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.

Comments

Gee

[ElectricPoppy]

do you suppose that's why it's called science fiction??

Re:Gee

[ekarjala]

The story is the fiction, the science is what "should" make it seem feasible.

Re:Gee

[Eric Ass Raymond]

An excellent point.

I'm a professional scientist but I'm more pissed off by the "let's find a plot hole in a movie just to prove that I am smart"-people than the actual plot holes.

Hey, it's entertainment! Go with the flow!

Re:Gee

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to misunderstand why people do that. It's not to look smart, but because the plot holes grate and really bother them. Why this happens is the interesting question, since there are always incredible elements of a SF movie that the audience will accept without batting an eye, only to groan with dismay at some particular dumb explanation or the like. It's usually not about contraventions of fact, but of the set of assumptions the story rests upon (implicitly or explicitly) - a question of internal consistency. There's a sort of perceived compact between the storyteller and the audience, and when the writers go over that line, it seems a kind of betrayal. So people who complain are generally going with the flow - they're annoyed because the story didn't. People who're unbothered are generally just getting less out of the story in the first place, probably because they've come to have such low expectations of Hollywood.

Re:Gee

[harrkev]

Give me a break. As long as it is not TOO bad, you have to expect some of this type of stuff going on.

Star Trek: Alien species can communicate without even exchanging any sort of dictionary. All ships have exactly the same concept of "up" and "down." It is also assumed that there is an absolute time (even though it is not explicitly stated). The theory of relativity simply does not exist.

Star Wars: All ships have a maximum speed, which assumes a fixed frame of reference (motion is NOT relative). And I must admit that I like it this way. When playing Star Wars flight sims, if I had to deal with the "real" physics of acceleration (and near-limitless velocity), the game would not be as much fun to play.

And, of course, don't even get me started on X-men.

BUT (and this is the important part) -- I liked all of these movies (well, at least some in each series). The point of watching a movie is to have fun. If the movie has good plot and characters, that can make up for a LOT of bad science.

The truly sad thing is that I recognize bad science when I see it. The average American would not. I see this as not being a failing of Hollywood, but as a failing of the American educational system.

Re:Gee

[Daniel_Staal]

No. Science fiction is when the science works. At least in theory. It is the genre of the what could actually happen.

'The Hulk', and most 'Science Fiction' movies are in a different category altogether: Fantasy. That is the genre where anything is possible, no matter what. It is a total escape from reality.

I like both. But I don't confuse them.

Re:Gee

[dasmegabyte]

Here, here. I'm of the opinion that it's the Fictional Science which creates the enjoyment. It's all a matter of what-if.

Hulk is a perfect example. When he was created, everybody was scared of nuclear weapons, because they were powerful and mysterious. Marvel said, "What if a gamma bomb were able to create monsters and in doing so updates Jeckyll and Hyde?"

Good science? No. Of course not. Good science would have our man Banner dead from radiation sickness and buried in a lead lined coffin. The story is rather short and tragic. Now, with this fictional, impossible, fantastic science, Hulk is an interesting character and a symbol of inner conflict.

The "Science" in science fiction is crap because it makes the stories more interesting. Complaining that it's crap is missing the point entirely -- it's like complaining that conceits are unrealistic, something that Willy Shakespearre already touched on..."My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," etc.

I do think there's a trade off, and the best science fiction adheres as closely to "real world" physics, chemistry and biology as it can. But you have to excuse where it steps off, or accept some VERY boring shit:

"Warp Factor 5, Mr. Sulu."

"Ahh, but captain, warp dynamics violate general relativity, and therefore are bad science. Besides which, it does not make sense that they are measured in factors when those factors have decimal values."

"I guess we'll just float around here for a while, then. Maybe I'll make out with a blonde crew member, being as there's apparently no sexual harrassment in space."

Re:Gee

[B'Trey]

Couldn't agree more. Just sent the following email to intuitor (author of the Hulk article linked above):

You closed your recent Hulk article by saying "We went to see the fantasy of a likeable nerdy guy reluctantly turn into an 8 foot high science project and educate the mindless, heartless cool guys who had ignorantly messed with him. What we got was a cross between King Cong and Godzilla. Not only did the moviemakers give us wrong physics, they gave us the wrong movie."

