found it rather thought-provoking.
Despite being a bad movie, I was shocked to see a blatant disregard for even basic physics in that scene where the double helix of M&M's is spinning in a circle. (I guess if the M&M's had sufficient gravity then such motion is possible....) Anyway, nice "science" fiction guys.
-Derek
Arthur C Clarke came up with exactly the same plot device for 3001 (in this case the Hal/Bowman entity uploading several viruses to disable the Monolith), so it can't be that dumb an idea...
If you were fast/strong enough, you could pull down a helicopter using only your own mass. You'd have to be moving "a little" faster than 60mph though...
Of course by jerking downwards so fast you'd also launch yourself. Depending on the mass difference between you and the helicopter, you'd perhaps have to put yourself into orbit.
.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
As much as you people pick apart these movies, I wonder how you could possibly enjoy them and then wonder why you would ever go to another movie. I also have to wonder if you tear apart your friends in the same manner... well, if you do then you probably don't have many friends.
The best part is whe they are on the "volcano" and the atmosphere gets "represurized".
Net trick, that.
s/whe/when/
s/Net/Neat/
I always liked how any person that needed to do something sneaky had a perfectly made, totally lifelike mask of whatever other person they needed. It's especially good how at the end, while being shot at and with glass and whatnot flying all over the place, Tom Cruise manages to apply a mask to himself such that it fools the bad guys. I mean, it's not like it's just some halloween mask here.
I felt like the movie hated me.
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Actually, just to nitpick, he used a Macintosh. A "MAC" is an Ethernet address. I suppose this plot element would have been somewhat feasable had they worked in scenes showing how he figured out how to make his computer interface with the alien tech. and then spent several weeks learning to code for it.
;-)
The fact he gets drunk one morning and then suddenly has the answer is pretty fucking stupid though.
Still, I wonder what kind of licencing deal Apple gave those aliens for their servers to run AppleShare IP
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Independence Day
Hackers
Tomb Raider
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
People with a basic understanding of biomechanics will love the scaling of organisms. Giant insects/lizards (cannot begin to count the movies). Really small people (again more than one movie). Someday people will realize that sticking an animal on the photocopier and hitting enlarge does not make functioning organisms.
/ 96 12LaBarbera.html
http://www2.uchicago.edu/alumni/alumni.mag/9612
I saw a stunt special on the Discovery channel once where they showed the making of that stunt. They basically had a guy on a motorcycle drive off a platform on the side of some mountain and had a plane fly over him. He parachutes off below the plane, and the snow "poof" as the plane is going over the edge is CGI, to hide the fact that the plane was never on the platform.
They actually had another stuntman skydive along side of a vertically diving plane and climb in the door, although he didn't start from a motorcycle.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
The movie Barbarella is my favorite.
First, of course, it's fun to watch Jane Fonda cavort around in skimpy outfits, especially given how "serious" she got later in life about various causes.
One of the best parts of the entire movie occurs when she's cruising around in some kind of pirate ship that sails across a frozen ocean of ice.
Propped amid cushions and pillows below decks, she questions her lover about how they are going to go anywhere now that the wind has died down. He indicates that he has a solution to that problem: they can make their own wind!
Cut to camera showing the ships sails puffing out and the ship moving forward.
Meanwhile, firmly planted in the stern of the boat is a large fan blowing into the sails and they are moving forward!
I watched this movie with a bunch of nerds who couldn't get into the romanticism of the moment; they were heard muttering something about Newton's 3rd Law.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Well no, but there is a literary technique called Suspension of Disbelief. Authors create a self-consistent universe in which we accept the fact that certain things happen. In Star Trek they have transporters, in X-Men they have mutant powers, and in Star Wars Luke can use the Force. But in the case of a good movie/book, these things are clearly delineated, and have limits. Storm cannot, for instance, shoot lasers from her eyeballs because that's not one of her powers. Captain Picard can't transport the entire Enterprise across the galaxy because their transporters just can't do that.
