Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[p1t1o]

40 minutes ago, RizzoTheRat said:

As a scientist doing a lot of work for the military I'm always disappointed by this, the biggest thing they've ever let me fire was a 40mm (with a chalk dust practice round)

Are you saying you *dont* have a 9mm under your labcoat and an M4 slung across your back at all times?

Have any of your superiors seen any movies?

I bet your work doesnt even involve doing something because you can or playing god amirite?

[RizzoTheRat]

Alas not, I have got a really big spreadsheet though...

Edited January 31, 2018 by RizzoTheRat

[DDE]

15 hours ago, DAL59 said:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/

Oh, it’s much worse than that, and never explained. The Blight is an actual all-destroying organism with a nitrogen biocycle. It’s destroying crop types one-by-one and it’s also driving down the atmospheric oxygen content.

heavily implied to be engineered or alien.

15 hours ago, tater said:

It makes no sense at all. Anyone (nation state) capable of detecting the difference can detect that the thing is not in orbit. Anyone else would not see, the SSTO takes off at night, looks like a plane, disappears.

You assume other nation-states still exist. It’s essentially a post-apocalyptic world.

The canon reason is that they used a chemical booster to conserve SSTO fuel. BTW, they strapped two SSTOs together in that launch.

[Just Jim]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

Going to have to respectfully disagree about Starship Troopers. That's another prime candidate for @Just Jim's rogue's gallery of movies that are so terribly bad you can use it to throw a "Bad-Movie" party, in my opinion.

I LOVED that movie... but for the same reason you mention... it's SOOOO bad, but in a really fun way!!! I would throw a bad-movie party with that one!

But if we're talking bad science... bad acting... bad everything... then nothing beats The Green Slime!!! (Sooo bad... so very, very bad....)  hehehe

 

[tater]

2 hours ago, KSK said:

Going to have to respectfully disagree about Starship Troopers. That's another prime candidate for @Just Jim's rogue's gallery of movies that are so terribly bad you can use it to throw a "Bad-Movie" party, in my opinion.

I'll grant you that a more faithful adaptation of the book would have been difficult and probably controversial but what we got failed at pretty much every level; as a satire it was hamfisted, as a commentary on the source material it had nothing to say and as either a sci-fi war movie, or a coming-of-age-in-the-military adventure movie, it was dreadful. Featuring a cast of beautiful people actors that looked - and acted - like sculptures.

Back on topic - I don't even recall any glaring scientific errors.

This, *1e6.

I hate Starship Troopers in a profound way. I actually saw it in the theater with a buddy who worked on many of the physical effects (close bug with people stuff was not CGI).

In the modern world, it's actually doable as per the book, too, and would have been far more interesting.

As much as I hate Interstellar, I think I'd rather see no other movie in my life ever again except Interstellar rather than watch Starship Troopers even once again since the only time I ever saw it (in the theater).

[Just Jim]

12 minutes ago, tater said:

As much as I hate Interstellar, I think I'd rather see no other movie in my life ever again except Interstellar rather than watch Starship Troopers even once again since the only time I ever saw it (in the theater).

Wow... it's funny... and I don't mean to argue, not at all... but I'm the complete opposite. I could handle Starship Troopers again, but I'd rather run head first into a brick wall than try and watch Interstellar again... Even my Emiko wormholes (as nutty as they are) are more believable.

 

 

[PB666]

8 hours ago, PakledHostage said:

Agreed. Movies like Starship Troopers and Star Wars (some episodes, at least) are just fun. Who cares about realism? 

I can't watch Star Wars, to get into the plot line you have to forget about the filmography, and it's just such a violation of the law of physics it stays in my head the entire movie.

[tater]

10 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Wow... it's funny... and I don't mean to argue, not at all... but I'm the complete opposite. I could handle Starship Troopers again, but I'd rather run head first into a brick wall than try and watch Interstellar again... Even my Emiko wormholes (as nutty as they are) are more believable.

I HATE Interstellar. A lot.

