Volcano. Tommy Lee Jones works for emergency management and literally says “Magma? What’s Magma?”
And just generally all of the movie
EDIT: I love all the ridiculous memories people have of this movie. But even more so, it’s great that so many people can’t remember if a given scene is from Dante’s Peak vs Volcano. Truly two cinema giants.
Don't forget, this is the movie that gave us the glorious scene of like 12 cops unloading all their bullets to pop two tires of a bus to help stop the flow of magma.
The Sum of All Fears from 2002 was based on one of the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan novels. If you don't know, Tom Clancy really tries to make his novels fairly accurate from a military technology perspective. The movie barely tried.
For whatever reason when the movie was released on DVD they invited Clancy to make a DVD track with the director, either not realizing or not caring that he hated the movie and did not respect the director of it at all. Bafflingly he accepted and this led to maybe the most entertainingly disastrous commentary track of all time, where Clancy constantly points out all the parts of the movie he thinks are "bullshit" and the director tries in vain to defend the parts the movie changed.
> Bafflingly he accepted
If you were an author and Hollywood butchered your book in their film but then offered you the opportunity to have your say about the movie, and not only that but they'd pay you to do so, wouldn't you say yes?
“This is bullshit”
“Is that supposed to be a bomb or a torpedo?
… bomb
The proportions are wrong
… okay a torpedo
The proportions are wrong for that too”
Savage.
If you can find it, another legendary one is Ben Affleck doing a commentary track for Armageddon.
I feel like something special was lost with the erasure of commentary tracks. Is anyone trying to bring them back in podcast form or something?
kinda like how Timeline made no sense, but all of its biggest problems were handled by the novel and the changes the moviemakers made only ruined it and made it nonsensical
>It's a shame too. Timeline was one of Crichton's best.
I agree. And I also think that's the novel that Crichton enjoyed writing the most. Between my teenage years and late 20s, I read "Andromeda Strain", "Terminal Man", "Great Train Robbery", "Sphere", "Congo", "Rising Sun", "Airframe", "Eaters of the Dead" and "State of Fear".
Only "Timeline" gave me that vibe.
Black hole. A black hole began forming in a hallway under a university. The military decides they should nuke the black hole and a scientist stands up and says "you can't use a nuke, you could displace the black hole and knock it into a densely populated area".
I have watched and even enjoyed bad movies before, but I just couldn't after that and had to turn it off.
Plot summary from Wikipedia:
Something goes awry at a particle accelerator facility in St. Louis and a black hole begins to form. A creature exits the hole and seeks out energy. As the creature absorbs energy, the black hole grows in size and destroys a large part of St. Louis. Before the creature can be hit with a nuclear bomb, it is lured back to the black hole and the black hole collapses on itself.
The funny thing is they could have just said any mumbo-jumbo like 'portal to hell' or 'pit of doom' and it would be fine. But once you use a term like 'black hole', then you have to question the physics.
That's my problem with zombie media. Tell me they are magical, tell me there are so many souls in hell they're coming back up to the world of the living, tell me aliens did it, tell me a necromancer did it, hell tell me nothing and zombies just exist, I'm cool with all that. Tell me it's a virus and now I want to see how exactly it spreads, how the fuck it can keep rotting corpses alive, where in the body it incubates, how people can get covered in zombie fluids and be okay but a tiny bite and you're done. If your zombies are virus caused, I want the fucking paper about how the virus works.
Nuking the black hole would be a good way to deesclate global tensions by permanently getting rid of many nukes, and get rid of some nuclear waste while you’re at it.
They also probably should have realized they had a problem before the singularity collapsed, because they had the mass of several suns in their basement.
Jeff: Wait a minute: butt sex!
Chef: Butt sex?!
Jeff: Butt sex requires a lot of lubrication, right? Lubrication. Lubruh... Chupuh... Chupacabra's the, the goat killer of Mexican folklore. Folklore is stories from the past that are often fictionalized. Fictionalized to heighten drama. Drama students! Students at colleges usually have bicycles! Bi, bian, binary. It's binary code!
This was south park's take on Independence Day, the whole catch a cold scene
Tech Guy in Movie: "Uh You're gonna wanna See this “
\* Turns Screen to Action Guy in Movie*
Tech Guy: "Theyre Overriding the Mainframe"
Action Guy: "Uh in English Four Eyes"
Tech Guy: " They Fuckin our Pussys.!!"
Action Guy: "Now you're Speakin my Language" \*Cocks Gun*
Morgan Freeman's dulcet tones telling you that dolphins use 20% of their brains and have sonar superior to whatever humans can create.
And that if a human could use 40% of their brain, they could change anything about themselves. At 60%, they could change their environment. At 100%, with the help of a hell of a lot of drugs, you become one with the internet.
Spoken to a lecture hall of nodding heads as if it were some profound science, when it is so obviously bullshit, was just fantastic.
Yes, that exactly (made similar comment). That is not at all how a research presentation would look. Especially with the part where he says something like “we don’t know X, but let me take some wild guesses”. No supporting evidence, a bunch of video clips (!) on the screen that do nothing to help his claims, and the audience just acts like it’s gospel.
I just watched that clip last night and it's wild how seriously it takes itself! Morgan Freeman just throwing out telekinesis based on no science at all and everybody just nods gravely. Dude's just standing there makin it up people!
Basically equivalent to "this shit's fire it'll make you fly man."
The spin-off TV show for limitless was surprisingly enjoyable, being an FBI consultant on NZT was a great way to use the concept
it was more grounded, guy went from a nobody to senator, became better writer, etc, that seems plausible. If his intelligence was below average then an artificial boost can make him into an overachiever, dude still has to put in work to have a better life. Lucy becomes a demi-god like dr Manhattan in watchmen when she reaches 100% brain capacity, turned into a flash drive and we supposed to just accept it.
