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NASA Names Best & Worst Sci-Fi Movies of All Time
mvar writes "Working through the year-end best/worst movie lists can be a feat of Olympic proportions, but there's one list which is so damn cool you'll definitely want to give it a whirl. NASA and the Science and Entertainment Exchange have compiled a list of the 'least plausible science fiction movies ever made,' and they ranked the disastrous (in more ways than one) 2012 as the most 'absurd' sci-fi flick of all time."
If I recall correctly, 2012 was the disaster movie that caused hundreds (maybe thousands) of overly emotional retards to call NASA directly and ask whether the world was actually going to end. I think one caller even asked NASA if they should kill their child now, in order to save them the pain of having to deal with the 2012 apocalypse. I know if a particular movie turned my work phone into a spam pot for dipshits I would declare that movie the ultimate fuck up of all time as well.
I think next we'll see NASA using it's orbital lasers to melt John Cusack's for his role in that film, at least, I can dream.
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Not since Congress won't approve anything good and keeps forcing them to work on bullshit they already cancelled until the money runs out, since apparently that makes good economic sense or something. Besides, NASA probably has one of the highest concentrations of nerds anywhere in the world. They probably know a thing or two about SciFi (as opposed to SyFy).
They don't even list "Capricorn One".
I know you're being sarcastic, but it is money well spent. NASA faces huge uphill battles from people wondering why they aren't doing as much as they could be, and why we're not building colonies on the moon. SciFi movies are the primary tool to impression people as to what is technologically available to us. Bad movies give the public unfair expectations of what could happen, who controls it, and how it can be fixed. These people then write their congress people and complain that NASA isn't doing enough. Congress then gets onto NASA on how they're spending what they're spending, and how they should change priorities. The public is dumb, congress is dumb, and they're controlled by images given in SciFi movies.
Think if a majority of the people in this country were convinced by "2012" that the world would really end at that year. Their priorities for government spending would be dramatically different.
Yes, SF shouldn't have a moral message. It should just be shoot-'em-up.
Obviously Gattaca was done on a relatively small budget, but it told a pretty compelling story that isn't exactly a mile away from what we'll likely be facing in fifty years.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
But not all sci-fi films were mocked by NASA experts, they did agree to praise 1982s Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford. The movie which they said “convincingly portrayed a futuristic Los Angeles now only eight years away”
And the most “realistic” sci-fi film according to NASA, goes to 1997s Gattaca, starring Ethan Hawke, Jude Law and Uma Thurman. The movie was about “a genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel.”
It looks like the smart guys at NASA agree with many of us 'dotters that the future is going to be a bleak, dystopian police state where the richer get richer and the poor eat noodles off the street. Ah well, at least we get Harrison Ford and glowing umbrellas right?
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now I know why we never returned to the moon
No, it's because the NASA administrator says that the president has told him that NASA's top priority is to find ways to make Muslims feel better about themselves . So, there's a lot of re-tooling going on, to make that happen.
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I hate to break it to you, but (A) they didn't judge best or worst, but most absurd as science goes, and (B) they do have people qualified in several branches of science and technology. In fact, I'd expect that if anyone is qualified to judge woowoo doomsday scenarios based on stellar alignments and mysterious radiations from the galaxy, it would be NASA. That's, you know, the kinda thing they _are_ supposed to do: know what's happening up there.
Of course, don't tell that to the homeschooled idiots who'd rather wait for a "rapture" that kept being sold as any day now for 2000 years straight and never happened, than fix the real problems on Earth in the meantime. And who'll even take a non-existent Mayan prophecy as support for their Bible delusions. Or to the gang who just wants to believe any non-scientific idiocy, presumably because it makes them feel less bad about sleeping through Physics class high-school.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Think if a majority of the people in this country were convinced by "2012" that the world would really end at that year. Their priorities for government spending would be dramatically different.
This part of your comment reminded me of this article; NASA actually had to post a rather lengthy FAQ about 2012 because of the sheer volume of grief that movie was causing them.
