# Worst "science" movie



## DreadPirateMurphy (Sep 20, 2005)

Lots of words have been written about films that stretch believability well past the breaking point.  Non-sensical plots, stupid behavior by characters, etc., are all fairly common in film.  What breaks it for me, though, is a film that purports to be set in "reality," yet gets even the simplist scientific principles wrong.

Note:  I exempt superhero and fantasy films, since the stretching of the laws of physics is one of the basic premises of the genres.  Critiquing X-Men for scientific plausibility is like saying Schindler's List could have used a laugh track.

The film that really has always irritated me was Armageddon.  It is probably my least liked film of all time (and I've seen some really bad ones).  I can't help but roll my eyes when I think of moon buggies armed with miniguns, timers that shut off when they lose radio contact, and asteroids that get angry at people.  (Arguably, Independence Day has as many improbable events, but more of them might pass the 5-year-old test than the ones in Armageddon.)

So what are the worst SCIENCE fiction films of all time, i.e., films where science matters to the plot, but apparently not to the scriptwriters or director.


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## Firebird (Sep 20, 2005)

*Hmmm....so many to choose from*

I'd have to probably say, "The Core". I laughed out loud watching that one. Super strong ships hull to withstand the heat and crushing pressure of the earth's core and then the crew goes outside of it while in the mantle. That's like climbing out a submarine at crush depth in a wetsuit. An insult to intelligence.


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## Dagger75 (Sep 20, 2005)

The Day After Tomorrow

 Now I know how fast you have to run to out run cold.


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## Zoatebix (Sep 20, 2005)

The Core is right up there with Dagger75's choice.


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## JimAde (Sep 20, 2005)

Armageddon's gotta be near the top of the list.

Here's a site with all the movie physics stupidity you can take: 
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/

Enjoy


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## Warrior Poet (Sep 20, 2005)

Whatever the crapfest with Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz (why, Rachel?  WHY?!) with the hydrogen explosion that levelled Chicago was.

Also, _The Saint_, Val Kilmer version.  Elizabeth Shue as a nuclear physicist (or whatever she was supposed to be).  My brain devolved just listening to her deliver her lines about whatever science she was explaining as you would to a kindergardener.

Warrior Poet, Neanderthal


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## Zoatebix (Sep 20, 2005)

And now I'm embarrassed  because I missed that firebird mentioned the Core.  Whoops!


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## The Grumpy Celt (Sep 20, 2005)

The Black Hole.

In, though and out the other side indeed...


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## cjdc1973 (Sep 20, 2005)

Hrm, I misread the thread entirely and have absolutely nothing useful to add whatsoever...

My netiquette skills have become pathetically dull.


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## sniffles (Sep 20, 2005)

Honestly, I'm having a hard time thinking of a science-related movie that had *good* science it it!! 

Sigh. Someday I really want to see a movie set in space in which something explodes - silently, with no fireball.  :\

[Edit] For worst science in a movie I've actually seen (though I regret it still): the exploding people on the surface of Mars in "Total Recall".


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## griff_goodbeard (Sep 20, 2005)

JimAde said:
			
		

> Armageddon's gotta be near the top of the list.
> 
> Here's a site with all the movie physics stupidity you can take:
> http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/
> ...



That site is classic, the write-up on The Core made me laugh out loud.   Boy, am I glad I never wasted money seeing the pile of $@$%.    Thanks for the link.


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## JimAde (Sep 20, 2005)

sniffles said:
			
		

> Honestly, I'm having a hard time thinking of a science-related movie that had *good* science it it!!
> 
> Sigh. Someday I really want to see a movie set in space in which something explodes - silently, with no fireball.  :\
> 
> [Edit] For worst science in a movie I've actually seen (though I regret it still): the exploding people on the surface of Mars in "Total Recall".



 I don't think it had any explosions, but 2001: A Space Odyssey correctly portayed silent events in space.  Can't think of any others right off.


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## Kanegrundar (Sep 20, 2005)

My list is waaaaay too long to list, but Armageddon and The Core are at the top of the list.  I still enjoyed both movies, though, because I was expecting a far-fetched sci-fi/action flick and got what I expected (and a little more) with both.

Kane


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## Pyrex (Sep 20, 2005)

Well, everyone already got 'The Core' and 'The Day After Tomorrow' which are some of the worst in recent memory.  

How about Terminator 3?  All _kinds_ of bad science there.


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## JimAde (Sep 20, 2005)

Pyrex said:
			
		

> Well, everyone already got 'The Core' and 'The Day After Tomorrow' which are some of the worst in recent memory.
> 
> How about Terminator 3?  All _kinds_ of bad science there.



 I don't know if you can call time travel bad science, since it's not really science at all.  More like philosophical speculation.   Or was there other bad science in that movie?  I don't remember it very well.

I just got done reading the intuitor review of "What the **** Do We Know".  I was actually interested in seeing that when it came out but now I'm SO glad I didn't.  Wow.


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## Mallus (Sep 20, 2005)

Who expected real science in a film called "The Core"... that featured an inverse rocketship that travels to --surprise-- the Earth's core?

That's pretty close to expecting a laugh track in "Schindler's List". Or perhaps a cameo by Hello Kitty in "The Sorrow and the Pity" (see, then the tag-line could have been "The Sorrow and the Kitty!". Genius, I say...)

I have a hard time thinking of a movie that qualifies. All the SF films I can think of fit into the category "comic book/pulp science".

Maybe "Event Horizon", which _looked_ almost 2001/2010-ish for the 1st 45 minutes or so, until it morphed into a totally unimaginative horror flick (now if it would have morphed into a smart horror flick, it would have rocked).

And Sphere. Not even my new HDTV could make that anything but crap, though I was astounded by how clear the text on all the little, meaningless computer displays were in HD...


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## Ankh-Morpork Guard (Sep 20, 2005)

Pyrex said:
			
		

> How about Terminator 3?  All _kinds_ of bad science there.




Well, if you're going to start going into movies that don't care about it in the first place, then sure we can name off pretty much every single movie ever made, especially anything science fiction/fantasy.


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## Thornir Alekeg (Sep 20, 2005)

I immediately thought of Armageddon when I saw the title of this thread.  

I was disappointed to see The Abyss listed as RP on tht Intuitor website.  It was a long time ago when I saw it, but I thought at the time that it was pretty good.  Now I know better.


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## Crothian (Sep 20, 2005)

The Abyss is sitll one of the better movies ever made.  I don't think the move erver claimed it was realistic.  

The science of Ghostbusters was pretty bad......


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## Warrior Poet (Sep 20, 2005)

JimAde said:
			
		

> Here's a site with all the movie physics stupidity you can take:
> http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/
> 
> Enjoy



My favorite quote from that site so far:

"There are individuals who have accidentally fallen through windows without sustaining serious injuries. There are also people who have survived the Ebola virus."

Warrior Poet


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## Zoatebix (Sep 20, 2005)

Firefly has silence in space, no?  But that's not a movie...  Didn't Alien have the tag-line that implied that they knew there shouldn't be sound in space?


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## DonTadow (Sep 20, 2005)

This summer's war of the worlds was horrible and full of scientific inconsistencies from the ever running car, to the working camera after the eom to the plancrash that destroyed everything but the house tom cruise was in (and a path for the minivan)


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## Crothian (Sep 20, 2005)

Zoatebix said:
			
		

> Firefly has silence in space, no?  But that's not a movie...  Didn't Alien have the tag-line that implied that they knew there shouldn't be sound in space?




In space no one can hear you scream


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## nakia (Sep 20, 2005)

While I loathe Armageddon, I have to go with The Day After Tomorrow.  The "you gotta be kidding me" moment was not any of the "temperature plummets 500 degrees in 12 seconds" or "global climate change in 72 hours", though.  It was the wolves.  I mean, really, they have to fight wolves on a tanker outside of the NYC Public Library?  Man, I feel stupid even typing that sentence.


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## JimAde (Sep 20, 2005)

nakia said:
			
		

> While I loathe Armageddon, I have to go with The Day After Tomorrow.  The "you gotta be kidding me" moment was not any of the "temperature plummets 500 degrees in 12 seconds" or "global climate change in 72 hours", though.  It was the wolves.  I mean, really, they have to fight wolves on a tanker outside of the NYC Public Library?  Man, I feel stupid even typing that sentence.



 Maybe the wolves were carried from the far North on those crazy winds.


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## Crothian (Sep 20, 2005)

JimAde said:
			
		

> Maybe the wolves were carried from the far North on those crazy winds.




ACtually the wolves escaped from a zoo in NYC, that was fully explained int he show


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## WayneLigon (Sep 20, 2005)

The Grumpy Celt said:
			
		

> The Black Hole. In, though and out the other side indeed...