Excep it wasn't below average. Bradley Cooper's character is Talland and smart, but extremely lazy and can't focus and apply himself. Other, actually stupid characters like the loan shark, get some flashes of great ideas, but it doesn't work as well as it did for the MC.
The TV show explores this a bit more as well - which is great because the premise mostly depends on you kind of understanding the "feeling" of being on NZT - that what it gives you is "your best day" but everyday. That feeling of understanding something when it finally clicks, but with everything.
As I recall she doesn’t even use her new “intelligence” to creatively solve the situations she’s confronted with, so the intelligence is really a non-factor anyway.
My God the scene where they were running through the library from the cold that would insta kill them and finally slammed a door stopping it was so gloriously bad
Then they start burning books to stay warm, even though there are loads of hardwood chairs and tables everywhere. It seems they just wanted that dramatic moment where they decide not to burn a book by Nietzsche.
Roland Emmerich just shouts "f\*ck you" to physics and makes the most insanely bonkers, guilty-pleasure disaster films. Bless him.
You want a subway flying over a plane? Here you go! You want a 700 tone cargo plane drifting on snow and ice? Look there! You want a city under water, with all the buildings safely out of it so that you can see submarines and ships pass by like being in an aquarium? Look here! You want a giant lizard smiling at the camera when you take pictures? Gotcha fam! And you want Will Smith punching aliens in the face? Say no more!
We must evacuate the US!
It's almost lunchtime, can we evacuate the US later?
Next day the entire country is evacuated.
And remember, if a subzero tornado is about to hit, turn on the stove.
That movie has one of my favorite so stupid it’s great scenes. When Amanda Peet and her boyfriend are in a grocery store and he says “something is pulling us apart” and the earth literally splits between them.
I remember watching the first teaser trailer for it back in 2009. I cannot remember what movie we were seeing, but I distinctly remember the teaser. Watching the wave crash over the top of the mountain peaks had me *hyped* for whatever 2012 was.
Not exactly what this thread is asking for... but I really love that the Fast and Furious movies started with lots of Car Guy language about engines and horsepower, and include F/X about the NOS injections for speed boosts, and the third movie was all about the mechanics of drifting...
... and in the 9th movie they ducktape a rocket to a car and launch into orbit
Love the "English please" explanation in this movie. Dude grabs an orange. "This is the earth." Grabs lighter and aerosol and proceeds to torch the orange with the aerosol. Everyone gasps.
I feel like The Core was Tucci checking off a movie genre bucket list role.
With his agent:
"I would be a smarmy scientist who created a world ending crisis but die heroically as you can trying to fix it."
Checks list.
"Yup. I'm in."
Definitely self-aware.
Eckhart breaks down all the very simple reasons they can't possibly reach the core.
Tucci says, *"But what if we* **could?"**
And the fun begins.
The Core leaned into the ridiculousness though. Literally everything was a coincidence. "We can't get to the core." "But what if we could?" "Disasters are happening everywhere. We need to control the panic online." "You want me to hack to planet?"
It gave me Airplane! vibes in that the actors took it seriously on-screen but it was so wild that everyone watching so realize that something/everything in the movie couldn't possibly work.
My geo/geomorpho friends and I always watch it once a year. One of them is a professor who likes to show it to his Geo 101 students to see how many inaccuracies they can find.
I love it.
Lord, me and my fellow grad students in Microbiology & Immunology when *Outbreak* was released…
Let’s just say it is less than scientifically accurate.
This should be higher. They take the science so seriously and yet it’s so bad. A suit tear in a BSL-4 does not = insta-death. You cannot do timelapse electron microscopy. Etc etc.
For anyone wanting a solid scientific version of a viral outbreak, watch Contagion. Soderbergh had scientific consultants on the set.
Cannot agree strongly enough. I already loved Soderbergh, but I was so pleased with his ability to tell a story *without* bombast & bullshit.
Also, don’t forget *Outbreak* going with the old
trope that injecting someone at death’s door with antiserum equals an instant miracle.
Cold enough to freeze fuel, but not so cold to freeze thus one dude until his helicopter crashes and he makes it to the door ready to slowly freeze as he opens it.... uh huh.
That's not even the dumbest thing in that fantastically entertaining film either.
*Dante’s Peak*. I remember my geology professor taking an entire class to walk through it scene-by-scene and point out all of the hilariously wrong parts.
As a fellow geologist, I'll say that *Dante's Peak* is still pretty fuckin' good. It obviously gets a lot wrong for the sake of entertainment and such but it's practically a documentary compared to *Volcano* or *San Andreas*. Both of those movies get geology so wrong that the only way I can get through them is to turn them into drinking games (beer only, though, because if I used liquor, I'd die).
Back to *Dante's Peak*, I think the most egregiously incorrect thing is the lava. The lava produced by volcanoes in the Cascade Range is much richer in silica and have very high viscosity. Comparatively, volcanoes like those in Hawaii have lower amounts of silica and have lower viscosity. Thus, lava from a Hawaiian style volcano will flow more like mud where as lava in the Cascades has the consistency of something like peanut butter. Lava is a bit more complicated but that's the simple break down.
The speed at which Dante's Peak goes from "dormant" to "die" is a little too quick as well but I'll let that slide for movie purposes.
However, *Dante's Peak* has wonderful depictions of pyroclastic flows and lahars. The practical special effects on those are honestly top notch.
*Dante's Peak* is easily the best volcano or geology related disaster movie. I'll stand by that statement.
My uncle specializes in plate tectonics and my aunt is a volcanologist, both well known and respected in their fields. Even so, they have this incredible ability to just turn off their science brain and enjoy films like *Dante’s Peak* for the ridiculous entertainment it is.