I just think I hate Starship Troopers more. I read the book ages ago, and will never like any poor adaptation of it. I understand the critique about the statement it supposedly makes (hamfisted, at best), and don't care. If there had never been a book by the same name, then ST would merely be a forgettable, bad movie. For those like my kids who loved the Harry Potter books, imagine if the movie adaptations had been as profoundly awful as ST, and the director had intentionally made them to "make a statement" about the world the author created (for example, if the whole point of the movies was to show the fascist nature of a world where some people were simply and unarguably better than others (which clearly wizards are compared to us muggles)). And everything about the plot, etc was also unrelated to the books.

I hate the Dune movie, as well (god, that was awful---though some of the sets looks pretty OK).

Edited January 31, 2018 by tater

[p1t1o]

Weird how subjective some things are.

I think interstellar is visually awesome with a story written by someone with little interest in science. Dont tell me they actually love science because that would be worse.

I think Starship troopers is a pretty good sci-fi action movie.

I think Dune is one of the best sci-fi movies ever made. Even Frank Herbert liked it so much he retconned certain features into later books.

 

But thats art for you. 

[Just Jim]

21 minutes ago, tater said:

I hate the Dune movie, as well (god, that was awful---though some of the sets looks pretty OK).

I much prefer the Dune mini-series put out by Sci-Fi channel a few years ago:

 

[KG3]

My all time favorite bad sci-fi guilty pleasure movie is Dark Star which was made in 1974.  It is totally unapologetic.  I especially like the space suits which you can see are made of house hold items such as vacuum cleaner part, muffin tins and such.  The alien in the clip I linked to here a beach ball with green feet!  Still, it's an entertaining move.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5YTXnnQjC4&t=20s

 

[MaxwellsDemon]

People's tastes are different.

I as well might have enjoyed Starship Troopers more if I'd never read Heinlein.  Unfortunately, the book is far more than a sci-fi action story.   (I wonder why nobody's ever tried to do a movie of Moon is a Harsh Mistress?  Perhaps it's better that they don't try.)  And they spent so much money on the Bugs cgi that they had nothing left for the really interesting stuff, like the combat suits...

When it comes to 'realism,' it's far better not to even try than to try and fail, I think.   That goes for historical fiction, too.   If you're going to tell a historical story, you have an obligation to make the story have some recognizable resemblance to the history-- if you're going to bill a SF movie as science-based, you have an obligation to have some concept of the science.

Asimov had a good essay about this sort of thing once.  He simply noted that there were certain technologies (FTL travel and communication, for instance) that, scientifically speaking, he couldn't accept as valid-- yet they were necessary from a storytelling point of view.  (If your plot depends on a person starting on one planet in one star system and ending up in another, a multigenerational colony ship is not the correct way to do it, however much more physically possible it is.)  I might be mixing up my essays, but he basically said that a SF starship is a plot vehicle, a dramatic convention, rather than a physically possible vehicle.   Once one realizes that, then one can mitigate in in ways that ease the necessary suspension of disbelief.

Thinking back to Edgar Rice Burroughs... the way he got John Carter to Mars was by some sort of psychic transference.  The way he got Carson Napier to Venus was a rocket ship that was aimed at Mars but missed and landed on Venus instead.  Which one is more 'realistic'?  Neither one, really-- the point was that he needed his hero to be on Mars (or Venus) and needed some quick explanation to put him there.  I admit I prefer the Carson of Venus method because it seems less fantastical... but looking closely, it's not really all that much more realistic.

Anyway... things like 'Star Wars' and 'Star Trek' work for me because they're so obviously divorced from reality that I don't even feel the need to make them fit into reality.  It's when somebody gets it close but wrong that things are really jarring (such as the losing-the-grip thing in Gravity.  Why couldn't they simply have had Clooney fly by, miss the grab, and then play out the scene as he's coasting irreversibly away?  Would have worked dramatically just as well).

