Physics in movies

[begadelavela]

Hi guys,

I want to know in what movies producers didn't listen physics teacher. Write me some of examples of movies or series where you noticed something bad about laws of physics.

I would appreciate if you would explain what is wrong in those scenes!

Tnx!

[Atmos]

One word.

Interstellar

 

though its more astrophysics and theoretical physics. 

I f*cking hated that movie as someone who actually has even the most basic understanding of blackholes and gravity. Sure that blackhole can create 600ft waves, and warp time so much that its flowing at 1/1000th speed or w/e, but they can survive just fine. No spaghettification whatsoever. no gravitational forces tearing the planet apart. nothing at all. don't question it. Oh, your individual atoms are being torn apart because you're flying close to the backhole to try and slingshot out of it? oh, but you're completely fine, just a hangover and a bit of stretched vision? Oh, okay.

Meanwhile everyones like "oh wow! its so smart! its so sciencey! WOOOOOOW!" and im cringing the whole way through.

[WindirBear]

25 minutes ago, Atmos said:

One word.

Interstellar

Isn't that the point, to make a movie based on astrophysics and theoretical physics? 

 

I really enjoyed the movie

[lonestar31]

Armageddon, that moon slingshot. And most of the other parts of the movie too. 

[dalekphalm]

Basically every action or sci-fi movie ever? There are very few movies that do physics properly.

 

6 hours ago, Atmos said:

One word.

Interstellar

 

though its more astrophysics and theoretical physics. 

I f*cking hated that movie as someone who actually has even the most basic understanding of blackholes and gravity. Sure that blackhole can create 600ft waves, and warp time so much that its flowing at 1/1000th speed or w/e, but they can survive just fine. No spaghettification whatsoever. no gravitational forces tearing the planet apart. nothing at all. don't question it. Oh, your individual atoms are being torn apart because you're flying close to the backhole to try and slingshot out of it? oh, but you're completely fine, just a hangover and a bit of stretched vision? Oh, okay.

Meanwhile everyones like "oh wow! its so smart! its so sciencey! WOOOOOOW!" and im cringing the whole way through.

To be fair, they did try to do their best to make the science accurate or plausible. They had physicist on staff as consultants to help with that kind of stuff.

[PlayStation 2]

Not really physics, but I still wonder about that runway scene in Fast & Furious 6.

[dalekphalm]

7 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Not really physics, but I still wonder about that runway scene in Fast & Furious 6.

Oh my god, me too.

 

Like Jesus, is that runway 40 kilometers long?

 

For reference, the longest paved runway in the world in 5.47 KM long, in China.

 

The scene is something like 20 minutes long, and if we assume they are going a VERY conservative 100 KM/h, then the runway is at least 33 KM long.

 

Oh the BBC did the math for me... According to them, the scene is 13 minutes long:

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-23005848

According to their calculations, the runway is just shy of 30 KM long.

 

Someone should get fired for that shit.

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

Oh my god, me too.

 

Like Jesus, is that runway 40 kilometers long?

 

For reference, the longest paved runway in the world in 5.47 KM long, in China.

 

The scene is something like 20 minutes long, and if we assume they are going a VERY conservative 100 KM/h, then the runway is at least 33 KM long.

 

Oh the BBC did the math for me... According to them, the scene is 13 minutes long:

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-23005848

According to their calculations, the runway is just shy of 30 KM long.

 

Someone should get fired for that shit.

That whole scene was fucking crazy though. You gotta give them props for somehow managing it.

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

That whole scene was fucking crazy though. You gotta give them props for somehow managing it.

I mean, it was visually impressive as hell, but yeah... that scene ruined the immersion for me. I unabashedly love the F&F movies (except 2 Fast and Tokyo Drift... those movies were fucking horrible), and Fast Five and Furious 7 were both solid "popcorn" action movies. #6 was a bit much.

 

Still haven't seen Fate of the Furious yet, but I assume it'll break Physics in droves

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

I mean, it was visually impressive as hell, but yeah... that scene ruined the immersion for me. I unabashedly love the F&F movies (except 2 Fast and Tokyo Drift... those movies were fucking horrible), and Fast Five and Furious 7 were both solid "popcorn" action movies. #6 was a bit much.

 

Still haven't seen Fate of the Furious yet, but I assume it'll break Physics in droves

2Fast is fucking dreadful. Tokyo Drift is even worse. Like that's the big reason there's a decent amount of prequels to TD, because the movie made no real sense in the story arc.

 

F&F6 was ridiculous on the stunts, but I think that's what it needed: a sense of ridiculousness to go with it.

F7 was pretty good. The way they handled the whole Paul Walker situation was pretty top-notch, if a bit long.

 

I haven't been able to see Fate. It looks pretty alright though.

[WMGroomAK]

Probably the worst movie I've ever seen scientifically is 'The Core'.  We used that movie in a Plate Tectonics class as an off-day laugh session.  Basically, we were allowed to leave the class early after writing down 10 things that were wrong with the movie on a geology basis.  Don't think it even took an hour. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

This is the one that always pissed me off

 

 

[dalekphalm]

17 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

This is the one that always pissed me off

 

 

I'm confused as to why this pisses you off? It's basically magic, and they aren't going for realism at all lol.

 

It would be one thing if they spent a whole long time trying to convince viewers that the bullet bending was scientific. They don't.