You couldn't be more wrong. I can only assume you're basing your expectations on the syndicated television show staring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno and that you're unfamiliar with the comic books themselves. I was profoundly disappointed in the movie. The plot was disjointed and weak. The dialog was inferior to that normally found in poorly dubbed martial arts movies. The only thing they got RIGHT was the size and strength (and color) of the character.

The Hulk is SUPPOSED to throw tanks around. He's SUPPOSED to leap thousands of feet through the air. He's SUPPOSED to have missiles bounce off his chest. Yes, the physics are all wrong. But like almost all comic books, The Hulk isn't science fiction. It's fantasy. And you might as well calculate the amount of energy it would take to turn a Hobbit invisible and complain that a tiny ring would be incapable of containing that much energy as complain about the strength or density of the Hulk.

Re:Gee

[calica]

I am probably going to have to help educate my children in math and science and check over the textbooks for errors (there was a /. story in the last 6 months about textbook errors).

Gee, teaching your kids something. Imagine that!!

The problem with education in the US isn't the schools. The problem is parents assuming the public schools will provide 100% of the education a child needs.

That is like assuming social security will provide for 100% of your retirement.

In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

[Le Marteau]

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.

Re:In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact it is more dramatic. Firefly made good use of the silence of space on several occasions.

Conventions like woosh-n-boom-in-space aren't there for drama's sake; they're simply put in without a thought. The vastest majority of TV and movie makers are astonishingly uncreative hacks working from formulae they'd be terrified to change. Did you think the best and brightest of your society were all going to Hollywood to write and direct? People with creativity and clue have far better things to do...

Re:In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

[NudeZiggy]

Conventions like woosh-n-boom-in-space aren't there for drama's sake; they're simply put in without a thought.

bullshit. Most sound effects designers are Physics Majors anyways. Everyone (yes EVERYONE) watching a movie knows sound can't travel in a vacuum! All movie makers know it too, and they all admit it. The sound is for dramatic effect. I'm sorry, when I was 4 I woulda been bored to death with Star Wars if the Tie Fighters didnt have those cool metallic wines and the blasters have those blasty sounds. Hell, Asimov let it slide when he was consulting for the first Trek movie.

Personally, I like it a lot. Yeah, Kubric and Whedon, etc. use the true silence for the real dramatic effect, but movies would be boring if everyone did it. Besides, those sonic charges in Attack of the Clones had THE COOLEST SOUND EFFECTS. Everyone loved 'em.

If you want to argue what the sound is in Real Life, just imagine the viewer (yes, you) are viewing the action from outside, but you get the feeling you are in every space craft on screen, it's sensory immersion, the original point of it. Sonar doesn't really go "PING" (though some expensive medical equipment do). Before I knew it was silent in space, I didnt really give much thought to the sound effects in movies. Afterwards I passed it off as 3rd person omniscient experience (be it outside the craft hearing what's inside, or actually being in it, but seing it from outside....)

Besides, it's a FUCKING MOVIE get over it!

Thanks for listening.

Re:In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

[MrAndrews]

This is actually a really annoying thing to deal with as a producer. The concept of a ship making is something that sounds good (ahem) on paper, and even in some circumstances it has dramatic effect, but then when you get to the visuals of a dogfight (such as it is) in space, with lots of ships and lots of movement, the lack of some kind of whooshing sound makes it all seem very empty.

The alternative is to cut inside the ship to hear the sounds there (well, the sound of that ship itself), but eventually you need to go outside again, and once there, the silence almost seems like a statement rather than a fact. It's like the environment becoming a character by its absence.

So really, in some entertainment, it's either your scientific accuracy or your excitement level. Crappy tradeoff.

Re:In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

[NanoGator]

"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."

This is an old and tired argument. Sound is very much an integral sense in our lives. Our ears never blink. We're so used to having sound for everything we do that movie makers know they need to add a rich sound track. Audio is very much a huge part of a movie.