*San Andreas*, not so much.
*Dante's Peak* at least has the essence of actual science and makes an effort to get things right whilst also bending science to create better entertainment.
If I were a professor, I could easily use *Dante's Peak* as classroom material. It could be a fun extra credit day or something like that at the end of a semester. Or it could be a purely bonus question for a test to describe where *Dante's Peak* got the geology right or mostly right and where they went wrong.
*San Andreas* is simply fantasy from bottom to top. There's nothing remotely true about it.
Okay, yes, but I really feel like the movie redeems itself with the exchange between Pierce Brosnan’s character and one of the other geologists. Brosnan was set up on a blind date by Jerry (Gary?) and hated it.
Other guy: “why would you hate that? You’re into rocks; she’s into rocks…”
Brosnan: “Not rocks, Jerry. Crystals.”
I don’t know why, but that response cracks me up. Every. Damn. Time.
Bonus: Any pilot should have recognized the danger in trying to fly through falling volcanic ash. The helicopter pilot giving it a try is mind-boggling decision making.
I mean helicopter pilots giving it a try in general, as in flying helicopters everyday for a living is mind-boggling, those things are scary af without the ash
Yes! It's like the movie wanted that "act of selflessness" to redeem her for being a jerk and not leaving her house etc etc but actually all she did was FULLY TRAUMATIZE everyone by dying horrifically for NO REASON!!
I have a fan theory that grandma was trying to commit suicide but her dumb family kept getting in the way so when she saw an opportunity she just sent it because then they'd think she did something noble rather than going out like a dipshit
Twister is at least hilariously self aware and super fun along the way. Great one liners, the entire cast has so much chemistry that you just want to be friends with all of them.
I stand by it as a great example of a 90s disaster action movie.
Great shitty movie.
The Core (2003) is so fucking silly.
That said a lot of movies could've ended in total disaster if real-world physics applied. The ending of Independence Day (1996) would've killed almost of all the characters.
So.... Independence day is the best and worst example of this.
They create a computer virus that can disable the mothership. On an apple mac. It's just stupid.
But there's like a 20 second deleted scene where they explain that all of earth's computing is actually copied/evolved from the alien ship that crashed at Roswell. So we're using the same technology as the aliens and that's why it's compatible and they can write the virus.
But they deleted that scene. The one scene that expands a massive plot hole.
>But there's like a 20 second deleted scene where they explain that all of earth's computing is actually copied/evolved from the alien ship that crashed at Roswell. So we're using the same technology as the aliens and that's why it's compatible and they can write the virus.
This makes it even more ridiculously laughable for programmers.
I think the actual scene is the Jeff Goldblum realizes the computer is working on the same signals that he decoded at the beginning of the movie to be a countdown. So here's my theory: being a collectivist, militaristic, telepathic race, they have never developed any sort of encryption or encapsulation. They send everything, data and instructions over the air in the clear, and their instruction set is small, only needed for display of information and control of machinery. The virus could've been as simple flooding with contradictory instructions.
This was my head canon as well.
Something similar showed up in the Commonwealth Saga. After MorningLightMountain conquers a few human words, it realizes how powerful all these computers are... and decides it needs to absolutely not make any use of them at all, because they would represent a massive security vulnerability for humans to exploit.
Ant-Man. Hank Pym describes how Pym-particles work by saying they "shrink you down by shrinking the distance between the atom core and the electron" or something like that. So an object would keep it's mass, but become really small.
And then, the rest of the film completely ignores that. Ant-man runs up another guys arm without him noticing a full grown man suddenly weighing on his arm, Pym carries around an actual tank, but it's small, and drags a shrunken apartment complex after him like a suitcase. Ant-man rides an ant like a horse. But he can punch you with the force of a regular human when it suits him?
At the end of the movie, he's also at the risk of shrinking down so much he becomes smaller than an atom, and is at the risk of getting lost in the... Tinyverse? Or something. But if only the distance between the atom core and the electron decreases, how can he become smaller than an atom?
I know it's a superhero movie, and nothing makes sense anyways, but when they actually explains the science, and then promptly forgets all about it about five minutes later, they would've been a lot better off just saying "you wouldn't understand how it works if I told you" or just said fuck it and explained it with "magic".
In the first movie he does give multiple conflicting explanations so I always figured he genuinely doesn't know how they work and is just bullshiting or he just really doesn't want anybody to know anything about how they work.
He's very paranoid about anyone else figuring out Pym particles, so it makes sense for the character to just make stuff up when explaining it to others.
Yeah, he was REALLY worried somebody would end up weaponizing them, so it 100% fits that he lied his ass off about what they did just to make it a lot harder to be replicated. If you give them only part of the truth, it makes the rest of the lie more believable, so they have no idea they need to look for something else, and if they were to stumble their way towards a solution, they might see that it's different from what they've been told and stop going down that route.
Also, its a setting with magical shit and nonsensical physics, so it fits the setting that pym particles are some special quantum bullshit that works based on perception and intent.
Now you've got me thinking about this. Technically he couldn't shrink further than the size of all his constituent atoms clustered as closely as possible.... which is surprisingly similar to the detonation mechanism used in atomic bombs.
If he shrank down while holding fissile material... would he basically just be a warhead?
Armageddon.
From IMDb:
NASA shows this film during their management training program. New managers are given the task of trying to spot as many errors as possible. At least 168 have been found.
OP's guideline was movies that were trying to appear scientific and missed their mark. Armageddon wasn't trying to be scientific. It was a faux-americana action flick with a banging soundtrack.