Part of it is what the viewer brings along in terms of prior knowledge and expectations, too, such as me and Starship Troopers (you just can't rewrite Heinlein and expect a Heinlein fan to like it, bottom line) or when I watch a WW2 movie like Midway and get annoyed when they're talking about one sort of plane (like a F4F Wildcat) and showing a different one (like a TBF Avenger), where either the filmmaker doesn't know the difference, or thinks that the audience won't know it.  In another vein, American Civil War scholars are highly divided on the movie Gettysburg, because it gets so much right and also so much wrong... or, on another tack, I really enjoy the movie Stargate for the fact they went to some trouble to reasonably reconstruct the ancient Egyptian language-- no matter that the plot itself is firmly in the realm of fantasy (so much so, I can ignore the vast chasm between it and reality).  So, to bring this ramble to a close, better a wide gulf between the movie and reality than a narrow crack, IMHO.

 

ETA:  For instance, it bothers me that in Hidden Figures, they magically transported Mercury Control to Langley.  It wasn't necessary.  They could perfectly well have had Katherine Goble Johnson fly to Florida if they really wanted her in Mercury Control.  What the what?

In a better vein... try listening to the commentary by Jim and Marilyn Lovell on the Apollo 13 DVD.  It's quite interesting.  For instance, Marilyn notes how many of Jim's mannerisms Tom Hanks picked up for the movie, or Jim noted that the characterization of Jack Swigert wasn't right-- he was in fact a Command Module control systems expert, so there was no question at all that he knew his stuff, but they wanted to have a 'rookie earns his stripes' theme in the movie.

Edited January 31, 2018 by MaxwellsDemon
Additional thought

[PakledHostage]

46 minutes ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

Part of it is what the viewer brings along in terms of prior knowledge and expectations, too, such as me and Starship Troopers (you just can't rewrite Heinlein and expect a Heinlein fan to like it, bottom line) 

And that's just it... I wasn't actually aware [gasp!] that Starship Troopers is a film adaptation of a novel until people here started mentioning it. I just watched it, had some chuckles and subsequently found that I understood more of the pop culture references that the nerds around me were making. Some years later, I watched it again with my wife and she enjoyed it too. Sure it is ridiculous, but it can be fun if you don't have any preconceptions or expectations.

[radonek]

I am surprised nobody mentioned the Martian. It may not be as bad as other mentionables, but as a gross perversion of good material it's unbeatable. Blinken lights, sound-in-vacuum, untethered astronauts… you name it, all the worst hollywood crap is there. I expected it to take liberties with story, but not being this lazy about exection.

Also, how could you forget the Prometheus? That one was so bad <blindly staring at keyboard for a minute> …it's just beyond description.

[PakledHostage]

A bit off topic, but is anyone else here looking forward to the next Predator movie? I understand that it is being directed by the Duffer brothers of Stranger Things fame, which bodes well.

The Alien franchise jumped the shark with Prometheus (or even before), and the AVP movies certainly have oodles of examples of bad sci-fi movie science, but I'm holding out a glimmer of hope for the next stand-alone Predator movie.

6 minutes ago, radonek said:

Also, how could you forget the Prometheus? That one was so bad <blindly staring at keyboard for a minute> …it's just beyond description.

Get out of my head!

[monstah]

19 hours ago, tater said:

In B5 they flew into some docking bay which was not rotating... then they'd get out and walk around (it's been a while). yeah, makes no sense. Other races in B5 have gravity control on ships, perhpas they can make artificial gravity on small scale. Never bothered thinking about it, lol.

As I recall it, the Mimbari gave humans said tech as part of their peace treaty in the series' backstory. Yay, more people who've watched B5

[tater]

18 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

And that's just it... I wasn't actually aware [gasp!] that Starship Troopers is a film adaptation of a novel until people here started mentioning it. I just watched it, had some chuckles and subsequently found that I understood more of the pop culture references that the nerds around me were making. Some years later, I watched it again with my wife and she enjoyed it too. Sure it is ridiculous, but it can be fun if you don't have any preconceptions or expectations.

Like I said, I would likely not have abjectly hated it if I had not read the book decades before (I have the old board game, too---think hex maps and chits).

