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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.
/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!
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
Main Entry: giga-
Pronunciation: 'ji-g&, 'gi-
Function: combining form
Etymology: International Scientific Vocabulary, from Greek gigas giant
: billion
there is nothing wrong with his pronunciation; it is infact the first (ie preferred) one.
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