# Movies that thumb their nose at science **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 16, 2006, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430 "2006-12-16T21:28:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Walter\_Windchill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Walter\_Windchill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walter_Windchill)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/21 "2006-12-17T07:17:10Z")
Exactly. I don’t think historical films need to be accurate down to the slightest detail, but if they make a movie about the Battle of Hastings and have the soldiers using muskets, I’m going to notice and be annoyed by it. Not because I’m a stickler for details or nitpicking, but because it’s obviously wrong. This is like that, only worse. ---
**Author:** ![Phantom\_Dennis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/51bf81/32.png) [@Phantom\_Dennis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phantom_Dennis)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/22 "2006-12-17T07:25:58Z")
_Contact_, did a decent job with the science, probably because Carl Sagan was involved in the production before he died. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I definitely wouldn’t say it thumbs its nose at science. Almost all movies use lazy science (or ignore it altogether) – I think it would be easier to list the rare gems that try to get things right. I nominate _Apollo 13_. Again, not 100% perfect, but it gets an A for effort. ---
**Author:** ![Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/c4cdca/32.png) [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/23 "2006-12-17T07:31:01Z")
[QUOTE=Walter Windchill] This statement suggests that noticing major logical contradictions, plotholes, and pseudoscientific blathering is “nitpicking,” which compels me to wonder what valid criticism of a movie would look like. Can they kill off a character and have him whistling by in the next scene? Have cowboys setting a little campfire on the dark side of the moon, with their moon cattle grazing on the green cheese in the background? Of course, any of that would be fine in a comedy or puppet show, but in a purportedly serious, science-based movie, it seems like fair game. The notion that such “nitpicking” – which, in this case, is the most basic exercise of critical thinking, as would be done by anyone with a flickering of consciousness – is the road to “cluelessness,” is so very silly I’m not sure how to respond without derailing the thread and drawing a warning from a mod. Well, here’s the best I can do: No it isn’t. [/QUOTE] So you’re not really down with ‘willing suspension of disbelief’, then? ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/24 "2006-12-17T08:17:43Z")
‘Willing suspension’ is fine and dandy, but watching _The Core_ my disbelief was grabbed by an angry mob and hanged in the town square. ---
**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/25 "2006-12-17T09:35:05Z")
Screw the science. _The Core_ was a badass movie. The opening scene, which involved an emergency landing of the Space Shuttle on an LA freeway, should have tipped the audience off that this was not intended as a physics primer. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/26 "2006-12-17T11:26:37Z")
Y’know, I actually liked _The Core_. Mostly because it was fun it watch. Tear the physics apart all you want—I certainly won’t say it doesn’t deserve it—but at least it’s is not an entirely unpleasant way to spend an afternoon. Personally, I can’t tell if it’s when a movie tries to cross the boundry between “adventure flick” and “drama” that the science mistakes start getting insulting, or if it’s just when it does the “adventure” part _badly_. On the other hand, there are some lines that even _I’m_ loathe to cross in the name of entertainment—like one new movie, [“Reanimated.”](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780126/) It’s “understanding” of the fundamentals of neurology borders on the utterly blasphemous, in my book. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/27 "2006-12-17T13:28:51Z")
Highlander 2(I think)where Sean Connery,killed in the original,reappears because the heroes wished for it,(not to mention the producers of a pretty dreadful movie all round )and the fact that not one of the immortals in the original were able to remember that they’d all travelled to Earth from an alien planet. Not the sort of thing that would normally slip from your memory. It makes you wonder if the plot of Mel Brooks "The Producers"i.e. intentionly release a piece of garbage and by doing so stand to make huge amounts of money,was being carried out in real life. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/28 "2006-12-17T13:54:12Z")
[QUOTE=Walter Windchill] I just sat through “A Sound of Thunder,” which is loosely based on a Ray Bradbury story by the same name. .. because, of course, if the future’s changed, it’s changed you. There are also simple plot holes that five year olds would spot. For one thing, different groups of tourists keep returning to the same place and time and killing the same unfortunate T Rex, without once encountering the last group. . [/QUOTE] It could be that returning to your past,altering it and then not actually experiencing sequentially the return to your time of origin has caused a shunt to a similar but parallel time line so you could in fact notice the difference and that might also explain why you dont bump into the other tourist groups. But I’m getting a headache. Ithink the most annoying offenders relating to "bullshit science “and time were ALL of the Star Treks” who would substitute the word “Temporal” for time followed by a common or garden term ,Storm,vortex,hole,Greenfly etc. and expect us all to believe it was physics on the strength of the "T"word. ---
