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Sci-Fi Movies and 'Bad Science'
Roland Piquepaille writes "Science fiction movies can be fun, and sometimes boring, when Hollywood producers want to show us a 2 1/2 hour film when 90 minutes would be enough. But what about the 'science' behind them? BBC News says it's pretty bad in 'When sci-fi forgets the science.' For example, the metamorphosis of Bruce Banner into The Hulk, based on work of marine biologist Greg Szulgit from Hiram College, Ohio, about sea cucumbers, is qualified by himself as "really awful"." The Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics website, which we've previously mentioned, is referenced in this article, and is now freshly updated to deal with movies like The Hulk.
does this mean the flux capacitor isn't real?
do you suppose that's why it's called science fiction??
Wierd Science was my favorite movie of all time. Does this mean the chick wasn't real?
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
Law of conservation of mass and energy. Apearently, they can conjure up matter from no where. If they repected that law, then 99% of movies are out the window.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Radioactive spiders do not actually change you into a buff moviestar who swings around fighting hobgoblins.
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What gets me every time is when there is, say, an explosion (ala Star Wars) in space, and it goes "Boom!".
Obviously, without air, there would be no sound. I think it's much more dramatic to see the explosion without hearing the sound, like they did in 2001: A Space Oddessy, rather than the way they did it in Star Wars, which came across as rather cartoonish in comparison.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Granted, its always nice when fiction has basis in reality, but come on, if we're going to believe that a guy gets mad and turns into a giant green tank smashing bad ass (not to mention that his PANTS stay ON), cant we just ENJOY it for what it is?
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
I agree that some movies push it a bit too far, but did people really go into The Hulk expecting to come out saying, "holy crap, I want to go get induced with gamma rays now!"
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Another site collecting this sort of stuff is Bad Astronomy
M@
Krispy Cream is people
It's a science FICTION movie. If they called themselves a science movie and had holes, then there would be a problem. Stop trying to find holes in science FICTION movies and just enjoy the movie. Science fiction movies aren't real life. They're an entertaining break from real-life.
That NASA made? That was pretty bad! The lighting, ack, and the dialouge? Ouch.
pfft.. that's not what she said!
Time to /. the Intuitor website:
:D
2.3 seconds
I am the Barber of Seville.
At the end of Red Planet, Val Kilmer's character is in the zero G section of the ship and the computer suggests the doctor should stand him up!!
UP??? It's zero friggin G!! What the fuck is UP??
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
Apparently to make a man, complete with 6 pack abs and a nice gold lame speedo, you just need a big ass empty aquarium and some funky colored fluids... but you do need to be wearing some really trashy lingerie...
(rocky horror picture show for those who are too young to remember, or maybe humor impaired)
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
But the most anoying is probably the Darth Vader helmet. How is it possible to live with such a helmet? How does he breath? And there is now data about how they in the future have soved the problem with steam from the mouth.
Proud patriot and republican voter.
If we were constrained by the limits of "REAL SCIENCE", the entire sci-fi genre would be the most boring thing ever.
OBVIOUSLY
SHOW A LITTLE EFFORT IN YOUR WORK, EDITORS!
and
ICE CREAM IS A SUMPTOUS TREAT.
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are featured large in the biochemistry GRE subject test. It's that fission reproduction trick and the related regenerative abilities that gets them all the attention.
Thus, I feel that films about the realms of magic fall into the same catagory. There are so many inconsistencies in the Harry Potter stories, for example, they make me wince. My girlfriend laughs and reminds me that it's just a story, but it's often not about the magic or science (as the case may be). It's often just an issue of consistency. I mean, if those kids can cast a spell to keep their faces dry in the rain, why can't they cast it on their whole bodies?
OK, I guess I've got better things to do than rant about Harry Potter... Or do I?
The CB App. What's your 20?
/stating the obvious
Goo goo g'joob.
A few years back I worked as an animator (Lightwave 3D) for a production company pitching a pilot to Universal.
It was a space scene and I was told "make it look real". I did, physics and all.
Then the producer looked at it and asked why the stars didn't move ala Star Trek. I explained that will the ship was moving fast, there are no know little glowing dots in space to zip by and smack the camera. Stars are big and very, very far away.
He said "fix it, and do it right this time!"
Sigh...
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
At the end of the movie, Arnie and the generic love interest end up out on the Martian surface without suits, gasping, their eyes bulging like tennis balls, and the "airmaker" gets going, venting out precious oxygen. A wave of wind washes over them, and suddenly they're back to normal, no worse for the wear. The "wind wave" slams into the colony and windows explode inward.
Okay, first off, if your skin and eyes are stretched like that, you would have serious damage to contend with. Just to make some sort of nod toward this, they might have shown them with bruises and bloodshot eyes, but no...
Second, as presented, there's no way that air machine could have created a breatheable atmosphere in the time shown. At the rough rate of production shown, it'd be hours before a noticeable air pressure had built up.
But you could even save this scene. Imagine the scene exactly as presented, except suddenly, around the mountain, some shimmering globe of energy forms, trapping the air. As more air comes in, it expands, maintaining a constant pressure. This would save our heroes (well, except for the eyes-the-size-of-tennis-balls thing) and you could have a neat effect of the globe expanding, sweeping past windows that blow in sequentially as the 'force-field' passed by.
Sure, we don't know how such a 'force-field' could possibly work, but aliens can get away with a certain amount of magic. For a science fiction movie done right, see The Abyss. All the human tech is plausible or at least not inconceivable. Sure, the aliens do magic things, but hey, they're supposed to be more advanced than us.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I haven't seen this film... but, the fact that the guy goes from normal size, then grows enormous, as do his clothes. Sure, they're ripped a little, but they go from underoo's size, to the size of a tent, and back again. And, they remain on him. Go figure.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
There is a movie that was FAR too long. As far as the science behind it? My guess is there was more science in creating the drugs Stanley Kubrick was taking than the movie.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
I love Stan Lee's work, but let's face it. Just about all of the characters' powers come from the mysterious force of radiation. Well, it's not that mysterious now. In the 50's and 60's, it was a dark power that caused all kinds of mutations. All the A-bomb testing would throughout the world would have strange side effects on humanity, etc. In modern times, people don't fall for this line so easily. that's why in Spiderman and The Hulk, the screenweiters shyed away from radiation. Of course, all they did was replace it with modern day boogymen like genetic engineering and nanotechnology.
Hulk smash puny web server!
In SWAT, they pulled the guy over because he had a left teal light out. He was driving a new Cadillac Deville (they have LED Tailights) LED tailights dont burn out, especailly on such a new car.
Since we're talking about Bad Science in movies,
why isn't
Story of Ricky at all mentioned. If there's a movie
with bad science ideas, Story of Ricky is it.
Nevertheless, it is a great movie to watch.
This is why "Science Fiction" and "Fantasy" are commonly lumped together in book stores. It can be difficult to separate one from another and people endlessly dicker over where the line is. Also, where do you categorize books which were based on the science of the day, but over the course of fifty years are systematically proven incorrect?
Now people usually separate sci-fi into "hard" and "soft" to make this distinction, because they don't want to lump sci-fi and fantasy together. This seems to me to be a pointless form of elitism. Science fiction without any scientific explanation (even if not given) behind the "science" is fantasy, plain and simple.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Always informative and often hilarious... check it out!
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Nothing wrecks a movie for me more than watching them talk about computers or doing stuff with computers that is so completely out to lunch that whatever illusion the movie has created so far is destroyed.
Then there's my wife, the genetics expert, for whom hollywood's attempts at describing that particular branch of science causes her to throw her popcorn in disgust.
I image that nearly everyone experiences this frustration with movies, regardless of their area of expertise though. I bet if my mom had watched american pie she would have said something along the lines of: "That's not how you bake a proper applie pie -- the crust should be darker!".
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
The Hulk doesn't suck damnit! Quit the bashing already, I enjoyed the frickin movie.
I'm sorry, but my take on 2001 is totally different. It took 5 tries to watch that movie all the way through (3 of them I fell asleep during any one of the numerous 20 minutes acid-trip induced classical music scenes) The script would fit comfortably on a 3x5 notecard, and in the end, you have no idea what you have just watched. It seems to me that the movie is vastly overrrated.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Yes, they adapted it as live-action (sorta) movie, but I don't know that it qualifies as "science fiction".
You mean there's no scientific basis for turning into a big green monster when I'm angry? Damn. More disillusionment every freakin day.
The lightning... or you're probably a bit too close to it for comfort. Most movies time the thunder/lightning to be together, rather than the normal delay for the difference in travel speed.
The producer commentary on the 'Back to the Future' admitted to some mildly bad science... Doc Brown's mispronunciation of the word 'Gigawatt'.
He said something to the effect that nerds everywhere wrote in and pointed out this egregious error after the first film was released, but for the sake of continuity they had to keep using the 'jiggawatt' pronunciation for the rest of the films.
The Incredible Hulk: Not Real
Also Not Real:
The Tooth Fairy
Santa Claus
Porn
The New York Times
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
Lois Lane falls from top of tall building, reaches terminal velocity of about 200 mph. Superman flies up from ground to meet her halfway, resulting in a 400mph relative speed. Superman catches Lois, and she's unhurt! Yes, it's no wonder schoolchildren don't understand physics, when what passes for everyday experience violates it on a regular basis, and nobody tells them that what they see on telivision and in the movies isn't real. From what I've seen of movie representations of computers, I have no doubt that an expert in ANY field must be appalled by how that field is depicted in the movies...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The point of sci-fi isn't to mirror what's currently believed scientifical circles. The point is to entertain.
Complaining that sci-fi doesn't use real science is like criticizing porn because it doesn't represent real sex. When was the last time your pizza was delivered by a set of hot buxom twins?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
...The Immediately Slashdotted Movie Physics website!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
between SF and Fantasy. "The Hulk" is Fantasy and should be taken in the same grain as cartoons or movies with magic, dragons etc. Real SF doesn't usually make it into move/television form (or if it does it ends up being corrupted). The best SF is still in books not in your movie theatre.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Dear J-Lo,
I have been informed that your derriere violates the law of conservation of mass and energy. Please fix this violation for Gigli 2 so the slashdot crew will pay their $$$.
Love,
MPAA
I think the problem most people who disliked The Matrix Reloaded had was that they didn't understand it. For once they were being expected to think. For once they were watching a movie that requires more than one sitting to really comprehend. IMHO, Hollywood needs to do this more often instead of constantly shovelling out brain dead crap aimed at the lazy lowest common denominator. I personally appreciate a movie that I have to think about at least a little. That being said, there were some holes in both Matrix movies.
Sorry, slasheds, listen up. When I need to catch up on what's going on in the world, yunno, when I'm back from holiday or back at work after the weekend, I go to visit the BBC site (a news site) and then from the BBC site to slashdot.org
If reading about AMD's latest benchmark tests was news I'd come here first. But it's not. So why do I have to read the article there and then see it posted here a) As if some keen eye'd slashreader "discovered" it and b) As if no-one knew about the BBC site's technology section!
Gaaah.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Uh ... next time they tell us there is no TX and all our dreams about her are futile...
Yeah, right.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
I was gonna make a joke to illustrate a point that most people would see something entertaining that may not be real rather than some science documentary on say PBS. Then I realized that this whole site is filled with nerds that like that sort of thing.
I might as well shut up because the opinions of the community here are always expressed in "reality" (i.e. Linux domination over Windows, this issue of real vs. entertaining, and the ever popular CowboyNeal presidential candidacy).
I'll probably go see one of these "fake" sci-fi movies this weekend. At least I don't have a date with my Linux box.
Producer: NEXT!!
Ralph Wiggum: Chicken necks
Entertainment has the power to stir the imagination. It only takes one yammering asshole who thinks he's sooo smart because he found some obvious flaw in a story to ruin the experience for others. I don't think we have much to fear by the dumbing down of science in cinema. Real science rarely makes for thrills and explosions. Those that make for good movies (PI for example)still take liberties. Poor funding for science education and rampaging ignorance are more danger to science than The Hulk.
See, you take a guy and inject him with sea cucumber/starfish goo and have him reproduce. Then you take that child, have him hang around Jennifer Connelly for a good long while*, and then have him inhale medicinal nanites while getting zapped with lots and lots of gamma radiation. I'm not sure which part of this people have trouble understanding.
* For some reason, sexual frustration aids in the creation of superheroes; the exact mechanism is unknown, but research is underway.
"Understand you're having a little Jimmy Page trouble."
You shouldn't care...it's entertainment!
As a computer geek, I know how to program, use the internet, and assemble collections of OEM components into working computers. I wince every time I see some Hollywood version of these activities, because they are always utterly ridiculous! They aim for entertainment value rather than realism. The teeming masses don't know any better. And they don't want to. A movie is supposed to be entertaining rather than educational or thought-provoking.
