What is your biggest science pet peeve in movies?

[InterCity]

Hello, guys.

Yesterday, we've had a "Bad movie night" with my wife. For those of you who don't know what that involves, we've been watching some of the worst movies conceivable (Sharknado, one episode of Twilight, couldn't bring myself to watch two...) and pointing out the stupidities in them. This is when I pulled out Live Free or Die Hard (Die Hard 4), because I heard that it was pretty awful. And the pearls they were letting out of their mouth...

Quote

They HACKED ALL THE IPs!!!

Seriously? Do your script writers do their homework, Hollywood? 

Anyway, that made me curious. What's the worst faux-technical nonsense talk you've ever heard or the most hilariously stupid science you've seen in movies?

[Tex Mechs Robot]

Going to have to go with the ENTIRE solution to the problem in the movie "The Core".

[cantab]

2012 or maybe The Core. Or most disaster movies really. The earthquake and flight scene in 2012 was so ridiculous I burst out laughing in the cinema.

[Frybert]

Threads on same subject merged.

[Guest]

Press any key to continue hacking...

[peadar1987]

On 18/04/2016 at 0:10 PM, p1t1o said:

Not just movies, but other media too. And it happens all the time.

I hate "bootstrap" paradoxes. You know, when find some amazing treasure or other plot point, and then later use a time machine to go back in time to put said amazing treasure/plotpoint in the place you previously found it, so that your past self can find it. Said treasure/plotpoint has no origin, it just oscillate forward and backward through time.

Another example might be, you travel back in time and set up your mother with your father. The result and the cause are the same phenomena.

Yeah, I know there are some mathematical treatments of timelike loops or something which says that this isn't necessarily forbidden, mathematically at least. But that is A) still pretty dubious, even for time travel, and B) it is still like SUPER lazy writing.

Even in Back to the Future?!

I've got a pile of manure with your name on it!

[WestAir]

1. Pilots struggle for five full minutes to pull a Jumbo Jet out of a dive. (If you're pulling back for five minutes, that's why you're in the dive to begin with.)

2. Enemy Marksmen miss every shot. And it's not like they only shot once or twice - they literally unloaded on our heroes. (Did I mention the untrained heroes kill all twelve enemies with precision?)

3. Nuclear Weapons. ("We've got 30 seconds to disarm the nuke!" - or "Russia's fired an ICBM. We have to hack it mid flight!")

4. Speaking of the above^ Super weapons. Because in Sci Fi like Star Trek, the base weapons of starships are often already superweapons. (A Quantum Torpedo literally has its yield select-able on launch and can destroy the surface of a planet. Why do we need super weapons, again, when we have 70 Quantum Torpedo planet killers sitting on B deck? And why don't these super weapon torpedoes, that can destroy planets, not destroy the enemy spaceship which is the size of a minibus?)

5. Car / Plane / Train / Spaceship crashes. If your wreck looks like the aftermath of a WW2 bombing, no actors should be crawling out of the rubble saying "That was close!" - The next scene should, instead, take place in a CSI lab with doctors comparing our heroes remains with dental records on file.

6. Finally - my biggest pet peeve with Hollywood: The reactions of Earth to events of the film. If you just Nuked Paris or an alien race just vaporized SF Bay, society won't just give the Klingons a "free pass". No body is going to Hakuna Matata a war act. It's silly when cities get vaporized and everyone is always so chill about it!

[Eric S]

Not necessarily the worst, but one that has always annoyed me every time I see it is brute forcing a password/launchcode/etc.  They fill in digits one at a time.  I get why they feel the need, that gives us a countdown for suspense, but it still hurts the brain.

 

[Darnok]

15 minutes ago, WestAir said:

1. Pilots struggle for five full minutes to pull a Jumbo Jet out of a dive. (If you're pulling back for five minutes, that's why you're in the dive to begin with.)

2. Enemy Marksmen miss every shot. And it's not like they only shot once or twice - they literally unloaded on our heroes. (Did I mention the untrained heroes kill all twelve enemies with precision?)

3. Nuclear Weapons. ("We've got 30 seconds to disarm the nuke!" - or "Russia's fired an ICBM. We have to hack it mid flight!")

4. Speaking of the above^ Super weapons. Because in Sci Fi like Star Trek, the base weapons of starships are often already superweapons. (A Quantum Torpedo literally has its yield select-able on launch and can destroy the surface of a planet. Why do we need super weapons, again, when we have 70 Quantum Torpedo planet killers sitting on B deck? And why don't these super weapon torpedoes, that can destroy planets, not destroy the enemy spaceship which is the size of a minibus?)

5. Car / Plane / Train / Spaceship crashes. If your wreck looks like the aftermath of a WW2 bombing, no actors should be crawling out of the rubble saying "That was close!" - The next scene should, instead, take place in a CSI lab with doctors comparing our heroes remains with dental records on file.