On the other hand, a bad movie will violate their own rules (and/or other accepted rules like physics) when convenient to advance the plot. Tom Cruise jumping off the nose of a helicopter, which happens to be flying in a tunnel, and landing on the nose of a 200MPH train is my favorite example. Prior to this, we are not presented with a self-consistent universe in which Tom Cruise is part superman. He is just a regular guy. We are not told that he has adamantium bones, and therefore will not break every bone in his body when hitting a 200MPH train. We are not told that this is a special magical helicopter that can fly in tunnels without being sucked up to the ceiling. The scene was created solely for the purpose of advancing the plot, and is inconsistent, and sucks.
Many of the greatest novels/movies of all time have created a self-consistent universe, and then explored the limits of that universe. No, it doesn't match with our universe. Yes, they can do things that when taken out of context in and of themselves are incompatible with what we know. But, in general, we know about these "powers" before they are used, and new "powers" are not invented on the spot. When some new "power" is introduced, it is well explained, and becomes part of the universe. For example, using EMP pulses to kill the squiddies in The Matrix. The device has become part of the Matrix universe, and I imagine will be used in future movies with little explanation. Some examples of great universes: Dune, The Matrix, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Asimov's Robot novels (3 laws of robotics).
If you're going to violate laws of physics in particular, authors had better be prepared to create an entire universe with different laws of physics. Because as far as I know, you just can't do it. Physics is an accepted, implied characteristic of a universe, whether the author spells it out or not. There are only a handful of exceptions that we as audiences have come to accept. Namely: faster-than-light-travel and/or wormholes/hyperspace/stargates. But hey, I am a physicist, so maybe I'm biased. ;)
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Bond diving faster than a crashing airplane, entering it through the side door, getting into the cockpit and rescuing the plane ...
Don't remember which Bond it was, but I thing it was Goldeneye
Without the twist, the car would have had to have landed either on its roof, or if it completed a 360 degree flip, it would have landed on its tires facing the same direction it had originally been heading.
Which is not what happened.
Somehow without twisting this car is facing one direction, does a backflip and lands on its tires facing the opposite direction. This clearly violates the laws of physics.
For me, this impossibility ruined what was an otherwise well-researched and accurate film.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I thought the talking sperm were a little unrealistic.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
In one of the James bond (sorry, don't recall which one), James has a watch with a "magnetic beam" which he uses to move a car, and to undress a woman :) The first time is the more difficult to pass by, as he holds his watch with only 2 fingers and is still able to move (at distance) a car.
Nitpickers. More than enough nitpicking for all of you.
(spider-man)
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
I've always wondered about Terminator 2 - ok, accepting all the time-travel-is-possible stuff: at the point right at the end where the original Terminator arm was dropped in the molten steel (or whatever), shouldn't Arnie have disappeared right then? Since he wouldn't have been possible to "invent"?
P.S. Oh, and in 24, how is it that a terrorist mastermind can get access to all of the "national security" internal cameras, even with inside help, and no-one noticed? Nothing strange in the logs there? Hmm?
Group of Terminators go back in time with a human prisoner. When they get there, it turns out the human's had a zap-gun implanted in his stomach, which is then retrieved with predictable gory results.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
You really hit the hammer on the head when you say "as far as I know, it can't be done". That is the crux of the biscuit. If you, as a writer, are going to violate the laws of physics in your writing, there has to be a prior justification (e.g. magic, superpowers, etc.) or you must be prepared to theorize on physical properties of the universe that simply haven't been discovered yet. Now that is not to say that the writer has to come up with a bona fide, Nobel prize winning adjunct to the laws of physics for the scientific community to begin integrating into the current paradigm, but it should be plausible enough to pull the wool over the eyes of the average dope sitting in a movie theater. That is to say: As far as he knows, it can be done.
Some are given suckers and some get lollipops
While Armageddon takes the cake for the worst ever - what with the big red switch in the background marked "science" - and it's always in the "off" position, there are some equally bad, and pretty recent movies:
Independence day: Lots of people had problems with the Mac being compatible with the alien tech...But hey... Maybe that's where we got the technology to make laptops - From Data there in the underground bunker tearing apart the roswell crash.
Aliens: The alien's biology is pretty damn improbable. What kind of environment did it evolve in to get that low a PH? And since it's got that low a PH, why not just go into the alien nest with a big bottle of Ammonia and hose them down? They'd foam alot, and makes lots of nasty salts, but Ammonia should burn them worse than their blood burns us.