That used to be a perfectly good assumption at the time the film was made, especially for a 'rotating' black hole. It was almost cutting edge science at the time because we hadn't yet seen evidence of one yet, so everything was up in the air. One of the assumptions was that for every black hole you had a white hole that was ejecting matter. We didn't yet have theories about it ripping every little particle down to the component quarks  There were several stories and novels at the time that used black holes as a travel mechanism (Tiptree's HeeChee books did, if I remember right).

There was also a TV film  about a family on a starship; at the end they also travel through a black hole and emerge from a white hole in a new universe. Don't remember the name of it, but it did have the cool effect of them firing the ships lasers and them seeing the laser light drawn into the hole


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## JimAde (Sep 20, 2005)

Crothian said:
			
		

> ACtually the wolves escaped from a zoo in NYC, that was fully explained int he show



 Ah.  I didn't actually see the movie.  So it's just wildly implausible instead of downright impossible.


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## Crothian (Sep 20, 2005)

JimAde said:
			
		

> Ah.  I didn't actually see the movie.  So it's just wildly implausible instead of downright impossible.




wolves being in a zoo is implausible?


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## Shadowdancer (Sep 21, 2005)

sniffles said:
			
		

> [Edit] For worst science in a movie I've actually seen (though I regret it still): the exploding people on the surface of Mars in "Total Recall".




I felt the same way when I saw "Total Recall" in the theater. That just ruined the whole movie for me. That, and how fast the atmosphere for Mars is generated and stabilizes. So much so that for years I refused to watch the movie again, on TV or on video.

Then, bored late one night, I started watching it on cable TV. And I realized something I missed the first time I saw it (and then felt really stupid). The exploding people on Mars _does not happen_. NOTHING in that movie really happens after Arnold is knocked out to be injected with his virtual "vacation." It's all the fake "secret agent" vacation scenario (even titled, IIRC, Blue Skies on Mars or something like that) injected into his memory. When the movie ends, in reality (although they don't show it), Arnold is still strapped into a chair in the Total Rekall facility. Since the exploding people and instant atmosphere are things happening in Arnold's imagination, they are perfectly legitimate.

I haven't seen it, but I've been told that on the commentary track of the "Total Recall" special limited edition DVD, Paul Verhoeven talks about this very thing, that many people missed that subtle little twist which makes the entire movie completely different.


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## wingsandsword (Sep 21, 2005)

I saw the title and my first thought was "The Core", my second thought was "Armageddon".  It should have been no surprise that it was that way to everybody else.

Yeah, Total Recall had that subtle little twist where you were never quite sure if the movie was real or not.

The basic plot of The Matrix bugged me on a Laws of Thermodynamics level, that how could they use human metabolisms as a power source, without losing power by whatever means they could have to feed humans.  You can't gain energy like that.  Then I read what the Wachowskis's original plans for the movie were but the studio thought it would be way too dense and incomprehensible to the moviegoing public: the minds of the enslaved humans were being used like a distributed computing network, their subconscious minds providing much of the raw computing power the machine empire used, using the unique properties of organic brains as a giant computer.  Warner Brothers thought nobody would ever understand that, but using people as batteries, that made sense (supposedly).

The basic plot of "Star Trek: Generations" also bothers me, since the basic idea of blowing up stars to get rid of their gravity well doesn't work, the mass remains the same even if you force the star to noval (and the end where a chemically propelled rocket takes only a few seconds to go from a habitable planets surface to a yellow star, which you see the rocket visibly fly all the way, and the explosion of the star is visible on the planet's surface only seconds after launch.)


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## Tarrasque Wrangler (Sep 21, 2005)

Dagger75 said:
			
		

> The Day After Tomorrow
> 
> Now I know how fast you have to run to out run cold.



 LOL, that was my immediate answer as soon as I saw this thread title.  I'll go you one better though: the friggin' weather CHASED THEM.  

I'd have paid to hear someone say "Hurry!  The climate's catching up with us!"

Of course, if you just put your brain in neutral and sit back and enjoy the dumb fun ... it still sucks.  Screw that movie.


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## Tarrasque Wrangler (Sep 21, 2005)

> I haven't seen it, but I've been told that on the commentary track of the "Total Recall" special limited edition DVD, Paul Verhoeven talks about this very thing, that many people missed that subtle little twist which makes the entire movie completely different.




Well, the neat thing about the movie IMO is that it left the truth open to interpretation.  Yeah, maybe it is all a simulation judging by what he told the Rekall doctors he wanted to see, or maybe it was real and he told them all those details because subconsciously he still remembered these things from the first time around.

I haven't watched the DVD.  If Verhoeven comes right out and says if it's real or not on the commentary, I'll be very disappointed.


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## Umbran (Sep 21, 2005)

_The Core_ and _Armageddon_ get a slight reprieve, in my mind.

Armageddon has some bad sicence, but I don't think it's really trying to be a sicence movie.  It is more an adventure flick, and with a goodly portion of charactgerization from the actors, it was at least entertaining.  The Core (though I haven't seen it) I will let off because of the Unobtanium reference - a dead giveaway that it knows it is bad.

_The Day After Tomorrow_, however, is a horrendous waste of existance.  I don't think there's a good argument that it doesn't have a political message, but it lies like a rug while delivering it.  That's not defensible.  Even less when the movie's just plain boring.


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## Crothian (Sep 21, 2005)

Congo was pretty bad


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## cignus_pfaccari (Sep 21, 2005)

DreadPirateMurphy said:
			
		

> Note:  I exempt superhero and fantasy films, since the stretching of the laws of physics is one of the basic premises of the genres.




The one thing that's really ever bothered me science-wise was the fusion reactor in Spider-Man 2.  

"...so, you can drown a fusion reaction in water?  And all the iron flying into it due to the magnetic field isn't shutting the fusion reaction down?  What the?"

I know, I know, superhero movie, but still.

Brad


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## Abraxas (Sep 21, 2005)

> Congo was pretty bad




Yes it was - did you mention this because it was on tonight


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## Welverin (Sep 21, 2005)

Firebird said:
			
		

> I'd have to probably say, "The Core". I laughed out loud watching that one. Super strong ships hull to withstand the heat and crushing pressure of the earth's core and then the crew goes outside of it while in the mantle. That's like climbing out a submarine at crush depth in a wetsuit. An insult to intelligence.




Hmm, I wonder where jonrog1 is.



			
				wingsandsword said:
			
		

> The basic plot of The Matrix bugged me on a Laws of Thermodynamics level, that how could they use human metabolisms as a power source, without losing power by whatever means they could have to feed humans.  You can't gain energy like that.




What I love about it is right afterwards Morpheus mentions that the machines have a form of nuclear fusion.



> Then I read what the Wachowskis's original plans for the movie were but the studio thought it would be way too dense and incomprehensible to the moviegoing public: the minds of the enslaved humans were being used like a distributed computing network, their subconscious minds providing much of the raw computing power the machine empire used, using the unique properties of organic brains as a giant computer.  Warner Brothers thought nobody would ever understand that, but using people as batteries, that made sense (supposedly).




Damn, that would have been much cooler, and more believable.


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## Barendd Nobeard (Sep 21, 2005)

cignus_pfaccari said:
			
		

> The one thing that's really ever bothered me science-wise was the fusion reactor in Spider-Man 2.
> 
> "...so, you can drown a fusion reaction in water?  And all the iron flying into it due to the magnetic field isn't shutting the fusion reaction down?  What the?"
> 
> ...




Same thing with *Superman*.  Turning back time by spinning the planet backward?  Not even *The Day After Tomorrow* was that dumb!


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## David Howery (Sep 21, 2005)

Crothian said:
			
		

> Congo was pretty bad



yeah, with the super duper laser.... the book was sooo much better and made so much more sense....


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## TheAuldGrump (Sep 21, 2005)

JimAde said:
			
		

> I don't think it had any explosions, but 2001: A Space Odyssey correctly portayed silent events in space.  Can't think of any others right off.




The otherwise pretty horrible Moontrap. It also has guns acting as a reaction engine - fire the gun in Zero G and get blown the other way. (And yes, guns _will_ work in a vacuum thank you very much! There is a series of books about guns that I will not buy because of an author who stated otherwise on these very forums... He obviously does not know enough about guns to be writing on the subject.)

Bad Astronomy is another good 'scientist poking fun at the movies' site. He considers The Core to have the worst movie physics ever. 

The Auld Grump


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## jasper (Sep 21, 2005)

The Day After (1984) Atom bombs fall over american but limited damage. Plus standard story line of horny girl wanting to be former maiden. This thing is still spoke of as great movie in the hollywood crowd.


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## Hand of Evil (Sep 21, 2005)

I enjoyed The Core   

The Day After Tomorrow was crap.