I bet it's the same for every profession. I'm sure real firefighters look at firefighting scenes in movies and find a hundred little inaccuracies or unrealistic stretches. Lawyers must have retched at "Legally Blonde". Hell, I've been on a witness stand and your average real-life court case is about as exciting as boiling pasta, and lawyers don't holler "I object" every two minutes.
Everybody who really understands the basics of General Relativity and Special Relativity knows why FTL travel and "subspace" communication can't happen. Hell, Star Trek is internally inconsistent as well -- how do you fire a phaser out of your ship's warp field, across normal space, and into another ship's warp field when both ships are travelling at some multiple of the speed of light? But the average viewer doesn't give a flip about Relativity and has no desire to analyze the fictional science. They just care that Worf gets warm fuzzy feelings about pounding Borg ships with photon torpedoes.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
If you think The Hulk has bad physics check out Lee's monstrosity Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. People can fly without any visible rocket packs and there are no dragons or tigers to be seen at any point in the movie.
In fact, the last scientifically accurate Ang Lee movie was The Ice Storm which actually included a storm that appeared to be made of ice and appeared to accurately portray a death by electrocution. Although I did see the actor in a subsequent movie, so it may not have been real.
insulting? i don't know - it seems like the movie makers are just trying to make money, and that means pandering to the lowest common denominator, and that in turn means focusing on what nearly everyone can appreciate, versus what a select few can. it's just the capitalist system acknowledging that most people won't get it... hence, it's not worth the bother of getting right. there is a subset of movies that do, and they probably represent a market share proportional to the number of people that provide the demand for scientific accuracy.
Sometimes, things get blurred based on who the author is. I suppose anything that Arthur C. Clarke ever wrote gets called sci-fi, while anything Stephen King writes is horror. The Dark Tower books are as sci-fi as it gets, IMO, but betcha you'll find 'em lurking over in the monsters-under-the-bed section.
But back to the topic: If I want to see "bad science," I don't go to a theatre. I go to the undergrad labs ;-)
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Hey, it's all a programmed memory, they're allowed to make up the physics as they go.
I happen to like this film quite a bit. But opinion seems to be fairly divided on whether its good science or bad. Consider - NASA cuts funding on a mars mission, so the "bad scientist" decides to fake the space mission by staging it in an unused air-force facility, disguised to look like mars, and then transmitting the footage to the audience. NASA "good guy" looks at transmission lag, compares it to what the real lag should be if the transmission were indeed from mars, and figures something's fishy. "good guy" talks to "bad scientist" who then knocks him off, but before he disappears, he divulges suspicions to a close friend/reporter, who plays the hero. Now, whole thing requires cooperation from the astronauts, who comply, only to find the spacecraft blowing up on re-entry due to heat-shield failure, thereby "killing" them, even though they've never even left the earth. Now, astronauts must escape before "bad scientist" really kills them off. Nice sci-fi/thriller/comedy/70mm action flick, but didn't get the acclaim it deserved. Ppl poked numerous holes into the plot, which I concede isn't airtight, but still, is pretty sound considering other cheaply made sci-fi's involving data on a floppy disk or somesuch.
Guess I'll have to start over from scratch on my graduate thesis.
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Is the accuracy of "social science". Like "American Wedding", for example. Here we have some nutcases from the previous two movies, who had huge house-destroying parties, and that bachelor party was the best they could do? Please!
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this implies that radioactive spiders don't make you gay.
Reality is sometimes better than fiction.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Why focus just on physics? What about some of the "science" we see in a lot of other films that people take seriously? Much of this seemed to start when you had the near simultaneous release of "China Syndrome" and the Three Mile Island incident. Although the actual incident was a far cry from what happened in the movie, it gave the perception that Hollywood was making movies based on real scientific information - i.e. these things could really happen.
We have ecological examples like "Waterworld," where the entire planet loses its land to melted polar ice caps, presumably the result of global warming; or "Jurassic Park" with bad biology bringing fossilized DNA to life. And speaking of biology, we all know SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!
When I look at the mass of audiences that these "blockbusters" want to attract, I wonder how many of these masses can distinguish between "good" science and "bad" science - esp if most of them know very little science to begin with ....
My point is that if most people don't know much of science to begin with, how can "good" science or "bad" science have an effect on their experience ....
For people who are too discerning, or cannot suspend their beliefs, or cannot appreciate magic .... there is a bunch of "realistic" indy movies to watch ....
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
There's hardly a nerd who wouldn't like, at least once, to morph into a huge green guy and panic his tormentors. So, how is it that Hollywood can take this delicious daydream and puree it into pure broccoli juice? Let's start with a simple principle that Hollywood has failed to grasp. Bigger is not always better.
Consider the scene where the evil father genetically engineers a group of dogs into vicious behemoths and sets them on the scent of a victim to assassinate. Ironically, one of the dogs appears to be an American pit bull terrier (hence forth referred to as a pit bull). Even cat lovers will recognize this as one tough puppy. Why is this ironic? Making the dog larger would most likely make it a less effective assassin.
According to pit bull lore, they have been matched against virtually every other dog breed not to mention lions, tigers, and bears. More often than not the pit bull wins. Yes, this has a lot to do with the breed's strength and stamina but it's also because, at around 60 pounds, pit bulls are exactly the right size.
Dog breeders have produced huge fighting dogs such as the Japanese Tosa Inu which can reach 200 lbs but it typically doesn't make them better fighters than the pit bull. If a dog is scaled up, its strength will increase with the square of the scale up factor while its mass will increase with the cube of the scale up factor. For example double the size of the dog and its strength will increase by a factor of 4 but its weight will increase by a factor of 8. At some point the shear mass of the dog will begin to limit its stamina as well as its ability to move quickly.
The best way to convert a pit bull into an assassin's tool would be to make it super smart rather than super large. A truly intelligent dog would not have to rely on the vagaries of following a scent. It could read maps, plan its attack for the best possible situation, sneak up, and quietly dispatch its victim with a quick bite to the throat. The dog already has all the jaw strength, agility, and jumping ability required to do so.
If anything, converting a pit bull into a snarling slobbering monster and sending it out with two other similar beasts would have made it a less effective assassin. How are a group of vicious dogs the size of cars going to detect and follow the scent of a person driving dozens of miles, let alone do so without alerting the community, police, and national news media. Keep in mind that the targeted victim probably drove home, filled up with gas, and stopped at the supermarket before eventually ending up at a remote cabin in the woods.
As depicted in the movie, morphing also had serious problems. For one, it disobeyed the first law of thermodynamics. This is the most firmly established principle in all of physics and says that one cannot create mass out of nothing. No amount of mumbo jumbo about sea cucumbers and star fish can compensate for this shortcoming. If the Hulk is going to bulk up in a few seconds he's going to have to either acquire more mass, lower his density or some combination of the two. Unfortunately, gulping air is about the only choice for gaining mass and this will almost certainly lower density in the process.
By inhaling and standing in a more upright posture, a creature could appear perhaps 25% larger. A good snort of adrenalin or some other drug could conceivably increase short term strength by a factor of ten. An increase beyond this would probably cause injuries such as broken bones or torn tendons and ligaments. Combining these transformations with a color change along with growling and snarling would create a very imposing presence.
By contrast the movie has a scene in which the Hulk holds his love interest King-Cong-like in his fist. The Hulk would have to be at least ten t
...especially of the laser or explosion variety
You were saying ?
one day working the hell known as OEM tech support, I had a customer call me claiming that AOL told him he needed to have his "modem flux capacitor" reset in order for him to get connected to the internet.
Prozac makes the voices in my head say nice things to me.
Does exclude our "aerodynamically impossible" flying insect friend from a career in the movies?
;-)
I mean seriously, if someone had said in the Middle Ages that there was to be no fiction to challenge or exaggerate current scientific knowledge think how boring literature and art would be. Flying machines were built by technical people who were inspired by science fiction of the day. Who knows, perhaps there is a flux capacitor or perpetual motion machine out there in someones imagination
crazy dynamite monkey
I'm the first to cringe at "insultingly stupid physics" during movies, but standardized nitpicking such as the one provided in this movie is highly annoying.
Let's not forget that filmmaking is an art and as such doesn't have to be realistic. I notice irrealistic stuff in a movie, and cringe when it isn't justified, but gladly accept it when it is. The need for style > the need for realism.
This is especially true for Asian movies and directors, whose respect for reality is far supreior to that of most Hollywood directors, but will willingly disregard it when it pleases them. I could mention John Woo's HK era masterpieces, which are wholly unrealistic -- but who cares? Tsui Hark's Time and Tide is an incredible combination of highly realistic action moments, far more than 99% Hollywood movies, and completely ludicrous/impossible events. And the director knows it.
People are now used to high drama, high action and MASSIVE special effects in their Sci-Fi diet. But a major part of the atraction of 2001 is its realism which many people find very boaring.
Have you every spent two or three hours watching Nasa TV when a soviet cargo ship docks with the ISS? Real life space activity is miserably slow, tedious, deliberate and boaring. 2001 played it like it was. The space scenes were slow, deliberate and tedious just like the real thing.
2001 cannot be compared to the new Star Wars films or DS9. 2001 was from a time when there was no CG effects. Special effects in general were new and most lacked any realism. But, 2001 made it work. It was believable and realistic and that is what makes people fans of 2001. If you must compare 2001 to something, try comparing it to the Star Trek TV series. Until 2001 was released, Start Trek and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea were the state of the are for Sci-Fi.
Now as for the Acid trip scenes in 2001, I can't explain that but,those scenes were fairly short. In real life there is no boom when something explodes in space and things happen very slowly or people float off into the void.
For me, the most annoying example of bad science ruining a movie is "The Saint" (1997) with Val Kilmer in the tile role and Elisabeth (Adventures In Babysitting) Shue as a brilliant scientist.
The casting, plot twists, acting and lousy disguises were bad enough - Val Kilmer wearing gobs of makeup still looks exactly like Val Kilmer - but the worst part were the scenes where Elizabeth Shue scribbles down her cold fusion calculations on scraps of paper whenever she takes a break from fleeing assasins.
At the climax of the movie, the gorgeous young scientist is able to throw together a working model in a few minutes using some nearby junk, and Presto! Cold Fusion! Wow, that was easy! The final scene shows crowds celebrating the death of the Laws of Thermodynamics, with free energy for everyone. What an uplifting ending!
... ...
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/
Articles like this are like a mere Slashdot troll gone large, and to reference this sort of article merely encourages the troll. Of course the movie's physics are ludicrous. Of course, it doesn't make any sort of sense. Neither does Bugs Bunny, despite being an excellent source of entertainment in the opinion of many people.
If someone wrote an article commenting about how much they enjoyed The Hulk's excesses, they might get two or three reads, depending on how many of their immediate relatives have internet access. That same journo, writing a disparaging article about even the most obvious things, gets far more attention as people who either agree with his view or disagree, pick up the article and procede to flame away in the comments. This same effect also explains much of the popularity of shows like Seinfeld, which made trivial sniping a way of life.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
...sensor systems will deliver information to your ears
and these systems will be called "Alarms."
In the year two thousand.
Science fiction
From webster.com's definition of fiction:
1 a : something invented by the imagination or feigned; specifically : an invented story
Something invented by the imagination, won't you just let us enjoy our break from reality into the imaginary world of fiction without nitpicking every time you hear an explosion in space?
It's not that bad for us to complain about things that are not technically correct, especially if they are just so technically awful! With the Hulk rewrites, I cringed as i watched the number of marine organisms being cut or poked in an attempt tomake a better soldier. The worst part about it was the fact that Bruce's dad essentially performed Gene Therapy on himself in a way that can't even be done in this day and age. On top of that, they tried too hard to incorporate real science into the movie that it made it even more awful that you couldn't believe what was going on. For example, they really didn't need to show the species name of the jellyfish in the movie... and it seemed like a cheap attempt at explaining why the Hulk was green.
In Space No One Can Hear You Smeg.
Although I still have the image of the smashed space sign that says 'Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers' in my mind.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Wait a minute. No! No! There were no sequels. I'm not listening! LALALALALALA!!
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I saw one about a stable MS Windows environment.
Like anyone would believe that.
For pete's sake, I don't give a jack about bad movies or replacement for lightbulbs or silent pumps for water-cooled PCs.
Where is my freakin' daily dose of SCO stories?!!!