Terminator: Why didn't skynet send Arnie back with a cow...hidden inside the cow is an "Ames plasma rifle, in the 40 watt range" and other high-tech, human slaying goodness? Once he gets here, he rips open the cow and gets his cool futuristic blaster out of it's guts and shows the 20th century how a real cyborg goes on a killing spree.
Men In Black: Without touching the "Neuralizer" we'll just go to the bug in the "Edgar-Suit". How did such a big bug fit inside Edgar's skin? That thing was 20' tall, with a head big enough to swallow Tommy Lee Jones whole!
Star Trek? Too Easy. stuff like: How can Geordi's visor "see" neutrinos when a neutrinos can pass through light-years of lead and not hit anything? If Data sweats to cool himself (which is something they said he does) why doesn't he have to eat *something* to replenish his supply of "sweat"? etc. etc. etc.
Robocop? oh god...His bullets can penetrate body armor, yet bounce off a refridgerator door?
and finally for me: every Jackie Chan movie ever made. I'm supposed to believe he can do all that stuff? I mean, come on - some of the jumps he does are just plain impossib....Huh? He really does do all that stuff for real? DAMN!
Not true, these movies took place a "long long time ago" when all of the hydrogen in between the planets and such had not completely dispersed. It's why you can see the laser blasts too.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
In other words, wet brick/stone is more likely to reflect light than dry.
one thing i never got...alright, they had to dig a hole what, 800 feet or something to drop the bomb in, right? well, when Bruce Willis pushes the button to detonate it (after the remote detonator stoppped working), he's clearly on the surface of the asteroid...i didn't see a 800 ft extension cord attached to his detonator...so, what gives???
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
The tornadoes could suck up fences, cars, semis, houses and trees, but couldn't suck the tank-top off of Helen Hunt. WTF?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The heroes have just crash landed on an unknown planet. The SCIENTIST in the group checks the readings and utters this classic line:
"Well, the gravity is close to that of Earth. The atmosphere must be breathable!"
Thank you, for your comments the train/helicopter/tunnel scene. That one just ruined the movie for me, but no one else seemed to mind.
I had trouble believing that tiny helicopter could keep up with a TGV. Maybe it can, I don't know much about choppers.
--RJ
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/cook
There's something to be said for Sci-Fi/Fantasy or any fiction that is INTERNALLY CONSISTANT. Any time a person experiences a work of fiction, they are asking ot be lied to, basically. We want to believe this lie. So - as long as the lie remains consistant, it's okay, we agreed to believe it (for a little while anyway) when we decided to read/watch/listen to it.
But - especially with a long-running work such as a TV show - this consistancy breaks down. You start seeing the lie for what it really is, instead of what you are supposed to see it as. In short: It stops being entertaining.
There's a couple ways to cope with this: someone else mentioned the method "Gloss-over-and-ignore-it", and that's probably the best one. The less you say, the less you get nailed on. Take Star Wars for instance. How do lightsabers work? Doesn't matter, isn't important. All you need to know is that they can cut off Walrus Man's arm in the cantina. Then look at Star Trek: How does Warp Drive work? Well, it creates a bias in subspace blah blahblahblah. Anyone who payed attention to high school physics will eventaully have trouble swallowing this.
Another method of maintaining suspension of disbelief is "F*ck you, it's magic!" How did Harry Potter's broom fly? Magic. How did The One Ring make Frodo invisible? Magic. How does Luke move his lightsaber in the Wampa cave without touching it? Magic. That's all you need to know.
So - how does a Warp Drive work? The smart answer for the Star Trek crowd would be "Your primitive mind couldn't grasp the concepts. Sorry, but most of what you know of physics is wrong." and then you set course for the Neutral Zone and engage at warp 8.
As any good sci-fi/fantasy writer knows: the less you say, the better. Explain it too much, and you are likely to get it wrong. And - don't expect people to believe too much too quickly.
The worst movie science wise I've ever seen is Fortress 2: Re-entry. Don't ever watch this. It's almost as bad as Beowulf.
Anyways, in this movie, The Fortress 2, the main character is on this space station. Of course, he needs to get from one part of the station to another because this sections is blowing up or something. Fine. No spacesuit? Uh oh.
Anyone guess the solution to this dilemma?
Why OF COURSE! Just HOLD YOUR BREATH and jump into space without a spacesuit!!
Even a bottle of wine couldn't save this movie.
