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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.
The story is the fiction, the science is what "should" make it seem feasible.
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!
BOO! TERRO
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
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.
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.
Anyhow, the movie newsgroups were flooded with many reviewers picking plot holes...
And I remember one wag posting something like this:
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.