What is your biggest science pet peeve in movies?

[todofwar]

1 hour ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

When you think about it, scientific method itself is sort of misrepresented in the movies and television.  There are many scenes in many movies with laboratories full of people faffing about with beakers full of smoking liquid, computers that beep unnecessarily, and malevolent supervisors.

Few movies really describe testing of hypotheses, designing experiments, etc.  One of the great wrongs done in the media is making science seem inaccessible to the masses.

Probably because science is a long tedious slog of failed results followed by a sort of half result that the boss says can be published. It lacks that good narrative flow. 

[Hary R]

10 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

It's a movie about a time machine, and you're worried about body armor? If it matters, Doc Brown had 30 years to make sure he got some that would be effective.

Still, even a modern military grade body armor are not safe against an AK 47 at that distance but doc brown is not your modern engineer right. In fact, someone pointed it out to me recently and I didn't think about it until then. My peeve came from other movie.

Edited December 13, 2016 by Hary R

[Benji13]

31 minutes ago, Hary R said:

Still, even a modern military grade body armor are not safe against an AK 47 at that distance but doc brown is not your modern engineer right. In fact, someone pointed it out to me recently and I didn't think about it until then. My peeve came from other movie.

Unless doc brown predicted that the terrorists would catch up to him after stealing the plutonium, travelled forward in time to get some futuristic magical body armour, then he went back to show Marty the time machine (where the movie starts). 

[Hary R]

1 hour ago, Benji13 said:

Unless doc brown predicted that the terrorists would catch up to him after stealing the plutonium, travelled forward in time to get some futuristic magical body armour, then he went back to show Marty the time machine (where the movie starts). 

it is more probable, for the plot to be coherent, that a future Doc Brown came back to send him the right magical body armor to use but I degress.

And now you put it in front of my face, that is a paradox in itself and one of my peeve is the paradoxes created each time a time machine is in use in any movie.

Edited December 13, 2016 by Hary R
add some line and spelling

[Jonfliesgoats]

Speaking of armor in movies, it's all wrong, especially for women. 

Surface to Air and Air to Air missiles are always in a boost phase and never in a ballistic phase in the movies.  You always have nice trails of flame and vapor to look for rather than scanning visually for a nearly invisible rod traveling toward you at Mach 3.

I know the ballistic phases of these missiles are less spectacular for film, but it's all wrong.  These things are still dangerous after their motors burn out.

Also, missiles in the movies rarely spin.  Many man-portable systems roll and corkscrew in flight.

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

Surface to Air and Air to Air missiles are always in a boost phase and never in a ballistic phase in the movies.  You always have nice trails of flame and vapor to look for rather than scanning visually for a nearly invisible rod traveling toward you at Mach 3.

I know the ballistic phases of these missiles are less spectacular for film, but it's all wrong.  These things are still dangerous after their motors burn out.

I had a massive whine about this early on in the thread

Dont forget how every missile is hit-to-kill, flies only just a bit faster than whatever the main character is in and apparently carries a 3,000kg warhead!

[DarkOwl57]

2 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Dont forget how every missile is hit-to-kill, flies only just a bit faster than whatever the main character is in and apparently carries a 3,000kg warhead!

Except when it isn't of course. (See my whine about the main characters NEVER dying unless it's crucial for plot.)

[p1t1o]

5 minutes ago, DarkOwl57 said:

Except when it isn't of course. (See my whine about the main characters NEVER dying unless it's crucial for plot.)

Exactly, hit-to-kill means even a near miss is a miss. IRL a decent-size missile can have a lethal zone a hundred feet across or more.

[DarkOwl57]

ah

[Jonfliesgoats]

I should have searched.  Curse my lazy thumbs!

[p1t1o]

5 minutes ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

I should have searched.  Curse my lazy thumbs!

Heh, nah, it was waay back. I dont subscibe to the "You must perform the equivalent of a patent-search before making any comment" I hate when people get called out for that...

[Codraroll]

Speaking of searches, isn't it strange how characters in movies always find what they're looking for at the top of the search engine results, no matter what they search for? I've heard there's this movie where the main character searches for "file" and "computer" and gets three hits.