Personally, I agree that NASA should take the proactive approach on this one. It shouldn't be part of their job to educate the public like this but it has proven necessary.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
What is the point of writing about 2012 being "absurd"? It was a special effects action movie intended to entertain people in a cinema for 2 hours. Mission accomplished, for me and millions of other people. The same team that made 2012 also made films about alien invasions and giant lizards, so they aren't exactly aiming for hard realism and non-absurdity.
Someone at NASA isn't making an interesting or valid criticism, they are demonstrating their own lack of humour.
Worst Sci-Fi Movies
1. 2012 (2009)
2. The Core (2003)
3. Armageddon (1998)
4. Volcano (1997)
5. Chain Reaction (1996)
6. The 6th Day (2000)
7. What the #$*! Do We Know? (2004)
Most Realistic Films
1. Gattaca (1997)
2. Contact (1997)
3. Metropolis (1927)
4. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
5. Woman in the Moon (1929)
6. The Thing from Another World (1951)
7. Jurassic Park (1993)
Why would a government agency be rating movies, anyway? The only possible explanation is that they know something we don't about 2012, and it actually is going to be the end of the world. The top gubmint politicians and military brass are confident that they have their secret shelters and caves to flee to, but the masses are being psychologically conditioned to quietly walk right into their doom.
The worst thing is, the few brave voices that speak out against this stuff tend to get a bullet in the head without warni
It's not only NASA vs. SciFi Movies. That problem can be seen in a lot of genres. The more and more movies and shows try to claim they are "authentic" and are seen as such, the more people start to wonder why what they see in their shows isn't done in real life.
A friend of mine is in forensics. You might be able to imagine what he thinks of shows like CSI. To quote: "If they killed the prez, we wouldn't get the money needed to do half the tests they do routinely there on a hunch". Not to mention that the tests (those that ARE actually working as they do in RL, by far not everything they do has anything to do with reality, deus ex machinas are a staple of the later CSI episodes) sometimes require machinery so expensive that you couldn't get your hands on it if you blew your annual budget on just renting it. Not to mention that petty things like constitution or human rights seem to be non existent in the world of CSI.
But people see it as genuine and start to demand that forensics can flawlessly identify every culprit. That's not the case. By far not. Having a piece of hair or a cigarette butt doesn't mean you also have a suspect to match it against.
It's very well spent money if such claims are debunked so people do not have irrational expectations based on movies and shows. What people have to learn is that their main focus is entertainment. Not education.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As god is my witness, I thought trains could fly.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
They do not judge artistical quality or entertainment value. They judge credibility, feasibility and scientific accuracy of the "science" portrait.
And given that they are mostly doing science in space, I'd say they're qualified to judge the quality of how science in space is described.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The 'alien lifeform debacle' as you chose to propagandize it, was a very important and interesting discovery regarding the fundamental ingredients for life that is still being reviewed by major microbial scientists worldwide. Not recognizing the significance of that announcement just because it wasn't the discovery of alien life (something that NASA never advertised, but, rather, a speculation that the media over-hyped) does little more than betray your ignorance on that particular matter.
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Maybe it's dumbassed attitudes from people who reply without understanding the opinion of who they're replying to?
Parent has NOT said you're not allowed to criticize. Parent was saying he agrees with what NASA is doing and he stated why.
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The correct answer is Forbidden Planet.
As for the worst, the list is way too lengthy even to contemplate.
Apparently you're unaware of Newton's 4th Law. "Any natural disaster travels at the speed of the transportation you happen to be in at the time." Of course later Einstein showed that relativistic effects could add or subtract 10 or 20 miles per hour, but only in faster vehicles which weren't available in newton's time.
I know an organisation that can offer her a free personality test...
Don't you feel bad about being so dishonest?
Actually, no, I don't feel bad because I'm quoting the guy. He said it, not me. I suppose I do feel bad that the head of such an important agency, and perhaps even the president he takes orders from, think so little of Muslims that they think it's OK to condescendingly say - out loud - that anything NASA can or should do would make them "feel better about themselves." That's the most smarmy, patronizing bunch of BS I can possibly imagine.
