# The Big Bang

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-big-bang/583644>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [May 29, 2011, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-big-bang/583644 "2011-05-29T06:49:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-big-bang/583644/1 "2011-05-29T06:49:32Z")

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I watched this movie the other night.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1307873/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1307873/)

I thought the movie was a little peculiar, but not bad. A short description would be film noir combined with particle physics. There is one scene where Antonio Banderas is having sex with a woman while she is discussing quantum uncertainty.

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-big-bang/583644/2 "2011-05-29T18:25:01Z")

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You certainly wouldn’t guess that from the synopsis.

Is the physics any good?

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**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-big-bang/583644/3 "2011-05-30T05:57:16Z")

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Not really. The part where Sam Elliot was trying to create the Higgs Boson and one of the possible consequences was creating one was a black hole was gibberish as far I know.

The comedy show, The Big Bang **Theory** , is much better about trying to keep their science on the up and up.

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**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-big-bang/583644/4 "2011-05-30T06:13:20Z")

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For more genre mash-ups, I recommend [Yesterday Was A Lie](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448182/combined). It’s film noir mixed with an attempt to explain something about physics. and psychology. or something like that. It felt like someone trying to get credit for both their noir film class and their science thesis at once.

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**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-big-bang/583644/5 "2011-05-30T10:41:20Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> You certainly wouldn’t guess that from the synopsis.
> 
> Is the physics any good?

No it’s not, and I don’t think it’s meant to be – the physics is really just a means to an end, introducing a kind of culture rather than actually trying to get across something about how the world works at a subnuclear level. It’s a kind of shorthand, the same way exploding cars are a visual shorthand for ‘awesome stuff happening’, intended to communicate the subjective experience of a scene rather than to show what would happen in the real world (though, films looking so much like the real world, people tend to miss the distinction and gripe online about how unrealistic the movie was afterwards). As such, though, I think it worked – I thought the film was hilarious, though that doesn’t seem to be the consensus opinion.