Movies are usually not as good as books, that's a given, and I view them with an eye towards the fact that there are many limitations in a format that is only a few hours at most, and has trouble with inner dialog, etc. ST completely ignored the part of the book that was most iconic, and turned the premise around completely (it's been decades, but as I recall the underlying point of the military in the society was one where everyone was required to have "skin in the game" to participate in democracy. This was either via military service, or as I recall (read it in the 1980s) also non-military service for those so inclined. If you are unwilling to serve your society, then you can't participate in the electoral process. The movie just went to a fascist state, instead.).

20 minutes ago, radonek said:

I am surprised nobody mentioned the Martian. It may not be as bad as other mentionables, but as a gross perversion of good material it's unbeatable. Blinken lights, sound-in-vacuum, untethered astronauts… you name it, all the worst hollywood crap is there. I expected it to take liberties with story, but not being this lazy about exection.

The largest problem with the Martian science wise was in fact in the source material, the %%@#$!$@ storm. The rest of the movie didn't bother me much (the landing site was absurd, of course, but the hill allowed the movie services stuff to be hidden, and it was photogenic). Weir could have made the landing site over a lava tube, then had it start collapsing, for example, while Watney was away on some errand in a rover. The sink hole is opening, and at the rate it is expanding they need to move the MAV in minutes or be trapped, and while rushing back, a new hole opens swallowing Watney, life signs stop, etc. Just the same as the rest, but a plausible way to strand him.

[PB666]

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

Weird how subjective some things are.

I think interstellar is visually awesome with a story written by someone with little interest in science. Dont tell me they actually love science because that would be worse.

I think Starship troopers is a pretty good sci-fi action movie.

I think Dune is one of the best sci-fi movies ever made. Even Frank Herbert liked it so much he retconned certain features into later books.

 

But thats art for you. 

Star Trek FG - like, its got nostalgic value
Lost in Space - a space comedy if you get into that angle, otherwise awful, without Dr. Smith it would have been complete garbage.
Barbarella - Really liked and disliked. Jane Fonda still looks good at 80. Who would ever have thought to put a deep shag carpet as the crew quarter in a space ship. 
Star Wars -  Mostly like, novelty.
Star Trek Movie - Mostly dislike, cool graphics in many places
Star Wars Empire strikes back - Nah, I really started cooling on the whole franchise
Star Trek, Wrath of Khan - Like, but Shattner goes into his overacting phase of his career. This was the epitome of the FG
Star Trek, NG - parts I like and dislike, like Troy, Giordi, Data, Worf - the ship is too cushy. I like the Borg they are cool, the Borg ships are cool, the new enterprise not so cool. 
DS9 - same as NG
Voyager - too touchy-feely. Would have liked it better if 7o9 became captain force everyone to wear implants.
Enterprise - Best series in the franchise they draw out stories over many episodes, right now Im wathcing the Vulcan episodes (4 part). Like the ship.
Discovery - From what I have seen I like.
Recent Star Trek movies - Too much SE no good plots (no one can replace Nemoy as Spock) Also too much boom and bang. In space there is no sound.
Original Martian - Nope
HHGTG - Rocks!  I like the guy who plays, whats his name Smaryfartbast or something, funny.
Dune - didn't like
Interstellar - refuse to watch
SG1 - OK
SG1-series- LIke, mostly except the last 2 seasons.
later SG Movies - Thumbs down.
Battlestar Gallactica (original) - when it came out i liked, but its too much period cast and so its loses its appeal over time.
SG-Universe - like but they cancelled it, didn't get into some of the touchy-feely stuff. Really liked the ship and the basic story line. What I didn't like is the time it took to cross between two galaxies (too short).
Martian (recent) - refuse to watch
Red Dwarf - Its the kind of show you can get into watching at 1 am in the morning and want to go to sleep, sort of Nostaligic.
Doctor Who - dislike (seriously spend a bit more money on special effects - using an upside down garbage can as the main villian across several series, silly)
Original HHGTH series - OK.

Forgot to add B5 - like, the plot, also liked the first captain, sorry had to leave.
B5 movies mostly liked.

