What's the worst example of bad science in a film you've watched?

[Unrulyhandbag]

Erm, Plan 9 from outer space anyone?

"According to Eros, the humans will eventually discover the solarbonite, a bomb that has the effect of exploding "sunlight molecules". Eros explains that a solarbonite explosion would destroy everything the sunlight touches, causing a chain reaction that would eventually destroy the entire universe."

0_O ?

[/thread]Either that or plan9 from outer space shouldn't be allowed.
There's not a single thing in the film that holds up to any scrutiny. shoddy camera work, production, sets, special effects, script, story and everything else. It wasn't accused of being the worst film ever made for no reason.

 

[Guest_Star]

You don't have to go to sci-fi movies and space to find bad science. Just pick a random movie made after 1970 involving gunplay, and the odds are the movie makers know nothing about Newton's 3rd law.

I guess another explenation could be that plasma or laserguns ionizes the air around it, within the gun from which it is fired. This could make it produce sound since oxygen might exist within the guns firing, thus enabling the sound to travel, with the shot, into a tiny fraction of space before the oxygen is dissolved.

So, in your spaceship, you'd have a laser inside the ships atmoshpere, and you must open a hatch to let the beam (and a bit of air) out each time you fire it?

 

[Seerio]

As much as I enjoyed the first film, the Matrix as a concept makes no sense.
The laws of thermodynamics do not work that way!

[HEADING=2]Entropy motherfuckers! Look it up![/HEADING]

Would you (or anyone else) mind explaining that relation a little bit? I don't think I understand.

Hell, link me to some literature about it if possible.

 

[Boneasse]

You don't have to go to sci-fi movies and space to find bad science. Just pick a random movie made after 1970 involving gunplay, and the odds are the movie makers know nothing about Newton's 3rd law.

I guess another explenation could be that plasma or laserguns ionizes the air around it, within the gun from which it is fired. This could make it produce sound since oxygen might exist within the guns firing, thus enabling the sound to travel, with the shot, into a tiny fraction of space before the oxygen is dissolved.

So, in your spaceship, you'd have a laser inside the ships atmoshpere, and you must open a hatch to let the beam (and a bit of air) out each time you fire it?

Nah, it was just a suggestion as to a possible explanation. Not something I'd necessarily do myself. Besides, it was a half-assed suggestion at late in the evening.

 

[Angryman101]

this is probably going to sound stupid

Spoiler

at the end of Wanted Angelina Jolie's character fires a bullet around in a circle that kills 9 people I think. that was so unbelievably ridiculous that it ruined the whole movie for me.

I'm sure I can think of other ones but that one sticks out in my mind the most

The Wanted movie was pretty silly, get the comic book, so much better.

OT:I was a bit iffy on the mutants in Pandorum(And how they weakened as the movie went on). How does a drug that speeds up evolution so you can adapt to a new planet faster turn you into very loud and annoying, virtual indestructible mutants?

I actually feel the opposite: the movies to both Wanted and Kick-Ass were better than their comic counterparts. The movies tried to give the story direction and, for lack of a better word, a point. Seriously, Wanted's comic had a really cool idea, super villains and the like, but it was so god damned pointless and stupid. It's retardedly cynical for absolutely no reason: the main guy kills random people without a second thought from the get-go. He just goes 'yeah, I hate my desk job, time to kill people.' Not a second thought. At least the movie tries to give him proper motivation and humanization. Kick-Ass similarly meandered around being absurdly violent for no reason other to be absurdly violent. After reading both comics (I actually couldn't get all the way through Wanted, it was so god damn stupid), I walked away feeling really disappointed. The movies weren't even that good, especially Wanted.

 

[Khitchary]

FAIL. Ok .... you are all arguing about something that is really stupid in regards the *can you hear lasers in space*.

1. There is no *science* to show that we will ever be having *space ships* or *laser weapons*.
2. There is no life any place near earth, so even if we did develop these ships (which we cannot and will not) we would only have each other to fight, as there is no other inhabitable planet with the distance you could travel in a life time even IF you could travel at light speed.

Science FICTION. That implies make believe. As in the people making know it isnt real. It is not supposed to be real. It is never based on real science, no one has ever claimed that it was. Even science fiction written by scientists does not use real science.

Just accept that movies are make believe, and you may enjoy them a little more (although tbh i think 4/5 movies made are rubbish if not more, but that has to do with terrible acting/directing/script writing etc.......)