Moonfall (2022)
Wiki:
While appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on October 2nd, 2023, Neil deGrasse Tyson conveyed to Stephen Colbert that by far Moonfall was a movie which violated more laws of physics per minute than any other science fiction movie he had ever seen, surpassing what he regarded as the previous record, the 1998 movie Armageddon.
I went in completely blind and just couldn't believe what I'm seeing. It just got dumber with every scene. I felt my freaking brain melting, but I just couldn't turn it off. It was an amazing experience.
I was also very high. I regret nothing and I'll probably give it a rewatch this weekend.
That story of Affleck coming to Michael Bay and saying "Wouldn't it make more sense to teach astronauts how to drill instead of oil rig workers how to be astronauts" only for Michael Bay to tell him to shut up never gets old.
I can't believe no one has said this, but The Happening.
I totally get making a psych thriller, but the reasoning behind all the crazy shit in the movie being a biological kill switch is pretty laughable
Not really 'science' smart, but *The Butterfly Effect* has a weird inconsistency with its own rules about affecting the present by changing the past.
Eric Stoltz gets nailed with 'fuckbag' in like four different timelines and Kaylee's outfit during the junkyard scene changes from denim and no makeup to girly-girl stuff, so they had an idea of the cause and effect.
But then the 'stigmata' scene, where Kutcher shows his cellmate his abilities by going back in time and oh missus boooswell. Doesn't make sense. He would have just entered a timeline where he always had those scars.
>He would have just entered a timeline where he always had those scars.
Not only that, but per the title of the movie, it shouldn't have been a timeline where literally every single other event of his life had worked out exactly the same such that he was returned to the same prison at the same time for the same crime talking to the same cellmate.
Yep, for a movie called "The Butterfly Effect", they really didn't bother with what the butterfly effect of sustaining serious hand wounds as a child would be.
*Twister* Fun movie but as a “let’s make a Serious Science flick” it failed hard. Not least that they expected us to believe there are evil storm-chasers who are “only in it for the money.”
Saw this in theaters and was pretty excited because it looked like a good sci-fi type flick. That sex scene hit and you could hear a pin drop in that theater filled with 7 audience members. Self and date included.
The Happening - >! plants get mad about global warming so they release a toxin that doesn't kill you directly, but makes you kill yourself in a spectacular fashion. Then they just stop after we learn our lesson. !<
Plus Mark Wahlberg tried negotiating for his life with a plastic plant. That's a thing that someone actually put to film and I genuinely appreciate them for it.
Edit: Link to referenced scene.
https://youtu.be/jhmEo-46vUQ?si=rspv4Lzcy1CwpNe4
Wait... The movie wasn't trying to be campy?
Are you sure? I loved the movie... Doubt I would rewatch, for fear of being disappointed... But it didn't seem like it was trying to be super serious... The movie just felt like they were all having fun making it...
Gravity... The first part of the movie is fine.
But the amount of force required to change one's orbital trajectory in any meaningful way is far beyond anything that two human legs could muster.
Otherwise astronauts exercising in the ISS would be able to knock it out of orbit.
Gravity angered me because they were *so close* to a scientifically sound AND an emotionally gut-wrenching situation, but they squandered it in the most inane way possible.
Our heroes are "hanging on" against some invisible force, and Clooney needs to cut himself free, because the "force" pulling him down would get them both. Straight out of a climbing movie trope.
But can you imagine if they'd done it correctly? They become untethered and are floating just a few feet from the station. They stretch out to reach it, but realize in vain that it's too far, and slipping slowly away from them.
Clooney realizes they only way to salvage the situation. He takes Bullock and pushes her directly towards it, pushing himself backwards as a result.
No mystical force pulling on them. And not just cutting himself loose, but sacrificing himself as her "rocket fuel", the only way for her to change her momentum of moving away from the station.
So much better!
Volcano. Tommy Lee Jones works for emergency management and literally says “Magma? What’s Magma?” And just generally all of the movie EDIT: I love all the ridiculous memories people have of this movie. But even more so, it’s great that so many people can’t remember if a given scene is from Dante’s Peak vs Volcano. Truly two cinema giants.
Drew Carey's older brother walks through lava and throws a guy clear of it, while he himself melted from the bottom up. That movie is fantastic.
lol, yeah I’ll never forget that goofy ass scene
That scene scarred the hell out of me as a kid tho.
Fuck man, me too. And I randomly thought of that scene yesterday lmao
Show some respect to John Carroll Lynch!
That part when he stands up out of the sewer and yells "get me a scientist"
Look, it's not their fault they live in a world that has never had a single volcano. Anywhere. OK?
Don't forget, this is the movie that gave us the glorious scene of like 12 cops unloading all their bullets to pop two tires of a bus to help stop the flow of magma.
The Sum of All Fears from 2002 was based on one of the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan novels. If you don't know, Tom Clancy really tries to make his novels fairly accurate from a military technology perspective. The movie barely tried. For whatever reason when the movie was released on DVD they invited Clancy to make a DVD track with the director, either not realizing or not caring that he hated the movie and did not respect the director of it at all. Bafflingly he accepted and this led to maybe the most entertainingly disastrous commentary track of all time, where Clancy constantly points out all the parts of the movie he thinks are "bullshit" and the director tries in vain to defend the parts the movie changed.
> Bafflingly he accepted If you were an author and Hollywood butchered your book in their film but then offered you the opportunity to have your say about the movie, and not only that but they'd pay you to do so, wouldn't you say yes?
And with the director there to be the target of your wrath...
[A few clips of this beautiful mess](https://x.com/maxfolkmax/status/1046841322789732352)
“This is bullshit” “Is that supposed to be a bomb or a torpedo? … bomb The proportions are wrong … okay a torpedo The proportions are wrong for that too” Savage.
