Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
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Bad Science in Science Fiction Movies Poll
May 10th, 2009
I’ve been too busy, traveling, tired/jet lagged, and/or sick (fighting a little cold) to catch the Wolverine or Star Trek movies. I may well get to Star Trek today. I was planning to write a “science of” after watching it, but Phil Plait at badastronomy.com beat me to it. I’ll watch it and if I catch things he didn’t, or disagree with his assessment, I’ll post an entry about it.
I should be settled back in Porto Alegre this week and things should settle down with more regular, focused blogging.
In the meantime, I was surprised the other day over the Mind Meld post about the disagreement concerning Sunshine, and also on sfsignal.com about Outland (see comments at the link).
So, while I’ve already given away my vote for Armageddon as the worst science fiction movie of all time, I think there are a lot of other candidates that are arguably worse. What’s your vote?
Loading ...Some comments about why some of the movies are on the list. Usually there will be many other problems that what I note here. Mission to Mars has leaking liquids freezing solid like icicles. Outland has people living in the deadly radiation belt of Jupiter without problems or mention, as well people exploding in space. The Core is legendary. Independence Day has the Macintosh infecting alien computers with a virus. Signs may or may not be a science fiction movie, technically, but there was a lot of dumb stuff in there. Superhero movies in general all have ludicrous science, and I tend to watch them as fantasy, but often they try to be half-way serious by invoking genetics, nanotechnology, radioactivity, cosmic rays, but the laws of physics, pretty much never.
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There was actually a bit of *good* science — in passing, that most people probably didn’t see — in the third Spider-Man movie. No, I’m not talking about a particle physics experiment creating the Sandman….
Early on, in the gratuitous “crane runs into building seven times” scene, Spidy’s new potential love interest falls out of the building. Spiderman shows up to save the day, of course.
Frequently, in movies, somebody would just “fall faster” and catch up. This can make sense in some skydiving sqeuences, where people are deliberately spreading their arms and such to increase drag, but rarely is it done right. In this case, though, Spiderman shows up, and whatshername already has a head start of gravitational acceleration. He needs to catch up, so what does he do? He shoots a web out at a chunk of falling building, and then pulls on it to accelerate himself *faster* than gravity, thereby being able to catch up with the falling whatshername.
Small, subtle, all about Newton’s physics, but it heartened me.
Thanks, Rob. My colleague Danny Dale at Wyoming uses comic book examples in his intro physics course, particularly the Gwen Stacy falling sequence from the comic book that is ludicrous and fails for exactly the reason you mention. Plus, the Green Goblin says that from such an extreme height, she was dead before she even hit the ground!
Well Mike, I have to remember the bad climatological science in “The Day After Tomorrow”. It’s another entertaining but confusing doozie.
I concur with Mr. Cater about the Day After Tomorrow. I normally dig apocalyptic films but simply viewing the previews made me disgusted by it. Especially the scene of a tornado appearing in Los Angeles and one appearing on Hollywood Hill. I don’t care if this is some cataclysmic climate change, the weather is still tied down to physics.
Ironically, I actually enjoy Independence Day though mostly just as a fun dumb film. If you analyze it then it most certainly falls apart. And I tend to have a soft spot for movies so bad they’re good.
John, you’re right. That movie struck me as pretty silly, too! I should have put it on the initial list.
It’s not SF, but I love the clarity of this bit from the IMDB Goofs page for Vertical Limit. It’s been expanded since, but IIRC this used to be the entirety of the entry:
“Everything shown about belaying and climbing techniques, high altitude mountaineering, helicopter usage, high altitude medicine (exception: dex), high altitude mountaineering clothes and the shape of K2 is wrong.”
Although neither of these are directly related to plot, Red Planet has two major biology gaffes: it gets the nucleotides of DNA wrong (instead of ACTG, one of the characters indicates they are ACTP). And it identifies what is clearly an insect as a nematode (which is a roundworm). This is high school level material. I use clips of both of these in introductory college biology courses, and they always get a good laugh. The movie might or might not have the worst science overall, but it certainly belongs in the biology hall of shame.
And I can’t proofread…
While I’m at it, when the “nematodes” in Red Planet explode out of a human body, they look like a mini-fireworks display, and this is accompanied by popping firework sounds. Huh?
Bill, that’s too bad. Red Planet gets a lot of the physical science right. Perhaps they had one science consultant when they needed two (or more!).
Journey to the Center of the Earth, worst science, hands down.
I can’t seem to get your RSS feed to work with my program. Do you mind telling me the url so I can read your posts on my own program?
L,
Mike’s feed is:
http://www.mikebrotherton.com/?feed=rss2
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2012 is worth seeing, just for the Yellow Stone eruption sequence, but over all the ‘science’ in this movie is even worse than “The Day After”.
I thought the Yellow Stone eruption sequence was pretty good, but those supersonic ash cloud flows and shock waves never seem to go faster than 40 miles an hour. The small earth quakes are really well done, but the big ones are ridiculous. I thought the bit about California falling into the sea was a metaphor. A really big solar flare would simply cook the earth – the mechanism of special neutrinos heating up the core by some arbitrary number of millions of degrees? Wouldn’t you notice some drastic effects sooner? Don’t get me started on pole reversals and continents moving 1000 of miles instantly. Something about momentum. The ‘tidal’ waves are inconsistent. The little ones are big enough to capsize ships in the middle of the ocean and turn aircraft carriers into surf boards on the Capital Mall. The final apocalypse – tidal waves that are over 15,000 feet high – well – eh. Chokes me up. I guess if you can move the crust relative to the core by thousands of miles in a matter of seconds, the oceans might slosh out, but
everyone would be dead from whiplash, and there would be no movie.