Oh gosh, I'm so addicted, somebody help me please!
ub96Among all the other reasons that people (zealots) like Babylon 5, one of the more compelling ones is that the science is incrementally extended off science in the 90s. One of the downsides of this is that, when science has made wild advances, it makes B5 look dated -- in the same way that the "Pocket Pager" comment in Star Trek IV sounds silly in a post-NOKIA world.
can't have it all...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
They were based upon the ancient Greek idea of mankind having "sparks" of the god(s) inside their very being; that everything the god(s) created had a piece of themselves inside as well. Or, for a more modern adaption, go for John Carpenter's "The Prince of Darkness." That film's premise advanced the idea that every thing in the universe had particles that were of God and also anti-God inside them; thus explaining how objects and people could be controlled by the paranormal... The reason why the Midichlorians "ruined" Star Wars is because it took away the moviegoers feelings that they too could be a Luke Skywalker, a hero transformed by his beliefs and his own inner strength. A whole generation of sci-fi moviegoers dreamed of becoming Jedi Knights only to find out that the universe made it impossible for an individual to become one from faith alone; that they only could touch the divine if they had enough microbes in their blood... The Matrix is terrible because if you've seen "Dark City" before, there's no point in seeing the film. Its just an algamation of the plot of "Dark City" (and with some of that movie's sets as well) mixed with the special effects from "Blade", the computer plot *adapted* from "The Deadly Assassin" episode from 70s Doctor Who, and a healthy batch of wire-fu. And for the third film, we have Mech-Warrior in it now as well...or maybe Robo-Jox. I know the only reason why I'll go see it is because Monica Bellucci appears in it...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Come on. In reality, you would never need to approach something that fast, the orientation of your ship wouldn't matter, you couldn't bank a hard left turn, and if you smacked into an object like that it would only happen once, as you would then bounce off it, out of control, and out into space.
This movie was made by a bunch of english lit. guys and it never occurred to them to get the opinion of someone who had passed at least one science or math class in high school. I saw it years ago, and it still pisses me off that this kind of crap can get through the Hollywood corporate machine. What kind of idiots to they think we are?
But then again, it appears that they are right, and we are idiots, because it made assloads of money. And I can't even exclude myself from the idiocy, because I saw it too. Therein lies the problem. Any film you've can criticize, you have seen, and therefore you have supported, and therefore they will make more like that. There is no escape.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
I decided to read it, just for fun, and ran into this rather hypocritical bit
So much for consistency.
If you can't have "chipmunk"-voiced characters when science dictates them, for the sake of a better movie experience, then who are they to criticize the sounds of explosions in space - as those are added only to enrich the movie experience as well.
Yes, 'Independence Day' was pretty much mindless enjoyment... I got as far with the 'willing suspension of disbelief thing' as
'Ok, so these aliens are invading earth pretty much for the sheer hell of it, the Fresh Prince is an ace fighter pilot, Lone Starr is the president, and they've just given Cousin Eddie control of a multi-million dollar fighter jet'
But when Jeff Goldblum plugs his Macintosh in the mothership network (good thing those aliens have compatible jacks in their spaceship control panels) and "uploads a virus" to an completely alien operating system written by a species advanced enough to have mastered interstellar travel, I'm not buying it anymore. He must have had a copy of O'Reilly's "Giger-derived Alien Scripting Language In a Nutshell" with him when he went to Area 51.
Upon reading this, I pulled the old ST:TNG Technical Manual from the shelf, which dates back to 1991 (I wonder if this has any collector value). And in the introductions, I find this:
"The Starship Enterprise is not a collection of motion picture sets or a model used in visual effects. It is a very real vehicle; one designed for storytelling. [...] Documents such as this Technical Manual help give some background to the vision we work so hard to create on Star Trek. Rick [Sternbach] and Mike [Okuda] have obviously had a lot of fun filling in the gaps and trying to find technical 'explanations' for some of our mistakes." -- Gene Roddenberry
There you have it, folks: story comes first, physical accurate explanations come later. The list of credits has a lot of names from NASA, Boeing, Rockwell and so on. Those scientists (or people in the know) were constantly asked from advice - but if the story demanded some excuse, then the scientific background was set aside (according to the comments scattered throughout the manual).
Do you honestly think this has hurt the series?!
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
While I understand and appreciate that sentiment, I counter by saying, "why can't a movie be intelligent and entertaining, too?" Although "popcorn movies" are OK in their own way, the problem is that it's used far too dismissively by studio executives themselves who set out to make entertainment that almost purposely doesn't rise above a certain level. It's cynical, and a justfication for lazy filmmaking. There are plenty of highly entertaining films that strive for some sort of intelligence and credibility. Alien, Aliens and Die Hard come immediately to mind.
That's right, everyone... by some weird cosmic coincidence, the stuff you see in Science FICTION movies is not real... and is, well at least in some cases, just plain impossible. Those of us who know better refer to this stuff as FICTION.
According to dictionary.com fiction is defined firstly as 'An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented.'.
Ah hah! Imagine that! So in the world of science FICTION, they use imaginative creation to INVENT something that doesn't represent actuality. WOW! What a concept!
Look, if it was SCIENCE SCIENCE it just wouldnt be as fun to watch... if it was SCIENCE SCIENCE, it'd just be the Discovery Channel or TLS but costing you $8 per show (not to say these channels dont have anything of interest mind you).
The worst example of this phenomenon has to be the mechanics of time travel in Lost in Space. You seriously had to see this disaster of a film to appreciate the abject horror that it is capable of producing.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Esp:
The episode where Bender gets fired out the torpedo tube while the ship is moving at full speed making it impossible for the ship to catch up to him.
Frye (as Captain Yesterday) jumping over a railing after a falling gemenoid and Lela says "Frye, you can't fall fast enough"
I saw a pic some guy took of the spark from a solid-state Tesla coil, and the flame shot straight out. Maybe you could use that as the base for a lightsaber, if you had a battery with sufficient capacity.
Actually, I believe the sky is blue due to its refraction index. If the colour was determined by reflection from the surface below it, the sky would be green-brown in the center of a continental land mass.
While I love to bash the Hulk, I have to give MASSIVE PROPS to the people who assembled the credits and introductory sequences. I worked as an undergraduate with light-based live-cell visualization systems. There wasn't one of them (fluorescein, green fluoroescent protein, diaminofluorescein) that wasn't shown in that sequence. And none of the images, as far as I could tell from 1s clips, were "digitally enhanced" most of them were actual images from fluoroescent microscopes.
So if you want to see a good representation of current cell visualization techniques, take a look at that sequence again.
"One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin." George Bernard Shaw
A tolerably good definition of "sci-fi" is "A story in which there are rules which are considered unbreakable, and they help drive the story, rather then the story driving the rules."
Many "fantasy" stories can thus be fit under this definition of sci-fi; Larry Niven in particular seems to be fascinated by playing with the definition above and producing "fantasy" that is really hard-core sci-fi in disguise. In particular, see his Svetz the Time Traveller world (pick up Rainbow Mars if you see it, and I think you'll then have all the Svetz stories unless he's written one since; start at the late middle of the book and read the short stories before reading the main novel!), and his Warlock world, where magic existed but was a finite resource that was used up before the modern era.
You don't have to stick with the "real world" science, though there is something to be said for trying to creatively work within those restrictions (for example, Vinge's "Zones of Thought" universe in A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky), you can even specify rules almost completely unlike the real world (I love 1950's and 1960's hard-core sci fi, or Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars, which is horribly anachronistic now but at the time was reasonably good sci-fi; can't write that stuff now unless it's a deliberate throw-back like Rainbow Mars is), but the key is you stick to the rules.
For the simple reason they never tried to explain how or why they work. The technology for them is perfectly impossable today, and is probably not somthing that will ever be possable, but you never know. We have seen many "impossable" technologies developed in the course of history as our understanding of the universe becomes better. It is possable, if unlikely, there there is someway to make a contained sitck of plasma or something of the like, hence something like a lightsaber.
One of the important thing for sci-fi movies, I think, is to not let their plots get hung up on the nifty tech. Just have it and don't bother trying to explain or rationlize it. Spend the time on a good story. If you do that, people won't really worry if it is plausable or not because the characters will make it seem like it is.
Blasters, lightsabers, etc are just accepted thigns in the Star Wars universe. No one goes on a 10 minute rant trying to explain how they work and why they were developed, etc. The characters just use them as we use any tool today and their time is spent on the story. Hence, it is easy to suspend disbelief.
It becomes hard when movies try really hard to take some implausable technology and explain it as if it were real. Leave that alone. add the new magic technology, and just use it. Don't hang up the movie on it. Not only is it boring to hear characters drone on about it, scenes like that are where the nitpicking urge kicks in big time.
Maybe I've just seen too many bad movies, but what really stretched my suspension of disbelief watching Hulk was the way all the helicopters didn't turn into huge fireballs as soon as they crashed into the ground.... you mean military vehicles aren't really built out of Semtex?
just a thought.
Only the poor schmuck has to get pissed off instead of waiting for a full moon.
People that didn't want to acknowledge that an action movie could have depth to it. It amazed me the number of angry reactions it got from people. Basically, they were pissed that this was NOT your typical action movie that has no layers of meaning and is purely superficial.
See, like with anything thing in life, you get elitest snobs when it comes to movies. They feel they are 'cultured' or 'refined' or whatever because of their taste in movies. this, of course, does NOT include shoot em' up movies for the simpletons. But here you have a movie that is a shoot 'em up, but yet has a real compelling story and more than one level of meaning. So they find that it is actually something they can like. But they aren't SUPPOSED to like things like this, hence you get angry reactions.
The first rule when viewing anything from Hollyweird is:
:-)
==> Suspend Disbelief ==
Examples:
Count how many times someone's six-shooter shoots without being reloaded in almost any classic western or detective/police movie.
Tires squealing on gravel roads.
Male lead is a geek but doesn't look like a nerd in "Blowfish".
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
The Dark Tower series, along with The Stand, are the by far the best of King's work. IMHO.
However, I consider the Dark Tower a fantasy series. (Whatever that means.) The Stand would fit under science-fiction.
JMS, the creator of Babylon 5, got sick of the you-cannot-hear-sounds-in-space complaint and posted a response. The gist of his argument -- apart from artistic issues -- is that space is not all empty all the time. He asked some experts, apparently, and decided that sounds were possible.
An exploding manned (soon to be unmanned) spacecraft would carry a breathable atmosphere and other gases/particles to carry sound. Weapon zaps and engine whines would be audible from within these crafts and over their comm-links. It's all a question of where you stick your microphone. Nobody is telling you where the mic is or how it works.
Just kidding.
You had to be around in '66 when that movie was being talked about to appreciate the *leap* it was from the "giant spiders invading earth" movie that was the state of the art.
However, the *science* represented by 2001 is still unmatched.
*(yes, I know I'm AC, but I'm at somebody's computer, and I don't feel like logging in)
1) Trek Universe: the galaxy populated by white people with funny foreheads. I mean, chimps are nearly identical to us genetically, look at them!
2) Bad magic physics: they're going a few light years and the stars are just zipping by. Come on!
3) Continuity is sacrificed for goofy morality. Guys who turn into giants wear uberlycra pants all the time.
4) Cultural continuity in the galaxy. OK, B5 had some truly wierd aliens, like the vorlons, and a narrative that helped explain the continuity somewhat, but the rest...
5) The general lack of plots involving easily predictable tech, like nanotech, ubiquitous computing, and radical bioengineering of human flesh.
6) Political dullardry. Haven't these damn script writers read Sam Delaney or KS Robinson? Things are going to get wild and wierd, mutate and evolve.
7) Gender idiocy. Again, things have changed radically in just the last 10 years, what makes you scriptflakes think we're going to maintain a Cleaver family morality in perpetuity? Damn that Heinlein. See Varley, Delaney, Stephenson. Sex is between the legs, gender is between the ears, and we're figuring that out already.
8) Economic ideology. New economies are the nature of social progression, STNG tries to be blandly utopian as a cop-out, let's see some interesting econotech please.
9) No one ever excretes in the future.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Is also the Didn't Pay Attention to the Movie guy.
I've clicked on one review. K-19 the Widowmaker. I just watched it the other night.
"Unfortunately, the movie also seriously alters physics. We're told that the out-of-control reactor is on the verge of exploding and when it does, it will set off the nuclear warheads on board the sub and destroy a nearby American Navy vessel."
That's not what the movie plot stated. The sub was near a NATO listening post and there was a NATO ship there, if the reactor melts down the resulting cloud of radioactive steam and waste from the reactor will destroy the base and possibly the ship in turn causing NATO to think it's something nuclear.
"The answer: dive a whole 300 meters under the ocean. Is this supposed to quench the fireball? 300 meters is nothing compared with the blast area of a multi-megaton nuclear explosion."
The K-19 might have to dive to 300 meters and flood it's self not to contain the nuclear blasts but to flood the ship, cooling the reactor and leaving it deep enough that NATO can't recover it.
Repeat after me...
Willing suspension of disbelief
Willing suspension of disbelief
If I want reality I'll read the news. Duh.
In fact, pretty much any Marvel-influenced movie is a special case. I mean, c'mon, even when I was a kid I had some vague idea that people didn't really turn green and get musclebound when they got mad, or that Angel would have had to have had hollow bones and pectoral muscles roughly the size of a Buick to actually fly with those wings of his.
