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Favorite Film Scientists?
theodp asks: "From Rotwang in Fritz Lang's Metropolis to Wallace the Engineer in last year's Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Slate notes that scientists have long been a staple of the movies. So who are some of the more memorable scientist characters from your movie-going?"
Mr. Spock, science officer of the USS Enterprise.
His objectivity, intellect, and curiosity made him the quintessential scientist.
(Okay, he's mostly a TV character, but he appeared in his share of movies.)
This is one of my favorite engineer exchanges in movies, from "No Way Out," 1987, with Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, and Sean Young. A computer is crunching away at a bad photograph which when enhanced will incorrectly incriminate Costner in the death of Sean Young's character. He estimates that he has only a few hours to find the true killer before the photo is legible. The following exchange takes place. (Compare and contrast this with absolutely every other movie and TV show in which a photograph can be zoomed indefinitely by simply clicking on the interesting part, or can be immediately enhanced by the geek of the day with only a few key strokes (never a mouse) upon directions from a superior such as, "Can you make it clearer?")
- What do you want me to do?
- Slow up the resolution on that picture.
I need more time, Sam. I need more time to get this straightened out.
That's what I need.
I'm not satisfied with the way this is coming up. The eigenvalue is off.
Looks all right to me.
We're pulling away from our reference information. Program a Fourier transform.
- That seems like a waste of time.
- Just do what I want, OK?
first place for me would be:
Dr. Daniel P. Schreber
(played by Keifer Sutherland in Dark City)
Honorable mentions would be:
Dr. Evil & Dr. Stranglove
The professor from Gilligan's Island. When I was a kid, that's what a scientist was like.
He knew nearly everything except how to get them off the island. He was a social misfit, still everyone respected him because of his high intelligence.
Jeff Goldblum is my favorite movie psychic, not scientist. Although I would like to hire his Independence Day character to be in charge of our Mac installers at work.
As far as movie scientists are concerned, I always liked that group of scientists in Brainstorm (which I haven't seen in a long time). I've worked in real labs of several different sorts, and those guys still look like the real deal. Unlike most Hollywood "science" movies, which force their scientist characters into Frankenstein-inspired cliches, there were a few common mistakes that Brainstorm avoided with its scientist characters:
- No one scientist who works in isolation. This was a team of at least 3 scientists, like you'd find in real life. The two team leads who were the primary researchers shared credit equally as far as the film was concerned. The project was their baby.
- No "mad" scientist. Although one of them was played by Christopher Walken. Louise Fletcher's character I think was better written. She was the one who smoked if I'm remembering correctly. Movie scientists are usually too smart to smoke. They've done research or something and found that it's bad for you.
- Intense personal relationships. Walken's character was having marital problems. That's very strange for a movie scientist, who usually remains single to avoid confusing audiences who do not view scientists are normal human beings. (If he has any family members at all, their purpose in the script is to be props- they will be in close proximity to a volcano or bomb or something, so as to establish that the amoral movie scientist has "something to care about".) Not only does this guy use his machine to rejuvenate his marriage and make things better between him and his wife, people in the lab immediately discover the new technology's potential for porn. Good call on that one!
- Problems with upper management. They had a boss who was trying to militarize their whole project, and IIRC they had to cooperate to keep their funding. Most "movie scientists" either require no visible source of funding, or can just rely on their own personal wealth to buy all the Jacob's ladders and other mad-looking items they need for their lab. (Or they have the scientist running an entire company, like Eldon Tyrell. As a CEO scientist, Tyrell naturally has plenty of time to spend with local city policemen as they give Voight-Kampff tests to his employees.) As far as militarization of scientific work is concerned, most movie scientists are amoral and don't care. In the movies, scientists are completely amoral unless they are saving the world that day- and they're probably only doing it because their wife or kid is too close to a volcano or bomb.
Having said all that, I have to admit that in general the characters in Brainstorm are not very well developed because the movie is trying too hard to impress you with its technology. In 1983 it looked pretty impressive- these people had a system where you could dial in over an acoustic modem and have a tape robot play terabits of personal experience directly into your head! As far as text went, their terminal software looked like the setup I had in 1983. But even for 1983 they made reasonable guesses. I always remember that scene where they finally demo the technology and have some sort of hub with a dozen ribbon cables coming out of it connected to everyone's heads.