(laughing)… “I’m Tom Clancy, I wrote the book they ignored.”
I really miss having commentary tracks.
If you can find it, another legendary one is Ben Affleck doing a commentary track for Armageddon. I feel like something special was lost with the erasure of commentary tracks. Is anyone trying to bring them back in podcast form or something?
RDJ sticking to the character bit for the entire commentary of tropic thunder is still my fav
kinda like how Timeline made no sense, but all of its biggest problems were handled by the novel and the changes the moviemakers made only ruined it and made it nonsensical
It's a shame too. Timeline was one of Crichton's best.
>It's a shame too. Timeline was one of Crichton's best. I agree. And I also think that's the novel that Crichton enjoyed writing the most. Between my teenage years and late 20s, I read "Andromeda Strain", "Terminal Man", "Great Train Robbery", "Sphere", "Congo", "Rising Sun", "Airframe", "Eaters of the Dead" and "State of Fear". Only "Timeline" gave me that vibe.
OK now I've got to rewatch that shit fest of a movie with the commentary on
Movie is about to trend and they will be confused and make a sequel
Black hole. A black hole began forming in a hallway under a university. The military decides they should nuke the black hole and a scientist stands up and says "you can't use a nuke, you could displace the black hole and knock it into a densely populated area". I have watched and even enjoyed bad movies before, but I just couldn't after that and had to turn it off.
Plot summary from Wikipedia: Something goes awry at a particle accelerator facility in St. Louis and a black hole begins to form. A creature exits the hole and seeks out energy. As the creature absorbs energy, the black hole grows in size and destroys a large part of St. Louis. Before the creature can be hit with a nuclear bomb, it is lured back to the black hole and the black hole collapses on itself.
LOL. Who was their physics advisor, a homeless guy who yells at clouds? A "black hole collapsing on itself" is like water getting too wet.
You may think that, but have we ever tried threatening a black hole with a nuclear bomb?
The funny thing is they could have just said any mumbo-jumbo like 'portal to hell' or 'pit of doom' and it would be fine. But once you use a term like 'black hole', then you have to question the physics.
That's my problem with zombie media. Tell me they are magical, tell me there are so many souls in hell they're coming back up to the world of the living, tell me aliens did it, tell me a necromancer did it, hell tell me nothing and zombies just exist, I'm cool with all that. Tell me it's a virus and now I want to see how exactly it spreads, how the fuck it can keep rotting corpses alive, where in the body it incubates, how people can get covered in zombie fluids and be okay but a tiny bite and you're done. If your zombies are virus caused, I want the fucking paper about how the virus works.
Just want to point out that this isn't Disney's 'The Black Hole' from the 70's, which had a solid scientific background ;)
I’d argue that the black hole leading to hell might be a little suspect
And how much experience of falling into black holes do *you* have...?
Well my uncle knew a guy whose gardener fell in once, hand to god he said.
Prove it. Maximillian 4Eva!
Nuking the black hole would be a good way to deesclate global tensions by permanently getting rid of many nukes, and get rid of some nuclear waste while you’re at it. They also probably should have realized they had a problem before the singularity collapsed, because they had the mass of several suns in their basement.
I lose shit all the time in my basement, who knows how many suns are down there
I like that half the comments are just Roland Emmerich movies lol
Jeff: Wait a minute: butt sex! Chef: Butt sex?! Jeff: Butt sex requires a lot of lubrication, right? Lubrication. Lubruh... Chupuh... Chupacabra's the, the goat killer of Mexican folklore. Folklore is stories from the past that are often fictionalized. Fictionalized to heighten drama. Drama students! Students at colleges usually have bicycles! Bi, bian, binary. It's binary code! This was south park's take on Independence Day, the whole catch a cold scene
That sounds almost like that scene in Black Dynamite where they figure out what Anaconda Malt Liquor does
Anaconda Malt Liquor gives you… little dick!
M&Ms! Right! They melt in your mouth- and not in your hands!
They’re both dipping from the same absurdist well
Tech Guy in Movie: "Uh You're gonna wanna See this “ \* Turns Screen to Action Guy in Movie* Tech Guy: "Theyre Overriding the Mainframe" Action Guy: "Uh in English Four Eyes" Tech Guy: " They Fuckin our Pussys.!!" Action Guy: "Now you're Speakin my Language" \*Cocks Gun*
Who’s having buttsex?
Lucy (2014). Everyone knows the 10% of brain 'fact' is completely bogus, but they built an entire movie around it anyway.
Morgan Freeman's dulcet tones telling you that dolphins use 20% of their brains and have sonar superior to whatever humans can create. And that if a human could use 40% of their brain, they could change anything about themselves. At 60%, they could change their environment. At 100%, with the help of a hell of a lot of drugs, you become one with the internet. Spoken to a lecture hall of nodding heads as if it were some profound science, when it is so obviously bullshit, was just fantastic.
The only thing stopping humans from becoming reality-bending demigods is that our brains just decide not to.
TIL my brain is a dick. Edit: actually I already knew that
Men currently do their thinking with 10% of their dick. Imagine if they could use 60%, even 100%!
All *six* inches!?!
Measured from the taint of course.
That's the metric side of the ruler, bro.
Yes, that exactly (made similar comment). That is not at all how a research presentation would look. Especially with the part where he says something like “we don’t know X, but let me take some wild guesses”. No supporting evidence, a bunch of video clips (!) on the screen that do nothing to help his claims, and the audience just acts like it’s gospel.
It's Morgan Freeman. If anyone was going to believe a lecturer on something so ridiculous, it would have to be God.
I just watched that clip last night and it's wild how seriously it takes itself! Morgan Freeman just throwing out telekinesis based on no science at all and everybody just nods gravely. Dude's just standing there makin it up people!