Science fiction is about the STORY, not about the effects. Sure, it's better if the science behind it is more solid, but the thing that makes science fiction good is the plot and characterization, not the science. Really, all the science is is a device to allow us to ask the basic question behind science fiction, "What if . . . "
If the story's enjoyable it's much easier to willingly suspend disbelief and let yourself think, for a few minutes at least, that a guy can shoot webs out of his wrists or death rays out of his eyeballs. We all (well, most of us) overlooked "made the Kessel run in twelve parsecs" and the explosions in space, because we thought the story behind Star Wars was so much fun. (On the other hand, if a movie otherwise stinks, the flashiest special effects aren't going to save it, and any recognizably bad science is just going to make such a movie more laughable.)
Someone you trust is one of us.
CmdrTaco doesn't need a mare like you.
She's got the gorgeous, incredibly feminine and smart Kathleen.
Gotta love it when Skynet's processing speed is measured in 'giga FLOPS per second'...!
a big honkin' retcon job.
Phil Plait has a site called Bad Astronomy which features all the bad astronomy, and various other forms of science, that are inappropriately represented in contemporary films, news, and television. The site is excellent, and journeys into other areas, such as debunking common myths and misunderstandings about astronomy and science in general. I'm surprised it wasn't one of the ones mentioned in the title.
Bad technical backup for scifi movies has never really annoyed me. The thing that really annoys me are the computerinterfaces and -applications I sometimes spot in Hollywood movies, especially friendly-voiced talking emailclients that deliver animated emailmessages that would take over twenty hours to make in Flash.
Most moviehackers are pretty awful too most of the time, i've seen people hack into networks by quickly typing a few words to bypass a well designed and animated promptscreen (another twenty hours Flash) in order to access some evil company's secret 3D rendered visualised datafiles.
bada bing
I place Hulk squarely into fantasy category, same as Spawn, X-men, etc.
But even if it was sci-fi, it is fiction.
And finally, I moan every time I read these blurbs by uptight, anal retentive "scientists", the same ones who often present themselves as the so-called "skeptics". What joyless, imagination deprived critters they are. They are no better than Linux, Microsoft, Emacs, Vi, Apple, Christian, Muslim and every other kind of zealot. They just can't relax and enjoy what is. Nope. They need to argue pedanticts and dogmas and obscure bullet points until death.
Radioactive spiders do not actually change you into a buff moviestar who swings around fighting hobgoblins.
OK, First off: I have no problem with "physics" like this - it's suspesion of disbelief.. I know that it wouldn't happen, but it doesn't ruin the movie for me..
But what really annoys me is when TV hosts of (for example) the Discovery channel, start claiming "there is real science behind it!"
When Spiderman was released, Discovery had an interview with different entymologists and biologists, asking them about the "science" in the film.. and their conclusion was "there is real science behind it."
For example, when asked about "spider-strength", the biologist said "spiders can lift many times their own bodyweight - so it's correct!".. while completely ignoring that the reason that spiders can lift many times their own weight is that they're small, not because there is some magical "spider" quality that gives them super-strength.
If a spider was a big as, and weighed as much as a human being, it wouldn't be able to damnwell move, let alone lift anything, because its muscles wouldn't have enough strength to overcome their own weight.
This is what pisses me off - not the faux-science, but supposedly intelligent individuals treating it as real science.
So, when you read his comment above and see
don't ignore the & character.
See also Schwa
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
A friend of mine is starting into what looks like a promising career in scriptwriting. He's been paying his dues writing kiddie movies, and now he's doing his first sci-fi horror flick. Having spent a lot of time hanging around engineers when he was at university (he wrote for their humour rag) he decided to put a good deal of thought into the script. Not only did he consult people to find out what they liked/disliked about the sci-fi horror genre, but he also did a bit of research to ensure that the "sci" part didn't take too far a backseat to the "fi" part. Within reason, of course, but he did make an effort. For his troubles? The producers congratulated him on bringing them a thoughtful, edgy, well researched script, and then immidiately asked him to have more stuff (like inert barrels) blow up real good so that the movie would be more "explosive." This would mean cutting out some of the neccessary "sci" background. It seems that most audiences don't mind checking their brains at the door, and producers want to sell tickets, not educations. Go figure.
It's The worst movie ever. There's scarecely a 2 minute period in the movie that is free of a scientific or logical error. What really boiled my blood was that there was no reason for the inaccuracies - everything could have been "realistic" and still been exciting. The mistakes were there because the screenwriters and everyone associated with the film was a retard.
It was the film that pushed me over the edge as far as Jerry Bruckheimer is concerned. I vowed never to see another of his pieces of shit. However, I've heard good things about "Pirates of the Caribbean" (damn you Bruckheimer!). If I must see it in the theatre, I figure I'll buy a ticket for another show & sneak into that one - I refuse to give him any more of my money.
-BbT
"People don't want a slice of life, they want a slice of pie"
-- Alfred Hitchcock.
Its only insultingly stupid when it detracts from the movie. I'm not often insulted at movies, but if it involves the physics it makes the movie worse--not better. It's hard to say insultingly stupid movie physics can better the plot line or strengthen a character/idea.
What appears as continuous motion is actually made from a series of static images, updated as little as 24 times a second!
The movie that made me cringe the most with stupidity was "Evolution". I know its a comedy, and its supposed to be stupid, but it was just too painful to watch that crap. Ug. Gives me the jibblies.
--- If I had a funny sig too, you might be laughing now.
are people who put no thought into what they are seeing, and thus dismiss it as baad science.
Take ID4..please.
but seriously,
The number one nitpic among people who hate that movie is the scence with the 'apple' computer interfacing with the space ship. On the surface, yeah that seems bad, but nobody considers the fact that they have been studing the electronic technology for 50 years, or that perhaps the OS is not the OS the laptop shipped with?
Maybe there was some [gasp] reverse engineering going on?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Things I learned by watching SCI-FI
1) When hacking into any computer system, the system will tell you that you are in by flashing "ACCESS GRANTED" or something similar in HUGE letters across your screen.
2) Any technical problem can be solved by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow (Dr. Who)
3) Any humanoid or machine that is devoid of emotion will always somehow develop emotion.
4) If you travel to a distant planet that you've never been to, (IE Dagobah) to see someone you've never met (Yoda), you will manage to land in just the right place. (Star Wars and others)
5) All planets other then Earth have just one climate type (Hoth - Ice, Tatooine - Desert, Dagobah - Swamp) (Star Wars)
6) Even if you don't have a protocol droid, you can communicate with an Alien slimeball in English, and he will understand you, and likewise you will understand his language. (Star Wars)
7) Space Ships can travel planet to planet and can easily escape gravity, and never have to worry about burning up upon reentry.
8) No matter unhumanlike your species, you will find Earth women attractive.
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
Comic Book Store Guy: Alec, Alec, regarding that so called "silent" propulsion system in "The Hunt For Red October", I printed out a list of technical errors which I think you'd enjoy discussing.
Check the posting time of the article on the bbc site:
... think ... "Oo. Oo. I can post about that on slashdot.org!" and hey presto:
Last Updated: Monday, 25 August, 2003, 09:20 GMT 10:20 UK
Then see how long it takes for a slashdot ed to read it and think
Posted by Simonker Monday August 25, @03:41PM
That's 5 hours thinking time.
I build up karma on this board every day (check my history) and occasionally I see someone go and make a "me too!" comment and get modded as "Insightful". And this I'm afraid is one of those times.
There is no way this can be called "news" by any definition.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
To Quote:
"If all the humans were blind they could not possibly be liberated."
Wow. Being blind means there is no possible hope; thats a serious kick in the teeth.
Gamma rays start with a 'G' that's why they're green.
I do believe that for 2001, the book is based on the movie (IE, the movie predates the book). Because so many people came away not know what happened, Arthur C Clarke wrote the book to clarify the movie.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
My dad calls gigahertz jigaboos. Not sure if this is on topic, but i think its funny.
I hate your country
Don't you dare, I'm from the US!
You mean you can't fly through a UNIX system and computers don't come with a "hack the pentagon" command built in?
skye
Hindsight is sharp, but do not forget the film came out in 1985. Giga- was not in common usage until after the first commercial 1-gig drive came out in 1995. I recall actual discussion about the pronunciation -- is it a Jig-a byte, or, to avoid the potential negative racial connotations, a Gig-a byte.
In a couple years I guess we will have to settle on vernacular pronunciations of peta- (10^15), and exo- (10^18) bytes.
"The Matrix Reloaded sought to explain exactly how the consensual hallucination that most people in the film's universe mistake for real life is actually generated. This confused some cinemagoers, and just plain bored others."
er... no it didn't, that was the first film. but then, that wouldn't tie in with your manufactured theme of "recent BS" would it? maybe I'm one of those who were confused but AFAIK it was explaining the reason "the one" exists.
this article is terrible. I'm disgusted that it's from the BBC.
I hope I am not too presumptive too think I speak for the entire Slashdot community in saying...
...and, while I have this chance to speak for everyone
...
OBVIOUSLY
SHOW A LITTLE EFFORT IN YOUR WORK, EDITORS!
and
ICE CREAM IS A SUMPTOUS TREAT.
There... now I pass for a Slashdot editor.
---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
In Star Trek, on thing they did not do was waste time explaining some of the basic technology of the series. For instance, No one explained warp technology you just knew it worked. No one explained how they communicated at warp speed. No one explained teleporting. Oh sure you can read the fan technology guides if you want too but you don't have to enjoy the show.
Surely if you were improvising such a bomb, you'd set the oven to run for much longer than necessary?
Examples: Most Wanted, Under Siege
You have received this message in error.
I have real issues with some of the reviews these guys post. In particular they don't seem to pay attention to any of the background justification in the movie.
For example - in the Matrix they spend a lot of effort pointing out that the jumps and kung-fu moves the protagonists pull off are impossible according to the laws of physics. COmpletely ignoring half the story which explains that people can do these impossible things because it's just a computer simulation they're hacking. They even seem to have major problems handling the concept of bullet time - "Trinity (one of the hackers) jumps five feet off the ground and pauses in mid air before kicking a policeman"..... tsk tsk
Sure the whole 'batteries' argument is bad movie physics, but most of the rest of their review is them applying textbook physics in places where it doesn't belong.
Or how abotu star wars where they point out that the force fields are transparent to light but they seem to stop the 'laser beams' - ignoring the fact that the weapons used in star wars clearly are something different from laser beams because they don't travel at the speed of light.
Basically these guys don't cover the genuinely insulting movie physics where writers setup some futuristic technology e.g. time travel - then
Of course, given that I worked as an astronomer writing papers on asteroids and comet impacts I've made more than a few analysis of Deep Impact and Armageddon. (both were bad in different ways, but I liked Armageddon for it's stupidity). Their reviews are rather shallow and I've pointed out a few errors to them, never had a response though.
...because the original post in this thread was somehow modded "insightful" while completely ignoring the definition of sci-fi (or at least the first half of it.) It is fiction in that the events never occurred, but must be based on reality, hence the first half of the term.
An exploding manned (soon to be unmanned) spacecraft would carry a breathable atmosphere and other gases/particles to carry sound. Weapon zaps and engine whines would be audible from within these crafts and over their comm-links.
An interesting theory, but it would sound totally different. The sound you hear on earth from an explosion a mile away is not because air particles or whatever travelled a mile, but are the result of sound waves... the actual particles not travelling very far at all, but causing waves with their neighboring particles. Using JMS's theory, there would be no sound waves and I'm sure it would sound nothing like we would expect.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
This one for a start. Then there is a first discussion of the paper, and here is even more about the "warp drive".
Have fun!
There is no air in space.. but as the original poster said, the event *is* the medium.
An exploding space craft *becomes* the gas/medium which carries the 'sound' you would 'hear'.
Assuming you don't become shredded by the shrapnel, the smaller, gassier, bits would hit you first; that is what you hear. Then later the larger, slower moving bits, would hit you, and then you die.
if the explosion is big enough, before the first 'shockwave' you get a 'shockfront' that is composed of radiation. The 'excitation' produced by that energy (some variant of induction as well as absorption) might also produce sound, if it doesn't also vaporize you.
GPL Deconstructed
Seriously, go call radioshack right now and ask if they have flux capacitors in stock. They'll pause for a moment, then tell you they're out but should have more in stock in about two weeks.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Let's not forget that, just because a movie is set in the future and doesn't break any known physical laws does not automatically make it good science fiction, or even science fiction at all.
...?", no matter how outlandish the premise might be, but then stays consistent and logical in exploring a potential fictional reality in which that premise holds true. Simply taking the plot of "Wagon Train" and setting it in space doesn't really qualify.
Worthwhile science fiction asks the question "What if
Most movies that purport to be science fiction are not. However that does not prevent me personally from taking them at face value and thoroughly enjoying them. I just watched DareDevil yesterday and thought it was pretty good. Deconstructing these movies and picking holes in the science is sort of missing the point. Take them for what they are -- enjoyable (usually) bull$#!+.
Wasn't Jeff Goldblum's character married in that movie?
