The Most Egregious Science Mistakes In Movies This Year

I bought this sci-fi movie and really enjoyed it!

Oh, if I pause the realities of all these movies, I would walk away shaking my head and laughing. It is because of the geewiz feeling I get from these movies, pretty colors and just plain old fantasy, I enjoy them. Hello roller coaster! I would not drive this way on a road, but for the moment, I love the ride! Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!

No one bothered to mention that the huge explosion at Skyfall that flamed through the tunnel would have burned up all the oxygen in the tunnel, either creating a vacuum or suffocating Bond as he took cover/ran through it...

I watched skyfall for the first time the other day, and thought the same thing. He hid in the little crevasse as the flame gushed past him, which should have consumed all the oxygen\, therefore suffocating him.

Yes, I too can distinguish between reality and fantasy. Why do people think they are so clever, when they point out that a fiction is not real?

Here let me help you folks out:
fic•tion
/ˈfikSHən/Noun
1. Prose literature, esp. short stories and novels, about imaginary events and people.
2. Invention or fabrication as opposed to fact.

Just get on the dang roller coaster and enjoy the ride! ;)

James Bond is clearly a superhero in disguise.

Batman was maddening.

A broken back fixed with some chiropractic arts.
A fusion powerplant that can become a fission bomb.
A fusion powerplant with a built-in LED display should it ever be turned into a fission bomb, something only learned after the device was built.
Somehow batman's body is very damaged from the last movies, but one set of magic straps on his legs gives him and iron foot that can break bricks.
Bruce Wayne tried to kill his housekeeper: He didn't know she was a thief yet, and the archery target he had in the house showed every shot (we assumed he aimed for bullseyes) was way off. Therefore he aimed at his housekeeper to kill.
Stupid super-genius scientists. If they big scary man with the bomb asks you, in front of a giant hostage audience, if anyone is capable of disarming the aforesaid bomb... you say "not a soul, no one, ever. Certainly not me. How about I walk far away from here?"

Yea and President Obama going to save the economy, social security and Medicare, too!

People do elect to believe in fiction, no matter how silly, LOL.

I like the "Honest Trailer" series. Here is the one for Prometheus:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBaKqOMGPWc

@Robot

Logic and consistency make good narrative. With so much money going into making these films, is that really too much to ask?

Logic and consistency make good narrative. With so much money going electing our government officials, is it too much to ask, they actually accomplish something?

democedes,
Oh, and back to your comment, you and I have just different expectations of the roller coaster ride of a science fiction movie. In my mind, I am able to just push the "I believe button", while you cannot or will not. Take care. ;)

@Robot

I totally agree with you on movies based on comic books. I expect there be blatant disregard for fundamental physics, cheesy costumes, and over-the-top dialog. But with films like Prometheus and Total Recall, they are trying for a gritty and realistic world, and it makes it so much better if they get all the details correct. Then I don't have these constant reminders that what I am watching is not remotely possible.

Oh, and I know better than to ask for logic and consistency from government. Hollywood maybe, government... not going to happen.

Love the article, but perhaps the Bond in a freezing lake issue is justified by his superior training of mind and body. One can be fairly certain he has learned to cope with freezing temperatures somewhere in his training. And the broken back Batman recovery time was something like 80 days rather than merely a few. Still ridiculous? Yes, but not quite as unreasonable.

@beyond9

It's not about money being more valuable than children's lives, it's about freedom being valuable to a good life. You're not looking to restrict people making money off of something that someone, I assume you think it'll be you or someone with the same exact twisted beliefs, deems excessively violent or pervasive, you're looking to restrict the freedom of them to produce it and for me or anyone else to access it. You're looking to rob freedom away from me and any children you claim to want to protect because you somehow believe the scientifically disproven non sequitur that there is a causal relationship between entertainment media and active acts of violence among members of the society. Oh, and btw, you can look it up. Crime rates started declining rapidly twenty years ago(When video games first started becoming mainstream, fancy that.) and are at their lowest levels EVER. Explain that one.

If these things can CAUSE one to become violent and sociopathic, how exactly have you made it through the Internet to this website without watching or playing a violent video game, movie, show, or other entertainment media? Either you've never seen a violent video game, movie, or tv show, have and are now a homicidal maniac, or you've experienced these mediums miraculously unscathed from the psychological barrage and brainwashing that ensued. Please, if it's that last one, explain to us how you pulled it off because, if the threat is bad enough to warrant maiming freedom, it couldn't've just been the fact that you could tell the difference between fact and fiction and are sane. It definitely couldn't be that since most people are sane and can tell the difference between what's real and what isn't.

Beyond the fact that such inhibited freedom is disgusting and vile, I find it insulting that you think myself and other people are dumb enough and weak enough that we need your totalitarian rules to be enforced on us. I don't need a babysitter telling what I can and can't see or do. If you feel so feeble-minded that you can't keep from committing acts of violence because you saw someone get shot on tv, then you go ahead and stay away from those types of media and stay away from the general population, but leave everyone else out of it. I want no part in it.