P.S. I think Christopher Lambert has played in *the* most amount of lame, cheesy, silly, bad science, bad plot, bad acting movies of any other actor on earth! Seriously, after highlander it was all down hill for this guy.
So, given that these people are trying to tell stories, and that stories are always About Things, and that the people telling these stories are more interested in Telling than the Getting Details Right, there is always going to be glitches like this.
I would suggest that every movie ever made -- and for that matter, every other work of fiction ever told -- is going to have technical glitches that pisses off some Expert In The Field.
Hell, look hard enough and you can even fine people that think cinematic typography is offensive. :)
Anyway, there are two solutions to this. You can either enforce that storytellers have to get the details right, keeping in mind that this involves myriad areas of learning, that most people won't notice or care, and that hell its can get pretty damned subjective anyway. Not too many stories get told that way -- Kubrick and who else? (And look how long it took him to finish off each film...). The alternative is a little literary device we like to call "suspension of disbelief." The point is, ignore the details, the story isn't about those details, and you're not going to see the forest if you keep focusing on the fact that the trees are just cardboard cutouts. We know that already, please keep moving along with us anyway.
Not that this kind of deconstruction can't be fun or anything -- that fontography site cracks me up, and half the fun in damn near all scifi movies is the fundamental implausibility of it all. As another commenter noted, you don't have a problem with spiders granting superhuman powers, but you want to quibble over aerodynamics? Come on.... :)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
I think the most implausible plot element ever would have to be when Jeff Goldblum uses a MAC to send to a "virus" to the alien computer system
It may be possible, in that any computer can, in theory, can emulate any other computer (if you don't care about speed).
Yet Another Web Site
I seem to remember one excuse for the sounds in Star Wars was that inside the fighters the computer created sounds to help the pilots tell what was going on around them. And you have to admit that hearing your enemy fire is probably quite helpful. But that's only an excuse :)
I was very dissapointed at the end of Air Force One. While Harrison Ford is an excellent, entertaining actor, his flicks tend to have crappy physics and redicilious interactions with computers.
The last few minutes of Air Force One seem a bit far fetched. The bit about slideing across a rope to another airplane, while I guess possible seems sort of unlikely. The real hideousness was when Air Force One actually hit the water. You'd expect it to crumble into bits. Nope. It performed ballet over the water. It danced. You'd expect when the nose touched the water the tail would flip forward very rapidly. Instead the plane bounced on the water, sort of like your toy plane bounced on the couch when you were playing "engine trouble" at age 6.
What a hideous ending to an otherwise entertaining flick.
I think Jurrasic Park 2, where the trailer falls AROUND everybody who's hangin from the rope. That was kind of stupid. And really disappointing. I think the plot would've been much improved if the trailer had broken everyone's neck like it should've. I can't really think of anything else right now. I just saw JP2 a couple days ago. I DO think the Superman movies were fairly absurd, however. ...flying people... HA!
Please stop stalking me, bro.
...is a new ratings system determined by how far into the movie you said "That's Bullshit!" (or just "Bullshit"), and the number of times you felt compelled enough to say it after a particularly bad scene.
--Man and woman jump from 100 ft tall cliff, scene cuts to man and woman dusting themselves off--
Commentary: "aw man...dat's boolshit"
(credit to Amazon Women on/in the Moon)
sine puella vita suget
There was also the minor (heavy dripping sarcasm) detail that the got the tunnel itself all wrong. It's a triple: one tunnel each way for the train, and one smaller one between them for maintenance. But that's really nitpicking, as they needed to make the tunnel at least big enough so that everyone wouldn't just walk out at that point.
Being quick to take offense is not a virtue.
Forget the major faults in plots, I'm annoyed by some of the visuals. Like in the end of matrix, when they fire off the EMP. EMP is a perfectly viable weapon against robots and the like, so it was a nice touch. However, when they activated it, you saw a ssssslllllllloooowwww shockwave moving out at a few meters per second, as opposed to around 299792458 m/s like it should. And you could SEE a shockwave. Good god, just make a fancy ass flash or something and be done with it.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
It is somewhat plausible though that the amount of energy that the engines on the various craft had was enough to perhaps vibrate the craft that is hearing the noise in some way, right? I mean, why go so far as to having problems with the sound, when we can't yet approach engineering a craft that can: land on planet, take off from planet, fly faster than light, land on new planet... Or maybe each craft has a little speaker in it that helps the pilots fly by making noises that represent other craft and thier laser fire. The sound is easy to account for, the physics ain't so.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Even with a relatively low speed of 30MPH each would result in a 60MPH impact for each of the riders. 60MPH-to-0 in no time is very hard on flesh.