1. Make no distinction between science and technology.
2. Do not discern between hardware and software
3. Appearance supersedes function and reality. Or in simple terms, if it looks or sounds funky, it makes sense.
4. Brilliant scientists are universally knowledgeable in all fields of scientific study.
5. Trump out "well-known facts", that no one in existence has in fact ever heard of before this story, which may be presented for the sake of plot explication.
6. Any device improvised or jury-rigged, out of available materials on short notice, will work at least as well as or better than the actual device whose function it is meant to emulate or replace. This principle is also known as "MacGyver's Law", or "The Doohan Principle."
7. Alien races will virtually mirror humankind, in appearance and culture, with only one or two notable exceptions to set them apart.
8. Any form of mysterious or unknown form of energy (like, oh say, nuclear radiation) has the power to give previously-existing lifeforms bizarre powers, increase their size, or bring them back from the dead.
9. Technology introduced at the start of the story always causes everyone's problems, while technology introduced in the middle or at the end of the story always solves everyone's problems.
10. All previously-known scientific laws and principles are open to reinterpretation, revision, or just being ignored, for the sake of the story or the above-mentioned laws.
--- No Boom? No Boom today. Boom tomorrow, there's always a boom tomorrow.
If you've read a lot, you'll appreciate the differences between the hardcore "science fiction", and the softcore "sci-fi". There is a difference, although it's often not very clear to people who aren't fans of the genre:
Science Fiction - The "science" in this universe is as realistic as possible based on, or extrapolating from our current understanding of the universe. Days, months or years to travel between planets, low energy transfer orbits, those types of things. The science is mostly an epic high-tech background for human drama.
Sci-Fi - The "sci" in this universe is as realistic as it needs to hold the viewer's attention while helping along the (probably bad) plot. AKA: "magic". Instant unexplained travel between galaxies, no momentum in space, instant generation of mass (the hulk), etc.
Unfortunately the first type doesn't make for great mass-market movies (because to Joe Moviegoer, realistic is boring), while the second lends itself to two hours of marketable explosions.
From the article:
Spiderman was just as nonsensical as Hulk, but it got away with it because there were so many other good things, such as character and plot, going on.
Spider-Man was absolutely terrible. Character? They were paper-cyphers. Plot? What plot? It was simplistic, asinine nonsense. The bit that Jack Black did for the MTV awards had more plot. Not only that, there is a moment when our spandex-clad saves his love after she falls by...falling faster than her. No, he doesn't fly, he falls...faster. How they can use this piece of shit movie as a positive example is beyond me.
One of the things that a story does is set up the rules by which the rest of the story plays. Part of the tension of a story is trying to understand how it is yet to unfold within the constraints that have been set up. When those constraints are violated we have a deus ex machina and it defuses the tension incorrectly and ruins the pleasure. A simple example: imagine a detective story where the protagonist tries to find a thief. In the last chapter they give up using their conventional methods and reveal they are telepathic and find the criminal that way. Crap story right? It's like losing at chess because your opponent suddenly decided to implement a novel rule giving them an extra queen at a crucial moment.
One of the problems with bad science is that you can't ever learn the rules of the game. It means the story loses its tension. But this only matters if the story is initially presented as one where science matters. If the story clearly isn't hard-science, it doesn't matter about the accuracy of the science, as long as we can figure out the rules.
For example: in Star Trek it bothers me more that the crew suddenly forget they can use intra-ship transporting than that the underlying science of the story makes no sense.
But in a spy story set in the early 21st century the rules have been set and having, say, an invisible car, is completely dumb. But not just because the science is bad. The rules have been messed with and there can be no dramatic tension as anything goes. Who knows, maybe the baddy will suddenly turn out to have some mega space weapon that can wipe out entire countries. If anything goes then you might as well just play random events unconnected by story.
And of course rules are made to be broken. Sometimes it's fun to see a movie that plays with the rules. But even then there needs to be a set of meta-rules otherwise it's just random events again. (And even that's OK if the events look pretty, say, but then we're no longer talking about plot.)
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Okay, two questions, and not about batteries.
In the first movie, when the agents capture Morpheus, they take him to a secure location to interrogate him. Unlike the interrogation room where the agents took Thomas Anderson, the interrogation room for Morpheus has a big glass curtain window.
Why? I mean, shouldn't they stick Morpheus in a windowless concrete cell?
Then, Neo and Trinity storm into the building (killing several people by shooting first but that's a well-known debate). They take an elevator up to the roof and drop some explosives into the lobby. There's a helicopter on the roof, and Trinity tells Tank she needs a program to fly it.
Was the helicopter part of Trinity's plan when she went in?
If it was part of their plan, how come Trinity didn't download the helicopter training program before they set off alarms and had a bunch of people trying to kill them? And if it's not part of their plan, what was their plan when they got to the roof? Were they planning to rappel down the side of the building, maybe?
... don't forget that many people with no knowledge of science will take the science in them as truth, especially in contemporarily set movies. Think about a society that thinks that something like "The Core" is a good primer into the structure of the Earth and its magnetic field. Or how about some of the other terrible science sci-fi movies? You know how many people think "Twister" is really what storm chasing is like?
Yes, movies should be entertaining and science generally isn't that entertaining to the common folk. Yes, writers should be able to take minor liberties with some scientific principles (as I have done in some of my fiction writings). But to put things in stories are blatantly incorrect... that's just a disservice to the scientific education of the general populace.
-Jellisky
Why can't people just take a movie for what it is? These aren't documentaries, you know.
When I go into a science fiction movie, I expect some minor attempt at scientific plausibility. Movies like The Andromeda Strain, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Jurassic Park are examples of good science fiction movies. Sure, they are not scientifically flawless, but their flaws are not so universally obvious as to make reasonably intelligent people gag. I can accept "Warp Drives", "Hyperspace Drives", and "Wormholes" to explain faster-than-light travel even though I know that man will probably never travel faster than the speed of light. I can even accept audible sounds made by explosions in space. Why? Because I don't deal with that kind of thing on a regular basis.
But look at some of the tripe for which you ask us to suspend disbelief: Using a Mac laptop to create and load a virus on some alien computer that has never been seen by humans before? Jumping and falling hundreds of feet onto a speeding vehicle without being injured? When the basic premise of a sci-fi movie is based on grossly-flawed pseudo-science, that ruins the movie for me. It's one thing if an explosion makes a sound in space. It's quite another to be told that the entire reason for enslaving the human race is to use them for electrical generation. Puhlease!
Why should sci-fi movies be given a special license not given to other genres? Would you have been willing to "suspend disbelief" if Saving Private Ryan had ended with someone picking up Private Ryan and leaping 300 feet through the air to safety? Would you have been willing to suspend disbelief if Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ended with them successfully dodging the bullets of the countless men who were shooting at them?
Suspension of disbelief is not a license to fill movies with stupidity and then pretend that the viewer is at fault when he complains about it.
Wasn't there an essay on whether or not superman's sperm could also survive harsh environments and fly, and whether massive paternity suits would ensue if he ever had so much as a wet dream? We won't even go into the potential dangers of having sex with someone with superhuman strength...
It's about the same for historians, yeah. Braveheart... didn't happen that way. Gladiator actually succeeded in getting most of the important things wrong, and some of the unimportant ones right. Amistad was fanciful PC garbage. The recent TNT movie of Caesar was slightly less accurate than Xena's version of the same events. Etc., etc.
It's kind of exhilarating when watching a movie to get to the point where they completely jump off the deep end, historically speaking... it's like the Tolkien fan watching The Two Towers, getting to the completely-invented part where Frodo and Sam are taken into Gondor, and thinking My God, I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen next...
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
when you take a comic characters, they do not need to meet the standards of real world physics, they need to meet the physics of the comic book universe in which they came.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
To me, accepting a different set of physical laws in a piece of fiction is no differnt than accepting that "character A secretly loves character B, but is afraid to show it". As long as the character behaves consistently with the motivation that the story-teller gives me, I can accept it. If the character does something completely "out of character", my suspension of disbelief is weakend.
I don't mind too many deviations from our currrnt knowledge of physical laws, just so long as the story doesn't contract itself. If the premise of a sci-fi of fantasy story holds that a "ruby fire beam" only burns through inorganic material, then when hits the hero I expect his brass belt buckle to burn, but not his leather belt.
I admit that not all speculative fiction is based on laws of physics that are different from what our scientists have discovered. However, as long as a story does not violate it's own "laws of physics", I can usually sit back and enjoy it...
I get torqued about this kind of thing from time to time, but far less than I used to.
Most SF movies are allegorical; they don't try or even need to get the facts absolutely straight to a) tell the story, and b) get a point across. For example, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence was chock full of silliness, but it got an important moral point across about trivializing sapient creatures. Minority Report had a big plot hole, but it was a thought-provoking allegory about how reliance on a crime-predicition technique could screw over the innocent.
Bad Science is a problem when the story directly warns about a specific problem . . . typically, "awful warning" stories about health or environmental issues. For example, there was an utterly ludicrous TV movie about global warming a year or two ago. No one could possibly learn anything from it that might make than informed citizen.
Stefan Jones
It's out!
Babylon 5 showed washrooms on a couple of occasions (mostly first season). On one occasion, Garibaldi points out the washroom for the methane breathers - I suppose that the excrement from the humans could be recycled in to the atmosphere for the methane breathers.
On Farscape, Chriton (while possessed by Rigel) was told to urinate in the corner of the cargo bay. Perhaps in terms of Moya's physiology, the cargo bay is really a bladder.
No further comment necessary. The quality of many recent articles is disappointing.
Actually, it would have been REALLY cool if they actually did it that way.
In other words, when people spoke over the com, they made them into "telphone" voices. To here the explosions through those coms and then go to static would have been a nice effect.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
By the end of the movie, Neo seems to be gaining special powers even in the "real world". Could it be that the movie's "real world" is no more real than the Matrix?
I'm guessing he walked out before the end as well.
But frankly, seeing the movie's heroes coldly snuff dozens of humans inside the matrix, so that humanity might be free to party-on, just didn't inspire.
Yeah, thats so unrealistic. I mean, innocent people NEVER die for the greater "good" of specific clump of people. *COUGH*IRAQ*COUGH*
One of the appeals of science fiction, at least for me, is the speculation about what future worlds and a future earth will be. No, it doesn't have to realistic, but IMHO it should at least be believable. Sure, in a fantasy novel/movie I can suspend belief if the story is plot or character driven. The problem is that many science fiction stories depend on the science itself; when the science is horrible then the entire thing fails.
For example, in the movie _Signs_, it doesn't much matter if aliens invaded or a bunch of rabid dogs started terrorizing a town and we find that the daughter has some doggie biscuit craving thereby saving the world. In this case the mechanics are somewhat irrelevant.
In something like a based-on-life astronaut movie, it's incredibly distracting when some Aborigine tribe in Australia helps guide an astronaut down to Earth.
Read the book, it's much better. And not in the book elitism crap you hear all the time. (From my cousin: Oh, I just HATED "Congo". The book was soooo much better!)
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
Babylon 5 at least tried. Consider "A view from the Gallery", where that very same first fact explained the different colors of some explosions, i.e. "see. that's an enermy fighter going up - their breathing mix tints the explosions green." Certainly, if people were picking up radio wave broadcasts of sound from comlinks on board the enemy ships, they'd have better things to do with the technology than convert it back to sound during a battle, like analizing the enemy's battle plans or calling the enemy pilots mom nasty names, but B5 is still a case where some real science was applied, then the authors usually gave up and went with what wouldn't seem skew to a non-tech audience for the rest.
Who is John Cabal?
I don't really mind the bad science, if it allows for a decent story. What really irks me are the numerous examples of computing environments that "hackers" would never use. For instance:
The 3D Visual Virus Studio that pops up in movies such as Swordfish.
The inability of spies, whistleblowers, etc. to MINIMIZE or at least Alt-Tab away the "Copy Secret Files x% Complete" window!
The latter makes me gnash my teeth and make hissing sounds at the movies.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
My father and I were watching an old black and white movie set in the Roman empire and there was a chariot chase in it. One of the chariots barrelled over a cliff and rolled down the steep hill, leaving debris in its wake.
My father and I both simultaneously filled the last element by jumping up and making explosive noises in order to modernize the movie.
I'm currently trying to sell this idea to Mel Brooks.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
It's all in how you explain in. If it's described as "Magic" or whatever, most people will accept it just fine. But if you actively flout the rules of physics, people might get mad. Look at the Midichlorians in Star Wars. The fact that they were mysterious meant that they were never questioned. Trying to attribute them to some weird parasitic life form just makes people groan and roll their eyes.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Lesbians of the type in Chasing Amy.
This problem of technical inaccuracy is not just something that bugs geeks watching sci-fi. I have a friend who is a big sports fan, and he cannot watch sports movies, like Any Given Sunday, because he says the depiction of the sports is so godawful and over-glamourized it completely spoils the film for him. Now I'm not a football fan, so I rather enjoyed AGS... but I have not been able to enjoy any of the latest Bond movies because of their bad science (how does a free-falling man catch up with an accelerating airplane?)
