Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics

[mr blur]

Technonerds go to movies strictly for entertainment, and of course, the most entertaining part comes after the movie when they can dissect, criticize, and argue the merits of every detail. However, when supposedly serious scenes totally disregard the laws of physics in blatantly obvious ways it's enough to make us retch. The motion picture industry has failed to police itself against the evils of bad physics. This page and its companion book. is provided as a public service in hopes of improving this deplorable matter. The minds of our children and their ability to master vectors are (shudder) at stake.

THE MOVIE PHYSICS RATING SYSTEM

In the name of physics decency, to protect the minds of children everywhere, so that they may grow up in a world where they know the difference between speed and velocity, we have taken the responsibility to rate movies for their portrayal of excessively bad physics. The system is as follows:
GP = Good physics in general

PGP = Pretty good physics (just enough flaws to be fun)

PGP-13 = Children under 13 might be tricked into thinking the physics were pretty good; parental guidance is suggested

RP = Retch

XP = Obviously physics from an unknown universe

NR = Unrated. When a movie is obviously a parody, fantasy, cartoon or is clearly based on a comic book it can't be rated but may still have some interesting physics worth discussing.

http://intuitor.com/moviephysics/

[onager]

1. I can think of several that qualify for RP or XP

2012

The Day After Tomorrow

Signs (that one might get a pass because of the "parody, fantasy, cartoon" clause).

Oh, and another Magnum Dopus from M. Night Sharlatan - The Happening. In which not much happened, and the Big Surprise could be figured out by any 5-yr-old even if they only spoke Swahili. Also, to paraphrase the great Mark Twain - you not only didn't care about the characters, you hoped they would just all go off and get drowned together.

One night I was wasting time on some movie forum, and came across a conspiracy theory I could almost believe. The poster suggested that M. Night really bought the script of The Sixth Sense from another writer and put his own name on it. But he's actually written all the other scripts since then, which explains why all his subsequent movies have sucked like great big sucking things.

[Codeine]

2. Actually,

M. Night Shamalamdingdong's "Unbreakable" was really quite fantastic, perhaps better than Sixth Sense. The remainder of his work has been uniformly shit, however.

[Q3JR4]

3. "After the movie" huh?

Me and my friends do that during the movie.

Fortunately we do it only for really bad movies that have been out for a while (the second run chain charges $1.50 so no full price movies).

I get good mileage out of the phrase, "Physics doesn't work like that!"

Q3JR4

[FiveGoodMen]

4. The one that always bothered me was James Bond's Tomorrow Never Dies

There's a scene where Bond & Babe-du-jour are riding a motorcycle while being chased by a helicopter.

They get cornered at the end of a street and the chopper slowly advances toward them, pitched at a 45 degree angle so that it's blades almost touch the ground in front of it.

It hovers, barely moving, while the rotor is nowhere near level.

How's that supposed to work?

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. Talking of helicopters - Mission: Impossible's climax

Wikipedia description of it:

"Claire tries to intervene, and Phelps kills her instead and climbs up to the roof of the car, while Krieger approaches the moving train in a helicopter to extract him. Hunt follows him onto the roof, impeding him and tethering Krieger's helicopter to the train, dragging it into the Channel Tunnel. In the tunnel, Phelps leaps to the helicopter. Hunt follows, climbing the helicopter's landing skids and attaching explosive chewing gum, a final relic of Prague, to the windshield. He leaps back to the train just as the ensuing explosion kills Phelps and Krieger."

Not only is there a load of factual stuff wrong (Channel Tunnel has separate tunnels in each direction, only just big enough for one train, with overhead wires completely absent; no-one builds a rail tunnel large enough for a helicopter to fly down); the helicopter gets dragged down the tunnel at over 100 mph(I think it occasionally bounces off the walls, ceiling and floor a few times too) and the pilot keeps control of it. Bugger the chewing gum, the copter with the baddie in would have crashed within seconds.