**Author:** ![Walter\_Windchill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Walter\_Windchill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walter_Windchill)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/29 "2006-12-17T15:27:55Z")
[QUOTE=Quiddity Glomfuster] So you’re not really down with ‘willing suspension of disbelief’, then? [/QUOTE] I’m pretty tired of this particular fallacy in this particular thread. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/30 "2006-12-17T15:33:50Z")
[QUOTE=Walter Windchill] I’m pretty tired of this particular fallacy in this particular thread. [/QUOTE] Basically, it’s just a justification for any contralogical premise of a movie that the poster hapened to enjoy. IOW, there is no shit too dumb for some people. “I liked it, so get out of my face.” Your thread, and the assumptions behind it, **WW** , are being invalidated systematically–get used to it. ---
**Author:** ![Rysdad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7cd45c/32.png) [@Rysdad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysdad)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/31 "2006-12-17T16:50:23Z")
_Starship Troopers_ Small nuclear devices that can be launched from a shoulder-fired weapon. :rolleyes: Not to mention the fact that you can _outrun the blast_ by sprinting through a tunnel. And…Doogie Howser as a colonel? ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/32 "2006-12-17T16:58:05Z")
[QUOTE=Rysdad] Small nuclear devices that can be launched from a shoulder-fired weapon. :rolleyes: [/QUOTE] The [Davey Crockett](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)) came close. ---
**Author:** ![Walter\_Windchill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Walter\_Windchill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walter_Windchill)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/33 "2006-12-17T17:09:19Z")
[QUOTE=Rysdad] _Starship Troopers_And…Doogie Howser as a colonel? [/QUOTE] I don’t see why not, assuming the military of the future has the same “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy it has now. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/34 "2006-12-17T18:39:28Z")
[QUOTE=Phantom Dennis] Almost all movies use lazy science (or ignore it altogether) – I think it would be easier to list the rare gems that try to get things right. I nominate _Apollo 13_. Again, not 100% perfect, but it gets an A for effort. [/QUOTE] But that was based on a RL event and they would have had to go out of their way to screw it up. Any others? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/35 "2006-12-17T18:43:28Z")
_Jurassic Park_ – never mind the application of chaos theory, can anyone really believe you could clone dinosaurs from DNA extracted from Jurassic mosquitoes preserved in amber? I was at an SF con once where a paleontologist explained that when a biting insect drinks blood, it is digested/broken down **immediately,** using especially powerful enzymes – because raw blood is ordinarily a very difficult thing for any animal to digest, plus it has coagulants in it. You couldn’t get usable DNA out of the blood a mosquito drank five minutes ago. ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/36 "2006-12-18T00:39:05Z")
[QUOTE=Lust4Life] It makes you wonder if the plot of Mel Brooks "The Producers"i.e. intentionly release a piece of garbage and by doing so stand to make huge amounts of money,was being carried out in real life. [/QUOTE] If I recall correctly, Uwe Boll has been doing exactly that. Something about German tax laws. ---
**Author:** ![Scuba\_Ben](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@Scuba\_Ben](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scuba_Ben)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/37 "2006-12-18T01:05:12Z")
[QUOTE=Sublight] ‘Willing suspension’ is fine and dandy, but watching _The Core_ my disbelief was grabbed by an angry mob and hanged in the town square. [/QUOTE] **Sublight** , if **OpalCat** is still maintaining her Page O’ Flames and One-Liners, please send that in! **Rysdad** , I find nothing inherently “wrong” with small-yield nukes, plus It Was In the Book. (Of course, the book had the mobile infantry in powered armor, so they could easily heft heavy weaponry.) Still, outrunning a nuclear explosion is a classic [bad movie element](http://www.rinkworks.com/filmmaker/) – see #9 on the linked page. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/38 "2006-12-18T01:18:18Z")
[QUOTE=Scuba\_Ben] Still, outrunning a nuclear explosion is a classic [bad movie element](http://www.rinkworks.com/filmmaker/) – see #9 on the linked page. [/QUOTE] So is outrunning a conventional/chemical explosion, for that matter. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/39 "2006-12-18T01:22:28Z")
And smashing through a glass window without getting lacerations all over your body. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430/40 "2006-12-18T01:41:27Z")
_The Core_ just aired on terrestrial TV in the UK, and IMO, it out-stupids _Independence Day_ and even _Starship Troopers_ by a comfortable margin. ID and ST weren’t really trying to take themselves at all seriously, but I just can’t bring myself to accept that the same is true of _The Core_. Key areas of incredible stupid: -Grumpy Scientist Guy says “science is just a collection of best guesses”, and he’s not being sarcastic -The hull material is called ‘unobtanium’ - surely this has to be a bit of SF-geek storyboarding shorthand that got accidentally preserved by someone further up the chain who thought it sounded cool and original. -All external shots of the _Virgil_ show it travelling through some kind of brightly-lit transparent medium -You can’t increase the yield of a nuclear weapon just by haphazardly dropping a ‘reactor core’ in the same room. Actually, I don’t know why I’m bothering - the whole movie was just a constant stream of painful stupidity - I kept watching only because I couldn’t believe they could keep it up (the stupid) right to the end, but they managed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-thumb-their-nose-at-science/384430.md?page=3)