Movie/game physics you wish would be accurate

[SeventhSigma]

Are there any common movie physics mistakes that you wish would be changed into something more realistic?

 

[Drakkith]

Oh where to start??

1. Depressurization of a spaceship into space sucking everything out like a tornado for minutes on end.
2. Freezing/exploding in vacuum in about 5 seconds.
3. People immediately dying from wounds that would take minutes-hours to die from. IE getting stabbed or shot in the abdomen and immediately dying. (More biology than physics)
4. Ridiculous explosions. (Since when does a frag hand grenade destroy an entire bus?!)

 

[Pengwuino]

Explosive decompression of an aircraft from a bullet or small hole in an airplane. It's pretty much ruined me from ever flying.

 

[Newai]

1. Easy gravity on spaceships.
2. Sound in space.
3. Infiltrating some military/pseudo-military base always starts with stupidly easy neck-breaks or throat slits and very little noise.
4. Aliens invading the planet... for its resources.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

1. Easy gravity on spaceships.
2. Sound in space.
3. Infiltrating some military/pseudo-military base always starts with stupidly easy neck-breaks or throat slits and very little noise.
4. Aliens invading the planet... for its resources.

The latter one definitely! I've yet to see a film that has a plausible reason for aliens attacking us. To add to what we have so far:

1. Spaceships that look like they were built (badly) for flying in atmosphere
2. Humanity winning in a fight with aliens far more advanced
3. Counter to one of Drakkith's when people get shot in the arm/leg and act fine. Sure they limp for a while then you see them running and fighting later.
4. Infections that take seconds to take hold
5. Cures that take seconds to work
6. Cures for diseases that are knocked up in a couple of hours by one man/team in a single lab (there's artistic license but most experiments don't even take that long! One drug takes $0.5billion dollars and ten dedicated years to produce)
7. The idea that scientists don't know anything (especially about "real" life or ethics) and play god all the time.

That's all for now...

 

[Pengwuino]

[*]Humanity winning in a fight with aliens far more advanced

I HATE this! For example, independence day was SO STUPID. I loved how they somehow uploaded a virus using a MAC interface that, without any prior knowledge of how their computer systems really worked, would disable the ENTIRE CIVILIZATIONS collection of ships. Then of course, the big 15km wide ships had 0 defenses against our fighters. Sure they had their swarm of little single person ships flying out as defense, but even our aircraft carriers have tremendous defense mechanisms.

What other movie was god awful in this respect...

You know what I also hate even though it has nothing to do with movies and inaccuracies? How no matter how horrific the movie was, everyone is all happy at the end. This was ESPECIALLY true for independence day (sorry I just saw it a few weeks ago again). Let's summarize what happened in the movie.

1) Every major city in the world was destroyed
2) Over a billion people had to have died, at LEAST
3) The militaries of the world were nearly decimated and vulnerable to a second attack
4) The President's wife had just died

Yet at the end of the movie everyone was celebrating, cracking jokes, smiling, lighting off fireworks. A biblical scale apocalypse had just befallen mankind and they're smoking cigars!

 

[Drakkith]

7. The idea that scientists don't know anything (especially about "real" life or ethics) and play god all the time.

Oh god, flag number 7 with a freakin siren. I can't stand the way most scientists are portrayed.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I HATE this! For example, independence day was SO STUPID. I loved how they somehow uploaded a virus using a MAC interface that, without any prior knowledge of how their computer systems really worked, would disable the ENTIRE CIVILIZATIONS collection of ships. Then of course, the big 15km wide ships had 0 defenses against our fighters. Sure they had their swarm of little single person ships flying out as defense, but even our aircraft carriers have tremendous defense mechanisms.

What other movie was god awful in this respect...

Exactly! Why didn't these 15km wide saucers have turrets of their own? Actually screw that they could have just turned off their antigravity for a few seconds and let the fall of the saucer cause horrendous wind's crashing the human planes as well as increasing the air pressure so much it kills everyone.

The computer virus thing...don't even go there. I'm still shocked from it.

Oh god, flag number 7 with a freakin siren. I can't stand the way most scientists are portrayed.

The new http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28Z_D9Grh18" film is blowing my head up in rage in this respect. Basic plot;
Scientist: I'm trying to make a cure for Alzhiemer's!
Normal person: Some thing's weren't meant to be meddled with
Scientist: Screw you, I'm going to do this experiment
Result = a bunch of savant apes wipe out the human race.

So stupid it sucks IQ through your nose just looking at it.