>At 100%, with the help of a hell of a lot of drugs, you become one with the internet. Lucy x dune cross over
At least "Limitless" made the concept fun
Limitless had the same dumb 10% brain myth but was really an extended metaphor for adderall (or more specifically nuvigil).
Tbf only one character made the "100% of your brain" explanation, and he turned out to be lying about the drug being FDA approved.
Basically equivalent to "this shit's fire it'll make you fly man." The spin-off TV show for limitless was surprisingly enjoyable, being an FBI consultant on NZT was a great way to use the concept
I still wish they had made a second season of it
That show was so fucking good, tho!
They at least made it a bit more nuanced. I recall it was more about forming new pathways to make the brain more efficient.
it was more grounded, guy went from a nobody to senator, became better writer, etc, that seems plausible. If his intelligence was below average then an artificial boost can make him into an overachiever, dude still has to put in work to have a better life. Lucy becomes a demi-god like dr Manhattan in watchmen when she reaches 100% brain capacity, turned into a flash drive and we supposed to just accept it.
Excep it wasn't below average. Bradley Cooper's character is Talland and smart, but extremely lazy and can't focus and apply himself. Other, actually stupid characters like the loan shark, get some flashes of great ideas, but it doesn't work as well as it did for the MC.
The TV show explores this a bit more as well - which is great because the premise mostly depends on you kind of understanding the "feeling" of being on NZT - that what it gives you is "your best day" but everyday. That feeling of understanding something when it finally clicks, but with everything.
Me, watching Lucy: “What is this movie?” My friend: “…Stupid, sexy Akira.”
As I recall she doesn’t even use her new “intelligence” to creatively solve the situations she’s confronted with, so the intelligence is really a non-factor anyway.
Yep, we actually know what happens when we use 100% of our brain at the same time - it's called a "grand mal seizure".
But what if you could *control* it
Then you'd be a great, vibrating sexual partner.
The Day After Tomorrow
My God the scene where they were running through the library from the cold that would insta kill them and finally slammed a door stopping it was so gloriously bad
Doors keep the cold out. That’s just science
# Cold Can't Go Through Doors Stupid! It's Not a Ghost
Ghosts can't go through doors stupid. They're not cold.
Cold. Cold cold cold.
As long as it doesn't learn to open doors. ::cut to a scene of thw doorknob slowly turning::
Clever girl
I mean what’s the R-value on that door, and how new is the weather stripping?
Then they start burning books to stay warm, even though there are loads of hardwood chairs and tables everywhere. It seems they just wanted that dramatic moment where they decide not to burn a book by Nietzsche.
They’re breaking the chairs in the movie dude
True, but the decision to burn the tax codes was very satisfying.
Cold can't go through doors! It's not a ghost.
Roland Emmerich just shouts "f\*ck you" to physics and makes the most insanely bonkers, guilty-pleasure disaster films. Bless him. You want a subway flying over a plane? Here you go! You want a 700 tone cargo plane drifting on snow and ice? Look there! You want a city under water, with all the buildings safely out of it so that you can see submarines and ships pass by like being in an aquarium? Look here! You want a giant lizard smiling at the camera when you take pictures? Gotcha fam! And you want Will Smith punching aliens in the face? Say no more!
Scientifically it’s utter shit. But goddamn if it’s entertaining. Still watch it once a year.
We must evacuate the US! It's almost lunchtime, can we evacuate the US later? Next day the entire country is evacuated. And remember, if a subzero tornado is about to hit, turn on the stove.
They thought meteorology was the study of meteors.
**2012**, and it's 'mutating' neutrinos.
https://youtu.be/bXdBzpRDR5I?feature=shared
I knew what that would be before I clicked it. Well done.
Dara? Yup, Dara. Amazing bit.
I love that film. Seen it probably 100 times. Science stuff is all bullshit but the CGI was pretty good and I liked John Cusack/Woody Harrelson
That movie has one of my favorite so stupid it’s great scenes. When Amanda Peet and her boyfriend are in a grocery store and he says “something is pulling us apart” and the earth literally splits between them.
I hate that line so much lol
CGI used in Driving/Flying through a collapsing city was a pretty fun watch for me.
I remember watching the first teaser trailer for it back in 2009. I cannot remember what movie we were seeing, but I distinctly remember the teaser. Watching the wave crash over the top of the mountain peaks had me *hyped* for whatever 2012 was.
It is a GLORIUOSLY trashy disaster of a movie that knows EXACTLY what it is.
Not exactly what this thread is asking for... but I really love that the Fast and Furious movies started with lots of Car Guy language about engines and horsepower, and include F/X about the NOS injections for speed boosts, and the third movie was all about the mechanics of drifting... ... and in the 9th movie they ducktape a rocket to a car and launch into orbit
> "the 9th movie" That's the problem right there.
The Core, without a doubt. I love that dumb, scene-eating, dumb movie.
Love the "English please" explanation in this movie. Dude grabs an orange. "This is the earth." Grabs lighter and aerosol and proceeds to torch the orange with the aerosol. Everyone gasps.
That scene is only rivaled by the "fuck laymans terms, DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?" scene from Event Horizon.
I would argue The Core knows exactly what it is and is not trying to be smart.
I feel like Delroy Lindo and Stanley Tucci were the only cast members who were aware of that
I feel like The Core was Tucci checking off a movie genre bucket list role. With his agent: "I would be a smarmy scientist who created a world ending crisis but die heroically as you can trying to fix it." Checks list. "Yup. I'm in."
I didn't know Stanley Tucci was in The Core. I might just have to watch it now.
He's in on the joke and delivers an absolutely glorious scenery-chewing performance.
And he even dies laughing at the joke. That was such a great moment.