I saw this as a satirical nod to old science fiction movies in which the monsters/aliens were so often vulnerable to something ubiquitous. I remember one (I forget which) in which the monsters were in fact done in by salt water.
"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show,
I should really just relax
For Mystery Science Theater 3000."
Have you read "Stranger in a Strange Land"? "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"? "Friday"? "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls"?
If not, I would highly recommend you do so. Heinlein decidedly did NOT write just for "Cleaver Family Morality' and to say he did is either ignorant or dishonest.
I hope you haven't just revolutionised modern combat.
1. Sound in space. To quote JMS Who Be-eth God, "It's part of the soundtrack." That is, no one wants to sit through ten minutes of Vorlon motherships fighting a Shadow planetkiller without any sound whatsoever. It'd be fscking boring.
2. Frank Herbert, and stillsuits. I think he had a brilliant, novel idea.. But he didn't see it clearly enough. Sure, recycling the body's water is well and all, but you know *someone*, in some Sietch, would have developed a stillsuit that turns sweat, urine and feces into alcohol.
3. Star Wars, lightsabers. Specifically, Episode II. "Waah, I got tapped on the shoulder and I'm down on the floor crying!" Come on. These guys are Jedi, supposedly the hard-asses of the universe. If some guy in the middle of a war can get his arm blown off, get up, pick it up, and wander around aimlessly while screaming, I'd think a Jedi could handle a tap on the arm from a lightsaber.
4. Legolas/LotR (not sci-fi, but bear with me). Arrows don't instantly kill unless they hit vitals. Most of those orcs shouldn't have dropped over, instantly dead.
5. Every freaking psuedo-historical film involving archery. What the fuck is with the fire? Hello? Research? Yes, that's right, the majority of archers did not set their arrows alight. Sorry to disappoint Hollywood, but flaming arrows don't look cool, indeed, they look utterly stupid.
Anyhow, the movie newsgroups were flooded with many reviewers picking plot holes...
And I remember one wag posting something like this:
This line was below a still from the Matrix Reloaded. Is the author implying that the Matix would have been better had they not told us about the Matix? I don't think that film would have worked without the explanation of what the matrix is. I think that explaining how the so called "dodgy physics" work does a lot for suspension of belief in a film. I mean, when I first saw Charlie's Angels and saw those gals defying gravity in what I thought was a normal universe, I kinda wondered "What the hell are they doing? Since when can they fly?". An explanation as to their anti-gravity abilities would have been nice.
...although perhaps not THAT heavy, and I doubt even a brontosaurus would be able to toss a tank across a mountain. Stilll, some people believe that in order for the dinosaurs to support their body mass, earths' gravity would have to be up to 8 times lower back then compared to today:
http://www.dinosaur.org/extinction.htm
Personally, I think Hulk and all the other super heroes are just living in a different simulation.
They never explained how Jean-Luc Picard, a French captain, has a British accent.
Sometimes good science makes bad movies, and vice versa. It does not explain all of Hollywood's abuses, which are often more attributable to a failure of courage or imagination, but it is the source of many of them. Simple laws of physics (or even simple rules of logic) are often ignored even in more conventional film genres for the sake of creating high drama (or in lieu of it)...witness people thrown backward by bullets, people outrunning explosions, sound heard the instant something explodes far away, cars that explode like a terrorist's Pinto on impact, planes that plummet like rocks when the engine quits, etc.
It just grates more in a science fiction film, especially since it is a genre originally named by authors whose work was very attentive to scientific accuracy. Film is a medium that does not always reward such accuracy, though, and modern audiences often condemn it. In an industry that seeks to open as many wallets as possible, the hard science is often sidestepped in favor of mass market appeal. Even the Sci Fi channel, whose target demographic is presumably hardcore SF fans, seems to be pretty cavalier about their definition of science fiction.
I have made a couple of rather ambitious (for me) animated short SF films, in which I tried to keep as faithful to the science as I could and still tell my story. The results were miced. The less scientific of the two is actually more watchable, and it proved impossible to adhere to every known scientific principle and still a) describe the events visually and b) not become so buried in research that I never finished the film. IT was an interesting learning experience. (The films were still generally well received, and even managed to get shown at a SF convention)
For those who are curious, you can see them at http://www.spanishcastle.com/infinity/
If you read the F.A.Q., you will find a discussion of the science, and what I was attempting to achieve. Enjoy them, at least until my server melts down, and take pity on the poor screenwriters who must somehow make the laws of physics conform to the story, the budget, and the whims of a dozen people who outrank them. It's a wonder we see movies like 2001 at all...
That bit about Leda and the Swan?
I can't buy it! It's not physically possible!
I object to this sort of misrepresentation of reality!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Come on, any more movies?
How would a ship be useful without oxygen? You always see the glowing heat of the Jets. To me this implies fire. But how do those jets ignite without oxygen? For those that don't know our cars run off of fuel which is more than just gas. Fuel is gas mixed with oxygen. This creates an explosive mixture. The piston presses into the cylinder. This provides us with compressed fuel (gas & air) in an engine cylinder (chamber). A spark is provided by the electrical system and BOOM! We have a small controlled explosion. And if the engines burn oxygen then what about the pilot's oxygen (in the cabin)? Exspecially in a small ship? I haven't built any spaceships but it would seem likely that any design would have to allow for some oxygen tanks. Kinda like what a diver would use. So we're potentially talking about compressed gas. Not only that but the oxygen tanks would be on the enemies 'aim for' list. Then again maybe I have no idea of what I speak and will stick to flipping burgers at the local space station.
It's a good thing I'm not a 'geek' aperantly.
I mean seriously, the hulk was always meant to have 'orders of magnitude' more strength then a regular human. Once you posit that, everything else about the movie (except spinning the tank, i guess) makes perfict sense.
I mean really. Lighten the hell up. Obviously the whole concept of the hulk isn't possible, physicaly in the real world. It's also weird that this reviewer thought that the Third Law of Thermodynamics was the "most fundemental" It dosn't even apply at the microscopic level. Wouldn't something like 'equal forces' or whatever been more fundemental?
bleh.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
A shockwave is a displacement wave. On the Earth, this is usually a wave of air compressed that is travelling outward from some disturbance (such as a nuclear explosion).
On the Moon, there's no atmosphere to heat and compress. The only travelling outward material would be energy.
If you don't remember, Slashdot had an article about nuking the moon back in 2000. The US didn't do it because, without the atomsphere, there is no shockwave or other impressive bits of an explosion.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
A nuke 10 feet from the surcace of the moon == small dust cloud? Have you ever heard of this thing called "radiation"? There would be plenty of gas around after setting off a nuke.
but no one would seriously try to call actual matter hitting you "sound." What do you think air is? Besides, if you were inside a ship, matter hitting the hull would create sound inside the ship, dumbass.
How did this get scored +5?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
2001: A Space Odyssey (C) 1968
I rest my case (what ever it was)
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I mean, what if 1 billion years ago, a NAZI culture arose on another planet, actually won their world wars, and, then focused on conquering the galaxy and exterminating all life not like them.
We have this bizarre faith that super intelligent races are not violent or conquering. But, what if they are?
This is my sig.
Hulk climb to top of Alek's house.
Hulk decide to jump.
Hulk is strong.
Hulk find out that gravity is stronger.
Hulk fall on butt.
Hulk Drop from Roof
Hulk
P.S. Hulk say Hulkmobile is a fine set of wheels.
The people at area 51 had been working with a sample fighter for 50 years. They probably hacked out a cross-compiler in that time...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Has no-one else seen the BBC TV show "Hollywood Science"
It is a half hour show in which The actor who plays Kryten and his sidekick take one or two hollywood movies to bits and explain whether or not the science behind it whould work.
Could bruce willis jump from the skyscraper tied to a hosereel and survive.
Could Papillon eat forty hard boiled eggs?
Whould an aluminium boat survive for long enough to cross an acid lake?
Worth watching if you see it, although even in the UK it is shown at 2am on BBC2.
RJG.
Breast cancer rates have shot through the roof, we all have Strontium 90 in our teeth, there's enough plutonium leaked from Hanford to equal Chernobyl and all the frogs have 3 legs. But hey, there's nothing wrong with this radiation stuff..
This is my sig.
Pick any subject. Hollywood always butchers the reality for the sake of the story. You don't really think all that legal jousting in "A Few Good Men" was for real, do you?
I think the problem is the confusion exhibited by many people between Science Fiction and Fantasy. A true Sci-Fi tale must start with some reasonable premise, generally based upon existing or historical parameters, which is then extrapolated by the author to some logical conclusion. Fantasy has no such restriction: a character may have the power to blink his left eye twice and disappear, and the fantasy author is under no obligation to explain why. Yes, there are sub-genres such as Future Fiction or Space Opera, but essentially a science fiction author is required to rationalize his plot within a logical framework, or his story becomes pure fantasy.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"Well, whenever anything like that happens, a wizard did it." "But miss, in episode..." "WIZARD."
That will change your view on standard relationships.
Why doesn't anyone on Star Trek run into something like that? I'm not talking Borg, either.
Go and read some old sci-fi. Try some Isaac Asimov, and then try some Edgar Rice Burroughs. Try reading Arthur C. Clarke and compare it with E. E. "Doc" Smith.
Some authors (usually those with scientific backgrounds, but not always) try to keep their sci-fi as scientific as possible. If it's necessary to bend or break a law of physics to tell the story, they will keep their changes as small as possible, and they will make sure that the story-physics remains completely consistent within that framework.
And then some authors throw up their hands and say "to hell with it" and just tell their stories without regard to how many physical laws are being violated in every scene.
And you know what? For most of us it doesn't matter at all. We care about a good story foremost and above all else. If the characters are believable and the plot is engaging and all the story threads get resolved, we usually don't give a rat's arse about how accurate the science is. (Unless, of course, the science is key to the plot, but even then we tend to forgive a lot.)
Bad science won't ruin a great story, and good science won't make a poor story, and this debate can probably be traced all the back to the first caveman who decided to tell a story to his fellow cavemen. (And if you want to say that primitive men didn't live in caves, I don't care - the image works to get my point across and that's all that really matters.)
the science in all the so-called "good" sci-fi movies mentioned in this article is just as bad as the "bad" ones - as acknowledged by its author. the only difference is that the author liked the good movies better. so i fail to see their point. they're not saying dodgy physics in movies in itself is a bad thing, just that they don't make sci-fi movies like they used to.
also i don't remember the Matrix: Reloaded trying to explain how the mass delusion worked - but hey, it's a new movie, so it must have been crap and i'm too young to notice.
Hmm...
... laws of Sci-Fi computer science are quite obvious:
I think we are forgetting we are (or believe we are or strive to be) geeks.
That means that we are mostly well-behaved and controlled schizos, as out of need often we have to do more than one thing at a time.
This is why, while watching a laser sabers duel [Star Wars], we cannot help thinking, though enjoying the fight, that two laser beams crossing will at most generate interference, and start calculating the possible pattern and the dependence of the pattern from the impact geometrical cross-section, not the clanging noise of metal swords [the most perverse among us trying to find the shortest and most effective notation to write this equation].
Or that laser beams, irrespectively of the advanced technology, will not stop at 70 centimeters after the handle, because they are light beams after all, not solid objects...
Also, as to more specialised computer geeks (I am a physicist and a computer scientist) the
1. Aliens don't bother to use firewalls [Independence Day]
2. Artificial intelligence shall harm you [Colossus]
3. Superior computer/telecom design is based mostly upon unbreakable capacitors [This Island Earth]
4. AI agents are not only marginally smart, they also get emotional [Agent Smith in Matrix]
5. Computer neuro-interfaces will interface to all the layers of your mind, according to Freud [Ego, Super-Ego and Id, in Forbidden Planet]
6. Last, but not least, the ultimate computer is a {geek|man} [Mentat in Dune]
There you have it, our unattainable and unconfessed purpose in life...
Let's face it, and meanwhile enjoy the stuff they throw at us, when decent!
Thufir Hawat
Part-time Mentat
As I said, it's all about where you stick the microphones. YOU would not be listening in on the battle: you'd die in space. There are no real microphones in a scifi alternate reality. The view we get is a hypothetical: what if we could observe the scene somehow? What if we had magic eyes that could observe space combat spread out over a vast battlefield that no real life inhabitant of that reality ever could see? Sound is possible in an atmosphere. What if we could stick microphones in each and every atmosphere-equipped ship to hear sounds within their cabins (engines, weapons)? What if we stick a mic near a ship as it explodes, and record the sound as its onboard atmosphere dissipates? And what if we took all those recordings, process them to compensate for distortion, and mix all those sounds in an n-channel sound soundtrack?
Its a lighthearted read but amusing reading for anybody who has debated at length the plausibility of things that were never meant to be taken that seriously anyway.