Realism is not the holy grail of a movie. Reality is actually quite boring. Ever watch Big Brother? Take the sound out of the space scenes in Star Wars, and you take out a good deal of information. Actually, Star Trek comes to mind. There's an episode of Deep Space Nine called Sacrifice of Angels. A massive fleet of Federation ships (600 or so) engaged a more massive fleet of Dominion ships. (1200 or so.) Explosions ensue. One scene in particular stands out in my mind. The Defiant and two other (Miranda Class?) ships were in formation trying to break through the line. Both were destroyed. The one closer to the camera took a hit that hulled the ship, and it spun off screen rather close to the camera. As it flew by, you could see the exposed frame. You could hear this loud creak of the metal as it started to buckle.

Yeah, you could watch this without sound and be 'more realistic', but what do you lose? The sound that ship made after it was hit let the audience know the ship died. In a form of personification, the sound you heard was its death rattle. 100's of people died defending the Defiant. The sound track for this ep really drove the point home.

The director's job is to entertain, not try to fool you into thinking you're watching a documentary. I think you should appreciate more the work that goes into communicating ideas to the audience. Maybe then, you wouldn't be 'gotten every time' there's sound in space.

Re:In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

[gamgee5273]

Okay, where in Star Wars did you get the idea that it was science fiction?

It's not. "Sci-Fi?" Maybe (Sci-Fi isn't Science Fiction). It is defintiely fantasy. The best litmus test of "Is it Science Fiction?" I've ever heard was "Does the science portion play a integral part in the story? is it almost like a character?"

The answer for Star Wars is "no." It's a great fantasy that just happens to take place in space - but it isn't SF.

Alien isn't SF - it's a horror flick that's set in space. Aliens is an action flick.

Now think of movies where they try to take actual science into account (not to say the movies are good, however): 2001, The Abyss...

So, while I agree with your critique, I think you should be comparing apples to apples, not oranges.

It's called "suspension of disbelief"

[Gudlyf]

Why can't people just take a movie for what it is? These aren't documentaries, you know.

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!"

Re:It's called "suspension of disbelief"

[sonicattack]

Yes, but the "suspension of disbelief" is something the movie script constantly must uphold, not something the viewer must force him/herself to experience.

For instance, however farfetched a story may be, properly presented, and given plausible scientific explanations for the phenomena it contains, it will carry the "suspension of disbelief" without any needed effort from its audience.

A bad script can not be excused with "Well it's science fiction, anyway, so it doesn't have to be realistic".

Here is just one example from one of the worst sci-fi movies I've ever seen, "Independence day.", and how it could be worked around.

Tip to future moviemakes: Please don't insult the intelligence of the audience. Don't let an alien computer be compatible with Earth-created software to the level of gladly running viruses. At least, not without giving a plausible explanation for this.
Arthur C Clarke solved this problem to an extent in 3001, where an alien system accepted a "virus" created by humans, by carefully explaining that it was some kind of "universal logic" program, that any intelligent system would accept, as opposed to machine-specific instructions.

Science fiction shouldn't be inconsequent or unrealistic, even though it presents technology not avaliable today. And explanations to stuff like "the Hulk" can either be well-crafted, or just insulting to the audience.

Re:It's called "suspension of disbelief"

[Dr. Manhattan]

But these days it's very rare that any movie even tries to help you suspend that disbelief. Like "Signs". I doubt I'm spoiling anyone's fun at this point by revealing that the aliens are deathly vulnerable to water.

And they are invading a planet that's mostly covered in water.

Without wearing any protective gear.

Now, maybe if we were utterly desperate, we'd consider invading a planet mostly covered in hydrochloric acid. But if we were that desperate, we wouldn't just give up and go away as soon as the natives figured out that we didn't like the stuff. For us to consider such a planet, our survival would have to be at stake, and we'd probably fight to the last.

I know the whole movie is a setup for the payoff moment at the end, where Gibson's character rediscovers his faith. But I can think of ten different substances besides water that could be poisonous to the aliens and give the same payoff. E.g. chocolate, caffiene, alcohol, aspartame, non-dairy creamer, etc. etc. etc.

