I can see where you people are coming from, but I would have to put myself in the "it's just a movie" camp. Because it really is just a movie.
I don't think anyone has ever called Kafka's
Metamorphosis garbage because the main character inexplicably turns into a giant cockroach. How blasphemous! Not only is such a thing absurd and impossible, but the author doesn't even try to explain how it happened!
Now I realize that that example is a bit different from a movie that tries to be serious in a more 'down to earth' way but uses bad physics in its plot. But something like the Ubermorlock having telepathy, I would say, is on a par with Kafka's character turning into a cockroach. Sometimes it's
okay to be
fictional when you're trying to write a good story. And sometimes it makes for a better storytelling to not spell everything out for the audience!
As for the menial physics misrepresentations... I think we need to make a critical distinction between
movies that, above all else, are made to be good cinema and
movies that, above all else, are made to make money. Unfortunately, most movies today (especially movies with a scientific theme/backdrop) fall into the latter category. As such, the chief task of such movies is to be entertaining to as wide an audience as possible. For 'scientific' movies of this kind, the only important objective in their presentation of science is to make it somewhat
believable to the layperson. 'Believable to the layperson' most assuredly does not translate into 'flawless physics.'
If you really want to get nitpicky, you could probably find fault in just about every computer generated explosion that has hit a movie screen, because they usually aren't made to be physically accurate-- they're made to be IMPRESSIVE! Impressive, and 'good enough' to be believable. Of course, even people well versed in physics will probably brush over most such explosions-- they simply won't notice that they're inaccurate, even though at bottom they are every bit as much a violation of physics as some of the more conspicuous examples from this thread. Now if the vast majority of your audience is not so well versed in physics, and will brush over the more conspicuous violations as readily as a PF member might brush over the accuracy of a computer generated explosion, the movie is golden. It will make its money just fine.
If one really has a complaint against this sort of thing, the real target of wrath should be the purely capitalist attitude that pervades cinema. Most movies are not made to appeal to the top 5%, but rather the largest % possible.
