As for the Kessel run thing, I always thought the line was there to show that Han Solo didn’t really know what he was talking about. In other words, its a deliberate mistake. Watch the scene again and you will see that Obi-Wan rolls his eyes when he says it.
How about Interview with a Vampire, wherein two vampires are caught in a deep, narrow manhole in Paris, France and get fried when the sun shines directly down into the bottom of the manhole.
It’s physically impossible, since the sun wouldn’t reach the bottom of any well or deep, narrow pit above the Tropic of Cancer (23 1/2 degrees latitude, north) in the northern hemisphere. Paris, France is well above that degree of latitude.
How about the ‘Spinning DNS Helix of M&Ms’ from “Mission to Mars”? Pretty much impossible to accomplish in weightlessness.
YES YES YES!!!
The letters page for issue four of the Marvel Star Wars comic book used this explanation (IIRC) and sources it to Lucas and Company.
I get so damn sick of hearing tortured explanations for that.
Was that the movie where Gary Sinise exclaims, “That DNA looks human!” I never watched the movie, mostly because that line ensured that it would be a waste of time for me (and I’m not even super-picky about such things).
I think the main reason Spinning DNS Helices are impossible on Mars is that Mars does not have a Top Level Domain assigned yet.
OK. How about Misssion Impossible?
Helicopter flying in a tunnel. Wouldn’t the upward and downward thrusts be pretty much equal?
Outrunning an explosion. Actually, this has been done to death for some time. This was the first time it really sank in. Maybe because it was so graphic. Then I began to remember other movies that did it. It’s a must-have now for all action movies.
Nope. Same universe, different galaxy. “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”
Nope. Same universe, different galaxy. “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”
A helicopter’s lift derives from the same basic wing/lift principle as that of a fixed-wing aircraft, with some idiosyncracies. Nothing about a confined area would necessarily interfere with that. The scene in Mission: Impossible, is still utterly implausible, of course. Turbulence in the wake of the TGV and generated by the helicopter rotors would likely make the helicopter uncontrolable and throw it into one of the walls of the tunnel almost immediately. Also, the reduced air pressure in the wake of the TGV in a tunnel would reduce the lift available to the helicopter, exacerbating the turbulence problem. It’d be like trying to fly a helicopter in a hurricane.
Anybody can outrun a speeding car, a bullet, or an explosion – if you have enough of a head start to the finish line. What has been abused in action films are scenes where the explosion doesn’t gain on the fleeing hero for an extended period, or gains only very slowly, so as to milk the special effect they’ve paid so much for. I attribute a lot of this to the influence of anime’ on western action films. Things that seem less questionable in a cartoon really undermine the credibility of a live action film.
Anytime a hero leaps from a buliding and grabs a bar or rope to stop a few floors from the bottom drives me nuts.
You know the dramatic tension can be shown by having them stop themselves after a very short fall and showing the results of the bozo who fell a few floors more. The arms torn from the sockets and horrifying yells would be enough to show that the hero made it just in time.
Almost as bad is when some one out runs Onrushing water or an explosion.
Hmm, from your source.
Unless I’m totally misreading the link, LCAC’s (Landing Craft, Air Cushion) are better against underwater mines than a ship but can still trip land mines. But they do have a much lower pressure signature.
As for Umbriel, according to [URL = http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/ships/ship-lcac.html] here, an LCAC is about 88 ft X 47 ft and weighs between 87 and 180 tons (depending on load). So the ground presssure has to be between 0.3 (87x2000)/(88 x 12 x 47 x 12) and 0.6 (180x2000)/(88 x 12 x 47 x 12) PSI, assuming I didn’t screw up my math or English units and that the air cushion is the full size of the LCAC.
According to here, an M1A1 main battle tank exerts 13-15.5 PSI ground pressure depending on the tank configuration.
I couldn’t find a site with the trigger pressures for land mines, but .3-.6 PSI is a lot less than 13-15.5 PSI, so I would concede that a tank is going to trip more mines than a hovercraft.
Now that I’ve actually done the math, and assuming I didn’t screw up anywhere, I’m inclined to believe Bryan Eckers. Ok, I can happily watch that scene again without tripping out. Thanks for fighting my ignorance! 
On the other hand, there still is the logical problem of command detonated, wire detonated, magnetic detonated, contact detonated (hovercraft skirts will hit trip wires!) and sound detonated mines. But with a stretch of imagination, the North Koreans could have layed out a minefield with a fatal flaw or sixteen. And that’s not a physics/science issue, so it doesn’t fit in this thread.
One of my favorites, since it’s obscure and stands out from the rest of the movie: In Deep Impact, the orbit of the comet is determined from two observations, when in actuality, orbital determination always requires at least three (unless you also have ranging or Doppler data, or some other source of information). Yeah, I know it’s nitpicking, and most of the science in that movie was very good, but I guess I just pick up on odd things.
Another remarkably common one: Violations of conservation of mass, especially with living things. I can accept, in movie-science terms, that when you expose an organism to radiation, or weird chemicals, or other mutagens, that the creature gets really big (and, incidentally, usually ugly). But it’s going to have to eat somewhere in between. When Bruce Banner gets angry, where does all that extra mass come from? Related example: In one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, they find a time-travel device which sends them back to fuedal Japan. When they go back, four guys from that time period simultaneously get sent to ours, in our place. Donatello explains that this is because the device must exchange equal amounts of mass. Fair enough… Except that the Heroes on the Half-Shell have a lot more bulk than humans, and probably a higher density as well. So it’s nowhere near equal mass.
License to Kill: That truck was heavily modified to do the wheelie and the up-on-9-wheels thing.
But I think the OP meant stuff like in Speed where the bus jumps the missing section of freeway. In the universe I know, it would have plummeted to the bottom and Sandra Bullock would have been squished.
But in the altered physics universe Keanu et al occupy, the bus gains altitude, easily clearing the several-bus-length gap. Evil Knevil would be so proud, no ramp, no rockets…just a bus, a gap and…glory.
I like how in Die Hard the hero can leap down an elevator shaft, miss grabbing a ledge and bounce off the wall, and curve back in empty space for a second chance to grab another ledge.
Heck, if we’re going to nitpick James Bond (which I personally think is about as fruitless as going after Star Trek) don’t forget the bit at the beginning of Goldeneye when Bond chases after a runaway airplane on a motorcycle. The plane plunges over a cliff and Bond rides after it, somehow managing to catch up to the plane, board it, and pull it out of its dive.
My favorite is in Die Hard 2. When the bad guys chuck 6 or 8 grenades into the plane. Miraculously they all go off at the same time. Even better the plane has an ejection seat.
My favorite is in Die Hard 2. When the bad guys chuck 6 or 8 grenades into the plane. Miraculously they all go off at the same time. Even better the plane has an ejection seat.
Eech, SuperMan with their idea that one base pair corresponds for each characteristic of a spider.
Star Trek Voyager: That episode where aliens were fiddling with their DNA, and they had bar codes on the little spheres representing the sugar molecules
ANY show where they can blow up a digital picture x100 times and not get pixels the size of your fist through the wonders of the magical phrase “enhance”.