Re:It's called "suspension of disbelief"

[Joe Tie.]

I didn't just dislike this movie, it pissed me off.

Same here. A number of my relatives died at an early age. I still have somewhat bitter memories of the hordes of people telling me, a little kid, that this was a good thing because it was all God's plan and that I should just cheer up and move on. To this day I don't know whether it was the deaths or those people which wound up screwing my head up more. I was not at all happy to find out that I'd wound up paying to be force fed that philosophy all over again. I'm all for finding good in bad situations, but the idea that Jesus is sitting up in the sky with a shotgun giving slow painful deaths to the innocent 'for the greater good' seems a somewhat horrific philosophy on life.

Re:It's called "suspension of disbelief"

[canadian_right]

I'm a secular humanist, and I was not offended by the depiction of religious faith in Signs. I find intolerance offensive no matter if the intolerant person shares my beliefs or not.

Re:It's called "suspension of disbelief"

[pamar]

---**** SPOILER BELOW ****---






I believe that the movie was an attempt to depict a sort of dream (hints: the claustrophobically framed shots, the daughter asking "are you in my dream too?" at the start, the final scene in which the main character is dressing up with what seems a renowned resolve... it could be that the last scene shows him getting ready for a new day after a very strange, but in the end "reassuring" dream). If you accept my hypotesis, it works much better: nothing really makes sense, but the strange "internal logic" of dreams (see also the UFO book, and the car accident subplot) seems to be well captured by the story. YMMV...

Not just limited to bad science.

[GreenCrackBaby]

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!".

2001 -- totally overrated

[Raul654]

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.

Re:2001 -- totally overrated

[willtsmith]

This is the reason that studios add "bad science" to movies. 2001 was a true science fiction film.

Star Wars and Star Trek are NOT sci-fi. George Lucas himself described Star Wars as a "Space Western". Star Trek is more like space sociology. They explore current sociological issues through the lense of a more ideal social future. Every once in a while Star Trek episodes hit on a sci-fi topic, but that is rare. In fact the most sci-fi movie was Star Trek 1, which everybody thought was pretty boring.

The best science fiction of late was "Contact" starring Jody Foster. That movie was lambasted as being boring and plotless. When the "asteroid" concept hit hollywood, two movies were made. The action packed "Armageddon" starring Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck contrasted with the thought provoking "Deep Impact" starring Elijah Wood, Morgan Freeman (the first black portrayal of an American president) and Tea Leaoni. Armageddon was the more popular (and pretty stupid in my opinion). Deep Impact was very thought provoking and brilliant but took a deep second to the action flick.

The best blend I've seen lately is 'Minority Report', 'The Sixth Day' and 'The Matrix: Reloaded'. All present a sci-fi plot in an action mode with action stars.

The brilliance of Sci-Fi is that it challenges us to think. The plot is often incomprehensible without a little deep thinking. Thats what science fiction is for, to challenge us.

Many people won't get 2001, it requires thought and interpretation. A lot of people really liked Matrix: Reloaded, but ultimately didn't have a clue of the real meaning of the film beyond the fighting and chase scenes. Some people look for different things in movies. I enjoy a good think and enjoyed 2001. If you don't enjoy thought than the entire sci-fi genre probably isn't for you.

Re:2001 -- totally overrated

[spaceyhackerlady]

2001 was a true science fiction film.
...
The best science fiction of late was "Contact" starring Jody Foster. That movie was lambasted as being boring and plotless.

I own 2001 on DVD (shhhh!!!!) and am always startled at how it only just barely looks dated, even today. There are a few things that aren't right, but they all have an It Just Didn't Happen That Way flavour to them. Like the logo on the phone booth, or the implication that the U.S.S.R. would still be alive and well in 2001. I find that Star Wars looks incredibly dated now.

Contact was a worthy film. It tried - it really did - to be "the proverbial good science fiction film". They almost got away with it. A really good try. Even a flawed movie can be interesting and worth watching.

...laura who thinks The Blue Danube is excellent music to dock spaceships to, and that no radio telescope operator should be without a recording of Classical Gas.