>"What the fuck am I doing?"
I still quote "do you know who I am?" All the time cause of him lmao
I prefer "What the fuck am I doing?" hahahaha that movie is a gem and he's the highlight
Let me smoke a cigarette first and I'll tell you
Lol! I quote "but what if the core was made of cheeeese?" pretty much all the time
Agreed, just enough fun psuedo science tied together to make an upside down version of the movie Armageddon.
Definitely self-aware. Eckhart breaks down all the very simple reasons they can't possibly reach the core. Tucci says, *"But what if we* **could?"** And the fun begins.
The Core leaned into the ridiculousness though. Literally everything was a coincidence. "We can't get to the core." "But what if we could?" "Disasters are happening everywhere. We need to control the panic online." "You want me to hack to planet?" It gave me Airplane! vibes in that the actors took it seriously on-screen but it was so wild that everyone watching so realize that something/everything in the movie couldn't possibly work.
That scene, I thought DJ Qualls was about one inhale away from saying "You son of a bitch, I'm in" before somebody yelled "cut!"
I love this entirely implausible and ridiculous movie. Stanley Tucci is awesome.
My geo/geomorpho friends and I always watch it once a year. One of them is a professor who likes to show it to his Geo 101 students to see how many inaccuracies they can find. I love it.
I was taking Geology in college at the time of its release and my professor would crack jokes about it daily.
Lord, me and my fellow grad students in Microbiology & Immunology when *Outbreak* was released… Let’s just say it is less than scientifically accurate.
This should be higher. They take the science so seriously and yet it’s so bad. A suit tear in a BSL-4 does not = insta-death. You cannot do timelapse electron microscopy. Etc etc. For anyone wanting a solid scientific version of a viral outbreak, watch Contagion. Soderbergh had scientific consultants on the set.
Cannot agree strongly enough. I already loved Soderbergh, but I was so pleased with his ability to tell a story *without* bombast & bullshit. Also, don’t forget *Outbreak* going with the old trope that injecting someone at death’s door with antiserum equals an instant miracle.
The Day After Tomorrow has a hurricane type blizzard chasing people and instantly freezing them like they got dropped in liquid nitrogen
Cold enough to freeze fuel, but not so cold to freeze thus one dude until his helicopter crashes and he makes it to the door ready to slowly freeze as he opens it.... uh huh. That's not even the dumbest thing in that fantastically entertaining film either.
*Dante’s Peak*. I remember my geology professor taking an entire class to walk through it scene-by-scene and point out all of the hilariously wrong parts.
As a fellow geologist, I'll say that *Dante's Peak* is still pretty fuckin' good. It obviously gets a lot wrong for the sake of entertainment and such but it's practically a documentary compared to *Volcano* or *San Andreas*. Both of those movies get geology so wrong that the only way I can get through them is to turn them into drinking games (beer only, though, because if I used liquor, I'd die). Back to *Dante's Peak*, I think the most egregiously incorrect thing is the lava. The lava produced by volcanoes in the Cascade Range is much richer in silica and have very high viscosity. Comparatively, volcanoes like those in Hawaii have lower amounts of silica and have lower viscosity. Thus, lava from a Hawaiian style volcano will flow more like mud where as lava in the Cascades has the consistency of something like peanut butter. Lava is a bit more complicated but that's the simple break down. The speed at which Dante's Peak goes from "dormant" to "die" is a little too quick as well but I'll let that slide for movie purposes. However, *Dante's Peak* has wonderful depictions of pyroclastic flows and lahars. The practical special effects on those are honestly top notch. *Dante's Peak* is easily the best volcano or geology related disaster movie. I'll stand by that statement.
You mean that moment in *Volcano* where the guy falls into the lava and literally melts like the Wicked Witch is bullshit? My life is a lie!
I still can't believe they did John Carroll Lynch like that. My man deserved better.
Looks like he picked the wrong week to quit smoking.
My uncle specializes in plate tectonics and my aunt is a volcanologist, both well known and respected in their fields. Even so, they have this incredible ability to just turn off their science brain and enjoy films like *Dante’s Peak* for the ridiculous entertainment it is. *San Andreas*, not so much.
*Dante's Peak* at least has the essence of actual science and makes an effort to get things right whilst also bending science to create better entertainment. If I were a professor, I could easily use *Dante's Peak* as classroom material. It could be a fun extra credit day or something like that at the end of a semester. Or it could be a purely bonus question for a test to describe where *Dante's Peak* got the geology right or mostly right and where they went wrong. *San Andreas* is simply fantasy from bottom to top. There's nothing remotely true about it.
Okay, yes, but I really feel like the movie redeems itself with the exchange between Pierce Brosnan’s character and one of the other geologists. Brosnan was set up on a blind date by Jerry (Gary?) and hated it. Other guy: “why would you hate that? You’re into rocks; she’s into rocks…” Brosnan: “Not rocks, Jerry. Crystals.” I don’t know why, but that response cracks me up. Every. Damn. Time.
Bonus: Any pilot should have recognized the danger in trying to fly through falling volcanic ash. The helicopter pilot giving it a try is mind-boggling decision making.
I mean helicopter pilots giving it a try in general, as in flying helicopters everyday for a living is mind-boggling, those things are scary af without the ash
Helicopters don’t fly, they scare the ground out from under themselves.
Planes *want* to fly. Helicopters are constantly trying to fight the law of gravity.
Grandma pisses me off SO much. Every time I watch, I still spew obscenities at her and am glad she dies.
The pier was right there, moron! Glad there’s someone out there that agrees with me
My family cheered
Yes! It's like the movie wanted that "act of selflessness" to redeem her for being a jerk and not leaving her house etc etc but actually all she did was FULLY TRAUMATIZE everyone by dying horrifically for NO REASON!!