This article is pretty funny.
And not only does it have links to the bionic noise, but also to the elusive "bionic eye noise" which you may have forgotten.
.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
you convert yourself to energy, and the food generator changes you back to you.
My favourite was when he retrieved the base for his hydra (also an interesting concept) from a computer hooked up to the net for historical reasons. Just love seeing that tape drive spin!! Plus, I love the Supeman (#?) where LL buys up all the land east of the San Andreas fault and tries to make C.A. fall into the sea!!! So very evil!!!
Fucker.
Well, the helicopter probably really does take it, but in MI2, there's the scene were Tom Cruise skids across the intersection doing a front-wheel wheelie and swivelling around to shoot people.
Hmmm... Although you often can get a motorcycle into that position it's usually followed by a sliding, crashed motorcycle and fresh organ donor. Even professional motorcycle racers (who haven't got a bit of sense in their heads) must laugh when they see this.
I like to think that the special effects team trying to explain why they shouldn't have to do that stunt to the director.
Hey!
It was a lot cheaper for Lucas to put the microphone INSIDE the Imperial Destroyer where there IS air and you CAN hear the engines.
What? There's not really an Imperial Destroyer? But how do they transport the AT-ATs then?
IIRC, Sir Arthur wrote about the humans developing malicious code which was implanted into the alien technology (computers? big time WAN? alien-net?) with a little help from Dave Bowman and HAL, whose consciousness had been living among the alien intelligences for about 1,000 years. Jeff Goldblum didn't have help from people or computers on the alien side in "Independende Day."
Apple gains another 5% of the market share as Jupiter begins the switch from oeø?® to OS XVI, galacticaly this puts Apple at roughly 45%, with Linux holding another 45% and Windows holding only 10%. Odly enough, Windows remains dominant on earth.
Apple discovered to have stolen code from Martian OS as well as the old Xerox OS.
Humans gain ability to hold their breath for extended periods of time.
New virus tears through the galactic systems, leaving system admins everywhere baffled. Called the Disk Muncher, the only way to stop it appear to be putting a disk into your computer.
In other news, helium breast implants now availible for those of you with some gravity to contend with.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
all sound effects in Star Wars are fake
They're not fake, they're just part of the score. In space no one can hear the London Symphony Orchestra!
Quis metamoderunt ipses metamoderatores?
parodoxes? parodoxi?
Anyway, I put this here to limit redundant posts.
Time paradoxes do not exist if you consider the parrallel universe theory. Any warping of spacetime that leads to traveling back in time instead places you back into another 'mirror' universe. Therefore if you squish your grandparents, it doesn't matter because you have come from another dimension. And as there is a different universe for each outcome of a particular quantum event, there are a lot of places to visit.
Which brings to mind Sliders, there is no guarantee that he every gets back to his real home, claiming to measure a specific signature of each possible universe doesn't quite cut it because the device he uses to measure that signature would need a phenominally high resolution for starters and the storage requirements to remember where he has come from would also be great. There does exist the possibility that he does get home, but it isn't probable and there is no way of being 100% certain.
Just my $2 * 10^(-2)
If I remember correctly, the alternative timeline Lt. Yar went back in time with the ship and was captured, married a romulan, had a daughter, tried to escape, was caught and executed. That daughter is who we see in the later episodes. Seems fairly plausible to me. My biggest annoyance was in Terminator 2, ignoring all the time paradoxs, where the T-1000 could have just stayed a puddle and flowed up to Conner and suffocated him. It would have been utterly impossible for Arnold to stop a intelligent puddle. But then whe wouldn't get to see the best action movie ever made.
Smoking is an expensive, slow, and unreliable method of suicide.
