"Supernova": Why do they keep doing drek like this?

[Shadowdancer]

Supernova

 

[wingsandsword]

Possible reasons:

1. Movie producers/TV executives either never took or failed astronomy classes, or assume that their audience are the same people who buy the Weekly World News (which would trumpet this movie's plotline as an actual news story) and won't see the problems with it.

2. They don't care about realism, they just want some horrible disaster they can make a movie out of and have done just about everything other than the sun exploding.

 

[Fast Learner]

I think was hit it, but here's how I'd put it:

BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW THAT IT'S LAME.

Seriously, most people producing science fiction these days simply don't know science fiction. They haven't actually read science fiction. They're not familiar with the tropes, the cliches, why sf fans like it, or, really, anything about the genre.

They can't even tell when something is incredibly lame. For that matter, neither can a huge chunk of the audience. And geeks, it seems, will tune into any sf, like dogs to bacon.

Here's to quality SF like Battlestar Galactice making it obvious to the average viewer just how lame this stuff is (and BSG isn't even very scientific... but it's good!).

 

[Pyrex]

Why? That one's easy. Because people keep watching them.

If the audience refused to tune in, they'd stop making it.

 

[Turanil]

I believed you spoke about this Supernova movie

<...> the sun is set to explode in a supernova that will bring about the end of the world in seven short, terrifying days!

But THEN(!!!), they find a way to prevent the sun to explode into a Supernova! Lets all bet that they are so much dumb that they can only think such a lame end. However, you could still have an alternate story this is in fact all about a clever plan to make people fall to panic in order to serve obscure schemes...

 

[trancejeremy]

Actually, Larry Niven wrote a very small short story about this (or a similar) premise. And he's a hard SF writer and presumably knows better. (In case anyone doesn't know why this is silly, the sun is simply too small for it to happen.)

So while it's silly, it's hardly that bad. Not as bad as BSG, where you have sexbots with glowing spines and other stuff but can't be told from humans by medical tests (?) or spaceships that mysteriously requires tons and tons of water for people to drink. (Our primitive recyling systems on our spaceships are 99.9999% effificient)

 

[trancejeremy]

A movie I recently saw that made me cringe - Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. It seems the Flying Saucers used sound waves to destroy satelites in space. And then the secret weapon the Earth people used to defeat the flying saucers was also sound. Somehow the sound disrupted the magnetic field that the saucers use.

Clearly, the script writer had no idea how sound waves work, and that EM waves are completely different. Granted, it was an old movie (50s) but the basic laws of physics have been pretty much known since the 1920s

 

[Viking Bastard]

I believed you spoke about this Supernova movie

Yeah, me too. I actually quite liked that one.

 

[Umbran]

Actually, Larry Niven wrote a very small short story about this (or a similar) premise. And he's a hard SF writer and presumably knows better. (In case anyone doesn't know why this is silly, the sun is simply too small for it to happen.)

The premise of Larry Niven's "Inconstant Moon" is similar in end result, but not in the mechanics. He doesn't have the sun going supernova. Or even normal nova. He instead posits a very large solar flare, wich was not (and probably still is not) outside the realm of the plausible.

So yes, Niven knows better. He found a way to do it without violating the more basic scientific principles of the time. I presume the movie makers either don't want to pay Niven for the idea, or just aren't familiar with the subject.

 

[sniffles]

The premise of Larry Niven's "Inconstant Moon" is similar in end result, but not in the mechanics. He doesn't have the sun going supernova. Or even normal nova. He instead posits a very large solar flare, wich was not (and probably still is not) outside the realm of the plausible.

So yes, Niven knows better. He found a way to do it without violating the more basic scientific principles of the time. I presume the movie makers either don't want to pay Niven for the idea, or just aren't familiar with the subject.

I suspect it's neither of those reasons. A solar flare just doesn't sound exciting enough. The general viewing audience have heard of solar flares, and maybe know them as something that disrupts satellite transmissions but is otherwise relatively harmless (or so they think). They've also heard of supernovas, and while most probably don't know exactly what a supernova is, they know it's something really destructive.