Worst "science" movie

[WayneLigon]

For a bit of bad geological science, how 'bout XXX? Vin Diesel's character snowboards ahead of an avalanche. I know, the guy's an extreme sports junkie, or something, but avalanches achieve speeds of 60 mph or more. I don't know what top speed on a snowboard is, but c'mon!

From Guiness: Highest Speed on a Snowboard - The highest recorded speed by a snowboarder is 201.907km/h (125.459mph) by Darren Powell (Australia) at Les Arcs, France on 2 May 1999.

From brief research, it looks like most avalanches reach 60-80 mph, but some go at over 200mph; the fastest on record is 400mph when Mt St Helens blew. So, given that your typical movie action hero is at least as good as an Olympi medalist, it doesn't seem out of the range of possibility.

 

[wingsandsword]

Did you ever actually watch this movie or did someone just tell you about it and you just wanted to attempt a cutesy quote about 'the Hollywood crowd'? This is the one with Jason Robards where people die hideous slow deaths from radiation poisoning because they were 'lucky' enough not to wind up as shadows on a wall, where we see Kansas City wiped off the face of the Earth, rubble and fires and destruction everywhere... that movie. Probably the most realistic portrayal we've seen yet of what even a limited nuclear attack would do.

I think he got The Day After (1984) confused with Testament (1983), a similar "small town in the aftermath of nuclear war" movie, that could be loosely described as he described it.

Testament was a lot like what he described, just average small-town folks sitting at home when the Emergency Broadcast System comes on and says a nuclear war is underway. Things slowly go from bad to worse as supply lines are cut, people wander away to find their fate elsewhere and people starve from lack of food or die of radiation poisoning. The young teenage female lead wants to lose her virginity, but there are no non-related male survivors in the area by this late in the movie, and in the end the entire family climbs into their car in the garage and commits suicide by running the engine in the car together.

Rather grim movie, and a really strange thing for a High School English teacher to a group of Sophomores for no apparent reason (mine did, just stopped class for two days to show us this movie, not apparently tied to any other lessons, I don't remember too much just the Emergency Broadcast System scene, the uncertainty about whatever happened to their father because he was out-of-town when the war broke out, the daughter lamenting to her mother she would die a virgin, and the entire family committing suicide in the end to escape the hardships of the postnuclear world).

Probably a grimly accurate depiction of life after a nuclear war, for people who weren't in the direct blast areas.

 

[sniffles]

I would like to nominate *any* film produced by the Sci Fi Channel. It's science *fiction*, yes, but I would like to see some tiny amount of actual science in one of their films someday. Not to mention good acting, writing, and production values.

 

[Someone]

According to some research I did. Vacuum "wielding" probably doesn't actually exist. From what I've been able to find, they've traced all supposed incidents of it to inadequate lubrication.

As far as freezing goes, I'm not really sure that's an issue if the proper lubricants are used. Part of it is that space isn't actually "cold". While the nominal temperature is close to absolute zero, there isn't anything there to transfer heat to. Most heat transfer on earth is by convection or molecules bumping into other molecules. In space there is really only radiative heat transfer or emitting energy as infra-red radiation, which is a much much slower process.

Indeed, the heat transfer mechanisms are conduction, convection (wich need matter in direct contact to transfer heat to) and radiation, wich does not, but is slow for mater at the temperatures in the range of a (living) human body. The oil would probably boil in a vacuum or near vacuum instead.

Guns don´t need oxygen to fire; the powder is a substance that quickly decomposes on "it´s own", generating large amounts of gases and heat. I know that organic molecules with -NO2 groups tend to do that (TNT, nitrocelulose, nitroglicerine...) but I don´t know if the powder used in guns are that kind of molecules or not.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

This is true but the impulse generated by firing a single round from a typical small firearm (like a pistol) won't send you flying very fast. Although I do imagine that in zero G it would impart enough momentum to send you tumbling slowly backwards, ruining your aim, if you didn't fire it perfectly in line with your center of mass.

I can forgive a lot of bad science in movies if they'll at least stay internally consistant. Once they violate that rule then I'm lost as a viewer.

And nothing could save the unbelieveable crapfest of Day After Tomorrow. If your going to chuck the science out the window then perhaps at least make me give a damn about the characters. :\

Actually I was pointing that out as 'okay' physics, in reply to another's post. Just to put in perspective for those who join in late.

Goddard was the fellow who demonstrated that guns would fire in a vacuum, and drive the gun backwards in reaction. One of my childhood heroes...

The Auld Grump

 

[John Crichton]

Actually, I had almost managed to repress that hell of oppressive brainwashing cheese. Thanks. :\

Armageddon was one of those movies where I came out thinking "wouldn't it have been easier (and maybe less painful) for them to write their message on a lead pipe and bash us over the head with that for 2 hours?"

And I found the production values uninspiring. No redeaming qualities, except maybe the existance of bruce willis.

I'm cool with anyone not liking any movie that I liked (or any movie for that matter). But it should be reviled for the right reasons. That's all I ask. There was lots to pick on in that film but saying that they tried to sell it as something that could happen and realistic is absurd.

 

[Umbran]

In space there is really only radiative heat transfer or emitting energy as infra-red radiation, which is a much much slower process.

"Much slower" and "negligible" are not the same thing.

However, for some things, you're absolutely correct, that cooling isn't the problem. But then, heating may be the problem. Thereis some tendency for automatic weapons to jam as they fire, due to various parts heating and expanding. If the weapon heats due to friction of it's parts, that process wil tend to be exacerbated.

Also, consider what happens to the weapon if you do let it cool down - the metal has a tendency to become more brittle as the temperature drops. And, as you then rapidly heat some parts up to operating temperature you get larger thermal expansion stresses.

Engineering for space can be tricky business...

 

[Plane Sailing]

The basic plot of "Star Trek: Generations" also bothers me, since the basic idea of blowing up stars to get rid of their gravity well doesn't work, the mass remains the same even if you force the star to noval (and the end where a chemically propelled rocket takes only a few seconds to go from a habitable planets surface to a yellow star, which you see the rocket visibly fly all the way, and the explosion of the star is visible on the planet's surface only seconds after launch.)

I had forgotten how much there was to hate in that movie, but the chemically propelled rocket which the enterprise was somehow unable to chase down, tractor beam or phaser before it completed its journey to the sun (which it managed to do in a ludicrously short period of time) was the capstone for me. I was just appalled.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Then, bored late one night, I started watching it on cable TV. And I realized something I missed the first time I saw it (and then felt really stupid). The exploding people on Mars does not happen. NOTHING in that movie really happens after Arnold is knocked out to be injected with his virtual "vacation." It's all the fake "secret agent" vacation scenario (even titled, IIRC, Blue Skies on Mars or something like that) injected into his memory.

I like the way that the film contains the ambiguity - if you have the chance to watch it again, take a look at the monitor in the background while they are preparing Arnies dream sequence - I'm pretty sure that a picture of the 'underground alien complex' appears on that monitor. Wasn't that supposed to be a secret or something?

I remember reading an article at one point that asserted that the make up guys had too much say in the film - they wanted to do the 'gob stopper through the nose' thing, the 'fat lady mask' thing, the 'exploding eyes on mars' thing and much of the mutant stuff too - and some (much cooler) ideas for the film were left out because of them.

Incidentally, it is worth reading the original Philip K Dick short story it was based on if you can - not filmable as it was, but it is a stunner

 

[Rel]

Incidentally, it is worth reading the original Philip K Dick short story it was based on if you can - not filmable as it was, but it is a stunner

If ambiguity is your thing then Philip K Dick is your guy.