Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[StrandedonEarth]

2 hours ago, Codraroll said:

It can get to a point where the discrepancies between the movie and reality become very distracting, though. Usually when the writers fall back on "... and then this happens!" as a major plot point or set piece, and the audience goes "Umm, that wouldn't happen at all".

I think the worst example I've seen in a blockbuster movie was that G.I. Joe movie where a seafloor base underneath the Arctic ice cap is destroyed by blowing up the ice sheet above it. Huge chunks of ice then sink down at freefall speeds and crush the base. Some visual effects director must have had this great vision he pushed through, unaware of the fact that ice floats in water. Hence why it forms on the surface to begin with, and not on the seafloor.

Yeah, some of the procedural dramas my wife and I watch fall into the category of “but they wouldn’t do it that way!” I’m not even in that industry and I know that if they tried to do it that way they’d get fired if they didn’t get killed. 

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Hm. What made it bad, if the core aspects were good?

Dialog and acting aren't the only core aspects of a good movie.

I'm sure it's been in this thread before but here's a non-exhaustive list from memory of what I recall making Armageddon bad, in spite of being fun to watch.

• It takes like 90 minutes to get into space. Everything before that is character building that might work in a character-building movie, but this isn't a character-building movie.
• Liv Tyler can't get her voice above 2 decibels and they don't raise it in post. Thankfully she didn't come along into space.
• The entire concept that you can teach oil riggers to be astronauts faster than you can teach astronauts to run a drill. They're not even drilling for oil on the asteroid.
• They brought rovers with them to the asteroid. Those rovers had loaded machine guns.
• They had to stop at Mir to refuel. The one cosmonaut on Mir had to spin it up for gravity, which makes no sense even if they got gravity pointing the correct direction afterward. Hint: They didn't.

I won't even get into the asteroid being "as big as Texas" yet break-apartable with a single nuke drilled like 100 yards into the surface. Or the "and after all that they just landed the shuttle." Or ... well ... I'm getting into it so I'll stop

[DDE]

11 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

They brought rovers with them to the asteroid. Those rovers had loaded machine guns.

Well, it was a USAF "black" space shuttle program.

[kerbiloid]

But neither Black Space Shuttle program, nor Project Horizon were driving the rover at 0.0001 g.

Also, NASA SEV.

Spoiler

It's like a rover with Gatling gun and Bruce Willis but without Gatling gun and Bruce Willis.

Edited September 20, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Rutabaga22]

On 9/20/2022 at 8:54 AM, kerbiloid said:

But neither Black Space Shuttle program, nor Project Horizon were driving the rover at 0.0001 g.

Also, NASA SEV.

  Hide contents

It's like a rover with Gatling gun and Bruce Willis but without Gatling gun and Bruce Willis.

I don't see what's wrong with the SEV, it may be out of reach now, but when we have stations on other plaenets, it could be a fine idea in my totally uneducated opinion.

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, Rutabaga22 said:

wrong with the SEV

Not with SEV, but with 0.0001 g rover driving.

[kerbiloid]

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

Why does the She-Hulk have the same hair in both forms, when their length and amount should stay constant?

Why does the big form not have short and rare hair due to the bigger head?

[Gargamel]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

Why does the She-Hulk have the same hair in both forms, when their length and amount should stay constant?

Why does the big form not have short and rare hair due to the bigger head?

We do not try to apply logic to super hero movies.    The latest Thor movie has goats running into a planet, head first.  

No.... no logic here. 

[kerbiloid]

3 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

No.... no logic here. 

A magick logick.

[Rutabaga22]

Just a reminder that TIE fighters use ion engines.

They also have the drag coefficient of a brick

 

[DDE]

3 hours ago, Rutabaga22 said:

Just a reminder that TIE fighters use ion engines.

They also have the drag coefficient of a brick

 

To be fair, ion engines of SW are basically some sort of fusion or fission fragment propulsion. Also, some of the really old works sought to restrict TIEs from atmospheric flight altogether.

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, DDE said:

To be fair, ion engines of SW are basically some sort of fusion or fission fragment propulsion. Also, some of the really old works sought to restrict TIEs from atmospheric flight altogether.

Star War is WW 2 dog fighting in space. That was the movies George Lucas grew up with and its the most visual stunning sort of air combat.
Seen some archives of WW 2 anti ship fighting and it looks so Star Wars but it made more sense like the dive bombers coming back and strafing the ship to suppress the anti air guns so the torpedo bombers had an easier job. Only the heavy AAA was armored and that only on capital ships. 40 mm and below was open mounts. 
And the death star trench run was an replicate of the dambursters movie. 