[mikegarrison]

20 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

Speaking of searches, isn't it strange how characters in movies always find what they're looking for at the top of the search engine results, no matter what they search for? I've heard there's this movie where the main character searches for "file" and "computer" and gets three hits.

Doing web searching is boring. Movies don't show us boring stuff, usually. That's what real life is for. The exception is when there is tremendous time pressure, and they have to show that it takes a long time to get a difficult job done just in the very last nick of time. And even then, they will use a montage.

Speaking of funny scenes in movies, Highlander always had a couple that bothered me. The main one is the scene where some researcher (who we never see before or after) looks up the deeds to MacLeod's house for the last several hundred years and compares the signatures, deciding that they all have been signed with the same handwriting. What would you determine:

1. The deeds were all forged recently by the same person.
2. The deeds were all signed by the same person, who has lived in the same house for hundreds of years and has sold the house to himself over and over using new identities.

Yeah ... it's the second one that the researcher just assumes right from the start.

Edited December 13, 2016 by mikegarrison

[Vanamonde]

Oh, cripes, air to air missiles. NO, you ninnies! They do not fly around maneuvering tightly for several minutes while chasing the target! How much flipping fuel do you think those things could hold? 

[Hary R]

55 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

Oh, cripes, air to air missiles. NO, you ninnies! They do not fly around maneuvering tightly for several minutes while chasing the target! How much flipping fuel do you think those things could hold? 

You mean like this:

 

If that was done in a live action movie, I will be like... are you kidding me!!! But in an anime: suspension of disbelief== very high.

[PB666]

On 12/13/2016 at 10:21 PM, Vanamonde said:

Oh, cripes, air to air missiles. NO, you ninnies! They do not fly around maneuvering tightly for several minutes while chasing the target! How much flipping fuel do you think those things could hold? 

As they burn fuel they accelerate, past the speed of sound and past the speed of sound things don't turn well at all.

[benzman]

On 12/7/2016 at 11:54 PM, Hary R said:

I have this one pet peeve from many space related story for a while: planets are never recognized as a planet size object. How many time have I heard a dialogue like this in a si-fi movie/anime/series:

"He is on that planet, let's get down and find him...."

Yeah! Like the same way you try find one person that try to hide or have disappeared in the wilderness... quite easy right?

Seriously some writers have no idea how huge a planet really is.

 

I don't care for it when Our Heroes find a new planet, land next to its one and only settlement and find it inhabited by about a dozen people.

 

[todofwar]

12 minutes ago, benzman said:

I don't care for it when Our Heroes find a new planet, land next to its one and only settlement and find it inhabited by about a dozen people.

 

And every planet is unified under a single government and there is a single culture, language, and religion per species (except humans). Then again, maybe we are moving towards having one world culture the way different regions have slowly become homogenized over the last fifty or so years. 

[CaptainAl]

I don't know if this has been said, but burning directly towards a planet rather than retrograde to deorbit

[Hary R]

13 hours ago, CaptainAl said:

I don't know if this has been said, but burning directly towards a planet rather than retrograde to deorbit

it can be done, it's just really not efficient.

[Smillerthegreat]

The Martian and how to MAV could manage to get up to the Here's at that speed, also the storm wouldn't have done much in real life

[Kosmonaut]

when they ignore gravity

[Tex_NL]

15 hours ago, Smillerthegreat said:

The Martian and how to MAV could manage to get up to the Here's at that speed, also the storm wouldn't have done much in real life

Start reading here (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/136744-what-is-your-biggest-science-pet-peeve-in-movies/&do=findComment&comment=2877003) and you'll learn this is not as far fetched as it might seem.

Edited December 20, 2016 by Tex_NL

[monstah]

13 hours ago, Kosmonaut said:

when they ignore gravity

A ship's engine fails, and it starts to fall toward Earth

Rogue One spoiler:

Spoiler

With all the suspension of disbelief any Star Wars movie requires in that regard, the way the Star Destroyer just stayed there, and they pushed it down instead, was a nice touch in my opinion. I was expecting this to happen, instead.

 

[magnemoe]

18 hours ago, Kosmonaut said:

when they ignore gravity

Ignoring gravity is easy but don't help as gravity don't ignore you back. 
During the winter its often the opposite with friction.