Incidentally, this was widely reported, and Obama's main press spokesman was asked about it. He did a ham-handed job of badly spinning it, and said he didn't know why the NASA director said that, blah blah blah. So, either the director said things accurately - which makes Obaman's idea of the top priority for that agency to be a complete disaster - or the director was completely BS-ing, which means he should never have had that job in the first place. Neither is a good scenario.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Ignore the plot of Gattaca, the morality lecture on genetic engineering and ask yourself this: In the future are human beings going to start tampering with the human genome? If the answer at any point in the future is yes, then the science in Gattaca is likely realistic. I actually agree with their assessment, the future portrayed in Gattaca where genetic information is used to discriminate and people begin to improve the human genome is VERY realistic. It will start with where they said it would start in the movie, the first tampering will be to remove disease, then it will be a slippery slope to make people smarter, stronger and more gifted. As the techniques improve testing will become so quick and routine that a microchip that can read out your entire individual genome in seconds is possible. Once improvements are made those that are "improved" begin to discriminate against those that aren't. From the first time I saw Gattaca I realized they accurately predicted the future of genetic engineering.
Even more nerds than Nestle/Willy Wonka?
It's even worse than that, really. It's not just "who cares about Mayans". It's that, really, they're trusting a calendar from back when the Mayans were as primitive as to not even figure out the length of a year (the Long Count uses 360 day years; seriously) and a culture who even at its apex only managed to count the days in the cycles of Venus (you know, the most bloody visible thing up there after the Sun and Moon) to tell them about galactic events. And they turn the end of a Mayan century into some kind of prophecy, although the Mayans never made such a prophecy. It's so fucking stupid, it's depressing.
To repeat a previous post (hey, it's Slashdot, you're used to dupes), for those who happen to still not know what that mayan thing is actually about:
Let's start from the start. The Mayans didn't count in base 10, but in base 20, presumably because they could count on their toes too. (No, really, look at their digits.) Thank goodness they didn't come up with a male-only maths, eh?
So they started with a year based on 260 day years, the so called Tzolkin calendar. If now you went "wait, that can't be right, it would skip through the actual year like crazy", congrats, you'd be smarter than the Mayans.
Then came the Long Count calendar, which was 360 days long, or 18 months of 20 days each. (Told you they were big on 20.) This is actually the calendar used in the 2012 (non)prophecy.
Yes, that's right. Those poor idiots are actually trusting a civilization to tell them about galactic alignments... who isn't even advanced enough to figure out the length of the year. Nor had the smarts to reset it to some equinoxe or such each year, like the lunisolar calendars used around here by even the most primitive ancient cultures. Yeah, that's the guy to trust with galactic calculations, right? ;)
To make it more stupid, even the Mayans eventually got a better calendar than that, the Haab calendar. Which finally padded the year to 365 days long, putting them finally on par with what the Egyptians had had, oh, only a couple of millennia before them. But anyway, a doomsday calculation based on the Long Count is already based on a calendar which is obsolete and crap even by Mayan standards.
So, anyway, a Long Count year was 18 months of 20 days each.
From there it went kinda like for us with decades, centuries and milenia, except in base 20.
So for us a decade is 10 years, for them a katun is 20 years.
For us a century is 10x10 years, for them a baktun is 20x20 years.
For us a millennium is 10x10x10 years, for them a piktun is 20x20x20 years.
All that happens in 2012 or 2013 is the end of a baktun. Yes, it's not even millennialism. The piktun (base-20 millenium) won't end for another couple thousand years or so.
That scare isn't even like Y2K, it's more like being scared of the rollover from 699 AD to 700 AD. I mean, WTF, it's not even running out of digits or anything.
And again that's _all_ there is to it, because there is no actual Mayan prophecy for that date.
But I guess that won't stop the doomsday idiots from waiting for their Rapture on that day. What else is new?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Idiocracy
I would more like assume that they're not serfs, and don't work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There'll be enough time for them to do their job _and_ watch a movie now and then. Sometimes even together with a few co-workers and start comparing notes.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If that $14T was all spent on actually worthwhile endeavors like NASA, we'd be having this idiotic argument on Mars.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Personally, I agree that NASA should take the proactive approach on this one. It shouldn't be part of their job to educate the public like this but it has proven necessary.
