Worst "science" movie

[Zoatebix]

Firefly has silence in space, no? But that's not a movie... Didn't Alien have the tag-line that implied that they knew there shouldn't be sound in space?

 

[DonTadow]

This summer's war of the worlds was horrible and full of scientific inconsistencies from the ever running car, to the working camera after the eom to the plancrash that destroyed everything but the house tom cruise was in (and a path for the minivan)

 

[Crothian]

Firefly has silence in space, no? But that's not a movie... Didn't Alien have the tag-line that implied that they knew there shouldn't be sound in space?

In space no one can hear you scream

 

[nakia]

While I loathe Armageddon, I have to go with The Day After Tomorrow. The "you gotta be kidding me" moment was not any of the "temperature plummets 500 degrees in 12 seconds" or "global climate change in 72 hours", though. It was the wolves. I mean, really, they have to fight wolves on a tanker outside of the NYC Public Library? Man, I feel stupid even typing that sentence.

 

[JimAde]

While I loathe Armageddon, I have to go with The Day After Tomorrow. The "you gotta be kidding me" moment was not any of the "temperature plummets 500 degrees in 12 seconds" or "global climate change in 72 hours", though. It was the wolves. I mean, really, they have to fight wolves on a tanker outside of the NYC Public Library? Man, I feel stupid even typing that sentence.

Maybe the wolves were carried from the far North on those crazy winds.

 

[Crothian]

Maybe the wolves were carried from the far North on those crazy winds.

ACtually the wolves escaped from a zoo in NYC, that was fully explained int he show

 

[WayneLigon]

The Black Hole. In, though and out the other side indeed...

That used to be a perfectly good assumption at the time the film was made, especially for a 'rotating' black hole. It was almost cutting edge science at the time because we hadn't yet seen evidence of one yet, so everything was up in the air. One of the assumptions was that for every black hole you had a white hole that was ejecting matter. We didn't yet have theories about it ripping every little particle down to the component quarks There were several stories and novels at the time that used black holes as a travel mechanism (Tiptree's HeeChee books did, if I remember right).

There was also a TV film about a family on a starship; at the end they also travel through a black hole and emerge from a white hole in a new universe. Don't remember the name of it, but it did have the cool effect of them firing the ships lasers and them seeing the laser light drawn into the hole

 

[JimAde]

ACtually the wolves escaped from a zoo in NYC, that was fully explained int he show

Ah. I didn't actually see the movie. So it's just wildly implausible instead of downright impossible.

 

[Crothian]

Ah. I didn't actually see the movie. So it's just wildly implausible instead of downright impossible.

wolves being in a zoo is implausible?

 

[Shadowdancer]

[Edit] For worst science in a movie I've actually seen (though I regret it still): the exploding people on the surface of Mars in "Total Recall".

I felt the same way when I saw "Total Recall" in the theater. That just ruined the whole movie for me. That, and how fast the atmosphere for Mars is generated and stabilizes. So much so that for years I refused to watch the movie again, on TV or on video.

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. When the movie ends, in reality (although they don't show it), Arnold is still strapped into a chair in the Total Rekall facility. Since the exploding people and instant atmosphere are things happening in Arnold's imagination, they are perfectly legitimate.

I haven't seen it, but I've been told that on the commentary track of the "Total Recall" special limited edition DVD, Paul Verhoeven talks about this very thing, that many people missed that subtle little twist which makes the entire movie completely different.