[Orrex]

5. I'll check the site a little later, but two that really bother me:

1. The absolute disregard for hypothermia, especially after the film makes a specific point of mentioning how dangerous it is. See James Cameron's The Abyss as one example. See James Cameron's Titanic as another.

2. The absolute disregard for the heat of molten rock or metal. Characters routinely hang out on a shore, watching a lava flow, or dangle low above an active volcano, or else have a big scene over a vat of molten steel. Some examples: James Cameron's T2. Peter Jackson's The Return of the King. Volcano, starring Tommy Lee Jones.

I'm not usually an obsessive stickler for these things, and I don't even get too worked up when a film botches the physics, as long as the story remains interesting. But when a movie universe can't even keep its own physical laws straight, then I cry foul.

[jberryhill]

11. Explosions And The Body

Explosive shock waves do not cause injury, nor is anyone ever hit by shrapnel.

In fact, riding the shock wave of an explosion has become a popular way to get from one place to another pretty quickly.

[Orrex]

19. Good call

My understanding is that being hit by the blast-wave of an explosion is like being smashed by a huge hammer. It might propel you in one direction or another, but you're not going to arrive unscathed.

[skepticscott]

25. And who can forget

the epic duel on a ocean of lava between Obi Wan and Annakin in Revenge of the Sith?

[frogmarch]

6. Not sure if it

pertains to physics, but it really BUGS me when I see movie scenes in which the characters are supposedly outside in frigid temps, yet when they speak you can't see their breath.

[onager]

7. Not strictly physics either, but fun goofs...

The Da Vinci Code - there's a lot of hugger-mugger about Robert Langdon and Amelie desperately trying to reach the American Embassy from the Louvre in her Smart car.

Smart car, dumb move - the American Embassy is just a short walk from the Louvre. A LOT faster than trying to drive down the Champs d'Elysees at any time of day or night.

In fact, as their route is depicted in the movie, I'm pretty sure they would have driven right past the American Embassy. Several times.

The Bourne Identity - major scenes take place at "the American Embassy in Zurich." Which doesn't exist - the American Embassy is just where you would expect it to be. In the capital of Switzerland, which is Bern.

I guess Zurich sounds sexier or something. As a one-time frequent flyer on SwissAir in the 1990's, I can attest that Zurich used to have some quite public sex in it, despite the dour Calvinist legacy that closed all the bars at midnight. Back then, passers-thru could enjoy the sight of...er...upright Swiss businessmen picking up drug-addled hookers of all sexes in the Spritz-Platz, or "Needle Park."

The Holy Family went to Egypt... - according to some History Channel program, apparently working off the dopey geography of the born-again Anne Rice.

According to them, the Holy Family sort of meandered all over Egypt, from Wadi Natrun and Siwa in the Western Desert, to the future Cairo, to the (alleged) Mt. Sinai, to a sort of Jewish Underground Railroad in Alexandria.

All of which is possible, I guess. But it's like a lot of that weird New Testament geography - sort of like traveling from New York City to Omaha by way of Los Angeles.

Not to mention Baby Jesus - a REAL baby at that point in his alleged life - stopping at all these future tourist traps to declaim in complete sentences about the great Xian holy men who will someday inhabit those places.

The monks who eventually inhabited Wadi Natrun killed Hypatia, which is pretty much an indicator of how well the whole thing worked out.

[frogmarch]

8. Interesting!

How odd The DaVinci Code contained such an obvious goof - well, obvious to people who know Paris, anyway (which I don't). I enjoyed the movie, but as an atheist I thought it was pretty silly, even without knowing about the car chase goof.

Now I'll have to see The Bourne Identity, just so I can say, knowingly, "Oh, for cryin' out loud, everyone knows the American Embassy in Switzerland is in Bern, not Zurich!" :)

I think I (sort of) saw the Jesus-into-Egypt program not long ago. There were some guys measuring distances from point A to B to C, and so on, trying to prove that the holy family passed by those points. While the program was on, I was reading a book about the Salem witch trials, so all I really remember is Charlie Brown's mother narrating a program about the holy family's travels ... blah blah blah...jesus... blah blah...Mt. Sinai....