[yathis]

8 hours ago, begadelavela said:

Hi guys,

I want to know in what movies producers didn't listen physics teacher. Write me some of examples of movies or series where you noticed something bad about laws of physics.

I would appreciate if you would explain what is wrong in those scenes!

Tnx!

Matt Damons Mars movie Martian i think is whats its called.

Neil DeGrass Tyson loves that movie.

[divito]

2 hours ago, WMGroomAK said:

Probably the worst movie I've ever seen scientifically is 'The Core'.  We used that movie in a Plate Tectonics class as an off-day laugh session.  Basically, we were allowed to leave the class early after writing down 10 things that were wrong with the movie on a geology basis.  Don't think it even took an hour. 

As inaccurate as it was, I still found it pretty entertaining. The rushed ending was really disappointing though.

[SteveGrabowski0]

2 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

I'm confused as to why this pisses you off? It's basically magic, and they aren't going for realism at all lol.

 

It would be one thing if they spent a whole long time trying to convince viewers that the bullet bending was scientific. They don't.

It pisses me off because it's something a lot of people would find plausible if only you could swing your arm fast enough.  This curve the bullet crap was on TV constantly in commercials for this POS movie when it came out. It's so annoying this movie reinforces peoples' ignorance of physics. Walter Lewin (amazing physics teacher) talks about this belief people have about centripetal acceleration around the 7:40 mark below.

 

 

[dalekphalm]

3 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

It pisses me off because it's something a lot of people would find plausible if only you could swing your arm fast enough.  This curve the bullet crap was on TV constantly in commercials for this POS movie when it came out. It's so annoying this movie reinforces peoples' ignorance of physics. Walter Lewin (amazing physics teacher) talks about this belief people have about centripetal acceleration around the 7:40 mark below.

 

 

Err... I don't know anyone that's dumb enough to think curving a bullet is realistic.

 

I dunno. I would be more pissed if the movie were trying to be realistic. But it's obviously off-the-chart-insane not realistic.

[SteveGrabowski0]

It's not physics, but Good Will Hunting's math was pretty stupid too. The professor is an expert in combinatorics but he's giving a lecture on complex analysis. And the problem Will Hunting gets busted solving on the blackboard that took MIT professors five years to prove is something any sophomore student doing reasonably well in his first graph theory or discrete math course would find a pretty easy homework problem. Also I thought it was funny when Prof Lambeau told Will "Oh you used MacLaurin," as in MacLaurin series. But everyone calls it Taylor series [MacLaurin series is just Taylor series f(x) = f(a) + f'(a)(x-a) + 1/2 f''(a) (x-a)^3 + ... expanded at a = 0].

[AkiraDaarkst]

9 hours ago, begadelavela said:

Hi guys,

I want to know in what movies producers didn't listen physics teacher. Write me some of examples of movies or series where you noticed something bad about laws of physics.

I would appreciate if you would explain what is wrong in those scenes!

Tnx!

Well some TV shows and movies do try to keep the physics as close to being realistic as possible.  But they also have to get high viewership ratings and make ticket sales by keeping the audience entertained.  Star Trek for example, the concept of warp drives was essential because otherwise we'd be spending most of the 1 hour show watching the crew of the enterprise trying to travel between one star system to the next at sub-light speeds and it would take years.

[AkiraDaarkst]

1 minute ago, dalekphalm said:

Err... I don't know anyone that's dumb enough to think curving a bullet is realistic.

The fact that Mythbusters did an episode on curving a bullet does seem to lay claim that there are (or were) a ton of people who thought it could be done.

[SteveGrabowski0]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

Err... I don't know anyone that's dumb enough to think curving a bullet is realistic.

 

I dunno. I would be more pissed if the movie were trying to be realistic. But it's obviously off-the-chart-insane not realistic.

Most people would believe the bullet could be made to follow a spiral like trajectory though instead of a straight one if the arm firing it was moving extremely fast.

[dalekphalm]

Just now, AkiraDaarkst said:

The fact that Mythbusters did an episode on curving a bullet does seem to lay claim that there are (or were) a ton of people who thought it could be done.

I dunno man. Mythbusters do a lot of myths that any sane individual would immediately be like "Yeah that's impossible". Just because a myth is popular doesn't mean lots of people believe it's true.

 

Plus a lot of the myths on mythbusters are pretty obscure.

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Most people would believe the bullet could be made to follow a spiral like trajectory though instead of a straight one if the arm firing it was moving extremely fast.

I disagree with your assessment. I don't think most people would believe that at all.

 

But since neither of us has any stats to prove our point, we're at an impasse. Let's just agree that some people are goddamn idiots and will believe stupid things, and other people won't

[Ithanul]

Most movies with guns....

There no way a 6 shooter revolver can shot 7+ times without a reload.  That bothers me more than the explosions in movies.

[SteveGrabowski0]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

I disagree with your assessment. I don't think most people would believe that at all.

 

But since neither of us has any stats to prove our point, we're at an impasse. Let's just agree that some people are goddamn idiots and will believe stupid things, and other people won't

I think most people don't understand the centripetal acceleration completely vanishes the moment the slug comes out the casing. I agree with Professor Lewin in that lecture I posted above: that people intuitively expect a somewhat spiral like trajectory. Not a tight spiral but still an inward component of acceleration to keep it from going completely straight. It seems like the textbook case of Hollywood getting a piece of simple physics completely wrong. About the only thing worse they could do is showing a bowling ball falling faster than a tennis ball if dropped from the Tower of Pisa.