 

[Pengwuino]

Exactly! Why didn't these 15km wide saucers have turrets of their own? Actually screw that they could have just turned off their antigravity for a few seconds and let the fall of the saucer cause horrendous wind's crashing the human planes as well as increasing the air pressure so much it kills everyone.

I think someone took hints off the movie (they gave the mass of each saucer at one point, or at least it could be determined from what was said) and tried to calculate approximately what kinda force would have taken to keep the ships in the air. I think it was so ridiculous that the hell with having to let the ship fall and destroy everything with wind damage, the propulsion would have had to have been so massive that it would have been ridiculously ruinous to anything below it.

Hell, i think they said the mothership was 1/4 the size of the moon. They could have literally pushed the Earth into an orbit that killed all live immediately yet left all the resources available. How stupid are they?

I also hate this non-morality and stupidity of science in those movies too! Hell, in my experience, scientists are FAR MORE conscientious and thoughtful about their actions than the average person is. Mainly because most people seem to do things with little understanding of the consequences.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Hell, i think they said the mothership was 1/4 the size of the moon.

1/4 of the moon! But didn't they blow it up with one nuclear bomb at the end?? Ridiculous film.

 

[Pengwuino]

1/4 of the moon! But didn't they blow it up with one nuclear bomb at the end?? Ridiculous film.

Oh yes, I forgot about that!

Well, it obviously was placed right next to the super fusion power core because they used x-ray vision to look through th emothership to find the perfect spot to dock in next to the fusion power core.

 

[daveb]

One that really got to me was that piece o'crap called 2012, where just about every land mass on Earth collapsed into the Earth (since when is the Earth hollow?), and tidal waves were so huge that they reached into the Himalayas.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Time Travel. How many times do people have to have time travel in a story and screw it up before people realize that it is not only extremely problematic but horribly horribly over used? Its just getting annoying.

 

[micromass]

One that really got to me was that piece o'crap called 2012, where just about every land mass on Earth collapsed into the Earth (since when is the Earth hollow?), and tidal waves were so huge that they reached into the Himalayas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIUTUVVRtFA

Anyway, something I see in games all the times but which annoys the hell out of me. If you jump or fall off something, you can always use the arrow keys to fall/jump to the left. So when jumping on a platform, you can fall a bit leftwards, and then adjust it a bit rightwards. REAL LIFE DOESN'T WORK THIS WAY!

Also, game characters which jump off high platforms and who are not dead.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Time Travel. How many times do people have to have time travel in a story and screw it up before people realize that it is not only extremely problematic but horribly horribly over used? Its just getting annoying.

Not only that but how misused it is. I can't watch Dr Who without thinking every 5 seconds "let her die whilst you run for your TIME MACHINE and go back to stop her doing it in the first place". In the majority of film and tv a "time machine" is just a lazy plot device that can carry the characters to specific places where the story runs in normal time.

 

[daveb]

Not only that but how misused it is. I can't watch Dr Who without thinking every 5 seconds "let her die whilst you run for your TIME MACHINE and go back to stop her doing it in the first place". In the majority of film and tv a "time machine" is just a lazy plot device that can carry the characters to specific places where the story runs in normal time.

Yes, but don't forget that in the Dr. Who universe:

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.

 

[flyingpig]

how come the scientist never plays the main role? It's always some guy who gets all the girls

 

[Ken Natton]

Erm… I get what you guys are talking about, but the way that it seems to upset you so much reminds me a little of the reaction you used to get to the Dukes of Hazard. Remember them? Every one used to scoff in such sardonic terms about the idea that the car could really fly through the air like that and still be driveable after it landed. As if the rest of the program was a penetrating insight into the ordinary lives of rural people in the Deep South. Generally, I am not a fan of programs or films that require that much suspension of disbelief, but at least The Dukes of Hazard had its tongue firmly in its cheek. I suppose I’m mystified as to why you go and watch these films if they upset you so much. Personally, I’d rather have my toenails drawn without benefit of anaesthetic.

Enis you dipstick! You scuffed my ve-hic-le!

 

[Newai]

Video games: Beat up villain after villain, all the while watching their health meter drop, and once it reaches the end, you only need one strike and they're KO! And I'm not starting on how characters respond to bullets or other weapon attacks.

In movies/tv: Something kind of cute are invincible characters. The oldest example is in the old television series for Superman. Guy with gun shoots Superman and Superman just stands there while the rounds bounce off his chest. Then the robber runs out of bullets and throws the gun at him, I guess out of frustration, and Superman ducks. I still catch these things once in a while. Even the last Superman movie showed a robber with a minigun expire all the rounds and so he decided to try a pistol.

