What is your #1 gripe about Science Fiction movies?

[sdifox]

Shockwave in space.

 

[pmv]

I partly agree about the touchscreen thing.

It crops up in so many SF movies.

I can't say its ever particularly bothered me before though, but Windows 8 with its touch-centric interface bought that to mind recently - you only have to imagine using a touch screen desktop and prodding at that Metro GUI all day to realise how much your arm would start to hurt after a day at the office. A few months of that and you'd be suing your employer for some sort of RSI complaint. Having had this thought I don't think I could watch those movies again without noticing that problem.

Most SF movies are bad though. I think the last one I actually liked was Aliens. And 2001 still seems like the only one that ever made any serious effort not to include anything really stupid.

Pretty much every one featuring some supposed inter-stellar space war leaves me wondering why, if they can fly ships at FTL speeds, they don't just hurl great big near-light-speed rocks at each other's planets, instead of messing around with lasers and rockets.

 

[dennilfloss]

Scientists & military being unbelievably unreasoned, dare I say stupid, and unprofessional in their analysis and reactions to a phenomenon.

 

[BUTCH1]

2001 did this of course.

KT

2001 was so far ahead of it's time it was jaw-dropping when it was released..

 

[shortylickens]

Scientists & military being unbelievably unreasoned, dare I say stupid, and unprofessional in their analysis and reactions to a phenomenon.

As has already been pointed out multiple times, movies are written by people with theater tech degrees. AKA folks who will never do anything real in their life.

 

[BladeVenom]

That Hollywood is too stupid to understand science fiction, or science. 2001 was both a commercial and critical success, yet they don't make more movies like that. Look how long Rendezvous with Rama has been talked about, but Hollywood won't actually produce it.

 

[sandorski]

There aren't enough of them.

/thread

This, although others are bringing up good points.

 

[dighn]

That Hollywood is too stupid to understand science fiction, or science. 2001 was both a commercial and critical success, yet they don't make more movies like that. Look how long Rendezvous with Rama has been talked about, but Hollywood won't actually produce it.

I'm not sure if a movie like 2001 would be a success in this day and age. Everything's just getting more and more dumbed down, and whether as a cause or effect, people expect it.

 

[Kadarin]

I understand the clear screens and fancy explosions and sounds in space are for the purpose of entertainment; they all look cool, which is part of the point of a movie.

The biggest problem that I have with aliens in scifi is that they don't tend to be alien enough. Aliens are usually people with prosthetic foreheads (or puppets, or CGI characters) that act just like people, with the same emotions and motivations. Sometimes you get more aggressiveness, but you never get a sense that their thought processes are actually alien.

 

[Kadarin]

I'm not sure if a movie like 2001 would be a success in this day and age. Everything's just getting more and more dumbed down, and whether as a cause or effect, people expect it.

Dumbed down and sped up. Compare the pacing of 2001 with that of the Star Trek reboot movie.

 

[Geosurface]

I agree on the shockwave in space if we mean the disc shaped explosions. Overdone massively.

Aliens looking too human also.

 

[Paratus]

2001 did this of course.

KT

Good call. :thumbsup:

 

[waggy]

Han shot first.

Me and my son were watching Lego:star wars on TV. they had a scene where Han shoots someone. C3PO goes something like "Han! you shot him first!" han replies "yeah? why wouldn't I?"

lol got a good laugh out of that.

 

[zerocool84]

As has already been pointed out multiple times, movies are written by people with theater tech degrees. AKA folks who will never do anything real in their life.

No duh. If they didn't, movies would suck.

 

[destrekor]

all aliens and humanoid and/or carbon based creators...

Oddly enough, some recent discussion in this realm has sort of come to the conclusion that, "while they did it wrong, sci-fi movies of aliens breathing fine on Earth/with oxygen, is likely correct."

I'm not sure if it'll require all entities to be carbon-based, but it is sounding like Oxygen is the most likely respiratory gas for higher-order organisms. Other similar gasses would simply be far too reactive with tissues, and almost any other gas, used in respiration for the purpose of energy production aerobically, just would not be as efficient and will likely limit organism size/potential.


But there could be some otherwordly batshit crazy approach to life out there, that has a method that resembles neither aerobic or anaerobic energy production. To that end, it's something so radically insane that none of our best scientists can come up with any feasible idea that would create organic matter, using the elements we know in this universe, with an organization so radically different that energy production won't remotely resemble what we have witnessed thus far.

Which is to say, it is sounding more and more likely that, if/when we encounter advanced alien life, it will likely breathe oxygen. It's a prevalent gas that, on any planet capable of hosting organic cell-based lifeforms (on the surface), will be readily provided both by natural methods and by anaerobic lifeforms sure to evolve on said planet.

They won't necessarily have to be humanoid, or even bipedal, that much is true.

 

[Paul98]

when the explanation of the science behind some main thing simply makes no sense and clearly the person who wrote it had no clue what they were talking about.

 

[Jeff7]

when the explanation of the science behind some main thing simply makes no sense and clearly the person who wrote it had no clue what they were talking about.

