Badmovies.org Forum

Don't get me wrong, I love bad movie science.

But since I'm familiar with actual science, let's point out some bad ideas.

Man of Steel is a movie with serious problems. I liked it, but it is not Superman. The movie got the moral core right, but they forgot that Superman is also very intelligent. The real Superman would not continue his fight in a populated center.

But there's a point in the movie where the "alien" core thing that Superman has was analyzed by a scientist.

Here's what they say in the movie:

"The scientist said that is made of elements that are not on the periodic table."
"That's another way of saying that it did not come from this Earth."

Well, no, that's saying quite a bit more than that. The entire universe is made of the same elements, and the reasons why should blow your mind. Supernovas and what not. Finding a new element would be universe changing. It also wouldn't make a lot of sense.

Was it made of that "island of stability" that has been theorized?

They did the same thing in "Iron Man", where all he needed to do is discover a new element. My dream is that the general public will know by default what a dumb idea this is.

Pretty much any big-budget Hollywood horror in the last few years:

Humans don't care about seeing their friends and family die. They might care long enough for a reaction shot, but that's it, unless they seek revenge, which is the only reaction to something like that. However, they, especcially teenagers, do react to their love interest being in danger, because their high school crush is considerably more important than, say, their parents.

Not sure emotional reactions fall under science, but that treatment of emotions is quite clearly BS.

Oh jeez a gazillion of them.   :bouncegiggle:

Starship Troopers - the aliens somehow manage to fire asteroids at Earth.  A diagram is shown which reveals that the alien planet is all the way on the other side of the galaxy.  The galaxy is really, really big;  judging by the speed we see the asteroid traveling at as it approaches Earth, it would take hundreds of millions of years to make the trip.

Star Wars - when the Millenium Falcon is under attack by Tie fighters, and Han Solo has to make a bunch of computations to make sure they don't hit anything when they make the jump to light speed.  The universe is almost entirely empty space, and setting out in any random direction wouldn't pose much danger of flying through a star or anything.  A lot less danger at least than getting killed by the fighters attacking you.  Also, you can see the lasers fired from the star destroyers traveling at a few hundred miles an hour - lasers travel at the speed of light.  they'd be all the way across the screen instantly  :smile:

Mofo, you have been WyreWizard all along?  :tongueout:

Anyway, it always bothered me that Superman could fly. If I went to a planet with less gravitational pull than earth I might be able to jump high because of my massive thighs but I'm pretty sure I couldn't swoop, do barrel rolls and stuff like that. Just one of the reasons I have never liked Superman. Batman is the only superhero I can stand.

But I do totally get how reversing the direction of the Earth's rotation would roll back time. That didn't completely destroy what had up to that time been a decent movie or anything.
 
(P.S. According to this page (http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/24116/how-did-superman-turn-back-time-in-the-first-movie) maybe he didn't reverse the Earth's rotation. Still makes no sense though.)

A-hah! Nerd time!

Jack: My rationalization of the blasters- they are actually particle cannon, using 'Tabanna gas' to boost the thermal effect and use the lasing of the guns to impart a direction of the 'bolt'. Hence, they are slower than light.
Also: Starship troopers is a whacked take on some weird 'Bioenergy-in place of tech' thingy...kinda...Earth better hope they don't develop a Godzilla...

Rev.: Superman went back in time, and left that other temporal reality without a Superman. Kinda like how the ST/TOS is without a Spock.

Tyranno: I'm not surprised at the lack of reaction. Kinda fits the emotional maturity of some of the folks who make those films.

Except that I like bad movie science. Also, I'm not a complete jackass (I hope).

When Superman first originated, he couldn't fly, only leap tall buildings with a single bound. Now he can fly because superheroes. And that I can live with, for some reason. It's just the new element thing really gets me because it's such a fundamental concept that people get wrong. Couldn't they find one scientist to ask about it? Or a university undergrad? Or a high school chemistry student?

Also, cool as Batman is, Superman is the best superhero. He's just nigh unto impossible to write a good story for.

I love the Hulk's sonic boom claps that blast tanks and cars to oblivion but leave humans intact.

Distances in space. Things are always a million miles from Earth. I've seen one film even put Mars in atmospheric Earth orbit! Jupiter is 900 kilometers away from Earth or Mars is 9,000.

There's one old comic where the Hulk fell off a train. Using his powerful back muscles, he was able to push himself off the air and back onto the train.

You never see the Hulk fart. Ever. Anywhere. Imagine the destruction that would ensue!


My favorite bad movie science movie is Twister (1996), complete with its physics-defying flying cow passing in front of the moving vehicle twice whilst the high wind velocity carrying the cow has absolutely no effect on the moving vehicle itself (probably because the truck had a hemi), and wind-swept tractors and barns flying up and over our protagonists who have to duck out of their way, without ever once being picked up by the wind itself. And who can forget the 10-ton tanker truck (presumably empty?) being pushed/dragged along the highway by the twister before flying over the protagonists' pickup truck, while the high winds never once intervening in the pickup truck's forward motion? Fascinating!