It's only necessary because of the complete dumbing down of the science curriculum in schools. That's what happens when you let a bunch of religious nutbars dictate what kind of science is taught to children.
It's time to ignore the religious crackpots and start teaching real science without fear of backlash.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
I know! I'm feeling soooo deceived by the movie's I've seen lately. I mean, I was at the hospital the other day, and the nurse was not wearing a form-fitting white uniform with a plunging neckline. She didn't come on to me or tell me how naughty she'd been. She didn't even have enormous breasts! B-cup, tops! All she did was poke me with needles and bring me terrible food!
Where is Duncan Jones' Moon on the best of list for science?
It's presumably not there (can't RTFA as slashdotted... if this is Nasa's list, why is the article linked somebody random's blog?). I would guess there were a few reasons:
1. Not that many people have seen it, it being an independent film, so the educational value of including it on the list is low.
2. Producing identical clones who believe they are the original source person (complete with memories and personality) is probably not viable.
3. With an AI as advanced as the one shown, it seems unlikely that an actual person would be needed.
Yes, there are many good details in the film (e.g. the details of life on the moon, the reason for being there), but it's very dependent on a scenario that's somewhat unrealistic. I'd score it somewhere mid-list in terms of plausible SF.
The term "space opera" is already around for that purpose. When George Lucas is giving an interview with a degree of candor, he'll usually use that term to describe Star Wars. Naturally, Lucas doesn't give many interviews with a sense of candor anymore, but I seem to remember him using it in the interview with Leonard Maltin that was in the VHS versions in the '90s.
Not a typewriter
Lately I've begun splitting what people call sci-fi into three different subgroups.
Yes, I'm a bit bitter, Hollywood is butchering sci-fi with every new movie and if I ever open my mouth about it to friends and acquaintances they immediately start namedropping movies from the third category as examples of how there are plenty of good sci-fi movies being made...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
This has been written up in the Toronto Star, Wired UK, The Australian and a few others.
Interesting, and saddening, that overseas media has picked this up and US media doesn't seem to be terribly interested. From one of TFAs,
But why has Nasa taken the day off from searching the galaxy to try its hand at movie criticism? Well, the agency argues that bad flicks can worry viewers. In fact, so many people wrote in to the agency, worried about potential 2012-related catastrophes, that Nasa had to publish a special website just days before the film's November 2009 release.
The myth debunking page reads "Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012."
Scientific illiteracy is becoming a big problem in the US. Kudos to NASA for tackling it.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Inside the station they walk at normal pace and what appears to be Earth gravity.
Outside everyone moves in slow motion.
Also, no delay in telecommunication.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I thought it was well understood in SF fandom that "Sci Fi" was movie-style action-oriented futuristic fantasy (and some pronounce this "skiffy"), while "SF" was actual science-based fiction, which is extremely unlikely to appear in any visual medium.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
That cuts both ways though. I've read about the police's and prosecutors' frusteration at the "CSI effect" and I'm fine with it, despite the fact that the details depicted on the show are sometimes dodgy or exaggerated. And beleive me, I know the frusteration. I know enough science to sit there and kibitz when the show gets things wrong. And, working in computers, I've had to explain that, "No, computers can't/dont actually do that." my share of times.
But juries demanding to actually see hard physical evidence of a crime, instead of just taking the word of some random guy who said: "he done it." is a GOOD thing... a VERY good thing! Peoples' freedom and sometimes their lives are at stake in a criminal trial. And if the government is going to take away either; we should damn well be a whole lot more sure about that than we are now. "Innocent until PROVEN guilty." and "Better a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent should suffer a trial." and all that.
And boo effing hoo for the cop who's PO'd that his version of events is not golden anymore, or for the DA who's seen his conviction ratio drop. It's almost routine now for DNA evidence, for example, to exonerate people who've spent years in prison, falsely convicted after some crooked cop lied in court to frame him and the DA went along with the sham just to get his numbers up. How many innocent people have lost years of their lives because of this? Have we executed anyone because on this? Even person, even one year, is intolerable. (And does anything ever happen to the cop and DA who set someone up for the crime they didn't commit? Nope.)