 

[V3x]

anyone see the movie shoot em up?
my friend had a blu ray copy. he said it was awesome...
The main character on several occaisions kills people with carrots. seriously. at one point he shoves a carrot into someones mouth and it comes out the back of the guys head....

Yeah, the movie is simply awesome just for the insane and unbelievable action scenes.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

That you can hear explosions and laserguns in space.
It's the worst because the film-makers can't even plead ignorance - everybody knows about this.

One of the reasons I loved firefly so much! They actually did this right!

 

[Outright Villainy]

As much as I enjoyed the first film, the Matrix as a concept makes no sense.
The laws of thermodynamics do not work that way!

[HEADING=2]Entropy motherfuckers! Look it up![/HEADING]

Would you (or anyone else) mind explaining that relation a little bit? I don't think I understand.

Hell, link me to some literature about it if possible.

Well, the first law of Thermodynamics states that the amount energy in a system is equal to the work put in, as well as heat lost the surroundings.
Everyone's heard:
"Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, just changed from one form to another."

For humans to have to be able to produce energy, the machines will have to give them the same amount of energy. If the humans were a perfect machine, they'd simply get back what they started with. Entropy is kind of hard to explain, but essentially in every thermodynamic process, the amount of useable energy either stays the same, or more realistically, always decreases. Think of heat loss to the surroundings in any machine, or the energy wasted powering their brain. There's no way they can get that back.

They're basically wasting energy keeping humans alive, which defies the entire point.

 

[V3x]

FAIL. Ok .... you are all arguing about something that is really stupid in regards the *can you hear lasers in space*.

1. There is no *science* to show that we will ever be having *space ships* or *laser weapons*.
2. There is no life any place near earth, so even if we did develop these ships (which we cannot and will not) we would only have each other to fight, as there is no other inhabitable planet with the distance you could travel in a life time even IF you could travel at light speed.

Science FICTION. That implies make believe. As in the people making know it isnt real. It is not supposed to be real. It is never based on real science, no one has ever claimed that it was. Even science fiction written by scientists does not use real science.

It's called rationalizing

Even sci.fi. movies need to have some ties to what the viewer thinks is or _could be_ a real world, even though we know some is just fiction. Many aspects of the movies follow scientific facts, like the gravity we have on earth, how space doesn't have a breathable atmosphere, that you can't walk through solid mass. etc.
The point being, if you break it down like that, you'll see that the fictional universe share many common aspects with the real one. If they changed too many basic "facts", no one would be able to relate to it or enjoy it.

But I get your point about hearing lasers in space. Even with the simulated-sound-in-helm argument, how do they explain the scenes where the camera is floating in space near a fleet battle, or for that matter, when you see a planet blow up from really far away. It always makes a huge exploding sound. Unless I'm mistaken, 2001 A Space Odyssey keeps space silent, then again, the majority doesn't know what that is or just finds it boring

 

[Unrulyhandbag]

The fact that, in the Star Trek movie (you know, the one that rebooted the franchize), the creators don't know how a Super Nova works.

Star go boom. Wipes out Solar System. Leaves a neutron star or blackhole. Done.

A super nova CANNOT threaten more than one solar system - it certainly cannot threaten "the entire galaxy".

Type 1A supernova. We've have yet to find remnants of such an event and given how bright they are it's presumed they totally detonate. The band of radiation from one of them could conceivably kill humans crossing it's path for millions of year to come; so yes it could threaten life forms across the galaxy, just not immediately.

 

[V3x]

Spoiler

As much as I enjoyed the first film, the Matrix as a concept makes no sense.
The laws of thermodynamics do not work that way!

[HEADING=2]Entropy motherfuckers! Look it up![/HEADING]

Would you (or anyone else) mind explaining that relation a little bit? I don't think I understand.

Hell, link me to some literature about it if possible.

Well, the first law of Thermodynamics states that the amount energy in a system is equal to the work put in, as well as heat lost the surroundings.
Everyone's heard:
"Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, just changed from one form to another."

For humans to have to be able to produce energy, the machines will have to give them the same amount of energy. If the humans were a perfect machine, they'd simply get back what they started with. Entropy is kind of hard to explain, but essentially in every thermodynamic process, the amount of useable energy either stays the same, or more realistically, always decreases. Think of heat loss to the surroundings in any machine, or the energy wasted powering their brain. There's no way they can get that back.