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## Umbran (Sep 21, 2005)

There's a huge difference between bad movie science, and bad science movies.

Superhero movies aren't science movies.  They are, in essence, fantasies.  Unless you're also goign to pick on The Hobbit because Smaug shouldn't be able to fly, superhero movies shouldn't be held to task for bad science.


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## Warrior Poet (Sep 21, 2005)

wingsandsword said:
			
		

> Yeah, Total Recall had that subtle little twist



_Total Recall_ and "subtle little twist" are two elements I never thought I'd see together in the same sentence.



			
				wingsandsword said:
			
		

> Warner Brothers thought nobody would ever understand that, but using people as batteries, that made sense (supposedly).



Never underestimate the ability of studio executives to underestimate the ability of the viewing public to embrace (more) intelligent movie scripts.

Warrior Poet


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## Warrior Poet (Sep 21, 2005)

Umbran said:
			
		

> There's a huge difference between bad movie science, and bad science movies.
> 
> Superhero movies aren't science movies.  They are, in essence, fantasies.  Unless you're also goign to pick on The Hobbit because Smaug shouldn't be able to fly, superhero movies shouldn't be held to task for bad science.



Agreed, which is why in that bad science linked page, I don't think _Reign of Fire_ should be on the list.

Warrior Poet


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## DungeonmasterCal (Sep 21, 2005)

What about "Fantastic Voyage" (1966)? It's a fun movie, but full of bad science.

If I recall correctly, if you shrink objects down like that you have to collapse the "spaces" between the atomic particles and they would weigh the same, but be much denser.  Or, if you somehow shed mass, people wouldn't have enough brain matter to function.  Larry Niven wrote something about this once, I think.


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## Warrior Poet (Sep 21, 2005)

Weren't there a few volcano-disaster-themed movies a few years ago that were pretty execrable?  I never saw 'em, but I can only imagine.

For a bit of bad geological science, how 'bout _XXX_?  Vin Diesel's character snowboards ahead of an avalanche.  I know, the guy's an extreme sports junkie, or something, but avalanches achieve speeds of 60 mph or more.  I don't know what top speed on a snowboard is, but c'mon!

Warrior Poet


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## Kahuna Burger (Sep 21, 2005)

Crothian said:
			
		

> wolves being in a zoo is implausible?



I think its more the wolves escaping from the entire zoo (as opposed to eating the yummy animals there) and avoiding all the similarly yummy carrion lying around to visciously attack the only potential food source that would actually fight back...  



> Whatever the crapfest with Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz (why, Rachel? WHY?!) with the hydrogen explosion that levelled Chicago was.



I think it was called chain reaction or something. Ironicly, its crappy science was (slightly) redeemed for me by a brief moment of movie realism where the hero and heroine fall through the ice into a freezing stream climb out and stumble wet across the windswept winter plain - and actually start dying of hypothermia shortly thereafter.

On Total Recall, the realty of the situation is ambiguous, but I could never fully accept the "its all a dream" explaination because the film shows scenes where arnie's character is not present and has no knowlege. If the director intended a definite dream answer, he should have avoided those scenes.


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## iwatt (Sep 21, 2005)

I hated the scene in Mission to Mars in which the characters jump ship, and catch up with each other and slow down at whim....


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## Kahuna Burger (Sep 21, 2005)

DungeonmasterCal said:
			
		

> What about "Fantastic Voyage" (1966)? It's a fun movie, but full of bad science.
> 
> If I recall correctly, if you shrink objects down like that you have to collapse the "spaces" between the atomic particles and they would weigh the same, but be much denser.  Or, if you somehow shed mass, people wouldn't have enough brain matter to function.  Larry Niven wrote something about this once, I think.




just to be really nitpicky, if you did shrink down all the atoms and cells and such proprtionally, they would no longer form the correct chemical receptors to take in oxygen and you would lie there and suffocate on the gigantic air molecules....

but shrinking movies, like time travel and super powers tend to be exempted from these sort of bash fests.


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## Warrior Poet (Sep 21, 2005)

Kahuna Burger said:
			
		

> I think it was called chain reaction or something.



That's the one!



			
				Kahuna Burger said:
			
		

> Ironicly, its crappy science was (slightly) redeemed for me by a brief moment of movie realism where the hero and heroine fall through the ice into a freezing stream climb out and stumble wet across the windswept winter plain - and actually start dying of hypothermia shortly thereafter.



I must have missed this part.  No doubt I was still fuming over Reeves outriding what was essentially a hydrogen bomb explosion on his little 150 dirt bike.  Or the fact that I paid full price to see this dog in theaters.

Warrior Poet


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## Warrior Poet (Sep 21, 2005)

The Grumpy Celt said:
			
		

> The Black Hole.
> 
> In, though and out the other side indeed...



I think I was too young to recognize there was bad science at work on this one.  I think I have nothing but fond memories of this film, probably because I loved the little floating robots (especially the one tough little robot who befriended the old, beat-up, past-his-prime robot), and was delightfully terrified of Maximillian.

That and there was that great (probably totally bad science) iconic moment of the burning meteor tumbling it's way down the length of the ship.  Just looked so cool.

Of course, I haven't seen the film in a long, long time, so it's probably best if I leave it in the fond, rose-colored nostalgia room and not disturb it by bringing it up into the light.

Warrior Poet


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## Kahuna Burger (Sep 21, 2005)

Warrior Poet said:
			
		

> I must have missed this part.  No doubt I was still fuming over Reeves outriding what was essentially a hydrogen bomb explosion on his little 150 dirt bike.  Or the fact that I paid full price to see this dog in theaters.
> 
> Warrior Poet



And remember, when on your dirt bike outriding hydrogen explosions that are leveling buildings behind you, find a 2 foot high dirt embankment to duck down behind, which will protect you from any damage.


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## Warrior Poet (Sep 21, 2005)

Kahuna Burger said:
			
		

> And remember, when on your dirt bike outriding hydrogen explosions that are leveling buildings behind you, find a 2 foot high dirt embankment to duck down behind, which will protect you from any damage.



Two hours and seven dollars I'll never get back.


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## The Grumpy Celt (Sep 21, 2005)

Warrior Poet said:
			
		

> Of course, I haven't seen the film in a long, long time, so it's probably best if I leave it in the fond, rose-colored nostalgia room and not disturb it by bringing it up into the light.




Stick to this. I also had rose colored memories and I made the mistake of watching _The Black Hole_ again a few years ago and it is just painful. Not funny bad - just painful. 

An interesting concept - a varation on the classic "travelers arrive at remote place controlled by a mad-man" - and the main ship is wonderfully Gothic. But aside from that, this movie is *deep hurting* on levels approaching _Monster-a-Go-Go_ and _Manos_ without the redeaming commentary by Joel or Mike and the 'Bots.


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## sniffles (Sep 21, 2005)

DungeonmasterCal said:
			
		

> What about "Fantastic Voyage" (1966)? It's a fun movie, but full of bad science.
> 
> If I recall correctly, if you shrink objects down like that you have to collapse the "spaces" between the atomic particles and they would weigh the same, but be much denser.  Or, if you somehow shed mass, people wouldn't have enough brain matter to function.  Larry Niven wrote something about this once, I think.




Actually, it was Isaac Asimov writing about that, I believe, not Niven.     And I still like Fantastic Voyage, bad science or no. 

Despite the supposed "twist" in Total Recall, I am still appalled by the exploding people. It was a completely gratuitous moment, done entirely for the special effects shock value. Bleah. I can overlook bad science in an otherwise fun movie, but that movie was two hours of my life wasted. I didn't even pay to see it, thank goodness, but I think my so-called "friends" had decided to spend a Saturday afternoon torturing me. 

I don't think the stuff mentioned in War of the Worlds counts as bad science; that's just bad action movie cliches.


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## DungeonmasterCal (Sep 21, 2005)

sniffles said:
			
		

> Actually, it was Isaac Asimov writing about that, I believe, not Niven.     And I still like Fantastic Voyage, bad science or no.




Oh yeah..I know Asimov wrote the book, but Niven had a short piece in a collection I read once about comic book science ("Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex", I think it was called).  IIRC, he touched on a lot of the comic book hero powers, not just Superman's.  I could be confusing this with something Asimov wrote from a scientific point of view, as well.  It's been a zabillion years since I read these things.


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## Rackhir (Sep 21, 2005)

I actually broke out laughing when watching the landing bit in "Armageddon". They had the shuttles come roaring in and trying to land on the asteroid like it was a runway, instead of just simply matching velocity and anchoring themselves. Then to make things even worse in the "landing" sequence they come slamming down onto the rocky surface with all of these jagged crystal spikes. I mean, we lost a shuttle because an icy chunk of foam hit a wing edge!