Oh yeah, and while I do like the idea of ensuring gun owners have appropriate facilities to safely store their weapons and the idea of weapons recovery programs, any further limitations on the ownership of firearms goes against the point of the second amendment, which is that in the case of someone threatening the life of another, such as a school shooter but extending as far as our own government in the most extreme cases, as outlined by the founding fathers, citizens will have access to the means to defend themselves. If someone actually had a gun, as the second amendment allows, to protect themselves at Sandy Brook, there may have been a lot less dead bodies instead of the killer having no opposition while everyone waited for the guys with guns to drive over. We also can't forget the fact that someone who doesn't care about laws against homicide isn't going to care too much about your gun laws, so the only thing these tighter laws will do is make it less likely that a law-abiding citizen will have the means to defend themselves or others against an armed assailant.

Oh, and let's just take a minute to acknowledge the fact that school is hard enough without making children feel as if they're in prison with trained guards always present and watching their every move. There are a lot more productive things law enforcement officers can be doing, trust me. I went to a high school that, after having a bomb threat during both my freshman and then sophomore years, felt it was necessary to place armed state troopers wandering the halls every day, have dogs come in and sniff the building regularly, limit us to an individuality crushing dress code to avoid bullying over clothes, and no longer allowed boys to carry a bag for their books. Girls just used their purses, so I tried my own man purse and was promptly disciplined for wanting to avoid having my books knocked out of my hand while simultaneously making it easier to transport the books I was supposed to be learning from. Whatever happened to fostering optimistic, independent, and diverse young minds? Now, people like you just want kids to feel like a closely watched number and have a harder time focusing on any actual learning number because you're afraid and paranoid.

You also have no idea what you're talking about with NASA. NASA is incredibly important. Overpopulation of the planet is already becoming an issue and, naturally, as it worsens, the rate or reproduction increases. Children will someday be subject to war or systematic genocide due to a lack of resources and space. Someday, whether you like it or not, we either need to limit the population to levels about 66% of what they are now, begin bringing resources from space here, or colonizing hospitable extraterrestrial environments, man-made or otherwise. How are we supposed to do that without a space program, smartypants? That's just one thing NASA will do for us, beyond everything else they've already done. Even if it wasn't necessity in its purest form, NASA is cheap as hell compared to how much we spend on being better at killing people. It costs $1,000,000,000 more than NASA's ENTIRE budget JUST to provide air conditioning for TEMPORARY tents and housing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The total cost of keeping troops is about $20,000,000,000. That figure comes from Steve Anderson, a retired brigadier general who was Gen. Petraeus' chief logistician in Iraq. NASA's TOTAL budget is just $19 billion. That's just for keeping troops cool, which is probably one of the cheapest things the military does. Lets not forget how much money we spend on developing and manufacturing military technology so that we can be better at killing. Don't take my word for it. Look it up. I'll get you started. Here's my source: www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/21/air-conditioning-military-cost-nasa_n_881828.html

Look, you don't seem like a bad person, but posting this vitriol on a post that's celebrating a unique genre of art, especially when it's this misguided, is wrong. Protecting kids is a fine and noble effort, but you need to think these things through and look at actual facts before you convince other uninformed people to believe the same ludicrous stuff that you're spouting here.

One of the most basic needs of the human psyche is an occasional escape from reality if only for a short time. What is the characteristic of a child adults envy most? Their imagination.
If you find it necessary to compile a list of real science shortcomings of the sci-fi flick you are watching, you are either watching the wrong film genre or on the brink of a much longer break from reality.

OK. Look at the genre -- science FICTION.

Now look at half the subjects of the movies listed --- Batman, Spiderman, The Avengers. Comic book superheroes.

Does anyone other really care that the science behind a superhero is a little bit dodgy? What about Superman? Is there any scientific basis for his being able to fly, burn holes through metal with his 'heat vision' or see your junk with his xray vision?

Hell, let's not even go to being able to land a plane that has no engines with no means for propulsion beyond super farts (I didn't catch the sound of those in the movies).

But a whole feature on how improbable the science behind sf and superhero movies is stretching. Everybody knows it is fiction. After all, we are no closer to a Star Trek teleporter than we were 45 years ago.

As I have noted before - Popsci is an entertainment magazine, not a scientific journal. Notwithstanding that, this article was really pointless by almost any measure. Who cares that the laws of science as we know them are not honored 100%? It is called Science FICTION for crying outloud. It is writers like this that give "Geeks" a bad name.

Spiderman, Batman, Superman, running faster than bombs can explode and the like; loads of crap. Our imagination and Plausible SciFy I can deal with. After all, it got us off the ground, to our Moon, Mars and beyond, countless medical and other scientific advancements, kept us from becoming just another link in the Japanese Empire or Soviet Union and of course these are just a taste of what imagination and plausible SciFy have lead to and of course we ain't done by a long-shot. It's kind of a shame that we waste so much time, money and energy using it to make and play with toys but I guess that too has lead lot of cool stuff.

I saw this article in flipboard. Caught my attention since i recently saw Total Recall. I am not much of a smart guy and interestingly admire "Nerds", the real smart guys. I wouldn't classify myself a "Nerd" which sometimes i would like to, but regarding total recall, the roller coaster is a bad analogy. For instance, i get your arguement about the hot core part, shouted impossible in my mind too. But how fast does the fastest roller coaster go? How fast did the concord go? list goes on. no one blacked out. But that is what si-fi is. Almost everything is possible, we just don't know how yet, exluding the core part.