The Matrix

[Malc]

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.

Re:The Matrix

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of the movie did you have to think about? Was it the boring and pointless fights Neo got in, the long and really boring chase scenes, or the pseudo-orgy? No, probably not. I guess that leaves about 10 minutes near the end.

The most likely situation is that you like to think you are on a level above everyone else. Fine, continue to get off on thinking you are superior to others. Reality doesn't want you anyway.

Re:The Matrix

[G-funk]

Boo.

I understood the matrix reloaded. It made me think for about 30 seconds. It was crap. The fights were crap, neo is a total pussy, the cg was ordinary, and the fisher-price "My first philosphy lesson TM" pseudo sci-fi was simply an insult to the viewers.

Saying that anybody who didn't like it doesn't make you seem smart, it makes you seem like a dick.

Re:The Matrix

[Anonymous Coward]

my shiny metal ass. or rather, that movie WAS ass. 'using your imagination' usually involves fleshing in details for yourself not provided by the plot. as far as i could tell, reloaded didn't have a freakin' plot. It was a bunch of senseless action sequences tied together with pretentious talk of deeper meaning. You are reading crap into the movie that as far as I can tell _did not_ exist. overanalysis anyone?

Do you read books? That's where I use my imagination. The artist describes a world and I flesh it out. The creators of reloaded had a pretty expensive canvas to flesh out a world for me, and failed spectacularly. I want my $10 back.

Re:Isnt the Point of a Movie Entertainment?

[On Lawn]

Actually the article is very good at pointing out that the problem is not so much the fanciful and incorrect science. They mention Spider Man and the Incredible Shrinking Man as examples of movie making gone right.

The difference? When movie makers try too hard to explain their movie scientifically, wind up detracting from the mystery of the movie and doing a horrible disservice to science. Their prime example of that is Star Wars' midi-chlorians.

Oh, how they blither on

[bitrott]

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.

You shouldn't care...

[TexVex]

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.

Re:Oh please, people

[jtroutman]

No. Most emphatically, no. There are a lot of science fiction writers who manage to write books that are based in hard science. Writers like Niven, Brin, and Bear, not to mention many, many others, all write engaging stories using extrapolations of real science. What this website, and people who understand even the basics of science, are complaining about is blatently bad science. Ignoring things like basic laws of physics or biology.
You can stick within the guidlines established by reality and still have incredible stories. If you don't believe me, just look at the world around you. It follows these rules and is full of wonderous variety.

Bumblebee Movies At Risk?

[decipher_saint]

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 ;-)

Re:Reality Check

[pclminion]

Stop trying to find holes in science FICTION movies and just enjoy the movie.

The problem is, when you have a certain amount of knowledge in any particular field of science, you are simply forced to notice these inconsistencies. My personal field of interest is physics, so I immediately notice, and am terribly distracted by, physics blunders.

You read Slashdot, so I'll assume you have a fair degree of computer knowledge, or at least pretend to. Imagine watching a moviem, supposedly about some fantastic computer hackers, where in a certain scene the main character says: "I've installed a 2.4 gigahertz hard drive, and applied a firewall to the keyboard. Let's see them hack through that!"

If you're anything like me, the contents of your mouth, be it Coke, popcorn, or whatever, would immeditely be distributed across the heads of the five unfortunate people sitting in front of you.

It's not that I don't try to ignore the problems and simply enjoy the movie. The errors are simply so huge I just... can't.

Sort of goes hand in hand.

[FreeLinux]

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.

Re:Sort of goes hand in hand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Special effects in general were new....

You've obviously never seen Metropolis!

the midichlorians weren't stupid...

[The Lynxpro]

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...

It's Science FICTION

[isa-kuruption]

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).

Re:It's Science FICTION

[0tim0]

Or you could say it's SCIENCE fiction. Meaning that if there wasn't any science, it should just be called 'fiction'.

--t

That and

[Sycraft-fu]

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 Hulk is a special case

[Our Man In Redmond]

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.)

Re:Arthur C. Clarke said...

