Sci-Fi Movies and 'Bad Science' 958
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.
#1 law violated (by occurance) (Score:5, Interesting)
Arthur C. Clarke said... (Score:3, Interesting)
Thus, I feel that films about the realms of magic fall into the same catagory. There are so many inconsistencies in the Harry Potter stories, for example, they make me wince. My girlfriend laughs and reminds me that it's just a story, but it's often not about the magic or science (as the case may be). It's often just an issue of consistency. I mean, if those kids can cast a spell to keep their faces dry in the rain, why can't they cast it on their whole bodies?
OK, I guess I've got better things to do than rant about Harry Potter... Or do I?
Let's Face It... (Score:5, Interesting)
/stating the obvious
Real or like Star Trek (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Half the time, it would be easy to fix! (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [imdb.com]. 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.
If it's not hard sci--fi, it's FANTASY (Score:3, Interesting)
This is why "Science Fiction" and "Fantasy" are commonly lumped together in book stores. It can be difficult to separate one from another and people endlessly dicker over where the line is. Also, where do you categorize books which were based on the science of the day, but over the course of fifty years are systematically proven incorrect?
Now people usually separate sci-fi into "hard" and "soft" to make this distinction, because they don't want to lump sci-fi and fantasy together. This seems to me to be a pointless form of elitism. Science fiction without any scientific explanation (even if not given) behind the "science" is fantasy, plain and simple.
You mean like "Superman"??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:2001 space odyssey (Score:3, Interesting)
Clarke took great pains to work out the science in his stories to be as real as possible.
Re:Half the time, it would be easy to fix! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Gigawatts (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Bad science or a bad genre? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes, things get blurred based on who the author is. I suppose anything that Arthur C. Clarke ever wrote gets called sci-fi, while anything Stephen King writes is horror. The Dark Tower books are as sci-fi as it gets, IMO, but betcha you'll find 'em lurking over in the monsters-under-the-bed section.
But back to the topic: If I want to see "bad science," I don't go to a theatre. I go to the undergrad labs ;-)
Capricorn one - bad science or good science ? (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, there *is* a thing as being too geeky. (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's not forget that filmmaking is an art and as such doesn't have to be realistic. I notice irrealistic stuff in a movie, and cringe when it isn't justified, but gladly accept it when it is. The need for style > the need for realism.
This is especially true for Asian movies and directors, whose respect for reality is far supreior to that of most Hollywood directors, but will willingly disregard it when it pleases them. I could mention John Woo's HK era masterpieces, which are wholly unrealistic -- but who cares? Tsui Hark's Time and Tide is an incredible combination of highly realistic action moments, far more than 99% Hollywood movies, and completely ludicrous/impossible events. And the director knows it.
Re:Reality Check (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it's a SCIENCE fiction movie. "Fiction" would normally be considered redundant; "true story" has to be explicitly labelled, since we assume the opposite.
The problem with SCIENCE fiction movies that don't use correct SCIENCE is that the authors can do whatever the hell they feel like with no consequences to the story, and generally that sucks. The story is one big deus ex machina. I mean hell, even death can be randomly reversed in a non-science SCIENCE fiction movie. Spock's dying was sorta dramatic; who really gave a damn that Data died in Nemesis? Anyone? Anyone? If they want him back there's more ways to get him back then you can shake a stick at. Drains the drama right out. (And provides a vivid illustration of the damage to the Star Trek universe that has been wreaked since then.)
It absolutely destroys the drama. Note I'm not criticising the "reality" or other "nerd" points, I'm making a point about the quality of the movie.
It's a real shame, too, because real science-based SCIENCE fiction movies have a vastly wider drama continuum available to them then traditional movies. Few things are as alienating as being thirty light years from the nearest human, ripped out of one's time into a competely unfamiliar society, or facing some of the unique hells technology can provide. To piss away these opportunities in favor of deus ex machina after deus ex machina is doing everyone, including the author as well as the more-obvious audience, a disservice.
Only science fiction shows think they can get away with this kind of deus ex machina. Even soap operas pay more attention to continuity, and I'm not kidding in the slighest.
