weird science

Braxter · Post by **Braxter** » December 4, 2002, 5:49 am

I'm a nerd, a movie-freak kinda nerd. And as a nerd, I naturally hate when a movie fucks up science or really anything technical. This is akin to the hatred most of you tech folks out there have for Hackers. Here are a few examples:

A Few Good Men: When the doctor is on the stand he's asked what Lactic Acidosis is. His reply? "It's when the body burns oxygen instead of sugar." Like, the body never 'burns' oxygen.

Aliens 4: Premise is that they got Sigorney's blood before she killed herself and the alien in the third movie, and by cloning her cells they were able to clone the alien too, like the aliens are some retrovirus.

More on the alien series, the slogan is "In space noone can hear you scream." We can, however, hear the space ships.

Medicine Man: They're looking at a mass spectra and one of the chemicals listed on the screen is HO2. Not H2O, but HO2. This one is wrong on many levels.

Superman: Goes around the earth and makes it rotate and revolve backwards. This um, turns back time. My Earth Science teacher actually told us that this would work. He was also our Jr. high team's football coach.

Waterworld: 100 years? or so after the polar ice cap melts a human has evolved gills, like evolution happens out of necessity. People used to believe that giraffes' necks were long because they were always stretching them to reach the leaves.

btw, I also hate when a movie tries to be historically correct and fails miserably. I mean I understand you have to dumb it down or make it more 'dramatic' but jesus tap-dancing christ, do they have to be so blatantly wrong so often? grrrrrr....

I guess when Hollywood treads on your territory and they get it wrong, it pisses you off more than normal. A friend of mine is in the military and pretty much hates every military movie ever made (with the exception of Saving Private Ryan, which is supposedly pretty realistic). I bartend and while watching Cocktail the other day started wondering how pissed the patrons at my bar would be if there were about 100 of them and I took 10 minutes making just one fucking drink, regardless of how pretty I made it look.

Am I alone here? Should I stop nit-picking and just enjoy the movie? What movies have you watched that made you just cringe because they just GOT...IT...WRONG..?

Drewno · Post by **Drewno** » December 4, 2002, 5:58 am

One thing I've wondered. In the Gray, it says "Your eyes tighten in response to the vacuum" or something along those lines. Wouldn't you completely and spontaneously explode upon entering a real vacuum? It wouldn't matter if you didn't nead to breathe, all of the air bubbles in your veins (The really tiny ones) would expand to an infinite space (If it were a true vacuum) and all of your veins and organs would explode. Pfft, EQ sucks.

seiffil · Post by **seiffil** » December 4, 2002, 5:59 am

My friends and I usually talk about the movies when we see them, occassionally if it's a glaring mistake, we usually end up arguing over it for quite a while.

Sometimes it's better not to nitpick, other times it can help you keep from losing your mind cause the movie sucks so badly. Usually we don't pick apart the movies in the theater, after being told to shut up so many times, we decided it'd be better to wait till after movie.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » December 4, 2002, 6:14 am

Braxter wrote:I'm a nerd

Oh sure, ruin my braxter sex fantasies.

Braxter · Post by **Braxter** » December 4, 2002, 6:24 am

Braxter wrote:
I'm a nerd

Oh sure, ruin my braxter sex fantasies.

yeah right. you're gonna fantasize more now. here's one to help your orgasm: i like star trek!

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » December 4, 2002, 6:54 am

deep space 9 was better

Brittney · Post by **Brittney** » December 4, 2002, 7:19 am

Weird Science ownd dude... what you smokin?

Arborealus · Post by **Arborealus** » December 4, 2002, 8:06 am

Drewno wrote:Wouldn't you completely and spontaneously explode upon entering a real vacuum?

The human body is amazingly coherent so no not really...sure your lungs would embolized pretty quickly if you hadn't remembered to exhale completely and you would certainly have immediate risk of immbolized gases in the blood stream but the explosion would be fairly slow and excruciating and fairly incomplete...

Animale · Post by **Animale** » December 4, 2002, 10:55 am

Hehe... about the Medicine Man mass spectra.

Although the movie was wrong on many many scientific thing, an HO2 signal IS possible...
A) Its a negative ion mass spectra with a "rough" ionization technique
B) There was some hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in the sample

Most of the hydrogen peroxide would of course give OH signals, but there would probably be a VERY small signal due to HO2.

Animale

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » December 4, 2002, 11:05 am

One movie I saw that really did great in regards to sound in space was Moontrap. The main guy was Checkov from Star Trek and Bruce Cambell played his partner.

Here is something nit picky. In the movie Independence Day they say that the mother ship was about 1/4 the size of the moon. If that were true, and the ship was closer to the planet than the moon is, wouldn't there be massive problems as the result of the gravitational mass the ship had? Earthquakes, tidal records eclipsed, and other weather extremes should have occured.