What, you've never seen a quark-cooled fusion reactor that's fueled with neutrino-based antimatter? A reactor like that is easily capable of putting out 500 gigajoules per watt every day.

 

[BladeVenom]

I'm not sure if it'll require all entities to be carbon-based, but it is sounding like Oxygen is the most likely respiratory gas for higher-order organisms.

Hydrogen sulfide would work. Then there's always photosynthesis with CO2.

 

[BladeVenom]

What, you've never seen a quark-cooled fusion reactor that's fueled with neutrino-based antimatter?

It's not even the mumbo jumbo fake technology. They can't even get the simplest stuff right. Like Prometheus, "the atmosphere is 3% CO2 it will kill you in a minute." The writers didn't even know what carbon dioxide is. It wouldn't even take a minute to search on Wikipedia. Not knowing any science is bad enough, but most Hollywood writers are even too stupid to use the internet to get an answer.

 

[shortylickens]

No duh. If they didn't, movies would suck.

I was responding to Denni.

DAMN YOU!

 

[Jeff7]

It's not even the mumbo jumbo fake technology. They can't even get the simplest stuff right. Like Prometheus, "the atmosphere is 3% CO2 it will kill you in a minute." The writers didn't even know what carbon dioxide is. It wouldn't even take a minute to search on Wikipedia. Not knowing any science is bad enough, but most Hollywood writers are even too stupid to use the internet to get an answer.

Right, that.
The danger of wanting them to use the Internet: They might go to Yahoo Answers or ehow.com and use the first answer that sounds like it'd play good on-screen.

MST3K movies are also full of that stuff. My dad's comment is that they should at least call in a science consultant for the basics - specifically, a 4th grader.



One other beef: "Unobtanium." It's their way of saying, "You're too uneducated to understand this." Star Trek at least tried to made up some reasonable sounding names for their fake substances. (Sarium krellide power cells, for example.) Just go the extra step then, and have a narrator step into the scene and spell it out. "This substance doesn't actually exist. It is fake. Just in case you didn't get that."

 

[cantholdanymore]

Real problem is that there aren't any new. They're all action movies, the sci-fi part is no more that 5%.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

- Every button, knob, or slider on anything anywhere needs to make a sound when used.
- When someone has to quickly rig up some kind of crude device, they often have time to equip it with functioning indicator lights and audio feedback.
- Laws of physics vary from scene to scene.
- Space often has the properties of warm molasses - if a spaceship's engines die, it immediately grinds to a halt. But again, this is sometimes dismissed when the plot calls for it. (Stargate: A ship, Daedalus I believe, is being pursued, when their engines cut off. It quickly comes to a halt. Different episode: Teal'c and O'Neill are in a small fighter, and it continues to drift long after its engine power cuts out.)
- The fiction:science ratio is shifting, because the perception is increasingly that science and any manner of high-brow stuff just ain't cool no more.
- Any explosion in space looks like everything's been packed full of gasoline and oxygen.

That's only a problem with sci-fi movies?

 

[destrekor]

Hydrogen sulfide would work. Then there's always photosynthesis with CO2.

Of course there are other possibilities, but I'm talking efficiency and the likelihood of advanced multicellular organisms (think an alien analogue of humanity - capable of advanced thought, perhaps use of tools, complex verbal and written language, possibly weapons, etc). Most of those routes work great for life that developed that way, but it would require tremendous energy input to scale up to larger, more advanced creatures.

And whatever gas it is, it needs to be replenished. Either natural reactions produce it, or, like us, other lifeforms help produce the gas we depend upon to breathe.

Hydrogen sulfide would most likely not be the gas used for energy generation. That sounds terrible for just about any imaginable biology. But, it could be the byproduct of their respiration/energy production (like O2-CO2 in humans). Some other sulfurous molecule would most likely be the gas used.

But what about oxygen as a poison then? I know some single-celled creatures die in the presence of free oxygen, not sure about the sulfurous types.

Would it be fare to say it's not likely such a place would both be habitable AND conducive to the controlled generation of fire/combustion for such types of creatures? How "advanced" are we willing to label aliens that are without metallurgy?

I guess, if they don't breathe oxygen, it at least cannot be a lethal gas for them either. Which, due to certain biological requirements, would likely limit which gasses a creature would even be able to use for respiration. If they require a different gas, certain aspects of their biology will be remarkably different, and for some of those differences, oxygen becomes a highly reactive and lethal substance. Without an ability to survive in an oxidized world, I don't think controlled combustion is even possible.
Granted, metallurgy isn't necessarily required for them to have strong reasoning skills, and they could come up with a creative solution to create fire in a controlled and sealed environment... but it also could limit them to simply crafting simpler things with their hands/mouths/whatever and not really advancing that much beyond the state of our primate brethren.

 

[Jeff7]

That's only a problem with sci-fi movies?

Hey, at least we have lots of gasoline and oxygen here on Earth.
I really hope that future spacecraft won't have "Premium unleaded only" tags on them.