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Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame


peadar1987

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1 minute ago, tater said:

Only because he did a movie where particular elements of realism were essential to the plot.

Nope. Realism was important to the dynamics of the Gargantua system itself and maybe the Endurance but everything else is sorta soft sci-fi, and that doesn't make it bad.

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1 minute ago, Bej Kerman said:

It's explained in the very scenes you picked these things up from :)

Um, they explain why they want to push people into farming, but not how somehow all the people alive forget reality 1984 style.

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1 minute ago, Bej Kerman said:

Realism was important to the dynamics of the Gargantua system itself and maybe the Endurance

Course it failed those as well. That first planet was a nonstarter because of proximity, not even worth a look precisely because of that solar system. And of course the black hole replacing the stargate as a survivable thing to enter. The latter is soft scifi—fine.

 

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Just now, tater said:

Course it failed those as well. That first planet was a nonstarter because of proximity, not even worth a look precisely because of that solar system. And of course the black hole replacing the stargate as a survivable thing to enter

Talking about the actual dynamics, of course, not the idea of colonizing it. Kip Thorne wrote an entire book on how scientifically sound it is. That's where the hard sci-fi is, not the film which is more soft sci-fi.

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5 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Might be to do with pushing people to do farming instead of STEM and history.

That can work for brainwashed children, but not adults who you know, actually experienced reality. Also, it takes place in the future from now, and if he was a NASA pilot, he must have piloted some pretty capable spacecraft in a time frame that is even in the future from 2022. Google says the movie is set in 2067. So assuming he was a NASA pilot he'd be pushing 30 at the youngest to start (most have military experience, plus a postgrad degree or two), so he was in NASA in the mid to late 2050s in this setting. Somehow in 10-15 years everyone thinks space travel is a conspiracy. For reasons.

1 minute ago, Bej Kerman said:

Talking about the actual dynamics, of course, not the idea of colonizing it. Kip Thorne wrote an entire book on how scientifically sound it is. That's where the hard sci-fi is, not the film which is more soft sci-fi.

Yes, that was part of the PR pushing how realistic this crap movie was.

And in 10-15 years we go from having space pilots to no MRIs available.

PS—if you posit him as a younger NASA pilot (upping the time from NASA to conspiracy to maybe 2 decades), then spacecraft must have been even better than I am imagining, so routine that astronauts no longer tend to have multiple postgrad degrees.

Edited by tater
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12 minutes ago, tater said:
16 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Might be to do with pushing people to do farming instead of STEM and history.

That can work for brainwashed children, but not adults who you know, actually experienced reality. Also, it takes place in the future from now, and if he was a NASA pilot, he must have piloted some pretty capable spacecraft in a time frame that is even in the future from 2022. Google says the movie is set in 2067. So assuming he was a NASA pilot he'd be pushing 30 at the youngest to start (most have military experience, plus a postgrad degree or two), so he was in NASA in the mid to late 2050s in this setting. Somehow in 10-15 years everyone thinks space travel is a conspiracy. For reasons.

You had to leave the movie and enter Google territory to make your point :confused:

For all it matters, it could be set in the year 5.5/apple/26 - it's never stated in the movie when it's set, and unless you go to Google specifically in the middle of your first watch to irritate yourself with details like this, the scenario will seem reasonable enough.

12 minutes ago, tater said:
12 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Talking about the actual dynamics, of course, not the idea of colonizing it. Kip Thorne wrote an entire book on how scientifically sound it is. That's where the hard sci-fi is, not the film which is more soft sci-fi.

Yes, that was part of the PR pushing how realistic this crap movie was.

Just proves my point that the movie itself isn't extreme hard sci-fi when you have to go to other related media to see the real fruits of Kip Thorne's work.

Edited by Bej Kerman
it could be set in the ***year*** 5.5/apple/26
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4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

You had to leave the movie and enter Google territory to make your point :confused:

Because I watched the movie when it first came out on DVD. How am I supposed to remember the year the film was set it based on memory from a movie that was so awful I never watched it again, in spite of owning it?

 

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

For all it matters, it could be set in the year 5.5/apple/26 - it's never stated in the movie when it's set, and unless you go to Google specifically in the middle of your first watch to irritate yourself with details like this, the scenario will seem reasonable enough.

Just proves my point that the movie itself isn't extreme hard sci-fi when you have to go to other related media to see the real fruits of Kip Thorne's work.

It's clearly near future, as the vehicles were current, even the drone was current.

And you don't address anything I actually said, just ad hominem based on me googling the year it was set in.

Somehow, in the Interstellar universe, the broad swath of the population has entirely swallowed "Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia" in the form of "The astronauts you watched just a few years ago never existed. we have never traveled in space."

 

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14 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

There's no authority that's going to arrest Nolan on the basis of "this piece of fiction didn't cater to my love and passion for realism for every second of its 2h30m runtime" - extra emphasis on fiction.

Bad science in fiction I can live with, it's fiction after all. But when the main marketing spiel is how scientifically accurate the movie is, that's exactly what I expect and demand. Context matters.

In some juristictions, this may be called misleading and/or false advertising which absolutely is illegal.

The fact that the render of a black hole is as good as we have right now pales in comparison with the failure to get basic newtonian physics right.

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Just now, Shpaget said:

The fact that the render of a black hole is as good as we have right now pales in comparison with the failure to get basic newtonian physics right.

The book was fascinating and the movie made everyone cry, that's all that matters.

3 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

You may be in the wrong thread.

I saw the thread and thought people did this jokingly. I didn't think people actually got frustrated over inconsequential things like this.

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5 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

I didn't think people actually got frustrated over inconsequential things like this.

When people tell you a movie is not just fantastic for its genre but fantastic in general, and you watch it and feel it's total, utter unwatchable garbage, you don't get frustrated?

You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

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7 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

When people tell you a movie is not just fantastic for its genre but fantastic in general, and you watch it and feel it's total, utter unwatchable garbage, you don't get frustrated?

Pff, of course I do! Everyone has to think it's just as bad as I do!

/s

Edited by Bej Kerman
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On 1/13/2023 at 8:58 PM, Nuke said:

what was your opinion of ad astra? i think that movie was kind of disappointing, thats one i definitely felt like i wasted ten bucks and 2 hours on.

"Kind of disappointing" is drastically overselling it. Boring as balls, with pretentiousness dripping from every shot. They somehow managed to make space travel monotonous, even while condensing it to the run time of a movie. And that's not even mentioning the various scientific accuracies that permeated the whole movie, of course. It's one of those movies that are more fun to have watched than to watch, because at least then you can find some enjoyment in discussing how much of a piece of crap it was.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/14/2023 at 5:49 PM, kerbiloid said:

The most unforgivable blunder of the movie:

  Hide contents

In 2067 they have AI robots, but don't have MechJeb for docking.

If they had, the movie would end on the Dr. Mann's command: "Ranger! Dock!"

Cooper asked TARS to take the stick if he blacks out. So they kinda do :)

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