Loved the movie, but ended up coming out of it with a real bad taste in my mouth - the robots had to spend all that energy keeping people alive and running the Matrix so they could generate their energy from the heat that human bodies generate? I was (and am still) furious about it. Even though the laws of thermodynamics aren't my favourite laws of physics (things would be so much easier without them), they are still laws of physics. You can't put energy into a closed system and expect more energy out than you put in!
Arg.
They could have done some much better pseudoscience (eg. they needed the human mind's fuzzy logic processing power, and the matrix has problems encoded into it for people to solve), but no. They had to use the human body's heat output.
-vrov
You sad geek! How crap would Star Wars be without blaster fire.
/. without moaning whinging geeks (actually, that is starting to sound quite good....George, I have an idea!)
Sort of like
The basic premise is still the same - a mechanism was found to implant viral code into the enemy system.
I think you'll find that even Jeff Goldblum would have had trouble getting inside a Monolith!
The mysterious part is that my wife has problems opening the jelly jars that closes tightly, yet can crush my arm, hand or knee with no trouble during a movie. Almost makes me wonder...
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
Movies only attempt to reflect reality when convenient and/or feasible. Lets look at the X-Men. A great film. Are any of the stunts possible if you're not some kind of a mutant?
Yes, but the physics model of a fictional universe has to be internally consistent, and if it's not it's usually a symptom of the writers being lazy, and that shows up in the quality of the rest of the movie, or show. Star Trek is the classical example of this. Some piece of technology which worked one day will not the next - the transporters will always fail (or be repaired) in a situation to advance the story, sometimes the sensors will penetrate enemy shields, sometimes not. That's just sloppy writing, using a Deus Ex Machina to dig the plot out of a hole.
When writers violate the physics model - that they created in the first place, don't forget, so they could have had it any way they wanted - it stops being a story and starts being a CGI showreel, and that is why a bad movie won't be rescued by special effects (Ref: The Phantom Menace).
In an Alien from LA sort of way.
:).
There's a scene where the wife, mia sara i think, literally askes our protagonist what's going on, and guessing exactly what's going on. He replies, something to the effect of, "You wouldn't understand."
It's like she's the only normal person trapped in an alternate stupid universe. Now, I'll grant it might be an aquired taste, but there is entertainment to be had
Smith's wife hid in a side closet which had a storm drain or vent or something in it, if memory serves. She had access to more air than was in the little closet.
As of Jolie's chest, there are any number of bras designed for the express purpose of keeping boobs upright and perky. Not an issue, provided you accept Jolie's character is wearing such a bra.
I'm the stranger...posting to
That chick was hot, gentlemen.
I'm the stranger...posting to
An annoying and ever-present piece of bad science is seeing a person out-run a large explosion. Jerry Pournelle pointed this out in one of his columns not long ago, but spend some time reading a DOD explosives manual and you'll see that explosions travel VERY fast, and you can't out-run them or drive faster than them.
there is a literary technique called Suspension of Disbelief.
I don't mind a movie requiring me to suspend my disbelief; what I object to is a movie that requires me to hang, draw, and quarter it.
In the various technical information put out by Lucasfilm (for the games and such) there are acutally "feedback" speakers in the cockipits (and elsewhere) converting a lot of the energy thrown off by other ships into audible signals. It's a user-interface assist, providing a non-visual cue to spacial locations.
Battlestar Gallactica didn't have this kind of doctored explanation though, and even made reference to riding the jet-streams. Which brings up another point that apparently you have to have your engines/thrusters firing at all times to remain in motion.
Any spoon would be too big.
As I mentioned elsewhere, Terminator 2 violates canon from T1. It was established in T1 that weapons couldn't pass through the time machine unless they were encased in living flesh, like Arnold.
:)
But in T2, we have the non-flesh-covered T1000 coming through. And we know from the bomb question that Arnold answers that the T1000 can't uplicate complex compounds, so we can rule out the T1000 duplicating flesh. But, then, how could he come back?
Which led to my conclusion that Skynet would send itself back. Now, that would make an interesting movie
Creedo
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Simply put, the aliens in Aliens! How would they evolve if they need to gestate inside humans?
Isn't this the one where the two 'buddies' jump over the railing of a large ship as it explodes with enough force to destroy many city blocks? Yet they are not burned, knocked unconscious or torn apart by flying debris? In fact they even get farther underwater than all the falling metal. They merely have to hold their breathe for a minute or so and the city is saved. fabulous.