 

[I like Serena]

Movies are in another world with different laws of physics.
What's left for you to discover is what these laws are, be amazed, and enjoy the sense of wonder.

For instance, did you ever notice that when a cartoon figure runs out over a cliff, he never falls immediately?
No, it's only when they realize what's happening, that they suddenly and abruptly fall.
Typically body-first and the head afterward.
This law is always and consistently applied afaik.

This is not wrong, it's just different!
The challenge is to discover all the laws and find out how consistent they are.
And if they're not consistent, obviously we need to adjust our empirical model!

So:
1. We always have sound in vacuum. Something is wrong with the movie if it's eerily silent!
2. We can always see lasers in vacuum. Did you ever see a science fiction movie, where you couldn't see them? That would just be plain wrong!
3. ...

 

[TylerDurden49]

Bruce Willis's "Armageddon" contains a lot of errors especially with the spaceship which landed on the asteroid was inaccurate, NASA shows the film as part of its management training program. Prospective managers are asked to find as many inaccuracies in the movie as they can. At least 168 impossible things have been found during these screenings of the film.

 

[Pengwuino]

Anyway, something I see in games all the times but which annoys the hell out of me. If you jump or fall off something, you can always use the arrow keys to fall/jump to the left. So when jumping on a platform, you can fall a bit leftwards, and then adjust it a bit rightwards. REAL LIFE DOESN'T WORK THIS WAY!

Also, game characters which jump off high platforms and who are not dead.

Yah this happens in games and movies. Hell, for most people, jumping off a table could very well break your ankle. However, in games and movies, people are practically jumping off houses unharmed

 

[Cuauhtemoc]

People flying after getting hit by bullets, especially shotguns.
Yeah right, a bullet weighing some grams can surely throw a 200lb man in the air and 50 feet backwards.
That always ruins the movie for me.
Yes, I try to not care and just enjoy it, but sometimes it gets so ridiculous it ruins the entire movie.
Especially in movies that pretend to be serious, if it's some action movie by stallone, hell I couldn't wish anything better, but for example No country for old men, it's a good movie, but when the guy with the silenced shotgun hits anybody they are thrown with such a force backwards it gets ridiculous.Explosions, when high explosives detonate they do not generate the kind of red flame you see in movies, that only happens with gasoline, napalm, whatever.

Not physics, but every movie about Romans, they all wear lorica segmentata, even if it was not prevalent at the time, and everybody wears red.
Or battles, no formation, guys just go around swinging their swords and killing everybody.
One of the few exceptions is HBO's rome, which is pretty good.Spartacus blood and sand on the other hand is terrible.
There was also some pretty ridiculous representations of historic figures like Genghis Khan or Alexander the great. I remember a movie(or some mini-series) where Genghis khan was some Caucasian blonde dude.
Or the movie Alexander with Collin Farrell where he is blonde, damn, how many greek/macedonian are blonde?
The ancient representations of alexander show a guy with curly brown hair and tanned skin, he was Macedonian, not Swedish ffs.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Erm… I get what you guys are talking about, but the way that it seems to upset you so much reminds me a little of the reaction you used to get to the Dukes of Hazard. Remember them? Every one used to scoff in such sardonic terms about the idea that the car could really fly through the air like that and still be driveable after it landed. As if the rest of the program was a penetrating insight into the ordinary lives of rural people in the Deep South. Generally, I am not a fan of programs or films that require that much suspension of disbelief, but at least The Dukes of Hazard had its tongue firmly in its cheek. I suppose I’m mystified as to why you go and watch these films if they upset you so much. Personally, I’d rather have my toenails drawn without benefit of anaesthetic.

Enis you dipstick! You scuffed my ve-hic-le!

Personally I find that for the most part I can ignore or suspend disbelief for quite a bit of nonsense but it seems that when they actually attempt to explain things it gets annoying. I've read several Philip K Dick novels. The "science" in his novels is really just for the backdrop. He rarely explains any of it. He even makes up random nonsense "devices" which are mentioned and never even used. Funny enough one of his novels was practically based on this. Never bothered me. Also in comedies and intentionally hokey movies it does not bother me much. Its when they try to be serious and "sciency" that it starts to bother me. Crichton's book "Timeline" (there's that pesky time travel thing again) bothered me with it's over zealous attempt at a "serious" scientific explanation for time travel. Tim Power's "Anubis Gates" was about time travel but never really attempted to explain it other than to say it was a temporal rift accidentally created by an egyptian wizard. He even took the fatal time travel faux pas that was made, pointed it out at the end, and said, "well that doesn't seem to make sense now does it?"