The Mini-guns on the exploration rovers were pretty funny as well. I remember thinking "Were they afraid Marvin the Martian was behind all of this?" At $100,000 per pound, you don't carry useless weight into space.

Deep Impact which came out that same summer I think was actually pretty good as far as physics and realisim. The only real flaw being the sunlight causing the comet surface to "explode", but at least that wasn't absurd.


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## Mouseferatu (Sep 21, 2005)

wingsandsword said:
			
		

> The basic plot of The Matrix bugged me on a Laws of Thermodynamics level, that how could they use human metabolisms as a power source, without losing power by whatever means they could have to feed humans.  You can't gain energy like that.  Then I read what the Wachowskis's original plans for the movie were but the studio thought it would be way too dense and incomprehensible to the moviegoing public: the minds of the enslaved humans were being used like a distributed computing network, their subconscious minds providing much of the raw computing power the machine empire used, using the unique properties of organic brains as a giant computer.  Warner Brothers thought nobody would ever understand that, but using people as batteries, that made sense (supposedly).




Wow. That would have made the movie about 10 times better for me.

Stupid WB execs...


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## Wombat (Sep 21, 2005)

No, it's not scientific, but it tries to be at a couple of points:

_The Horror of Party Beach!_ 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058208/

Imagine crossing The Creature from the Black Lagoon with an Annette Funicello-Frankie Avalon beach flick...

A scientist in the film discovers early on that the only way to defeat the monster is to dowse it with sodium, but no sodium is available from any pharmaceutical group from miles around!!!

...think about it  ...


----------



## DreadPirateMurphy (Sep 21, 2005)

Ooh, one more I forgot that nobody has mentioned.  The remake of Planet of the Apes.

Ignore the time travel, which is science fantasy.  What got me was the  whole "train chimps to fly spaceships" theme.


----------



## Prince Atom (Sep 21, 2005)

Wombat said:
			
		

> No, it's not scientific, but it tries to be at a couple of points:
> 
> _The Horror of Party Beach!_
> 
> Imagine crossing The Creature from the Black Lagoon with an Annette Funicello-Frankie Avalon beach flick...




Was that the one where the creature was created out of -- apparently -- nothing by nukular waste dumped in the ocean, not three miles off the shore, and then it waded ashore and started killing people at pajama parties?

Cuz I actually saw that one. With Mike and the Bots, thank someone, but still....

TWK


----------



## AdmundfortGeographer (Sep 22, 2005)

JimAde said:
			
		

> I just got done reading the intuitor review of "What the **** Do We Know".  I was actually interested in seeing that when it came out but now I'm SO glad I didn't.  Wow.



I actually saw it upon the recommendation of a college professor of mine. I couldn't have been more disappointed in the movie. I found out later that he hadn't actually seen it but was going on a relative of his recommendation... I told him that to me it amounted to a long advertisement for Transcendental Mediation (not that there is anything wrong with that, I just felt I was misled)... he was kind of deflated after that...

Well, actually, it could also be said to be an advertisement for living in Portland too. Portland does look to be a beautiful city in it.


----------



## Umbran (Sep 22, 2005)

DreadPirateMurphy said:
			
		

> Ooh, one more I forgot that nobody has mentioned.  The remake of Planet of the Apes.
> 
> Ignore the time travel, which is science fantasy.  What got me was the  whole "train chimps to fly spaceships" theme.




More important than that - _Where did the horses come from?!?_


----------



## Rel (Sep 22, 2005)

TheAuldGrump said:
			
		

> The otherwise pretty horrible Moontrap. It also has guns acting as a reaction engine - fire the gun in Zero G and get blown the other way. (And yes, guns _will_ work in a vacuum thank you very much! There is a series of books about guns that I will not buy because of an author who stated otherwise on these very forums... He obviously does not know enough about guns to be writing on the subject.)




This is true but the impulse generated by firing a single round from a typical small firearm (like a pistol) won't send you flying very fast.  Although I do imagine that in zero G it would impart enough momentum to send you tumbling slowly backwards, ruining your aim, if you didn't fire it perfectly in line with your center of mass.

I can forgive a lot of bad science in movies if they'll at least stay internally consistant.  Once they violate that rule then I'm lost as a viewer.

And nothing could save the unbelieveable crapfest of Day After Tomorrow.  If your going to chuck the science out the window then perhaps at least make me give a damn about the characters.  :\


----------



## Thornir Alekeg (Sep 22, 2005)

TheAuldGrump said:
			
		

> (And yes, guns _will_ work in a vacuum thank you very much! There is a series of books about guns that I will not buy because of an author who stated otherwise on these very forums... He obviously does not know enough about guns to be writing on the subject.)
> 
> The Auld Grump




I had always assumed that you couldn't fire a gun in a vacuum, but as I consider the idea, it makes sense.  If a bullet required atmospheric oxygen, where would it get it when first fired?  The powder is sealed in a casing that has to be pretty airtight, or else moisture would easily penetrate and ruin the powder.  

Well, I've learned my new thing for the day, I can coast from here.


----------



## JimAde (Sep 22, 2005)

But will the mechanics of the gun function in vacuum?  What about vacuum cementing?  Could the oil in the gun freeze or something?  I have no idea, just saying that space is a very hostile environment for gadgets.  Not too good for people, either.


----------



## mojo1701 (Sep 22, 2005)

Thornir Alekeg said:
			
		

> I had always assumed that you couldn't fire a gun in a vacuum, but as I consider the idea, it makes sense.  If a bullet required atmospheric oxygen, where would it get it when first fired?  The powder is sealed in a casing that has to be pretty airtight, or else moisture would easily penetrate and ruin the powder.
> 
> Well, I've learned my new thing for the day, I can coast from here.




Well, according to IMDb's goofs on "Firefly," they weren't supposed to fire in a vacuum. It's just that they asked the wrong "expert."



			
				JimAde said:
			
		

> But will the mechanics of the gun function in vacuum?  What about vacuum cementing?  Could the oil in the gun freeze or something?  I have no idea, just saying that space is a very hostile environment for gadgets.  Not too good for people, either.




Well, since there is no matter to transfer heat to, it wouldn't exactly freeze.


----------



## Rel (Sep 22, 2005)

JimAde said:
			
		

> But will the mechanics of the gun function in vacuum?  What about vacuum cementing?  Could the oil in the gun freeze or something?  I have no idea, just saying that space is a very hostile environment for gadgets.  Not too good for people, either.




My understanding (and I admit that it could be very flawed) is that vacuum cementing is mainly a property of small, granular particles.  I've always heard it referenced to things like moon dust and so forth.

The mechanics of many firearms are very simple.  Think of something like a Colt Single Action Revolver.  Pull back hammer.  Release hammer.  Bang.  I doubt that oil freezing is something to be overly concerned with in a case like that.

Granted, more modern firearms might have more complex mechanisms that are more prone to the harsh environment of space.  None of this would pose a difficulty to my suspension of disbelief.

More thorny would be the reason why you'd have a gun in space in the first place.  Even if they function perfectly, it's a highly impractical weapon for the environment from an operational standpoint.  You'd better hit whatever you're aiming at on the first try.


----------



## Rel (Sep 22, 2005)

mojo1701 said:
			
		

> Well, according to IMDb's goofs on "Firefly," they weren't supposed to fire in a vacuum. It's just that they asked the wrong "expert."




It says, 







> Jayne says that his gun (which we know as "Vera" from earlier in the episode) needs oxygen around it to fire. The gun is shown with standard projectile rounds which produce all the oxygen they need. The producers were not sure if "Vera" would need oxygen to fire. So they asked a gun expert, who gave them the wrong information, according to commentary on the DVDs.




That implies that they said on the show that "it needed oxygen around it to fire", which turned out to be erroneous information.


----------



## JimAde (Sep 22, 2005)

Rel said:
			
		

> More thorny would be the reason why you'd have a gun in space in the first place.  Even if they function perfectly, it's a highly impractical weapon for the environment from an operational standpoint.  You'd better hit whatever you're aiming at on the first try.




AND not use a very big gun.  Even if you hit your target, the bullet can keep going.  So gunfights in space will consist of everybody running around with .22 caliber hollowpoints and wincing every time they miss.


----------



## Rel (Sep 22, 2005)

JimAde said:
			
		

> AND not use a very big gun.  Even if you hit your target, the bullet can keep going.  So gunfights in space will consist of everybody running around with .22 caliber hollowpoints and wincing every time they miss.




I'd be a lot more inclined to use a grenade against my space enemies, provided I had access to some cover.