6. Finally - my biggest pet peeve with Hollywood: The reactions of Earth to events of the film. If you just Nuked Paris or an alien race just vaporized SF Bay, society won't just give the Klingons a "free pass". No body is going to Hakuna Matata a war act. It's silly when cities get vaporized and everyone is always so chill about it!

1.

2. Without it every movie would be like game of thrones

3. Hacking is great in movies (sarcasm)

4. Shields protect them

5. Look 2.

6. Well you are right, they should put flags on fb profile photos

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, WestAir said:

(Did I mention the untrained heroes kill all twelve enemies with precision?

As a conclusion: there are many times more bad people than good ones. Otherwose why they never become exhausted.

2,5. This effect is familiar to the terran science:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheChosenOne

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheChosenMany

 

 

.

[RainDreamer]

10 hours ago, WestAir said:

2. Enemy Marksmen miss every shot. And it's not like they only shot once or twice - they literally unloaded on our heroes. (Did I mention the untrained heroes kill all twelve enemies with precision?)

Adding on this about snipers: First shot against protagonists always miss, or at least survivable. First shot against expendable extra always hit, usually lethal. And for some reason the enemy sniper then just lose it and rapid fire their rifle at cover without moving, giving away their position, instead of taking careful shots and move constantly. Suppression fire makes no sense if you are a lone sniper.

10 hours ago, Eric S said:

Not necessarily the worst, but one that has always annoyed me every time I see it is brute forcing a password/launchcode/etc.  They fill in digits one at a time.  I get why they feel the need, that gives us a countdown for suspense, but it still hurts the brain.

 

Also passcodes are always numbers or words, not number and random letters.

[sevenperforce]

16 hours ago, Eric S said:

Not necessarily the worst, but one that has always annoyed me every time I see it is brute forcing a password/launchcode/etc.  They fill in digits one at a time.  I get why they feel the need, that gives us a countdown for suspense, but it still hurts the brain.

 

I'm always wracking my brain, trying to figure out how they imagine passwords and hacking and brute force attacks actually work.

Does anyone think that you can just query the computer on the individual characters of the passcode?

One particularly bad thing you don't see much anymore: trains stopping on a dime. Seriously, it does not happen.

Headshots with a one-handed grip on a large-caliber handgun are a bit amusing. 

[Hary R]

This one don't really bothers me but still pretty stupid:

if someone fall, if you just stop him abruptly (superman catching Lois in mid air or a rope that stop the hero a few centimeters from the ground), chance are you just applied the same amount of force as if that someone actually hit the ground.

7 hours ago, RainDreamer said:

First shot against expendable extra always hit, usually lethal

in the same style, in any sword fight, any expendable will die as soon as a blade touch them but the hero or the main antagonist.... even after being impaled, they will fight as if nothing happened. 

Oh, and hero, if you get hit in the head (back of the head in many movies), the consequence will be far worst than just a little headache.

Edited April 26, 2016 by Hary R

[todofwar]

9 minutes ago, Hary R said:

This one don't really bothers me but still pretty stupid:

if someone fall, if you just stop him abruptly (superman catching Lois in mid air or a rope that stop the hero a few centimeters from the ground), chance are you just applied the same amount of force as if that someone actually hit the ground.

in the same style, in any sword fight, any expendable will die as soon as a blade touch them but the hero or the main antagonist.... even after being impaled, they will fight as if nothing happened. 

Oh, and hero, if you get hit in the head (back of the head in many movies), the consequence will be far worst than just a little headache.

Yeah, if you get hit in the head and end up unconscious for several minutes or hours, please see a doctor and probably a physical therapist to try and regain function from your severe head trauma and brain injury.

[monstah]

A specific scene: GI Joe (or it's sequel, I don't know), the heroes storm an undersea base. Big bad explodes the ice above, which sinks to destroy said station. Like, REALLY?

I know, I know. Why the hell was I watching that?

[sevenperforce]

1 hour ago, todofwar said:

Yeah, if you get hit in the head and end up unconscious for several minutes or hours, please see a doctor and probably a physical therapist to try and regain function from your severe head trauma and brain injury.

Then again, for many many years it was considered standard practice for police to use a blackjack or nightstick to intentionally KO suspects. So while obviously the effects are far more than depicted, it was also expected. 

27 minutes ago, monstah said:

A specific scene: GI Joe (or it's sequel, I don't know), the heroes storm an undersea base. Big bad explodes the ice above, which sinks to destroy said station. Like, REALLY?

I know, I know. Why the hell was I watching that?

This. This. This. 

This movie rivals Armageddon for extreme errors.

Let us not forget that after the ice SANK, one of the main characters got in a PLANE and chased down an ICBM. Twice. 

Two ICBMs. Launched from the North Pole, one headed toward Moscow and one headed toward Washington DC, traveled SO SLOWLY that a freaking jet aircraft was able to give them a headstart, fly to Moscow and shoot down the first one, then fly from Moscow to Washington DC and physically intercept the second IBCM. On one tank of fuel, I might add.

Right. 

