Looking for movies where mathematics actually matters

[DanielH]

Hey everyone,
This might be a bit of an off-topic post, but I hope it fits here.
I’ve been thinking lately about how mathematics is portrayed in movies. I really enjoy films where math isn’t just a decorative detail, but actually plays a meaningful role - in the plot, in the characters’ thinking, or in the way problems are approached. Unfortunately, a lot of “math movies” either oversimplify things or turn mathematics into a vague stereotype.
I’ve already seen a few well-known ones, and while some are inspiring, others feel more symbolic than substantial.
Some movies I’ve watched so far:
A Beautiful Mind
Good Will Hunting
Pi
The Man Who Knew Infinity
Hidden Figures
A couple of them focus more on biography, others on atmosphere or psychological aspects, but I’m still looking for films where mathematical ideas feel central rather than incidental.
While searching, I also came across a few tag-based lists and articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_about_mathematicians
https://bestsimilar.com/tag/1-mathematician
I’m not entirely sure how reliable these lists are in terms of quality or depth, so I wanted to ask here.
Are there any movies you would recommend where mathematics is treated with a bit more respect or realism? Maybe some lesser-known or underrated films?
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.

 

[Bandersnatch]

From the wiki's main list I recognise X+Y and Gifted.
Both are about gifted children, with interpersonal drama as the focus and maths as background.
The first one attempts to show the kind of thinking mathematics may involve, in one or two scenes, as the kids prepare for the olympiad.
The second has the kid 'doing maths', as a signifier for precocity, and as such is just a window dressing that could be replaced by any other discipline and not change the film.

 

[russ_watters]

I'll vote for The Imitation Game.

 

[jedishrfu]

The TV series NUM3ERS had math as the backdrop for each episode. Sometimes the math is a bit of a stretch since the writers first created the episode and then a math consultant suggested what math would be involved.

It was inspired by a real-life case in Toronto where a policeman versed in math used it to catch a serial killer using the notion that a killer won't kill in his own backyard. So spatially, the killings made a donut, and the killer lived inside the donut hole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_(Numbers)

Bottom line, though, is that films and TV shows always emphasize story over math and may, in fact, get the math wrong.

In the Wizard of Oz (1939), the Scarecrow gets a diploma to show he's smart, and he immediately recites the Pythagorean theorem wrongly.



In Good Will Hunting, the impossible math problem he solves on the blackboard is one any math undergrad familiar with group theory and combinatorics could solve. It would've been trivial for a math grad student, but definitely not a Fields Medal problem. The wikipedia article towards the end gets into the math mistakaes made in the movies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Will_Hunting

The Imitation Game is another great movie where I doubt the Aha moments in it actually happened. They simplified the math down to build a machine and it will find the answer whereas in reality it was a group effort and the machine was based on many math codebreaking principles and ideas from many people strung together to make the machine.

There's also the X+Y movie starring Asa Butterfield, based on a BBC documentary, about a young math genius who gets into the math olympiad, later learns Chinese in 6 months, marries a young Chinese girl, and brings her back to England.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X+Y

My favorite though was The Day The Earth Stood Still. I had watched it several times as a kid more interested in the UFO, robot and alien. While in college, it came on TV and I watched it again having just taken a first course in Differential Equations and noticed immediately the blackboard celestial mechanics equations that Klaatu modifies using a technique I had just learned. That really floored me. It likely had mistakes but they did it so well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Earth_Stood_Still

Science consultant​

Samuel Herrick, an astrophysicist at UCLA, developed the equations on Prof. Barnhardt's blackboard. "Herrick reasoned that an equation related to celestial mechanics would be most appropriate, specifically an equation related to his own work on the "three-body problem" in astronavigation."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Earth_Stood_Still#cite_note-Kirby-p80-81-19"><span>[</span>17<span>]</span></a>

I also really liked the movie "Gifted," as it portrayed a mother's struggle to pursue her career, cut short by having kids, by making them math prodigies. It struck home because I had a friend whose mother was instrumental in his progress. The ending was probably the best part, featuring the solution to a Millennial Problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifted_(2017_film)

My last example was a movie that I can't even remember the name of, where I spied a D'lembertian operator on the blackboard (it's the 4D Relativistic Laplace operator). I recognized it immediately since I was studying General Relativity from Wheeler's seminal book on the topic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'Alembert_operator

The Iron Man movie had some cool math and physics equations in the backdrop too but not much in the way of math.

 

[mcastillo356]

¿Maybe Jurassic Park? The novel and the movie mentions fractals and chaos theory.

 

[hutchphd]

I have a certain fondness for "The Big Bang Theory" television show and have been pleased not to have detected horrible gaffs when they do expound upon things in the Physics realm. Admittedly this is not very often which also inures to the benefit of show: there is no gratuitous "gee whiz" explanation of irrelevant stuff. A laudible effort overall.

 

[DaveC426913]

I have a certain fondness for "The Big Bang Theory" television show and have been pleased not to have detected horrible gaffs when they do expound upon things in the Physics realm.

Except, notably, when Leonard was wooing Priya and said: "This is the Starhip Enterprise orbiting 20 miles above the planet."

The gaff, of course, is that there is no way Leonard would have made such a mistake. Script-writers did him dirty.