There is also the real world fallout that comes about from people seeing bad science in film, TV, and literature. Look up the "CSI Effect" for example.

 

[Ken Natton]

I find that for the most part I can ignore or suspend disbelief for quite a bit of nonsense but it seems that when they actually attempt to explain things it gets annoying.

I think that is a very good point. I know we are going away from films and into novels, but that was always one of the things that I thought was so good about Lord of the Flies. Golding resisted the temptation to give us some convoluted explanation for exactly how a group of public school boys came to be stranded unsupervised on an island. Whatever explanation he had come up with it would have been sure to be shot through with holes. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter. That’s the premise from which the story starts. The story is about the sequence of events from that point, and everything he does relate from that point is entirely plausible.

And just to take things even further in a direction that might horrify some others, the suspension of disbelief issue is what I always find amusing in those who object to musicals on the basis that people don’t really just start singing songs like that in real life. These are often the same people who will be big fans of the Terminator films, for example, and thus seem to feel that no suspension of disbelief at all is required for those films.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

And just to take things even further in a direction that might horrify some others, the suspension of disbelief issue is what I always find amusing in those who object to musicals on the basis that people don’t really just start singing songs like that in real life. These are often the same people who will be big fans of the Terminator films, for example, and thus seem to feel that no suspension of disbelief at all is required for those films.

I think it boils down to the fact that a better term for suspension of disbelief is willing suspension of disbelief. I'm more prepared to suspend my disbelief about some things than I am others, mainly decided by two things;

1) How much enjoyment do I get from suspending my belief?
2) How ignorant am I of the reality of the situation?

A good example is that I was recently reading a sci-fi series that heavily featured clichés like force fields, artificial gravity, inertial negation, FTL and super efficient STL propulsion. Normally I'm turned off by sci-fi like this but I got a lot of enjoyment out of reading. Because the author did not go into depth about the technologies I was able to reconcile the magic technologies with myself by vaguely concluding that the scientists in the fictional universe had discovered new laws of physics that allowed these things to happen.

Now if the author would have started to explain some of the technology it would have conflicted with what I know about physics and I would have gone from "perhaps they discovered new physical laws that allowed this" to "wait that doesn't make any sense because you've just contravened real life theory X without accounting for A, B, C...".

 

[Pengwuino]

I think the main problem really is the fact that movies and books are suppose to be about story telling. When writers/authors try to go into ridiculous details to try to prove to you what they're saying is realistic, they take away from the story telling. And when they fail, it's like "... sigh, this is pathetic".

 

[flyingpig]

also how all scientists are pushovers...

 

[Ricky116]

I always notice the lack of G-forces/forces from acceleration in movies.

Yes, you might be able to build a kickass exoskeleton, but doesn't accelerating it from 0 - 1000 km/h with you inside it... you know, hurt somewhat?

 

[Drakkith]

I think the main problem really is the fact that movies and books are suppose to be about story telling. When writers/authors try to go into ridiculous details to try to prove to you what they're saying is realistic, they take away from the story telling. And when they fail, it's like "... sigh, this is pathetic".

I disagree. You can easily stay realistic and not have to go into any detail about the science.

 

[Pengwuino]

I disagree. You can easily stay realistic and not have to go into any detail about the science.

No no, my point was that sometimes writers feel the need to go into the detail to try to "prove" their story is realistic, but then fail at it. The best thing to do is just go straight into the story and readers/viewers will be okay with suspending belief since the story telling is there.

 

[Drakkith]

No no, my point was that sometimes writers feel the need to go into the detail to try to "prove" their story is realistic, but then fail at it. The best thing to do is just go straight into the story and readers/viewers will be okay with suspending belief since the story telling is there.

Ah ok, I see.

 

[flyingpig]

How about explosions always happen right after the character leaves?

 

[bp_psy]

The only thing I can't stand are planets with really big or really close moons.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/6/c0030408alienlandscapea.jpg

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/6/c0030408alienlandscapea.jpg/

 

[timthereaper]

A huge problem in stories for me is that some random bit of science is often used as a Deus Ex Machina. Time travel, wormholes, FTL travel, etc. are often used in that way so that everything just happens to work out fine. It totally ruins the suspension of disbelief.