----------



## Rackhir (Sep 22, 2005)

JimAde said:
			
		

> But will the mechanics of the gun function in vacuum?  What about vacuum cementing?  Could the oil in the gun freeze or something?  I have no idea, just saying that space is a very hostile environment for gadgets.  Not too good for people, either.




According to some research I did. Vacuum "wielding" probably doesn't actually exist. From what I've been able to find, they've traced all supposed incidents of it to inadequate lubrication. 

As far as freezing goes, I'm not really sure that's an issue if the proper lubricants are used. Part of it is that space isn't actually "cold". While the nominal temperature is close to absolute zero, there isn't anything there to transfer heat to. Most heat transfer on earth is by convection or molecules bumping into other molecules. In space there is really only radiative heat transfer or emitting energy as infra-red radiation, which is a much much slower process.


----------



## John Crichton (Sep 22, 2005)

Umbran said:
			
		

> _The Core_ and _Armageddon_ get a slight reprieve, in my mind.
> 
> Armageddon has some bad sicence, but I don't think it's really trying to be a sicence movie.  It is more an adventure flick, and with a goodly portion of charactgerization from the actors, it was at least entertaining.



Never seen The Core but you touched upon something that I was going to say.  I'll elaborate -

According to the original poster, "What breaks it for me, though, is a film that purports to be set in "reality," yet gets even the simplist scientific principles wrong."

Armageddon never purported to be set in anything remotely resembling reality.  Yeah, it had humans in it but so does Lord of the Rings.  I think they are very similiar (and yes, I happened to love both films).  Does Armageddon have "bad science?"  Of course!  It's a doomsday movie released as a summer blockbuster, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by Mike Bay, the king of blowin' stuff up and blowin' it up real good and starring Bruce Willis who also likes to do the same.  Go watch the trailer/teaser/super bowl commercial again and think if you've been deceived into thinking that the film was grounded in any kind of science. 

I also think it should be mentioned that the movie is really Americana personified.  They have the biggest guns, the most ra-ra, big-ass jets and spaceships and even the crazy ruskie.  Check out the amount of flags, symbolism and general patriotic blabber going on.  None of it really makes any sense or really matters but it's all there wrapped up in a package of one-liners, cheezy romance and suspense points with some great production values.  Fantastic film once you remove it from the catagory of realism as it was properly presented as.

EDIT:  I'd also like to mention that for all you Lost fans out there (a show that has loads of melodrama, similar to Armageddon) JJ Abrams was a screenwriter on the flick.  Do I want all my movies like it?  No.  But it was a damn fun ride.

I had a much bigger problem with Deep Impact, which did present itself as realistic.  Maybe it's just me.


----------



## WayneLigon (Sep 22, 2005)

Kahuna Burger said:
			
		

> just to be really nitpicky, if you did shrink down all the atoms and cells and such proprtionally, they would no longer form the correct chemical receptors to take in oxygen and you would lie there and suffocate on the gigantic air molecules....
> 
> but shrinking movies, like time travel and super powers tend to be exempted from these sort of bash fests.




They actually mention this in the book; when they go to the lungs to refill the air tanks on the sub, they have to use a small version of the reducing machine to utilize the air there.


----------



## Rel (Sep 22, 2005)

Rackhir said:
			
		

> As far as freezing goes, I'm not really sure that's an issue if the proper lubricants are used. Part of it is that space isn't actually "cold". While the nominal temperature is close to absolute zero, there isn't anything there to transfer heat to. Most heat transfer on earth is by convection or molecules bumping into other molecules. In space there is really only radiative heat transfer or emitting energy as infra-red radiation, which is a much much slower process.




I'm rather talking out of my ass when I say this (I'm an amatuer physicist at best) but I'd be inclined to imagine that the heat radiated from the space suit might be enough to keep the oil from "freezing".


----------



## jasper (Sep 22, 2005)

speaking of gunfights in space imagine this...
James Bond  clone #007 steps out of ship to confront Blowfield #9 only to be killed by round James Bond clone #006 fired a decade ago killing Blowfield #7.  Talk about stray arounds.


----------



## WayneLigon (Sep 22, 2005)

jasper said:
			
		

> The Day After (1984) Atom bombs fall over american but limited damage. Plus standard story line of horny girl wanting to be former maiden. This thing is still spoke of as great movie in the hollywood crowd.




Did you ever actually _watch _ this movie or did someone just tell you about it and you just wanted to attempt a cutesy quote about 'the Hollywood crowd'? This is the one with Jason Robards where people die hideous slow deaths from radiation poisoning because they were 'lucky' enough not to wind up as shadows on a wall, where we see Kansas City wiped off the face of the Earth, rubble and fires and destruction everywhere... that movie. Probably the most realistic portrayal we've seen yet of what even a limited nuclear attack would do.


----------



## Kahuna Burger (Sep 22, 2005)

John Crichton said:
			
		

> Check out the amount of flags, symbolism and general patriotic blabber going on.



Actually, I had almost managed to repress that hell of oppressive brainwashing cheese. Thanks. :\ 

Armageddon was one of those movies where I came out thinking "wouldn't it have been easier (and maybe less painful) for them to write their message on a lead pipe and bash us over the head with that for 2 hours?"

And I found the production values uninspiring. No redeaming qualities, except maybe the existance of bruce willis.


----------



## WayneLigon (Sep 22, 2005)

Warrior Poet said:
			
		

> For a bit of bad geological science, how 'bout _XXX_?  Vin Diesel's character snowboards ahead of an avalanche.  I know, the guy's an extreme sports junkie, or something, but avalanches achieve speeds of 60 mph or more.  I don't know what top speed on a snowboard is, but c'mon!




From Guiness: Highest Speed on a Snowboard - The highest recorded speed by a snowboarder is 201.907km/h (125.459mph) by Darren Powell (Australia) at Les Arcs, France on 2 May 1999. 

From brief research, it looks like most avalanches reach 60-80 mph, but some go at over 200mph; the fastest on record is 400mph when Mt St Helens blew. So, given that your typical movie action hero is at least as good as an Olympi medalist, it doesn't seem out of the range of possibility.


----------



## wingsandsword (Sep 22, 2005)

WayneLigon said:
			
		

> Did you ever actually _watch _ this movie or did someone just tell you about it and you just wanted to attempt a cutesy quote about 'the Hollywood crowd'? This is the one with Jason Robards where people die hideous slow deaths from radiation poisoning because they were 'lucky' enough not to wind up as shadows on a wall, where we see Kansas City wiped off the face of the Earth, rubble and fires and destruction everywhere... that movie. Probably the most realistic portrayal we've seen yet of what even a limited nuclear attack would do.



I think he got The Day After (1984) confused with Testament (1983), a similar "small town in the aftermath of nuclear war" movie, that could be loosely described as he described it.

Testament was a lot like what he described, just average small-town folks sitting at home when the Emergency Broadcast System comes on and says a nuclear war is underway.  Things slowly go from bad to worse as supply lines are cut, people wander away to find their fate elsewhere and people starve from lack of food or die of radiation poisoning.  The young teenage female lead wants to lose her virginity, but there are no non-related male survivors in the area by this late in the movie, and in the end the entire family climbs into their car in the garage and commits suicide by running the engine in the car together.  

Rather grim movie, and a really strange thing for a High School English teacher to a group of Sophomores for no apparent reason (mine did, just stopped class for two days to show us this movie, not apparently tied to any other lessons, I don't remember too much just the Emergency Broadcast System scene, the uncertainty about whatever happened to their father because he was out-of-town when the war broke out, the daughter lamenting to her mother she would die a virgin, and the entire family committing suicide in the end to escape the hardships of the postnuclear world).

Probably a grimly accurate depiction of life after a nuclear war, for people who weren't in the direct blast areas.


----------



## sniffles (Sep 22, 2005)

I would like to nominate *any* film produced by the Sci Fi Channel. It's science *fiction*, yes, but I would like to see some tiny amount of actual science in one of their films someday. Not to mention good acting, writing, and production values.


----------



## Someone (Sep 22, 2005)

Rackhir said:
			
		

> According to some research I did. Vacuum "wielding" probably doesn't actually exist. From what I've been able to find, they've traced all supposed incidents of it to inadequate lubrication.
> 
> As far as freezing goes, I'm not really sure that's an issue if the proper lubricants are used. Part of it is that space isn't actually "cold". While the nominal temperature is close to absolute zero, there isn't anything there to transfer heat to. Most heat transfer on earth is by convection or molecules bumping into other molecules. In space there is really only radiative heat transfer or emitting energy as infra-red radiation, which is a much much slower process.




Indeed, the heat transfer mechanisms are conduction, convection (wich need matter in direct contact to transfer heat to) and radiation, wich does not, but is slow for mater at the temperatures in the range of a (living) human body. The oil would probably _boil_ in a vacuum or near vacuum instead.