Definately more of a library job than a book you will want to buy, but a good three-night read, anyway. If (like the angry reviewers down the bottom of the amazon page) you are expecting serious scientific debate, I would recommend you don't read it. It will only anger you.
My major argument with movie physics doesn't really have anything to do with wrong physics per se. What I care about is that the film/book/etc is internally consistent and doesn't violate its own rules. Movies that do that send me into a seething rage.
My thought is that basically, the filmmaker and the audience "agree" to suspend reality with regard to some parts of the "physics" of the world they are in, but the idea is that in other respects the world they live in is the same as ours. For example, most of the main characters in Star Wars are humans that act like humans who just happen to be able to fly through space.
Once one sets out those rules though, they should be inviolable so that the range of possible occurrences, actions by the characters, etc should be readily apparent to the audience. "Back to the Future" is a fantasy, but the filmmakers suspended reality only to the extent that in that universe (a) time travel is possible and (b) it works a particular way. So, it's not really legitimate to complain that in any "real" time travel scenario, modern physics says that our paths would probably be fixed and you couldn't change anything. It's a given that you can change things in the BTTF universe and that pictures/newspapers/etc will alter to match it.
However, audience members would have been rightly furious if Doc had decided to fly down from the clock tower to connect that other line for the DeLorean instead of sliding down that metal cable, for example. You could claim that "well, it's a fantasy, so we've left the bonds of reality behind", but that undermines the entire concept of the movie: what would real people do if they had control of a time machine?
Even Back to the Future falls prey to this problem in the third movie. Doc spends all movie fretting about how taking a woman to the future who would have been killed anyway falling off a cliff will disrupt the timeline. But he has no problem hijacking a train filled with people who will now no longer get to their destinations! How much will that disrupt the timeline? Doc just violated all his own precepts!
Good authors, filmmakers, etc have a knack for defining what is permissible in their fantasy worlds and what is not. Part of the thrill of the movie is to see how characters solve their problems in the constraints they are given. The "deus ex machina" ending has been used too many times in Hollywood, and in my opinion filmmakers ignore their own constraints to their peril.
A couple of errors:
- They claimed that the beams were identical because they all came from the same type of ship --- never mind that one of the ships was a hospital ship, a totally different class of vessel from a warship
- They claimed that the reason they pointed their beam at the spot was that one of the other ships had apparently pointed their beam first... yet all three claimed to be second.
Honestly, I hated that show. There were horrible holes in practically every episode I watched.Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
Looking around, it seems that the EM radiation hitting the surface of the moon won't create much heat after all.
Sorry everybody.
Happy people make bad consumers.
It is myth, with some sci-fi trappings. Star Wars is space opera. Matrix is myth and psychology. Star Trek isn't even sci fi, IMHO. It's space melodrama and morality play. Science fiction is different from these. It includes plausible extensions of technology and theoretical boundaries, and hopefully an interesting plot about people dealing with their changing world. Aliens is sci-fi, but only fails to be guilty of bad science because it doesn't bother to explain every detail. If they had tried to tell us why the Sulaco was able to make the journey to LV 426, it would have quickly gotten stupid. 2001 is sci-fi, as is A.I., as is Contact. Hulk is not sci-fi, although it does contain bad science. And yet it was a very good movie, I think.
People aren't that obsessed about regular movies...
Just imagine, seeing a character living in New York hop on a bike (sound effect of jet engine) ride 3 blocks, be in Tokyo, eat some rice (crunchy sounds), then ride back (sound effect of jet engine again), stopping for a chunk of orange ice called `coffee' before heading home, which, of course, is a castle built in the middle of an 8 lane interstate, which the cars bounce over.
Nobody would complain, because its a WILLING SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF!
Damn Anal Nerds...
The site also "derives" the fact that copper/lead bullets should not produce sparks, like they usually do in movies. This is correct, of course. But he goes on to justify it by calculating the kinetic energy of the bullet, again, and how much it should heat up when hitting a wall. Of course it does not heat up enough to glow. But this does not "prove" that bullets can not spark. The same calculation would "prove" that a flint and steel cannot spark, or a steel hammer, or for that matter a steel bullet.
The whole site is full of intuitive physics - often correct, sometimes not - accompanied by nearly irrelevant equations.
For a fascinating look at time travel paradoxes in all sorts of movies, check out this site.
END OF LINE
You're right, but you'll get attacked by a lot of morons.
Only it is't really a "shockwave;" it's more of a shock front.
I'd be well please if one of these "no air, no shock" morons were to set off a stick of dynamite inside a bell jar. Do they really think a tympanic membrane inside the bell jar wouldn't register a signal? Hell, they could even make a really big bell jar and stand inside it. Either way it would solve the problem.
stop lying.
Don't forget about Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics. Let's see what they have to say about Hulk.
I think the most unbelievable thing about the Hulk is that it stars Eric Banner...
I guess that most non-australians never saw Chopper or his talk show.
i never made the connection to gigawatt. whenever i hear that clip, 'jigawatt', it meant a huge, amazing, un-freakin-imaginable amount of power.
.... jiga!
ie kilo, mega, giga, tera,
eric
i know about 1d 10t codes. what is pebkac.
eric
p.s. about 12 years ago epson america had some documentation on printer troubleshooting that stated that most dotmatrix printer problems were caused by DEUs. defective end users. i am not kidding.
Warp factor five in Star Trek was always taken to be the cube of five. I have to wonder though, why not have the words been a literal shortening of "factorial"?
1x2x3x4x5 = 5! (factorial) = 120
5^3 = 125
"but it's lower", you protest.
"To whit', I reply, "look at 6"
1x2x3x4x5x6 = 6! (factorial) = 720
6^3 = 216
And suddenly those extremely low travel times make sense. Star Trek writers in the 60s simply didn't like math as much as writing? I dunno; I'm going to bed, with the hope the Rick Berman reads Slashdot and can slip it in. Just call it "Le'Brecage's theorem" or something....
John Le'Brecage
Now that has collector's value. I was offered 200 AUD for it.
Having just witnessed my GF kraust a canine; I can assure you some porn is real.
JMS, the creator of Babylon 5, got sick of the you-cannot-hear-sounds-in-space complaint and posted a response. The gist of his argument -- apart from artistic issues -- is that space is not all empty all the time. He asked some experts, apparently, and decided that sounds were possible.
He should have decided that sounds were impossible - especially his crappy, cliched dialogue.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I know this was supposed to be a 'great' SciFi movie but all I learned was, the future would have really bad user interfaces and computers wouldn't be networked. By the way... this is true... I hosted (for 4 seasons) the only SciFact show on the SciFi Channel, Inside Space. It was like hosting the celibacy show on Playboy!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but ... I saw this film back when it came out. I seem to remember a couple scenes from North America. One in the afternoon, where the comet can be seen. Later in the film, it's late at night, and the comet can also be seen. Now, unless the comet is in orbit around the Earth, at just the right speed, it would be impossible to see at all times of the day!
Sounds a lot like the Hulk TV series. I liked that far better than the piece of crap they made in the movies. The origin of the Hulk in the TV series was better, too, since it set up Banner as a more sympathetic character, someone who went a little too far with his research and had to live with the consequences.
But most of all, the TV series was better specifically because they had no budget for special effects to do better than to get musclebound Lou Ferrigno to be the Hulk persona. To me, it made the Hulk more "realistic", scaled down to something more believable. I personally prefer a version of the Hulk that can break down walls over the one that can throw tanks.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
I think it was him, and I think this was the quote: "Stanley Kubrik was smart enough to know that sound doesn't travel in space in 1968. In 1977, George Lucas showed us it *should*."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Many years ago a small cult decided that the insect hive structure was the best way to live.
Fast forward to today. In secret, he Hive has grown to 50,000 people. Mostly workers who are kept docile via pheromones and treated food. Others are leaders who interact with the regular humans and scientists bred for their oversized brains.
The hive mentality has been completely adopted by all of the members. Each one would die for the Hive.
Their devotion has resulted in advances in weapons and material technologies.
Their dead are dropped into underground food vats where they are stewed and eaten by the rest of the Hive.
They use pro-creative stumps (female bodies with the arms, legs and head removed) to bread even more Hive members. They also practice continual orgies for breeding.
You know, I was just this last week over in Nida, and we first went to Thomas Mann's house, and later went up the large dune, and saw the stage set being built for a a German movie, "Wellen" (waves).
However, while we were at Thomas Mann's house, I saw their reed roofs, and noticed how there was a good 1 foot (1/3 m) of reeds in the roof. The reeds all pointed downwards, but not nearly as steeply as the roof, so water tension and gravity would combine to make the water run out of the roof, towards the outside. Likewise, the siding involves boards that are carved to fit, interlocking, side by side. And there's a very specific style of house that is standard.
But then we were over at the stage set, and the first thing I notice is these island-style pagodas, with reed roofs 1-3 reeds thick, and reed-colored tar paper actually sealing against water. It was incredibly funny. Then I noticed that the house style was island-style pagoda. Then we walked a little farther, and I saw this Victorian-style mansion (not Nida at all, nor Island style, but American Victorian), with 1x2 (inch) furring nailed over particle board, along the outside to make it look sortof like the interlocking boards of the Thomas Mann house. Mmmhmm.
But the most amusing part was the reed roofs, because I had taken the time, on my own, to see how they actually worked, and this was glaringly obvious. For a small chicken shed, you can get away with 4"-6" thick roofs. For a larger house, you really need a greater thickness.
But ultimately, this is a stage set. It isn't reality. And when it comes down to it, the goal of these movies is to tell a story, pretty much as cheaply as possible, and the story isn't true. Which means that if you look, you're going to see that it isn't true. Maybe, we should get back to some simpler stories, and forget the glamour. When you tell a story with the hula, or in the style of the African dance stories, or a campfire horror story, nobody says "oh, that isn't real", largely because there isn't any glamour. But the story is just as entertaining.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
The Net
nuf said...
David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series is space opera set in a plausible, internally-consistent universe. It probably wouldn't translate well to the big screen, though; Weber needs too many narrative passages explaining things, and puts in too many parallel subplots.
The "Sten" series, by Alan Cole and Chris Bunch, is another space opera with good science. The main problem Hollywood would have is that Sten is an anti-hero. But that could be overcome. The Sten series has comprehensible plots, very human characters, and an exciting story line.
Worth reading is James Schmitz's old Federation of the Hub series, which is back in print. It has psychic powers, and a society that's figured out how to deal with them and the problems they create. There are aliens, wierd aliens. But the whole thing is consistent. The Hub series could be turned into a TV series, although it takes more attention to follow than audiences are allowed today.
So it's quite possible to get it right. Unfortunately, it's not commercially essential today, now that the space age is over.
> There's another option: perhaps it was all a "dream". Part of his secret agent package.
What's the consensus on that interpretation of the movie?
Also, regardless of the high-level interpretation, what's the consensus on whether Quaid was a renegade or a plant?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Babylon 5: Certain alien species, most notably the Pak'ma'ra and Vree (aliens who actually fly flying saucers and get sued for abduction of someone's ancestor), can't speak English at all and rely on sufficiently advanced translation devices. (You can still hear the original speech, though.) Because Earth is a big power, most aliens doing business on B5 speak English, occasionally broken (Drazi). All aliens, though, speak their own tongues and even the humans speak (or reference others speaking) foreign languages, most notably Russian, French, and Hebrew.
B5: Ships take time to slow and turn, the notable exceptions being Minbari, Vorlon and Shadow vessels due to magneto-gravitational drives (stretch, but even they prefer slow turns to fast ones) and Starfuries, which have retrorockets at all the axial points and a pilot at the center, thus negating G-force impacts. (NASA said that the Starfury was the best design they could think of for a "space forklift".)
Also, B5 rotates for gravity. The best way to view the station is as a tower rather than on its side, since the right-hand-rule for rotating objects shows that they exert a force perpendicular to the spin, hence 'gravity'. However, it exerts a true gravity in the neighborhood of
JMS also came up with a reasonable answer for the FTL question in hyperspace, which roughly translates theory-wise into a wormhole. Theory is it can be done, practice will take a while. (Of note, though, is that the "warp" idea where one distorts local spacetime to alter the local definition of a meter and a second to move ftl relative to normal space is also theoretically possible.)
Little details are also added, like the fact that little critters make it up to space (insects stuck with food), food gone bad (even alien food) tends to lead to sick humans, medicine can't fix every owie, and you have to board a ship to steal anything. And the asshole gene will survive for a long while.
Even the storage medium of choice, a data crystal, has been talked about here (a holographic storage system).
Of course that show stretches, but most everything he shows can reasonably be seen from at least bleeding edge R & D. Granted, an FTL phonecall and going to Mars in a few hours are still very far away, and a lot of the alien stuff is highly alien, but at least as far as humans go the show has a real good handle on things.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
And now I'm gay.
Looks good for your age..
You're going to ask me about weight. If you shrink an elephant to the size of a mouse, does it fall through the floor? Don't ask me, what do I know?
