Worst "science" movie

[Kahuna Burger]

What about "Fantastic Voyage" (1966)? It's a fun movie, but full of bad science.

If I recall correctly, if you shrink objects down like that you have to collapse the "spaces" between the atomic particles and they would weigh the same, but be much denser. Or, if you somehow shed mass, people wouldn't have enough brain matter to function. Larry Niven wrote something about this once, I think.

just to be really nitpicky, if you did shrink down all the atoms and cells and such proprtionally, they would no longer form the correct chemical receptors to take in oxygen and you would lie there and suffocate on the gigantic air molecules....

but shrinking movies, like time travel and super powers tend to be exempted from these sort of bash fests.

 

[Warrior Poet]

I think it was called chain reaction or something.

That's the one!

Ironicly, its crappy science was (slightly) redeemed for me by a brief moment of movie realism where the hero and heroine fall through the ice into a freezing stream climb out and stumble wet across the windswept winter plain - and actually start dying of hypothermia shortly thereafter.

I must have missed this part. No doubt I was still fuming over Reeves outriding what was essentially a hydrogen bomb explosion on his little 150 dirt bike. Or the fact that I paid full price to see this dog in theaters.

Warrior Poet

 

[Warrior Poet]

The Black Hole.

In, though and out the other side indeed...

I think I was too young to recognize there was bad science at work on this one. I think I have nothing but fond memories of this film, probably because I loved the little floating robots (especially the one tough little robot who befriended the old, beat-up, past-his-prime robot), and was delightfully terrified of Maximillian.

That and there was that great (probably totally bad science) iconic moment of the burning meteor tumbling it's way down the length of the ship. Just looked so cool.

Of course, I haven't seen the film in a long, long time, so it's probably best if I leave it in the fond, rose-colored nostalgia room and not disturb it by bringing it up into the light.

Warrior Poet

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I must have missed this part. No doubt I was still fuming over Reeves outriding what was essentially a hydrogen bomb explosion on his little 150 dirt bike. Or the fact that I paid full price to see this dog in theaters.

Warrior Poet

And remember, when on your dirt bike outriding hydrogen explosions that are leveling buildings behind you, find a 2 foot high dirt embankment to duck down behind, which will protect you from any damage.

 

[Warrior Poet]

And remember, when on your dirt bike outriding hydrogen explosions that are leveling buildings behind you, find a 2 foot high dirt embankment to duck down behind, which will protect you from any damage.

Two hours and seven dollars I'll never get back.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Of course, I haven't seen the film in a long, long time, so it's probably best if I leave it in the fond, rose-colored nostalgia room and not disturb it by bringing it up into the light.

Stick to this. I also had rose colored memories and I made the mistake of watching The Black Hole again a few years ago and it is just painful. Not funny bad - just painful.

An interesting concept - a varation on the classic "travelers arrive at remote place controlled by a mad-man" - and the main ship is wonderfully Gothic. But aside from that, this movie is deep hurting on levels approaching Monster-a-Go-Go and Manos without the redeaming commentary by Joel or Mike and the 'Bots.

 

[sniffles]

What about "Fantastic Voyage" (1966)? It's a fun movie, but full of bad science.

If I recall correctly, if you shrink objects down like that you have to collapse the "spaces" between the atomic particles and they would weigh the same, but be much denser. Or, if you somehow shed mass, people wouldn't have enough brain matter to function. Larry Niven wrote something about this once, I think.

Actually, it was Isaac Asimov writing about that, I believe, not Niven. And I still like Fantastic Voyage, bad science or no.

Despite the supposed "twist" in Total Recall, I am still appalled by the exploding people. It was a completely gratuitous moment, done entirely for the special effects shock value. Bleah. I can overlook bad science in an otherwise fun movie, but that movie was two hours of my life wasted. I didn't even pay to see it, thank goodness, but I think my so-called "friends" had decided to spend a Saturday afternoon torturing me.

I don't think the stuff mentioned in War of the Worlds counts as bad science; that's just bad action movie cliches.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Actually, it was Isaac Asimov writing about that, I believe, not Niven. And I still like Fantastic Voyage, bad science or no.

Oh yeah..I know Asimov wrote the book, but Niven had a short piece in a collection I read once about comic book science ("Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex", I think it was called). IIRC, he touched on a lot of the comic book hero powers, not just Superman's. I could be confusing this with something Asimov wrote from a scientific point of view, as well. It's been a zabillion years since I read these things.

 

[Rackhir]

I actually broke out laughing when watching the landing bit in "Armageddon". They had the shuttles come roaring in and trying to land on the asteroid like it was a runway, instead of just simply matching velocity and anchoring themselves. Then to make things even worse in the "landing" sequence they come slamming down onto the rocky surface with all of these jagged crystal spikes. I mean, we lost a shuttle because an icy chunk of foam hit a wing edge!

The Mini-guns on the exploration rovers were pretty funny as well. I remember thinking "Were they afraid Marvin the Martian was behind all of this?" At $100,000 per pound, you don't carry useless weight into space.

Deep Impact which came out that same summer I think was actually pretty good as far as physics and realisim. The only real flaw being the sunlight causing the comet surface to "explode", but at least that wasn't absurd.

 

[Mouseferatu]

The basic plot of The Matrix bugged me on a Laws of Thermodynamics level, that how could they use human metabolisms as a power source, without losing power by whatever means they could have to feed humans. You can't gain energy like that. Then I read what the Wachowskis's original plans for the movie were but the studio thought it would be way too dense and incomprehensible to the moviegoing public: the minds of the enslaved humans were being used like a distributed computing network, their subconscious minds providing much of the raw computing power the machine empire used, using the unique properties of organic brains as a giant computer. Warner Brothers thought nobody would ever understand that, but using people as batteries, that made sense (supposedly).

Wow. That would have made the movie about 10 times better for me.

Stupid WB execs...