Granted Star Wars like good fantasy tried to be internally consistent until hyperspace ramming  

[kerbiloid]

7 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

hyperspace ramming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_as_Gods
aka
https://ru-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Люди_как_боги_(роман_Снегова)?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp

It's all about ramming (like alcubierring) the space and matter with huge hyperspace star ploughs.

Edited October 23, 2022 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

4 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_as_Gods
aka
https://ru-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Люди_как_боги_(роман_Снегова)?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp

It's all about ramming (like alcubierring) the space and matter with huge hyperspace star ploughs.

Yes, if an known option, but the Star Wars universe was an very old civilization who had reached the end of progress in most places. 
You could build larger weapons like the death star but main focus was battleships and aircraft carriers usually combines as it was no need for runways. (they got that right) 
It was more dedicated carriers staying behind the BB, but BB carried air wings because of no runways. 

But hyperspace ramming is very obvious and you can fire lots of hyperspace torpedoes to kill an star destroyer. 

Rules changes, smaller more maneuverable ships works better 100 destroyer class crafts with two fighters and 20 hyperspace torpedoes are superior. 
As the capital ships goes away the hyperspace torpedoes goes away but they are easy to add, 

[DDE]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Star War is WW 2 dog fighting in space. That was the movies George Lucas grew up with and its the most visual stunning sort of air combat.
Seen some archives of WW 2 anti ship fighting and it looks so Star Wars but it made more sense like the dive bombers coming back and strafing the ship to suppress the anti air guns so the torpedo bombers had an easier job. Only the heavy AAA was armored and that only on capital ships. 40 mm and below was open mounts. 
And the death star trench run was an replicate of the dambursters movie. 

Technically, it's 1920s-1930s naval warfare. Back then, not everyone was dead-set on separating their carriers from their battleships and so there were plenty of hybrid designs.

[Codraroll]

On 10/23/2022 at 10:17 PM, magnemoe said:

Star War is WW 2 dog fighting in space. That was the movies George Lucas grew up with and its the most visual stunning sort of air combat.
Seen some archives of WW 2 anti ship fighting and it looks so Star Wars but it made more sense like the dive bombers coming back and strafing the ship to suppress the anti air guns so the torpedo bombers had an easier job. Only the heavy AAA was armored and that only on capital ships. 40 mm and below was open mounts. 

It still saddens me a bit that we've yet to see proper capital ship-to-ship combat in a Star Wars movie (Revenge of the Sith had some of it, but mainly in the background while the heroes zipped around in their little fighter craft). Both sides deploy these huge hulking capital ships bristling with big guns, yet they are constantly fought by fighter squadrons and destroyed by lucky hits on exposed weak points while AA is sprayed everywhere, while the big guns never get to shine. I guess it makes more dramaturgical sense that the heroes in their tiny spacecraft can take out the big ships on their own, "slaying the dragons" in personal combat as it were, but just for once it'd be cool to see the big ships trade salvos too. That sort of battle can still make an exciting movie scene, just a little bit different from the usual trope of "the hero in their little spaceship against the hulking enemy cruiser".

Edited October 25, 2022 by Codraroll

[LHACK4142]

On 9/19/2022 at 5:24 PM, Superfluous J said:

Dialog and acting aren't the only core aspects of a good movie.

I'm sure it's been in this thread before but here's a non-exhaustive list from memory of what I recall making Armageddon bad, in spite of being fun to watch.

• It takes like 90 minutes to get into space. Everything before that is character building that might work in a character-building movie, but this isn't a character-building movie.
• Liv Tyler can't get her voice above 2 decibels and they don't raise it in post. Thankfully she didn't come along into space.
• The entire concept that you can teach oil riggers to be astronauts faster than you can teach astronauts to run a drill. They're not even drilling for oil on the asteroid.
• They brought rovers with them to the asteroid. Those rovers had loaded machine guns.
• They had to stop at Mir to refuel. The one cosmonaut on Mir had to spin it up for gravity, which makes no sense even if they got gravity pointing the correct direction afterward. Hint: They didn't.

I won't even get into the asteroid being "as big as Texas" yet break-apartable with a single nuke drilled like 100 yards into the surface. Or the "and after all that they just landed the shuttle." Or ... well ... I'm getting into it so I'll stop

My favorite: The part where they're flying through the asteroid and its debris, engines fully ablaze while lacking an ET, as if they're in an atmosphere and the asteroid's gravity is similar to earth's. It could be as soft as a moon landing!