[Daniel_Staal]

I'll defend Harry Potter, for want of something better to do...

Harry Potter does not claim to be consistent with any rules of science. Including the rules of cause and effect, or predictability. 'Magic', by any accounts, is an art, requiring talent, skill, and experience to practice. Just because something happens in one case that does not mean it works in a similar case. Why? Because it is magic, and follows no rules but the historic: A happened when we did B before, so if we do B again A will happen again. Probably.

"Any science sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic." is true to those who do not understand the science. Magic is still magic when you understand magic.

Microwave oven timers

[tpledger]

My favourite is when someone improvises a bomb using a microwave oven, and the explosion happens at the exact moment the timer reaches zero.

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

Re:Oh please, people

[Anonymous Coward]

Writers like Niven

Ah, Niven. Let's see what Niven has concocted in the name of "hard science fiction."

1. Telepathy.

2. Hyperdrive.

3. Second quantum hyperdrive, because #2 wasn't fast enough.

4. Teleportation.

5. Stasis fields.

6. Genetic luck.

Et cetera.

Niven takes as many liberties with his stories as any other science fiction writer. And these aren't extrapolations of real science here, as you so deftly put it. They're completely, utterly made up. No attempt is made to explain any of them, except for a passing mention in "Flash Crowd" about how teleportation turns the cargo into a "super neutrino." Or something.

Niven's stories are great. They're really good. But in order to accept them, you have to accept a few assumptions without question or criticism. Hyperdrive works because it does. Don't look behind the curtain. Just go with it, and enjoy the story.

Same thing with Star Wars, or any other story with a fantasy element to it, science or otherwise.

Why it matters

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Some stories are plot driven. If they're not then the science might not matter. But if a story is plot driven the science can matter a lot.

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.)

comic books.

[geekoid]

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.

Re:Gigawatts

[jcr]

mispronunciation of the word 'Gigawatt'.

That's not a mispronunciation. Ask any EE who worked in the field before all the computer people started talking about Gigabytes.

The Greek root, "gigas", is also the basis of the word "Gigantic". Although greek never had a soft "g" sound, the English words derived from 'gigas' always did, until about 25 years ago.

-jcr

Re:Yeah, then why limit it to SciFi?

[Darby]

Apparantly, Cops are potrayed fairly unrealistically as well.

Yeah,

they're usually portrayed as the good guys.

Not just a problem with sci-fi

[eh?]

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?)

Said it best...

[geoswan]

I remember twenty years ago when Superman 3 was first released. dejanews is failing me. I remember the movie newsgroups being flooded with discussions of this film. Dejanews only found a handful of articles...

Anyhow, the movie newsgroups were flooded with many reviewers picking plot holes...

And I remember one wag posting something like this:

I have been reading all your critical comments on Superman 3 this last couple of weeks. And, after seeing it myself, I have got to agree -- this film was very unrealistic...

But I am going to disagree with you about what the most unrealistic element was. Some of you said it was a drunken Richard Pryor taking over the entire world using the computer literacy course he was taught in prison... Other of you said the most unrealistic element was ...

Well, so far as I am concerned, the most unrealistic thing about this film was the guy with the blue tights and the red cape.

Re:You mean like "Superman"???

[Eric Destiny]

Remind me never to take you to the movies you fucking joykiller. Unclench, enjoy, repeat.

Um

[autopr0n]

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...

Internal Consistency

[EntropyMan]

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.

Hulk isn't Sci-Fi.

[Infirmo]

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.

Re:Let's Face It...

[MalachiConstant]

I think the Stupid Movie Physics site makes a good point about this:

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.

This makes sense. Obviously if I'm watching a movie about a robot that comes from the future I'm willing to suspend some disbelief and enjoy it. If the robot suddenly built a railgun out of common household products I would be annoyed at the impossibility of it.

When you go to a play you agree to believe that those people on stage are actually sitting around the dinner table talking or whatever and ignore that they're actors on a stage. You don't agree that they can hack into the FBI in 30 seconds. Suspension of disbelief doesn't mean you throw your brain out the window, it means that you are willing to accept certain basic fictions so the story can be told.