[onager]

9. Yep, Holy Family Tourism is a big $$$-maker in Egypt.

While I was living in Egypt, I had a lot fun reading travel-agency brochures about "Holy Family Tours." That family was zig-zagging all over the country. They really got around, for a couple traveling on a donkey and carrying a baby!

Grumpy History Geek note: I'm not sure why they would have gone to Egypt anyhow. Maybe the New Testament had to throw that in to fulfill some obscure Old Testament prophecy.

But Egypt at the time was in the same political situation as Judea - it was occupied and governed by the Roman Empire, and had been since 31 BCE. Fleeing to Egypt could have been a case of outta the frying pan, into the fire.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. Can't abide by their taste in movies.

For example, they claim Avatar will have a significant place in movie history.

Bullshit, a couple of years from not nobody will care.

And I think they're too conservative in what they consider fantasy. James Bond, e.g., is fantasy.

[Orrex]

13. I love that Bond film when he rode a unicorn over the Rainbow Bridge to retrieve the sacred chalice

[realisticphish]

15. James Bond: The Man with the Purple Acid

[realisticphish]

14. it'll always have a place in the technical sense

but all the praise about anything other than graphics is nonsense. It's a standard alt-evolution thought experiment, with giant blue cats. The story was lame, the dialogue lamer,

Visually stunning, and I'm glad I saw it in 3D imax. The only problem is that now every friggin movie that comes out will have a "3D" version, to get that extra 3-4 bucks a ticket

[ZombieHorde]

16. I think Avatar will be known for its special effects, just like Jurassic Park and Matrix. nt

[SidDithers]

17. Any movie where ships travelling in space bank their turns...

as if they're a plane using air currents.

Changing direction in a vaccuum doesn't work that way :)

Sid

[realisticphish]

18. although

banking might maintain some momentum. But i'm not an astrophysicist :shrug:

[conscious evolution]

20. Electrocution scenes drive me batty

Can't think of any specific examples but I'm sure you guys will recall one.

One common electrocution scenario is when one actor yanks a branch circuit cable out of an electrical panel and jams the end into the other actor and killing him with it.Problem?The branch circuit is fed by the PANEL!!Without it connected it will not be energized!Whatever equipment/device the circuit is feeding doesn't generate power.
Another one is when they stick wires in water to do the electrocuting.In real life dead short circuit the fuse/breaker feeding that circuit will trip. Instantly.
Still another is when someone gets thrown into a panel.Granted, someone hitting a live bus or cable like this most likely will recieve a shock.However,a person is not going to get stuck to it and shower sparks like a roman candle while they die a slow agonizing death.

Spacecraft making sounds in space also makes me cringe.

[Orrex]

22. I'd like to meet the person strong enough to rip out a branch cable with one hand

Arnold in sure. But a regular ol' person? Nah.

And sound doesn't simply travel in space; it travels instantaneously! When you see a ship blow up four miles away, the sound reaches you at the same time as the sight of it--amazing!

Actually I don't mind spacecraft (or explosions) making noise in space because that's one of the genre conventions, like planets with human-friendly atmosphere or human-shaped, English-speaking aliens. Sure, it's a breach of real-world physics, but it's one I've chosen to overlook.

To date, I can think of only one film that got the sound right, and it was 40+ years ago...

[iris27]

24. Not a movie, but [i]Firefly[/i] gets (lack of) sound in space right.

In one episode, something explodes in the engine room of the ship. They seal off the room they're in, then open the cargo bay doors to suffocate the blaze. You hear the roar of the fire from inside the ship, but once the camera cuts to the space shot, it's dead silent as you watch the flames get sucked out along with the air they're consuming.

[Q3JR4]

21. Just heard about

this one: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1227637

Called Impact.

The stupid makes my brain hurt.

Q3JR4

[Iggo]

23. whoooooo, lordy!

i got stupider and stupider the deeper i got into that plot summary.