Guns don´t need oxygen to fire; the powder is a substance that quickly decomposes on "it´s own", generating large amounts of gases and heat. I know that organic molecules with -NO2 groups tend to do that (TNT, nitrocelulose, nitroglicerine...) but I don´t know if the powder used in guns are that kind of molecules or not.


----------



## TheAuldGrump (Sep 23, 2005)

Rel said:
			
		

> This is true but the impulse generated by firing a single round from a typical small firearm (like a pistol) won't send you flying very fast.  Although I do imagine that in zero G it would impart enough momentum to send you tumbling slowly backwards, ruining your aim, if you didn't fire it perfectly in line with your center of mass.
> 
> I can forgive a lot of bad science in movies if they'll at least stay internally consistant.  Once they violate that rule then I'm lost as a viewer.
> 
> And nothing could save the unbelieveable crapfest of Day After Tomorrow.  If your going to chuck the science out the window then perhaps at least make me give a damn about the characters.  :\




Actually I was pointing that out as 'okay' physics, in reply to another's post. Just to put in perspective for those who join in late.

Goddard was the fellow who demonstrated that guns would fire in a vacuum, and drive the gun backwards in reaction. One of my childhood heroes...

The Auld Grump


----------



## John Crichton (Sep 23, 2005)

Kahuna Burger said:
			
		

> Actually, I had almost managed to repress that hell of oppressive brainwashing cheese. Thanks. :\
> 
> Armageddon was one of those movies where I came out thinking "wouldn't it have been easier (and maybe less painful) for them to write their message on a lead pipe and bash us over the head with that for 2 hours?"
> 
> And I found the production values uninspiring. No redeaming qualities, except maybe the existance of bruce willis.



I'm cool with anyone not liking any movie that I liked (or any movie for that matter).  But it should be reviled for the right reasons.  That's all I ask.  There was lots to pick on in that film but saying that they tried to sell it as something that could happen and realistic is absurd.


----------



## Umbran (Sep 23, 2005)

Rackhir said:
			
		

> In space there is really only radiative heat transfer or emitting energy as infra-red radiation, which is a much much slower process.




"Much slower" and "negligible" are not the same thing.

However, for some things, you're absolutely correct, that cooling isn't the problem.  But then, _heating_ may be the problem.  Thereis some tendency for automatic weapons to jam as they fire, due to various parts heating and expanding.  If the weapon heats due to friction of it's parts, that process wil tend to be exacerbated.

Also, consider what happens to the weapon if you do let it cool down - the metal has a tendency to become more brittle as the temperature drops.  And, as you then rapidly heat some parts up to operating temperature you get larger thermal expansion stresses.

Engineering for space can be tricky business...


----------



## Plane Sailing (Sep 23, 2005)

wingsandsword said:
			
		

> The basic plot of "Star Trek: Generations" also bothers me, since the basic idea of blowing up stars to get rid of their gravity well doesn't work, the mass remains the same even if you force the star to noval (and the end where a chemically propelled rocket takes only a few seconds to go from a habitable planets surface to a yellow star, which you see the rocket visibly fly all the way, and the explosion of the star is visible on the planet's surface only seconds after launch.)




I had forgotten how much there was to hate in that movie, but the chemically propelled rocket which the enterprise was somehow unable to chase down, tractor beam or phaser before it completed its journey to the sun (which it managed to do in a ludicrously short period of time) was the capstone for me. I was just appalled.


----------



## Plane Sailing (Sep 23, 2005)

Shadowdancer said:
			
		

> Then, bored late one night, I started watching it on cable TV. And I realized something I missed the first time I saw it (and then felt really stupid). The exploding people on Mars _does not happen_. NOTHING in that movie really happens after Arnold is knocked out to be injected with his virtual "vacation." It's all the fake "secret agent" vacation scenario (even titled, IIRC, Blue Skies on Mars or something like that) injected into his memory.




I like the way that the film contains the ambiguity - if you have the chance to watch it again, take a look at the monitor in the background while they are preparing Arnies dream sequence - I'm pretty sure that a picture of the 'underground alien complex' appears on that monitor. Wasn't that supposed to be a secret or something?

I remember reading an article at one point that asserted that the make up guys had too much say in the film - they wanted to do the 'gob stopper through the nose' thing, the 'fat lady mask' thing, the 'exploding eyes on mars' thing and much of the mutant stuff too - and some (much cooler) ideas for the film were left out because of them.

Incidentally, it is worth reading the original Philip K Dick short story it was based on if you can - not filmable as it was, but it is a stunner


----------



## Rel (Sep 23, 2005)

Plane Sailing said:
			
		

> Incidentally, it is worth reading the original Philip K Dick short story it was based on if you can - not filmable as it was, but it is a stunner




If ambiguity is your thing then Philip K Dick is your guy.


----------



## Rackhir (Sep 23, 2005)

Umbran said:
			
		

> "Much slower" and "negligible" are not the same thing.



Didn't say it was negligible, however in scenes like the aformentioned Firefly "guns don't work in space" bit they aren't in space for days at a time, more like minutes. I think you can ignore the problem of cooling for that sort of time frame, just don't try licking the gun with your tongue.



			
				Umbran said:
			
		

> However, for some things, you're absolutely correct, that cooling isn't the problem.  But then, _heating_ may be the problem.  Thereis some tendency for automatic weapons to jam as they fire, due to various parts heating and expanding.  If the weapon heats due to friction of it's parts, that process wil tend to be exacerbated.




Assumming proper mainainance, friction isn't an issue with automatic weapons. You have lots of little explosions (the gunpowder) going off which is where the heat that causes the expansion and distortions in parts comes from. It could conceiveably be a problem for a lasting firefight in space, since you would would have trouble dissapating the heat for the reasons I pointed out above. But then again its perfectly possible to deal with that sort of problem if you simply take it into account in designing the weapon. 

But, most weapons aren't designed for long duration automatic fire in any situation. You need to be able to replace the barrel on any weapon which will be sustaining a high rate of fire for an extended time period, since it is where most of the heat is generated and remains. This can lead to premature detonation of the cartridge as well or the ammo "Cooking off" as it is more colorfully refered to. 



			
				Umbran said:
			
		

> Also, consider what happens to the weapon if you do let it cool down - the metal has a tendency to become more brittle as the temperature drops.  And, as you then rapidly heat some parts up to operating temperature you get larger thermal expansion stresses.



Weapons like rifles and pistols are tested in artic conditions (Try reading up on the development history of the M16 some time) where it can get very very cold, not absolute zero cold, but then again in the artic you have to deal with convection heat loss which is probably more difficult to deal with than the radiative cooling you have to take 
into account in space. 



			
				Umbran said:
			
		

> Engineering for space can be tricky business...



 Yes it can, but most problems in space design are irrelevant for short periods of time.



			
				Someone said:
			
		

> The oil would probably boil in a vacuum or near vacuum instead.



 Not if it was a good lubricant. Boiling is a highly undesireable characteristic in a lubricant. Its great if you want to dissapate heat, since it can absorb a tremendous amount of heat, but a good lubricant would not be designed to boil. Particularly a lubricant that would have to operate in a high temperature enviroment like a weapon.


----------



## jasper (Sep 23, 2005)

WayneLigon said:
			
		

> Did you ever actually _watch _ this movie or did someone just tell you about it and you just wanted to attempt a cutesy quote about 'the Hollywood crowd'? This is the one with Jason Robards where people die hideous slow deaths from radiation poisoning because they were 'lucky' enough not to wind up as shadows on a wall, where we see Kansas City wiped off the face of the Earth, rubble and fires and destruction everywhere... that movie. Probably the most realistic portrayal we've seen yet of what even a limited nuclear attack would do.




Yes I watching the night it air way back then. And remember all the hype. And while it had some good actors in.  I thought was cheesy antinuke movie. Still do. But to be fair I may get out the cheap bin if I see and see how 20 years of difference makes it.


----------



## Someone (Sep 23, 2005)

Rackhir said:
			
		

> Not if it was a good lubricant. Boiling is a highly undesireable characteristic in a lubricant. Its great if you want to dissapate heat, since it can absorb a tremendous amount of heat, but a good lubricant would not be designed to boil. Particularly a lubricant that would have to operate in a high temperature enviroment like a weapon.




Hence the "probably" part. I don´t know a lot about lubricants, but if you use one that behaves like a fluid it´ll boil when the vapor pressure equals the ambient pressure: in other words, you can make a liquid boil raising the temperature or lowering the pressure (or both). But I think there are lubricants that are not fluids in the temperature range we´re speakin of, so the lubrication of a gun designed to fire in space shouldn´t be a problem.