Anybody remember the 60s movie Fantastic Voyage, where they shrink a bunch of people and inject them into a guy's blood stream so they can fix a blood clot? They actually hired Isaac Asimov to write the novelization, and of course he insisted on dealing with all the Bad Science issues in the screen play. One thing he did was have the injectonauts go to a lot of trouble to get the wreckage of their submarine out of the body, 'cause of course it'll be a mess when it expands. Or maybe this was in Bixby's original screenplay. In any case, the movie just ignored this problem. The studio wasn't going to spend a lot of money on a detail that most of the audience wouldn't care about anyway.
And that's why movies have so much bad science. Good science is expensive, it's distracting, and nobody cares about it anyway. I've pretty much given up on movie SF.
Even geeks don't care about real physics.
In Star Trek: First Contact the Borg travel back in time to take over Earth. If the Borg could do this, why would they attack any civilization when it had any technology sufficient to protect itself?
Star Trek is the WORST OFFENDER and is probably the most responsible for the atrocious lack of realism. Star Wars is #2, and it gets that place because it's more fantasy than science fiction.
2001 is, admittedly, highly over-rated since without reading the book, there really isn't any way to tell why Hal went insane, what the monolith did in the beginning of the movie, or what the hell happened in the end. But it remains a classic because it's just about the ONLY movie that shows space as it would really be like, and it was made before we made it to the moon. They had roating space stations, the Discovery had a rotating module for "gravity", the star field ONCE screwed up and moved but that could have been explained with a parabolic course, and the gravity on the moon was wrong.
That was it.
2001 set the standard, and nobody lives up to it.
Science fiction sucks. I can't stand to watch it anymore.
BTW - Cowboy Bebop is rather amazing, but it's an anime.
The analogy to the Hulk is flawed. The Hulk is not scifi ... it is comic book fantasy. It may have some aspects of scifi, but the primary genre is comic book. Hell, I wish that there was a new genre, sci-fantasy, to encompass things like Star Trek, too (Geordions), so that we could more easily define fluffiness like ST compared to more serious SciFi like most of the good books out there. The "Science Fiction" genre is just too broadly defined to be of use anymore.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Apparently the weapon produce a pretty green sky show that everybody in England (where the book took place) went out to watch. Seems the green light show was a trojan horse that also exposed everyone to eye damaging radiation at the same time.
The protagonist of the book was in the hospital at the time having eye surgery, hence why he didn't get blinded by the light show. I believe in the book the day was saved by Americans landing in England. Apparently the US wasn't exposed to the blindness weapon.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
What gets me every time is when there is, say, an explosion (ala Star Wars) in space, and it goes "Boom!".
Simple, the Ships UI is simple aurally enhanced.
No, it doesn't have to realistic, but IMHO it should at least be believable.
I agree with you that movies that have all those annoying irrealistic things happening are enraging. But I don't think that sci-fi should be believable. SF is an literary movement, like naturalism or romanticism. What matters is the quality of the writing, the interaction between the characters. When he was starting out, Ray Bradbury had a very hard time getting published because his style was "too literary" instead of most SF writers, and that's wrong. In his stories, Bradbury gladly disregards any sense of realism, because that's not what matters in SF. When I read an Arthur C. Clarke novel, I'm impressed by all the detail and great ideas, but at the same time I'm annoyed by the time he spends explaining how realistic/plausible this is, so much that I call him the Tom Clancy of SF, which is hardly paying enough credit to his immense talent.
And after each novel, there's an addendum explaining that such or such idea is drawn from an article by a NASA researcher who's a good friend of his, or how it's just an extrapolation from well known data. Who cares? Or, rather, how does that make a character closer to me, or how does it make such or such description more vibrant, etc.
Every work of fiction builds its own rules. When it tries to look realistic and isn't, it's annoying. But I don't care about shpis making noise or lightsabres in Star Wars -- it's a space opera! Who cares that some inventions in Phil K. Dick's stories make little sense, except to him. The story is fantastic. If something irrealistic is thrown in just a sa plot device it's annoying. But if a writer or a filmmaker, SF or not, builds a universe which abides to other laws than the laws of physics as we know it, we don't have a right to bitch.
For one, it disobeyed the first law of thermodynamics. This is the most firmly established principle in all of physics and says that one cannot create mass out of nothing.
But lo and behold, the Hulk did not violate the first law of thermodynamics, he violated the second law of thermodynamics.
Near end of the movie when Bruce is fighting with his father and the water started to freeze around them, that explained that the extra mass came from temperature.
However this seems to make the Hulk violate the second law, because he seems to be converting heat from a lower temperature reservoir directly into energy (mass).
But more importantly the author seems to miss the biggest whack at science in the entire movie.
When they are performing experiments on the frog, they cut it with a scapel and then the nanites heal it, but immediately aftwerwards the nanites destroy the frog.
The scientists declare this a terrible failure! And I am thinking WHAT! If I could do this, I would be FAMOUS FOREVER. I would be biology books, I would get prizes, I would give speaches all over the world. And I would get a posh faculty position whereever I want. It doesn't matter if the frog died, it was amazing. They could have all stopped their research right there and be set for life.
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot
To me, these don't fall into the "suspension of disbelief" category. It's just simple ignorance. Hell, an auto mechanic occasionally works at micrometer scales, it's not like they're getting something esoteric like a particle decay sequence wrong (tau to k-muon? madness!).
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Stargate SG-1 should be sci-fi most of the time, I hope... :)
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
And a few million others come to... er... mind.
I'm kind of torn regarding sites like this. On the one hand, I'm kind of a nitpicker myself, which is why most people I know who like Star Trek generally try to avoid me. On the other hand, there's still such a thing as being too much of a nitpicker. But back to the first hand, you can still think a movie is good while pointing out all the technical inaccuracies at the same time. But on the other hand, this sometimes causes one to miss the entire point of the movie. I guess how I feel about nitpicking a movie depends on the quality of the film itself. Example: my favorite television show happens to be The X-Files. I have a very, very long list of scientific inaccuracies or just inconsistencies in the plot I've collected from the show. But it's more just to enjoy the show even more, by paying a close attention to detail. On the other hand, let's look at the Dungeons and Dragons movie, which is one of the worst sorry excuses for a movie I have ever seen. With that movie, the only way I could possibly enjoy it is by pointing out every single thing they got wrong. It's like whoever wrote the "script" has never even opened a Player's Handbook.
Especially when it comes to guns. Somehow someone standing straight up with a shotgun can make someone else fly back 5 metres, however they're not thrown back at all.
Open Range is a great, traditional-seeming western, that gets high marks for realism, until someone shoots a shotgun. Somehow this shotgun not only punches a hole in a wooden wall, it also throws the person it hits across an alley into another wall. The person firing the shot, on the other hand, seems to have no recoil to deal with.
Did this improve the movie? No. Did it distract me? Yes. Why do they do it? I just don't know.
There's an old axiom in fiction writing which says it's okay to ask a reader to believe the impossible but not the improbable. For example, it's okay to say that a maniac has activated an antimatter bomb in the wall safe, but it's not okay to say that someone miraculously guessed the right combination on the first try.
But if you could get your hands on an infinite improbability drive, and set it to the right level of improbability, the combination may be 1,2,3,4,5, which by some strange coincidence, is the same combination as your luggage.
After all, it is reported in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Gallaxy that after Aurthur hit the infinite improbibility drive, the two missiles that were persuing his ship turned into a giant sperm whale and a bowl of petunias. (While the whale had various thoughts, oddly enough the only thing the bowl of petunias had was 'Oh no, not again'.)
For more information, including how to make an improbability drive, please refer to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
Infinite Improbabity Drive
I've always had a problem with this type of discussion. I go to the movies to be entertained, not to study science or physics. Bruce Banner grows 10 times his normal size. So? It's entertainment. Nothing more.
I attribute this mentality to the declining sales of movie tickets in the Sci-fi department. Everyone seems to think that in order to be science fiction or fantasy, there has to be some basis in reality. Imagine if the original writers of shows like Buck Rogers, even earlier "B" rated movies thought this way? These people, as humourous as their movies are to us today, paved the way for today's science fiction.
I think it's time we all got a little less geeky in the movie theatre, and just sit back and enjoy the show.
my favorite bad physics experiment involved a flare gun.
In the movies, they go foompt! It's such a peaceful, friendly sound.
In real life, the sound is, well, entirely unlike that.
Picture a large shotgun shell with a phosphorus head, stuffed into a fat pistol a couple of inches from your ear and you'll have a pretty good idea what it really sounds like.
Now if I can just get my hands on a mortar, I can find out if they go foompt! as well...
I no longer fear being called the biggest nerd alive by my friends.
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
OK, I understand that there is some dramatic license allowed in SciFi movies and TV shows, but what happened to the third dimension? In a recent episode of Andromenda the Commonwealth forces supposedly surrounded another force with a circular ring of space ships. Couldn't the enemy forces escape by going up or down? And why are ships shown having battles a few feet from each other? Even in modern dog fights between fighter planes within the Earth's atmosphere it is rare for jets to make visual contact, let alone be a few feet away from each other. The pilots see a blip on their radar screen and fire a missile. The likelihood of two space ships being a few feet apart in future combat is very unlikely. At least now the ships move relative to each other. On the old Star Trek show two ships in a battle would just sit there and fire rays at each other. And what about orbital mechanics, this isn't taken into account in any show.
SciFi in its written form has traditionally been an extrapolation of present technology to sometime in the future. We are now seeing the science fiction of the 50's and 60's becoming reality. Robots, clones and portable computers were predicated in the stories of Asimov, Clarke and P.K.Dick. Although movies and TV shows have to appeal to a wider audience they can be written in an imaginative way that is still dramatic. I don't see this happening anytime soon, but maybe in the future . . .
Hooptie
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
I didn't claim that. Your justification for applying the word "aberrant" was "going against the norm... drastically". People who go out of the way to save themselves for marriage are doing just that. Perhaps a better example would be left-handedness.
Except that there is no other word for "homosexual" that isn't some sort of epithet or slang. I mean, how else should they refer to themselves distinctly?
Besides, I'm pretty sure even straight people would be offended by being called aberrant. As long as it has a negative connotation for the general populace, why shouldn't it for everyone?
Both are acceptable. Xenophobia: A person unduly fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign.
Regardless, I'm glad they don't apply.
See, that's the kind of talk that makes me doubt your tolerance. You sound like you want Them to stop acting different. Just be normal!
Oh, and Columbine was perpetrated by a couple of psychotics who stopped taking their meds. That they were geeks is only relevant insofar as they were being continuously bullied for being "different".
Actually, isn't that how it's listed in the dictionary? ;-)
That feels like a cop-out. I mean, "asshole" and "cunt" are just words, but like "aberrant", society as a whole has decided that these are offensive.
Hot damn, so Organic starships and hyperspace is bleeding edge?
This short "story" is actually an examination of what would happen if Superman and Lois were to get married and try to have children. Kind of a scientific exploration of the impossibility of Superman.
Niven discribes what would happen to Lois's feeble body as her and Superman writhe in the throes of pasion. Not to mention what would happen to her at the moment of climax. Remember, "faster than a speeding bullet"? Now apply it to SEX! Eeeeewww!
The illustration of Superman's super powered sperm cells riddling holes in every woman in metropolis is especially hilarious.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
I think you misplaced your decimal point. Isn't 0.2g greater than the Moon's surface gravity?
the security chief suggests looking cclose to the station for a body, since it would not get far simply being sucked out.)
"Correction, sir. That's 'blown out'". -- Data, "The Naked Now"
"calling the enemy pilots mom nasty names"
Kiz da yuo-meen, Shizumaat!
I cant remember the naming but shizumaat could have been the Dracs great great great great great great grand mother(and father).
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
If real science could explain everything in Sci-Fi today... everything in Sci-Fi would be real.. but it isn't, its fake.. fantasy... I say bring the fake science on... its what makes sci-fi possible.
Very good observations... then again, it isn't hard to poke holes in Trek.
The Genesis device introduced in the second movie was discussed to be a potentially dangerous weapon and someone made mention that it was barred from use ever again.
Faced with the Borg taking over, nobody ever thought about it again for the use while they were cooking up new ways to defend against them.
A few die-hard trekies argued that it was in some ethical law and one even laughed at the notion of having cube shaped planets.
Appologists... ugh.
If you go faster than light, then fire your laser; does the light go backwards?
I saw an episode of "Alias", where someone couldn't get contact with an Geosynchronous Satellite because it was in a Low Earth Orbit...
I was spraying my living-room with my coffee laughing....
..is in "Starship Troopers" where we had giants beetle who emit big ole lit farts that blaster asteriods from their orbit to fly ACROSS LIGHT YEARS from the aliens star system to our own. The filmmakers had NO IDEA of the distance, the time, or the energy involved to make that happen.
Ole Man Heinlein must have been turning in his grave. It makes me wanna lit a fart in their honor.