They're basically wasting energy keeping humans alive, which defies the entire point.

This is just a wild guess as I haven't read the books or any material describing the matrix idea/universe but,

what if it was intentional to symbolize that humans > machines, because of our "soul". Human warmth or energy can be interpreted in many ways

 

[daniel the immortal]

the core, everything about it... just bad

 

[Damoclies]

A fun fact is that you actually CAN use something like a "sling shot" effect to really travel through time. The "deeper" you are into a gravity well, the slower time flows. This has been demonstrated by extremely precise clocks placed in orbit gaining millionths of seconds over exactly synced clocks on the planet's surface. To truly see a noticeable change you would have to have a massively stronger gravitational effect, such as orbiting within a few miles of the event horizon of a black hole. At that point it's theoretically possible that you could reach a degree of time distortion that would mean that two days would pass outside the gravity well while only one passed inside your ship. A rather slow sort of time travel, but actually possible.

Sort of. This is just a Time Dilation effect, not "Time Travel." Basically, you can make your localized time slow down compared to the rest of the universe. However, the "sling shot" technique isn't at all necessary (hell, I'm not even really sure it works; astrophysics isn't my specialty). Time dilation works with any very high relative velocity, say in the neighborhood of 0.5 c for a useful effect (it is visible at small fractions of the speed of light [c] using synchronized atomic clocks, but a couple nanoseconds of difference isn't helpful to us mortals). Still, I wouldn't classify this as "Time Travel" since there is no way to go back in time, only forwards. Thus, it is technically equivalent to just waiting around, only without the hassle of actually waiting around.

Oh, it's not "time travel" in the classic sense that we all use it, but it is, at least relevant to those inside the ship, the same as jumping forward in time. Just much, much slower. Where Doc Brown and Marty could do it in the time it takes to gun it to 88, our hypothetical black hole orbiters would require 15 years or more to achieve the same result. (it was 1985 to 2015, right?) The same effect can also be achieved at relativistic speeds, since it's all essentially part of the same physical set of laws. (be it mass or velocity, they both effect good o'l E=MC(2) )

 

[Unrulyhandbag]

OK not a movie, but a TV series called 'Mutant X' or something like that.

Character gets shot and incapacitated by a laser beam or something. Theme song rolls. Same character wakes up in on a bed.

Supporting character casually says 'the gun destroyed part of your DNA'.

Er... do you writers even know what DNA is? Or what function it occupies?

This was the series meant to be a youth version of x-men that had to have all references to x-men and x-men like storytelling removed because of licensing issues (Marvel sold the same license twice, both times with exclusivity clauses, D'oh).

I've seen it and it's terrible they use "destroyed\damaged\mutated part of your DNA" all the time. They have mutants who are still mutating with no serious health problems just wonky powers. Then there's the acting and the absolute lack of chronology that thing was just shit.

 

[Crispee]

Any single piece of fiction where somebody goes inside a Volcano and is perfectly fine, just so long as they don't touch the lava, rather than say, having their brains melted out by being remotely near it.

 

[Ekonk]

Night of the Living Dead remake. It's one of my favourite films, but when Ben says that he's seen 'a man with a broken neck walk', it's just ridiculous. If decapitation or destruction of the brain works, breaking a neck will also work, as it's basically decapitation without the decapitation. The nerves are broken, there is no way even a zombie with a broken neck could still walk around.

 

[electric discordian]

Starship troopers, ignores something fundamental. It is fictitious science admittedly but does not make sense if you are willing to go along with the setting.

The Earth has a nuke which can split planets. This is proven scientific fact according to the setting.

They know where the bugs home planet is.

They send thousands of troops onto the planet to die when a push of one button would have destroyed the entire alien civilisation in about 2 minutes.

Which defies logic! At least the third film whilst being cheaply made redressed the logic balance by including some of the things from the book!

 

[taylor1077]

Anyone ever played "The Core" drinking game?

Simply put on the film The Core and take a finger of your drink every time someone comes up with a bit of dodgy science. Me and my friends got about halfway through the film to the point where the ship is dodging giant diamonds in the Earth's mantle (We decided to waterfall through this bit because of how wrong it is) before one of my friends was violently ill and we decided to call it a night

So yeah, it's a pretty bad film