----------



## Rel (Sep 23, 2005)

Someone said:
			
		

> Hence the "probably" part. I don´t know a lot about lubricants, but if you use one that behaves like a fluid it´ll boil when the vapor pressure equals the ambient pressure: in other words, you can make a liquid boil raising the temperature or lowering the pressure (or both). But I think there are lubricants that are not fluids in the temperature range we´re speakin of, so the lubrication of a gun designed to fire in space shouldn´t be a problem.




Kudos to you, sir.  I never thought that someone (heh, get it!   ) could use the word "lubricant" that many times in a single post without it violating the grandma rule.


----------



## DungeonmasterCal (Sep 23, 2005)

sniffles said:
			
		

> I would like to nominate *any* film produced by the Sci Fi Channel. It's science *fiction*, yes, but I would like to see some tiny amount of actual science in one of their films someday. Not to mention good acting, writing, and production values.




Sweet mercy, their movies are bad!  If it weren't for Battlestar Galactica, I'd never even turn that channel on.


----------



## Fast Learner (Sep 23, 2005)

Eric Anondson said:
			
		

> I actually saw it upon the recommendation of a college professor of mine. I couldn't have been more disappointed in the movie. I found out later that he hadn't actually seen it but was going on a relative of his recommendation... I told him that to me it amounted to a long advertisement for Transcendental Mediation (not that there is anything wrong with that, I just felt I was misled)... he was kind of deflated after that...



It wasn't about TM, though. If it was an ad for anything, it was for Ramtha, the purportedly channeled entity.


----------



## DungeonmasterCal (Sep 23, 2005)

Someone said:
			
		

> I don´t know a lot about lubricants




This may end up as a .sig file somewhere.  I'm just sayin'.


----------



## Someone (Sep 24, 2005)

You all have a dirty mind.


----------



## Rel (Sep 24, 2005)

Someone said:
			
		

> You all have a dirty mind.




It's what I do.


----------



## AdmundfortGeographer (Sep 24, 2005)

Fast Learner said:
			
		

> It wasn't about TM, though. If it was an ad for anything, it was for Ramtha, the purportedly channeled entity.



There was enough of it that was exactly about TM's teachings, it wasn't even funny. The DC Crime Study, for instance, was a TM scheme through and through. They had on a physicist from the Maharishi University, a school founded by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of TM.

As much as Ramtha was a focus, TM was right behind it/her/him(?). So much New Agism blurs from one to the next. *shrug*


----------



## Ei (Sep 24, 2005)

Welverin said:
			
		

> Hmm, I wonder where jonrog1 is.
> 
> 
> 
> ...





It would also explain why so many programs act so human (in the matrix at least), and how Agent smith was able to take over Bane.


----------



## Warrior Poet (Sep 26, 2005)

WayneLigon said:
			
		

> From Guiness: Highest Speed on a Snowboard - The highest recorded speed by a snowboarder is 201.907km/h (125.459mph) by Darren Powell (Australia) at Les Arcs, France on 2 May 1999.



Well, see, there ya go.  Thanks for the clarification.

Warrior Poet


----------



## Zog (Sep 26, 2005)

I have to toss is a vote for Lost in Space.

The planet was turning into a Black Hole.

Not possible.  Sorry, insufficient mass.  Most Suns don't turn into black holes, never mind planets.


And regarding the Black Hole movie - it is based on a theory called the Einstein-Rosen bridge.  Basically, when they plotted the topology of the curvature of space time the resulted from their equations describing Black holes - they got several interesting possibilities.  One of which is the well-known wormhole, the other is a bridge or hole, not to another place in space-time, but to a different space-time - ie, alternate universe.  The idea has not, as far as I know, been totally rejected by the science community.


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## Kesh (Sep 27, 2005)

_Battlefield: Earth_.

I'm going to paraphrase a review I read after it came out: "I find it impossible to believe in an alien species which would have become extinct the minute some guy tried to microwave a burrito."

And that's ignoring all the _other_ crap that was put onto celluloid for that movie.


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## Hypersmurf (Sep 27, 2005)

Plane Sailing said:
			
		

> I like the way that the film contains the ambiguity - if you have the chance to watch it again, take a look at the monitor in the background while they are preparing Arnies dream sequence - I'm pretty sure that a picture of the 'underground alien complex' appears on that monitor. Wasn't that supposed to be a secret or something?




The problem I've always had with the 'it was all a dream' theory of Total Recall is that Recall's policy is that you _can't tell their implanted memories from real ones_.

Let's say the whole Secret Agent thing was a dream.  Doug goes home from Recall, and aside from the fact that Mars doesn't have a breathable atmosphere, _his wife's alive_.  The wife his memory says he killed.  That memory is demonstrably false, now, so if Recall were going to put together a package like that, they'd avoid having images like killing relatives in there... right?

-Hyp.


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## Kesh (Sep 28, 2005)

Well, they just say that the memories are just as real as if you had experienced the events... not that the memories have to _make sense_ in the future. 

Still, I don't buy the "it was all a dream" answer out of spite. I hate stories that end that way.


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## Greyhawk_DM (Sep 28, 2005)

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy...how much more far fetched can you get?


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## TanisFrey (Sep 28, 2005)

Warrior Poet said:
			
		

> I think I was too young to recognize there was bad science at work on this one.  I think I have nothing but fond memories of this film, probably because I loved the little floating robots (especially the one tough little robot who befriended the old, beat-up, past-his-prime robot), and was delightfully terrified of Maximillian.
> 
> That and there was that great (probably totally bad science) iconic moment of the burning meteor tumbling it's way down the length of the ship.  Just looked so cool.
> 
> ...



Black Hole.  This film plot would be east to up date by saying that the mad-guy discovered how to create the strange engergy that physicists say is needed to hole open a wormhole.  If it was ever remade.  The thing that got me with move now, why make and send out small maned explorer ships when you once upon a time made GIANT explorer ships that could have more experts to look at any strange new things you find.


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## TanisFrey (Sep 28, 2005)

Greyhawk_DM said:
			
		

> The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy...how much more far fetched can you get?



Alway ment to be humors not sciencetific in any serios way.


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## Greyhawk_DM (Sep 28, 2005)

TanisFrey said:
			
		

> Alway ment to be humors not sciencetific in any serios way.



 Which brings up the point about the above mentioned movies....if you want a movie with scientific data...watch a documentary...dont watch a movie geared for the entertainment value instead of factual evidence...


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## Nuclear Platypus (Sep 28, 2005)

Warrior Poet said:
			
		

> Weren't there a few volcano-disaster-themed movies a few years ago that were pretty execrable?  I never saw 'em, but I can only imagine.




Which one?

Dante's Peak with Pierce Brosnan that has them crossing over a lake that is so acidic its eating thru the bottom of a (metal) canoe and the legs of some woman? Oh, don't forget that the poor guy in the crappy van gets swept away in the river yet those in the Hummers don't. Sheesh. That's up there with the horror cliche of 'the black guy dies first' or 'the virgin survives'.  

Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones where the good guys corral lava in the streets of L.A. with concrete blocks while standing reasonably close by yet not succumbing to the massive heat? 

I'm not a 100% sure but even the Jurassic Park cash cows were a bit off tho pushing it. Namely the bigger dinos would have a harder time breathing due to their weight since the present atmosphere isn't as oxygen rich but dinos were once believed to be cold blooded.

The American Godzilla aka GINO has that mutant iguana soaking up the radiation in the Pacific yet stomps across Central America to frollic in the Big Apple and spawn? Plus for such a fearsome creature who had been shrugging off everything in the US military's arsenal, he (she? it?) gets taken down by a handful of missiles in the last few minutes?

I wonder if Deep Blue Sea had any flaws, other than the super intelligent sharks. IMO, its more important for breaking the cliche of the 'black guy dies first' since LL Cool J survives yet the brainy female scientist bites it and ditto for the heroic speech guy (Samuel L. Jackson). However Halloween Water also broke that cliche.


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## Nuclear Platypus (Sep 28, 2005)

Kesh said:
			
		

> Well, they just say that the memories are just as real as if you had experienced the events... not that the memories have to _make sense_ in the future.
> 
> Still, I don't buy the "it was all a dream" answer out of spite. I hate stories that end that way.




I didn't like that season of Dallas either with Married... With Children copying it (HATED the character of Seven) while Family Guy had that awesome fist fight between Peter and the giant chicken (round 2 was better tho).


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## Shadowdancer (Sep 28, 2005)

Kahuna Burger said:
			
		

> On Total Recall, the realty of the situation is ambiguous, but I could never fully accept the "its all a dream" explaination because the film shows scenes where arnie's character is not present and has no knowlege. If the director intended a definite dream answer, he should have avoided those scenes.