[darthgently]

3 hours ago, Codraroll said:

It still saddens me a bit that we've yet to see proper capital ship-to-ship combat in a Star Wars movie (Revenge of the Sith had some of it, but mainly in the background while the heroes zipped around in their little fighter craft). Both sides deploy these huge hulking capital ships bristling with big guns, yet they are constantly fought by fighter squadrons and destroyed by lucky hits on exposed weak points while AA is sprayed everywhere, while the big guns never get to shine. I guess it makes more dramaturgical sense that the heroes in their tiny spacecraft can take out the big ships on their own, "slaying the dragons" in personal combat as it were, but just for once it'd be cool to see the big ships trade salvos too. That sort of battle can still make an exciting movie scene, just a little bit different from the usual trope of "the hero in their little spaceship against the hulking enemy cruiser".

I agree.  Other than the parts where a big not-a-moon blows up a big planet, we get nothing like that.  Not enough, then ridiculously too much (don't even try to realistically engineer  how much generated and stored energy would be required to destroy a planet)

Edited October 26, 2022 by darthgently

[Nazalassa]

On 10/23/2022 at 2:29 PM, Rutabaga22 said:

TIE fighters use ion engines

Ion engines do not produce that much thrust, and if they could, that would require an insane amount of energy.

[kerbiloid]

13 minutes ago, Nazalassa said:

ion engines

Not "ion engines" but "Ion engines".

They are buying these engines in Romania, from the guy whose name is Ion (= John).

[DDE]

On 10/25/2022 at 11:52 PM, Codraroll said:

It still saddens me a bit that we've yet to see proper capital ship-to-ship combat in a Star Wars movie (Revenge of the Sith had some of it, but mainly in the background while the heroes zipped around in their little fighter craft). Both sides deploy these huge hulking capital ships bristling with big guns, yet they are constantly fought by fighter squadrons and destroyed by lucky hits on exposed weak points while AA is sprayed everywhere, while the big guns never get to shine. I guess it makes more dramaturgical sense that the heroes in their tiny spacecraft can take out the big ships on their own, "slaying the dragons" in personal combat as it were, but just for once it'd be cool to see the big ships trade salvos too. That sort of battle can still make an exciting movie scene, just a little bit different from the usual trope of "the hero in their little spaceship against the hulking enemy cruiser".

Well, there hasn't been a good capital ship fight in... anything that I can think of, for decades.  

49 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Not "ion engines" but "Ion engines".

They are buying these engines in Romania, from the guy whose name is Ion (= John).

But is he tichy?

[intelliCom]

On 10/23/2022 at 10:29 PM, Rutabaga22 said:

Just a reminder that TIE fighters use ion engines.

Also, the "wings" on tie fighters are apparently supposed to be solar panels. Makes sense when you got an ion engine I guess, but less sense with the way they look. They seem more like radiator panels to me.

Also, with the kind of acceleration that TIE fighters have, surely its not an ion engine?

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, DDE said:

Well, there hasn't been a good capital ship fight in... anything that I can think of, for decades.  

But is he tichy?

Tichy is Ijon.

[magnemoe]

On 10/27/2022 at 12:10 AM, intelliCom said:

Also, the "wings" on tie fighters are apparently supposed to be solar panels. Makes sense when you got an ion engine I guess, but less sense with the way they look. They seem more like radiator panels to me.

Also, with the kind of acceleration that TIE fighters have, surely its not an ion engine?

Agree, it makes no sense at all, radiators makes more sense, perhaps doing double duty as stand off armor. 
Note that an fusion engine is also emitting ions. 

But again Star Wars is rule of cool. 

[magnemoe]

On 10/26/2022 at 11:13 PM, DDE said:

Well, there hasn't been a good capital ship fight in... anything that I can think of, for decades.  

Well Moscow was the last capital ship sunk, but sunk by land based missiles. 
Else 4 decades, General Belgrano was sunk by an nuclear powered submarine during the Falkland war. WW 2 light cruiser but still second largest one. 
Now destroyers and frigates has become much larger. Germany has an 7500 ton frigate and Japan has the +20.000 ton helicopter destroyer  
Yes that is heavier than early battleships, but its an very very obvious carrier. 

But as far as I know none of the larger modern ships has been lost in ship to ship combat. 
Ship to ship combat kind of require two parts with some sort of parity. Even air to air combat is kind of rare. Yes we have Ukraine but before that I think its only Israel against Syria an very short at the start of the gulf war and then back to Falkland.

Edited October 30, 2022 by magnemoe