Star Trek TNG - Technical Manual (Score:4, Interesting)
"The Starship Enterprise is not a collection of motion picture sets or a model used in visual effects. It is a very real vehicle; one designed for storytelling. [...] Documents such as this Technical Manual help give some background to the vision we work so hard to create on Star Trek. Rick [Sternbach] and Mike [Okuda] have obviously had a lot of fun filling in the gaps and trying to find technical 'explanations' for some of our mistakes." -- Gene Roddenberry
There you have it, folks: story comes first, physical accurate explanations come later. The list of credits has a lot of names from NASA, Boeing, Rockwell and so on. Those scientists (or people in the know) were constantly asked from advice - but if the story demanded some excuse, then the scientific background was set aside (according to the comments scattered throughout the manual).
Do you honestly think this has hurt the series?!
Re:In Space No One Can Hear You Scream (Score:4, Interesting)
With no atmosphere, there is no shockwave. Sure, the debris from the explosion would eventually hit you, but no one would seriously try to call actual matter hitting you "sound."
I repeat: Explosions in space have no shockwaves. A nuke detonated 10 feet over the surface of the moon would amount to little more than a small dust cloud a few feet in diameter (if anything) when the remaining atoms slammed into the surface. It would be nothing compared to a similar detonation on Earth.
Hulk - graphics. (Score:2, Interesting)
So if you want to see a good representation of current cell visualization techniques, take a look at that sequence again.
Re:Alien warships use AppleTalk! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In Space No One Can Hear You Nitpick (Score:4, Interesting)
An exploding manned (soon to be unmanned) spacecraft would carry a breathable atmosphere and other gases/particles to carry sound. Weapon zaps and engine whines would be audible from within these crafts and over their comm-links. It's all a question of where you stick your microphone. Nobody is telling you where the mic is or how it works.
Sophomoric pet peeves (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Gee (Score:4, Interesting)
If you can strip out all of the characters and plot from a story and it's still interesting, it's probably sci-fi.
You read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to hear Captain Nemo explain how they fuel the submarine, how they feed the crew, etc. But you don't watch Star Wars to learn about ion engines, blasters or light sabres work.
Re:Gee (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh gag me. Why does Slashdot tolerate this sort of self-congratulatory egomaniacal crap? Give me a break. You think you're the only person who passed high school physics? Newsflash: you're not that special.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to rip on you, but it just really gets me when I hear people here sighing and tsk-tsk-ing the scapegoat "education system," and assuming that they're not only in the intellectual elite of their peers and co-workers, but that the rest of their society isn't even close to them. Oh those poor, stupid morons, stumbling around the sidewalk
Blech. Get over yourself, kid. People aren't as dumb as you think and one day, you're going to say the wrong thing to one of them and come out looking like a total, arrogant ass.
Bad Astronomy (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, First off: I have no problem with "physics" like this - it's suspesion of disbelief.. I know that it wouldn't happen, but it doesn't ruin the movie for me..
But what really annoys me is when TV hosts of (for example) the Discovery channel, start claiming "there is real science behind it!"
When Spiderman was released, Discovery had an interview with different entymologists and biologists, asking them about the "science" in the film.. and their conclusion was "there is real science behind it."
For example, when asked about "spider-strength", the biologist said "spiders can lift many times their own bodyweight - so it's correct!".. while completely ignoring that the reason that spiders can lift many times their own weight is that they're small, not because there is some magical "spider" quality that gives them super-strength.
If a spider was a big as, and weighed as much as a human being, it wouldn't be able to damnwell move, let alone lift anything, because its muscles wouldn't have enough strength to overcome their own weight.
This is what pisses me off - not the faux-science, but supposedly intelligent individuals treating it as real science.
Do not revise history (Score:3, Interesting)
In a couple years I guess we will have to settle on vernacular pronunciations of peta- (10^15), and exo- (10^18) bytes.
Never explain, it ruins the concept (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The Matrix (Score:3, Interesting)
30 seconds isn't enough time to understand a nursery rhyme. You judged it, resulting in probably a dismissal of the nuiances of it.
The movie was art--like a painting. There are at least three layers of meaning buried in the darn movie, with several counterbalances and bits of foreshadowing. I'm going to have to watch the whole darn thing at least twice more before I can say that I "fully understand" it.
Now, it's fine if you don't like it--there are all sorts of complex works of art that I don't like and won't spend the time to fully understand. But don't say that you "understand" it.
Especially if your answer to "is life predetermined" is "[you're] a total pussy."
Internal Consistency (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't mind too many deviations from our currrnt knowledge of physical laws, just so long as the story doesn't contract itself. If the premise of a sci-fi of fantasy story holds that a "ruby fire beam" only burns through inorganic material, then when hits the hero I expect his brass belt buckle to burn, but not his leather belt.