A similar thing happens in "The Usual Suspects." Verbal is telling all of the flashbacks as a story to Kujan, yet there are scenes in the flashbacks in which Verbal does not appear, and about which he should have no knowlege. That should have been Kujan's tip-off, and the audience's, that Verbal was lying.


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## Storm Raven (Sep 28, 2005)

Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> The problem I've always had with the 'it was all a dream' theory of Total Recall is that Recall's policy is that you _can't tell their implanted memories from real ones_.
> 
> Let's say the whole Secret Agent thing was a dream.  Doug goes home from Recall, and aside from the fact that Mars doesn't have a breathable atmosphere, _his wife's alive_.  The wife his memory says he killed.  That memory is demonstrably false, now, so if Recall were going to put together a package like that, they'd avoid having images like killing relatives in there... right?




I thought the point was that Doug's mind might have somehow reacted badly to the implantation process and had spun the "implanted" memories into a combination with his own delusions, derailing the program, and lurching out of control.


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## Rel (Sep 28, 2005)

Nuclear Platypus said:
			
		

> I wonder if Deep Blue Sea had any flaws, other than the super intelligent sharks. IMO, its more important for breaking the cliche of the 'black guy dies first' since LL Cool J survives yet the brainy female scientist bites it and ditto for the heroic speech guy (Samuel L. Jackson). However Halloween Water also broke that cliche.




To me that movie will always be remembered as the one where (behind the scenes), Samuel L. Jackson must have said, "This film is a total crapfest and I don't care what happens to my character but I want OUT.  NOW!"

CHOMP!


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## Rackhir (Sep 28, 2005)

Greyhawk_DM said:
			
		

> The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy...how much more far fetched can you get?




You just don't get invited to those sorts of parties do you.


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## Umbra (Oct 8, 2005)

Battlefield Earth absolutely,
The Bore and Armageddon are all up there.

One of my big problems with sci fi films is when they break laws of physics outside of the movie physics of their world (eg FTL, transporter beams, etc).

I didn't like ST:Nemesis ( I think it was that one). But the stand out problem in the film (apart from the horrible makeup and lighting for Troy and Riker's wedding) was when the Enterprise having smashed nose to nose with the Romulan ship reversed out without the tangled wreckage dragging the Romulan ship with it.  Did they have the parking brake on?

Something like that throws me right out a film (not that I was into that one).

The Total Recall issues noted above are the same.  And how did Arnie get that golf ball sized implant out through the nasal bones!


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## Elemental (Oct 8, 2005)

A common bug for me is the notion that in space, constant thrust will equal constant motion, and a spacecraft will always travel in the direction it's pointed in. Props to _Babylon 5_ for avoiding that cliche.




			
				JimAde said:
			
		

> Armageddon's gotta be near the top of the list.




The miners taking a minigun with them on a mission to blow up an uninhabited rock has already been mentioned, but the one that made me laugh was the way in which the exploding asteroid could be seen on opposite sides of the world at the same time.


Or there's the aliens in _Signs_, which die on contact with water. So obviously, they invade a planet that's 70% covered in water, where most of the lifeforms are largely made from water and congregate near water supplies, where water is kept close to hand at all times, and where water falls from the sky regularly. Oh, and they don't bother to bring any protective gear or environment suits. Perhaps they were the most useless of the alien military and had been sent on a suicide mission to get them out of the way?


Another howler for me was the solar powered subamrine in _xXx_. One of the things people immediately notice in the deep sea is that it tends to be very dark. So, it's a submarine that will work so long as it stays within about 20ft of the surface at all times. The weird thing was that given the genre, they could have said it was a fictional miniaturised reactor or some such technobabble and I wouldn't have blinked.


One film that did make me blink for using _good_ science was _Pitch Black._ At the start, meteorites strike the ship. Instead of a big lump of stone and a fiery explosion, we get these tiny bullet-like stones that go through the ship and out the other side before anyone even has time to register they're there.


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## Meloncov (Oct 12, 2005)

Elemental said:
			
		

> A common bug for me is the notion that in space, constant thrust will equal constant motion, and a spacecraft will always travel in the direction it's pointed in. Props to _Babylon 5_ for avoiding that cliche.
> 
> 
> 
> > I have a theory that this is due to the inertia dampeners required to reach near-light speeds without expending unbelievably large amounts of energy. Having no inertia would mean that an object could accelerate incredebly easily, but it would have no tendency to stay in motion. Theirfore, to maintain a constant speed, you would have to apply constant motion.


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## Rel (Oct 12, 2005)

Meloncov said:
			
		

> I have a theory that this is due to the inertia dampeners required to reach near-light speeds without expending unbelievably large amounts of energy. Having no inertia would mean that an object could accelerate incredebly easily, but it would have no tendency to stay in motion. Theirfore, to maintain a constant speed, you would have to apply constant motion.




That's one fine rationalization right there.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 12, 2005)

Rel said:
			
		

> That's one fine rationalization right there.



Though it has it's flaws - without inertia, wouldn't the object instantly be accelerated to infinite (or light?) speed?


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## Dakkareth (Oct 12, 2005)

My knowledge of the kind of physics involved comes from popular science books (Michio Kaku et al), so this may be totally wrong, but ...



			
				WayneLigon said:
			
		

> That used to be a perfectly good assumption at the time the film was made, especially for a 'rotating' black hole. It was almost cutting edge science at the time because we hadn't yet seen evidence of one yet, so everything was up in the air.




They have more consistent theories now, that explicitely disallow this? To my knowledge (which is admittedly not quite up-to-date) all this rotating-black hole, Einstein-Rosen-Bridge, etc stuff always was a big Maybe - mathematically possible under certain conditions, which may or may not fit this universe. And now they have found *evidence* of one and found out it didn't work?   



> One of the assumptions was that for every black hole you had a white hole that was ejecting matter. We didn't yet have theories about it ripping every little particle down to the component quarks



I don't think that was an assumption, ever. More of a considered possibility. And they didn't have such theories?

That said, I haven't even seen the movie. And if someone knows better than I do, as I'm sure someone will, please enlighten me ...


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## Rel (Oct 12, 2005)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> Though it has it's flaws - without inertia, wouldn't the object instantly be accelerated to infinite (or light?) speed?




Well, on the assumption that you're using an "Inertial Dampener" then you could say that the effects of inertia are merely lessened.  If you had an "Inertial Eliminator" then you'd be in business!


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## JediSoth (Oct 13, 2005)

> I don't think it had any explosions, but 2001: A Space Odyssey correctly portayed silent events in space. Can't think of any others right off.




A crapfest called _Robotjox _ also featured a scene in space with no sound. It was pretty impressive for such a bad movie.

So, how about _My Science Project_, featuring Dennis Hopper as a high school science teacher? That had some wierd stuff going on in it.

JediSoth


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## Rel (Oct 13, 2005)

JediSoth said:
			
		

> So, how about _My Science Project_, featuring Dennis Hopper as a high school science teacher? That had some wierd stuff going on in it.
> 
> JediSoth




I'm embarassed to admit that I loosely based a D&D adventure around this movie some 15 years ago or so.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 13, 2005)

Rel said:
			
		

> Well, on the assumption that you're using an "Inertial Dampener" then you could say that the effects of inertia are merely lessened.  If you had an "Inertial Eliminator" then you'd be in business!



But for the rationalization to work it had to be an eliminator - even a tiny bit of inertia means you keep your direction and speed if you don't apply thrust. 

Probably the best idea is not to look to closely and hope that in time, movie-makers will try to get it right so that in 10-30 years, nobody will remember how they did it wrong


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## Rel (Oct 13, 2005)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> But for the rationalization to work it had to be an eliminator - even a tiny bit of inertia means you keep your direction and speed if you don't apply thrust.
> 
> Probably the best idea is not to look to closely and hope that in time, movie-makers will try to get it right so that in 10-30 years, nobody will remember how they did it wrong




To be honest, I don't care that much.  If a movie has a good plot and interesting characters then I can hand wave a lot of physics, so long as it is INTERNALLY CONSISTANT.  Those last two words are totally key for me to enjoy a movie.  Once that is violated, the rest of it better be close to perfect if they want me to retain any interest in it.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 14, 2005)

Rel said:
			
		

> To be honest, I don't care that much.  If a movie has a good plot and interesting characters then I can hand wave a lot of physics, so long as it is INTERNALLY CONSISTANT.  Those last two words are totally key for me to enjoy a movie.  Once that is violated, the rest of it better be close to perfect if they want me to retain any interest in it.



I like internal consistency and probably prefer it about "realismn", but if I can have both, I'll take that  . (Though I wouldn't want Star Wars (or a similar franchise) to change its physics to more realistic ones, unless they would remake all 6 movies, which I (and many others) wouldn't like for completely different reasons  )


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