[todofwar]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Then again, for many many years it was considered standard practice for police to use a blackjack or nightstick to intentionally KO suspects. So while obviously the effects are far more than depicted, it was also expected. 

This. This. This. 

This movie rivals Armageddon for extreme errors.

Let us not forget that after the ice SANK, one of the main characters got in a PLANE and chased down an ICBM. Twice. 

Two ICBMs. Launched from the North Pole, one headed toward Moscow and one headed toward Washington DC, traveled SO SLOWLY that a freaking jet aircraft was able to give them a headstart, fly to Moscow and shoot down the first one, then fly from Moscow to Washington DC and physically intercept the second IBCM. On one tank of fuel, I might add.

Right. 

Never saw that movie, now I kind of want to watch for a bad movie night. 

This one is sort of related to another one that might have been mentioned, but space is not up, its really really fast. It's not hard reaching the edge of the atmosphere, but reaching orbital velocity so you can stay there is hard. Movies always seem to think you magically become weightless when you leave the atmosphere.

[sevenperforce]

30 minutes ago, todofwar said:

Never saw that movie, now I kind of want to watch for a bad movie night. 

This one is sort of related to another one that might have been mentioned, but space is not up, its really really fast. It's not hard reaching the edge of the atmosphere, but reaching orbital velocity so you can stay there is hard. Movies always seem to think you magically become weightless when you leave the atmosphere.

Reminded of Oblivion, where Tom Cruise has a single-person craft which uses a pair of jet engines for flying around on the ground, then apparently transforms into an ion engine of some kind to fly into space later on. He apparently achieves orbit (though it's possible that his target, the alien TET craft, is just hovering in space on antigrav or something).

The G.I. Joe movie is also guilty of a subtler (but more prolific) error in films everywhere: iconic architecture pr0n. If there is a chase scene through a familiar city, you can guarantee that it will take you past every single iconic building in that city, regardless of whether it makes sense at all. The G.I. Joe movie had a chase scene in Paris that drove past the Arc de Triomphe, followed by Notre Dame, followed by the Eiffel Tower, even though those three landmarks are all in cardinal opposite parts of the town.

Action movies show a general disregard for conservation of momentum. Vehicle collisions (particularly between unequal vehicles, like trains vs cars or a large boat vs a jet ski) will not obey any sort of momentum conservation and will result in vehicles or parts flying off in vectors completely foreign to the original momenta. This is also the case with near-misses; a jet plane will pass inches from impact with an object but not affect it at all, even though the air wash (or, in some cases, the jet exhaust) would either send it flying or rip it to shreds.

Many times American films will use any Asian language, even when the characters don't match (for example, Korean for Japanese characters, or Chinese for Vietnamese characters).

The effects of blasts on individuals is vastly understated. They act as though a bomb can fling you half a city block but as long as you land on something soft, you'll be fine. No, the acceleration caused by the blast is what would have turned you to oatmeal, regardless of where you landed.

Edited April 26, 2016 by sevenperforce

[Andem]

I know campy superman movies don't count, but spinning the earth to reverse time. 'nuff said.

[Vanamonde]

When a gun is fired, it can miss, wound, or kill. When a knife is thrown, it always hits and is invariably fatal. 

Ah, snipers. 
1. If you do not see the enemy sniper's face, "he" will always turn out to be a "she." 
2.; The only way to kill a sniper is to make sure your bullet passes through his telescopic sight and through his eye. If you can't line up that shot, don't bother firing because you'll miss. 

[sevenperforce]

53 minutes ago, Andem said:

I know campy superman movies don't count, but spinning the earth to reverse time. 'nuff said.

Well, to be fair, I always thought the implication was that superman flew in a circle until he exceeded lightspeed, thus traveling backward in time and giving the illusion that the Earth was spinning in the opposite direction. 

[insert_name]

then theres the flash, where if he runs at mach 3 he risks traveling back in time, lasers can be frozen, and wormholes give off smoke.

[WestAir]

25 minutes ago, insert_name said:

then theres the flash, where if he runs at mach 3 he risks traveling back in time, lasers can be frozen, and wormholes give off smoke.

I've been waiting for an issue where he runs so fast Lorentz contraction flattens him paper thin, and then all of his (now free floating) atoms rapidly cascade through the air as plasma. Hopefully he'll be going fast enough to launch chunks of the atmosphere away at escape velocity before he disintegrates.

Edited April 26, 2016 by WestAir

[benzman]

  On 4/25/2016 at 5:49 AM, WestAir said:

1. Pilots struggle for five full minutes to pull a Jumbo Jet out of a dive. (If you're pulling back for five minutes, that's why you're in the dive to begin with.)

We old glider pilots had a joke saying,

Push forward and the houses get bigger. Pull back and the houses get smaller.  Pull back more and the houses get bigger again!

 

[monstah]

4 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Well, to be fair, I always thought the implication was that superman flew in a circle until he exceeded lightspeed, thus traveling backward in time and giving the illusion that the Earth was spinning in the opposite direction. 

Can't believe someone beat me to this answer!