So yeah... I'm all in favor of anything that conditions juries to expect to see real evidence... even if that expectation is unrealistically high... as opposed to taking the word of a human who may be lying. It's absolutely better than the alternative.
And as a purely practical matter; your friend, frustrated though he may be, still comes out as a winner and should be happy. Said "CSI effect" is also generating more demand for forensic evidence in order to convict. Higher demand means a higher budget and more cool toys for him to play with... and better job security as well.
Looks, to me, like a win-win across the board.
Imagine all the people...
Well, I guess that removes you from the pool of decent people then, as they would be ashamed to twist words around like you do in order to justify your intolerance.
For many of us, having a positive financial return is hardly a reason to do anything at all.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Sure, we can blame some of that on standards and requirements laid out by the legislatures. "Add this to your 5th grade health class." "Add this to your 7th grade math class." Teachers are spending a lot of time pushing crap that a politician thought was important, not what's actually important. I wouldn't be surprised to find that 10% of classroom time is wasted on political agendas instead of learning. But it's not the entire problem.
A big part of the problem is refusal to accept discipline as an appropriate path. (Note that discipline does NOT mean corporal punishment.) If little Johnny Trouble is disrupting class again, the rest of them just sit there and read 'Dick and Jane' for the 17th time while the teacher spends an hour trotting him down to the behavioral psychologist's office. Little Johnny is talked at without effect, then put back in the classroom where he then disrupts it for the 18th time. Little Johnny needs to be efficiently removed from the classroom setting without the parent's approval, and without concern for his "feelings", as every other approach rewards his bad behavior. And yes, his teacher should be able to tell the other kids that little Johnny was kicked out because he was being naughty. Stigmatize the offense. It works.
I'm not blaming little Johnny here. I'm blaming the system for deciding that accommodating little Johnny's every whim is a viable approach to education. If little Johnny has to end up in "special school" for a month to work out his issues, that gives 24 other kids the chance to excel. If Mommy or Daddy feel that little Johnny is being stigmatized by being placed in special school, Mommy or Daddy can hire a specialist to work with little Johnny to figure out his problems and get him cooperating so he can return to the classroom. The schools don't have to abandon him, but they also don't have to keep him slowing down the mainstream.
School boards have to step up and recognize they must represent the 95% of kids who aren't little Johnny. They also have to stop acting as the supreme court of schoolhouse behavior, and stand up to the whiny parents who think their kid shouldn't have been singled out. "Sorry, ma'am, that's a decision between the teacher and the principal, not us. They were there, we were not. Their decision is final. Your alternative to special school is to move out of our district, and take little Johnny with you. Now if you would please sit down and shut up, we won't send your new district a full transcript of little Johnny's discipline issues. Have a nice day."
Another big part of the problem is refusal to accept failure as a possible outcome for a child. Instead of moving the class along and leaving little Johnny behind, the entire class is held back to little Johnny's level of non-progress. If little Johnny can't keep up, alter little Johnny's schedule, not the whole class. There can be a standard pace, and it can be set to the pace of the average student. It doesn't have to be hyperaccelerated, but without the anchor of slow students, it will certainly speed up.
"No child left behind" takes the Garrison Keeler joke of "Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average" and tries to apply it legislatively, which is absurd. 5% of the children will always be the bottom 5% of the children. So far all it's accomplished is that we've proven that we can't squeeze 5% up into the bell curve without squeezing down the middle 90% to hide them.
John
In fact this is what defines SF according to a lit professor from whom I took a class on SF. Absent from his definition (which was accepted by some award group . . . Hugo perhaps) was any mention of "future", or science as a device. What was most critical was the recasting of the human condition in a new paradigm as a way to examine it. One of the best books from that course was "Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. LeGuin. Of course SF != SciFi.
If you go far enough it is indeed east of Java :P
One convenient locations...in Africa.