I admit that not all speculative fiction is based on laws of physics that are different from what our scientists have discovered. However, as long as a story does not violate it's own "laws of physics", I can usually sit back and enjoy it...
Re:Gee (Score:4, Interesting)
This is visible to some extent in all films, not just Science Fiction. For example, I recently saw The Count of Monte Cristo. In it, a prisoner is taught to become a master fencer by another elderly prisoner, while digging a tunnel and being malnourished. And he taught him on stone so well that fighting on a sandy beach presented no problem whatsoever. Clearly not very likely, but acceptable enough as a plot point in a rented movie since the overall story of escape and vengeance was more interesting.
From my point of view, I'm more critical of science fiction because I like science. I can accept minor bs-physics (for example, almost no space movie that I've seen has bothered with the fact that planets move - somehow Mars is always on the way to Earth) if there is an interesting story that doesn't harp on it.
I never could understand why Solo et. al. weren't bothered by a moon floating without a planet, unless they just assumed it was Alderon's. And in Star Trek II I always wondered why the sensors didn't notice a missing planet, but the story and execution made up for that oddity.
The same criticisms of SciFi are probably true of historically themed films to historians, but this is not commented upon nearly as often.
*[I learned in a Theatre History class that there once was a movement and law in France that the plots of all plays were to be in real time to the performance. Strange, but not quite as drastic as killing slaves for real blood near the end of the Roman Empire.]
Repeat to yourself "It's just a show" . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
I get torqued about this kind of thing from time to time, but far less than I used to.
Most SF movies are allegorical; they don't try or even need to get the facts absolutely straight to a) tell the story, and b) get a point across. For example, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence was chock full of silliness, but it got an important moral point across about trivializing sapient creatures. Minority Report had a big plot hole, but it was a thought-provoking allegory about how reliance on a crime-predicition technique could screw over the innocent.
Bad Science is a problem when the story directly warns about a specific problem . . . typically, "awful warning" stories about health or environmental issues. For example, there was an utterly ludicrous TV movie about global warming a year or two ago. No one could possibly learn anything from it that might make than informed citizen.
Stefan Jones
It's out! [sjgames.com]
Re:You mean like "Superman"??? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Gee (Score:2, Interesting)
We allow ourselves to go along with the author's contra-factual assumptions, to see where they lead the story, and to allow ourselves to become engaged by a tale of a world almost, but not quite, like our own.
The best science fiction tales, in my opinion, are those in which the author respects this effort on the part of his audience, and doesn't ask them to suspend disbelief unnecessarily. For example, look at any of Robert L. Forward's novels. He may ask you to believe, for the purpose of his story, that life (of some sort) could exist on the surface of a neutron star. But, beyond that one assumption, he builds an entirely consistent fictional universe, and weaves an interesting story around those creatures, and the first human crew that encounters them.
While there is a lot of bad science in bad science fiction, there's also plenty of good science in good science fiction.
Re:In Space No One Can Hear You Scream (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Gigawatts (Score:2, Interesting)
When I saw it back in 85 with subtitles it was written that way.
Re:The Matrix (Score:3, Interesting)
In the Matrix, Neo dodges several bullets in a superhuman fashion, but gets nicked by the last. When the agent puts his gun to Neo's forehead, for a second you believed he might actually kill Neo.
In the Matrix Reloaded, Neo blocks the edge of a sword with his bare hands and gets a paper cut. At no point did I think that Neo was in any danger, but the fight still goes on for another ten minutes. In another scene, Morpheus falls off the truck, but manages to grab the side and pull himself up despite the agent. Over and over.
In every agent-human fight in the Matrix, the human narrowly dodges death. In no agent-human fight in the Matrix Reloaded did the audience feel there was any danger to the human. That's why I disliked the Matrix Reloaded.
For once they were being expected to think.
Not really. The philosophy was basic. This was no where near Pi, for example.
Re:Gee (Score:3, Interesting)
If it's set in space, the future, or both, it's sci-fi.
If it's set in the past and there are monsters, it's fantasy.
There is no science to back up Star Wars. Up until Episode 1, light sabres had "special crystals" in them, and the Force was just the Force.
There is no science in the Star Wars movies. That doesn't make them bad sci-fi, it leaves them as what they are: good fantasy.