 

 

Edited January 31, 2018 by PB666

[tater]

Just now, monstah said:

As I recall it, the Mimbari gave humans said tech as part of their peace treaty in the series' backstory. Yay, more people who've watched B5

Yeah, if I had seen artificial gravity outside the rotating bits, I assumed it was alien tech (they clearly had control of that force), and that for huge areas it was not practical, hence rotating (and the Earth ships that had rotating sections).

[radonek]

10 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

The Alien franchise jumped the shark with Prometheus (or even before)…

I lost all hope when I learned that developing specimen may be cloned with it's host. Is that not neutrino grade idiocy?

(BTW I also think third installment is the best. Sue me :-)

[MaxwellsDemon]

8 minutes ago, tater said:

Movies are usually not as good as books, that's a given, and I view them with an eye towards the fact that there are many limitations in a format that is only a few hours at most, and has trouble with inner dialog, etc. ST completely ignored the part of the book that was most iconic, and turned the premise around completely (it's been decades, but as I recall the underlying point of the military in the society was one where everyone was required to have "skin in the game" to participate in democracy. This was either via military service, or as I recall (read it in the 1980s) also non-military service for those so inclined. If you are unwilling to serve your society, then you can't participate in the electoral process. The movie just went to a fascist state, instead.).

Yeah.  It's a point that Heinlein also made in one of his other books-- I think it was the commentary in 'Expanded Universe.'  Basically, why not limit the franchise to people who have shown that they are invested in the system.   He also speculated on limiting it to mothers, as they have a proven interest in the future.

[tater]

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

I think Dune is one of the best sci-fi movies ever made. Even Frank Herbert liked it so much he retconned certain features into later books.

This thread has made me remember how much I hated that movie. Visually great (except the 'thopters were so stupid it's hard to even talk about them), but literally everything else about it was awful.

[Nikolai]

5 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Gravity. It nearly made me scream because it was trying so hard to be realistic but theres a bit where george clooney is hanging on for dear life, and he looses his grip, and...falls off.

What?

He was rotating.  If we superimpose several screen captures, you can see that clearly.

(That doesn't mean that the orbital mechanics of the movie wasn't garbage, of course.  It's just that this particular objection has a fairly mundane explanation.)

Album will appear when post is submitted

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, tater said:

(I have the old board game, too---think hex maps and chits)

I have played that game.

Avalon Hill also had a Dune game that was kind of interesting. Every playable faction had a completely different winning condition. For instance, one time I played against my mother and she had the Bene Gesserit faction. I thought I was doing great and won the game -- except the Bene Gesserit had a special victory condition. The BG player would write down before the game started the name and turn that another player would win on. If it happened, then the BG actually won. She made sure that I won on the turn she had predicted, and so she won instead.

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, Nikolai said:

He was rotating.  If we superimpose several screen captures, you can see that clearly.

(That doesn't mean that the orbital mechanics of the movie wasn't garbage, of course.  It's just that this particular objection has a fairly mundane explanation.)

 

Of course that was the first thing that occurred to me too, but I dont buy it, I just watched the scene on youtube, its clear that they are not rotating: 2 shots 8 seconds apart, little difference in orientation to planet. If there is a rotation, it is very gentle. Also it follows from the situation, they come on a rapid uncontrolled approach, crash into the station, graze along it and overshoot, theres no way they picked up a whole frame-of-reference rotation, the whole station would have to be spinning, which it isnt. And if they were rotating independant of the station (which can be seen not to be the case, the station is stationary behind Sandra) then they would just rotate back into the station.

 

Album zd6hf will appear when post is submitted

Album https://imgur.com/a/zd6hf will appear when post is submitted

 

edit: is this imgur thing working? I can see yours but not mine?

 

Oh for petes sake what a load of tennisballs, imgur and this embedding thing are useless. Just imagine the image I described. Better yet, heres a link to the youtiube: (image was frame at 1:44 and 1:52)

 

At the very least, if there is supposed to be a rotation or some other force that is not visually obvious (magnets?), then its a terribly shot scene.

 

 

Edited January 31, 2018 by p1t1o