Chidoro · Post by **Chidoro** » December 4, 2002, 11:18 am

and in the Lion King, all of the animals talk. That is SO ridiculous. I mean, who are they fooling?

Siji · Post by **Siji** » December 4, 2002, 11:18 am

Two things..

1. You can't say Weird Science and not talk about boobs. Boobies in the shower.. boobies boobies boobies..

2. You have to understand that unless it's a documentary or biography Hollywood is in the business of making entertainment that brings in money. Yeah, some things are just dumb, but you don't go into a Mission Impossible movie expecting realism. You expect to see stuff blow up. I used to chuckle at General Hospital (don't ask, please) when Scorpio used to go into that secret mainframe computer room he had hidden in his house and if you looked closely, you'd see a C=64 keyboard sitting there in front of a panel full of blinking lights. (God, I can't believe I even remembered his name..)

Akaran_D · Post by **Akaran_D** » December 4, 2002, 12:41 pm

I would think that if you entered a vaccum, your tounge with swell / attempt to be sucked out of your mouth, aswell as any saliva in said mouth.. and that yer eyes would swell up and push out.

Just a thought.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » December 4, 2002, 12:58 pm

actually the biggest problem would be the dissolved gasss in your blood, the air rushing out of your lungs and any other orifice...so maybe your bladder collapses too - fun fun. maintaining blood pressure could be a problem that you'd run into rather quickly. what part of your body would be most likely to bust open because of that i'm not sure. probably cappillaries all around your skin and in your brain.

but to braxter's main point, this was essentially why i though Signs
was terrible. for starters animals that can breath in Earth's atmosphere can't find water toxic...ever notice on the weather channel the humidity number that comes up in the "Local Conditions" segment? i'll let you connect the dots. there are many other layers of idiocy on this one, but i've belabored that point in the past =).

i'm totally with you though Brax. I can suspend disbelief to a point. I'm happy accepting Hyperdrive on the Millenium Falcon and other fantastic things. symbiotic bacteria in cells giving rise to the Force however is stupid

Waterworld: 100 years? or so after the polar ice cap melts a human has evolved gills, like evolution happens out of necessity. People used to believe that giraffes' necks were long because they were always stretching them to reach the leaves.

this is stupid you are right. now of course we all have pharygeal gill slits embryonically because we are chordates...but we never show gill respiratory structure, the machinery takes a different course before it gets there (thx homeobox binding domains

), so it would not be something that could happen in that short of a time period.

but that being said, Waterworld wasnt nearly as stupid as The Postman

Denadeb · Post by **Denadeb** » December 5, 2002, 12:08 am

Almost every military based movie is fucked up like this.

Post by **Sylvus** » December 5, 2002, 2:11 pm

I'd have to go with The Contender or Air Force One. I mean seriously, female Vice Presidents?

Fallanthas · Post by **Fallanthas** » December 5, 2002, 2:22 pm

They screw up every movie to some degree.

I am an archery fanatic, and I can't even stand to watch the idiocy that was the Costner Robin Hood anymore.

To date in that movie I've spotted arrows tipped with 1960's era broadheads(in a damned close up shot of the arrow in flight, no less), arrows fletched with barred turkey feathers (there are no barred turkeys in the Old World), 14th century costume elements in a 12th century movie.....

Not to mention Costner couldn't shoot a bow without taking his friggin arm off in the process. C'mon! If you are going to make a movie with archery as a major element, is it that difficult to hire a decent archery coach?

Apparently the producers of LoTR didn't think so. Legolas is one of the most well-done 'archery' characters ever played in a production film.

/rant off

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » December 7, 2002, 1:30 pm

Ok, I watched Starship Troopers again last night. While I love the movie and think it is well worthy of being in my top 20 I have to point out some flaws.

The fort was being overrun by the arachnids but when they all fell back into the compound you only see a couple of them. I think the arachnids should have been up and over those walls in no time.

Denise Richards gets stabbed through the shoulder by an arachnid, pinning her to the ground to face the brain bug. Soon as the rescue comes she is up and blasting away as if she was never hurt. Granted this could just be the adrenalline kicking in but I would think she wouldn't be able to use that arm. Also, she shows no sign of the injury after they get back outside to meet up with Doogie Hauser.

Truant · Post by **Truant** » December 7, 2002, 4:55 pm

You need to remember, that most people are stupid, and don't think about things like this.

Granted I agree, ask anyone who knows me, I love to do subliminal editorials to movies.

But if these movies were technical and accurate, the majority of the human race wouldn't understand or enjoy the movie. and well, that doesn't make money now does it?

Ebumar · Post by **Ebumar** » December 7, 2002, 5:34 pm

But those of us that actually would understand it are left without entertainment. Damnit. Why can't there be a 'stupid' hollywood, and a 'smart' hollywood?

Trias · Post by **Trias** » December 7, 2002, 5:40 pm

it is a fact that animale knows everything science

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