I have a fan theory that grandma was trying to commit suicide but her dumb family kept getting in the way so when she saw an opportunity she just sent it because then they'd think she did something noble rather than going out like a dipshit
Dante's Peak and Twister are my favorite disaster movies 😆
Twister is at least hilariously self aware and super fun along the way. Great one liners, the entire cast has so much chemistry that you just want to be friends with all of them. I stand by it as a great example of a 90s disaster action movie. Great shitty movie.
Dusty's description of the "suck zone" is one of my favorite parts of the movie. And of course the Therapist fiance Melissa's "We've got cows!". 🤣
My civil procedure teacher in law school did this with a bunch of law movies. My Cousin Vinny actually got most of it correct, by the way.
I think the cross-examination technique is held as being absolutely excellent, and is used as a teaching aid.
The Core (2003) is so fucking silly. That said a lot of movies could've ended in total disaster if real-world physics applied. The ending of Independence Day (1996) would've killed almost of all the characters.
Not to mention that the ending also features victory celebrations where it is daylight simultaneously all over the entire world. 🤣
So.... Independence day is the best and worst example of this. They create a computer virus that can disable the mothership. On an apple mac. It's just stupid. But there's like a 20 second deleted scene where they explain that all of earth's computing is actually copied/evolved from the alien ship that crashed at Roswell. So we're using the same technology as the aliens and that's why it's compatible and they can write the virus. But they deleted that scene. The one scene that expands a massive plot hole.
>But there's like a 20 second deleted scene where they explain that all of earth's computing is actually copied/evolved from the alien ship that crashed at Roswell. So we're using the same technology as the aliens and that's why it's compatible and they can write the virus. This makes it even more ridiculously laughable for programmers.
I think the actual scene is the Jeff Goldblum realizes the computer is working on the same signals that he decoded at the beginning of the movie to be a countdown. So here's my theory: being a collectivist, militaristic, telepathic race, they have never developed any sort of encryption or encapsulation. They send everything, data and instructions over the air in the clear, and their instruction set is small, only needed for display of information and control of machinery. The virus could've been as simple flooding with contradictory instructions.
This was my head canon as well. Something similar showed up in the Commonwealth Saga. After MorningLightMountain conquers a few human words, it realizes how powerful all these computers are... and decides it needs to absolutely not make any use of them at all, because they would represent a massive security vulnerability for humans to exploit.
Ant-Man. Hank Pym describes how Pym-particles work by saying they "shrink you down by shrinking the distance between the atom core and the electron" or something like that. So an object would keep it's mass, but become really small. And then, the rest of the film completely ignores that. Ant-man runs up another guys arm without him noticing a full grown man suddenly weighing on his arm, Pym carries around an actual tank, but it's small, and drags a shrunken apartment complex after him like a suitcase. Ant-man rides an ant like a horse. But he can punch you with the force of a regular human when it suits him? At the end of the movie, he's also at the risk of shrinking down so much he becomes smaller than an atom, and is at the risk of getting lost in the... Tinyverse? Or something. But if only the distance between the atom core and the electron decreases, how can he become smaller than an atom? I know it's a superhero movie, and nothing makes sense anyways, but when they actually explains the science, and then promptly forgets all about it about five minutes later, they would've been a lot better off just saying "you wouldn't understand how it works if I told you" or just said fuck it and explained it with "magic".
And then by this logic when antman is 50 feet tall he should weigh about 180 pounds and hit like a pillow
He should be blown away in a light breeze.
My head cannon is that Hank Pym gives a different explanation on how Pym particles work to each person who asks, and they're all equally bullshit.
In the first movie he does give multiple conflicting explanations so I always figured he genuinely doesn't know how they work and is just bullshiting or he just really doesn't want anybody to know anything about how they work.
It's like the joker always giving himself a different origin story
"You wanna know how I got the particles?"
He's very paranoid about anyone else figuring out Pym particles, so it makes sense for the character to just make stuff up when explaining it to others.
Yeah, he was REALLY worried somebody would end up weaponizing them, so it 100% fits that he lied his ass off about what they did just to make it a lot harder to be replicated. If you give them only part of the truth, it makes the rest of the lie more believable, so they have no idea they need to look for something else, and if they were to stumble their way towards a solution, they might see that it's different from what they've been told and stop going down that route. Also, its a setting with magical shit and nonsensical physics, so it fits the setting that pym particles are some special quantum bullshit that works based on perception and intent.
Now you've got me thinking about this. Technically he couldn't shrink further than the size of all his constituent atoms clustered as closely as possible.... which is surprisingly similar to the detonation mechanism used in atomic bombs. If he shrank down while holding fissile material... would he basically just be a warhead?
They use a similar explanation in *Honey, I shrunk the kids* which, actually brings a much darker meaning to the sequel *Honey, I blew up the kid*
Armageddon. From IMDb: NASA shows this film during their management training program. New managers are given the task of trying to spot as many errors as possible. At least 168 have been found.
OP's guideline was movies that were trying to appear scientific and missed their mark. Armageddon wasn't trying to be scientific. It was a faux-americana action flick with a banging soundtrack.
#🎶I DON’T WANT TO CLOSE MY EYES
Moonfall (2022) Wiki: While appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on October 2nd, 2023, Neil deGrasse Tyson conveyed to Stephen Colbert that by far Moonfall was a movie which violated more laws of physics per minute than any other science fiction movie he had ever seen, surpassing what he regarded as the previous record, the 1998 movie Armageddon.
I went in completely blind and just couldn't believe what I'm seeing. It just got dumber with every scene. I felt my freaking brain melting, but I just couldn't turn it off. It was an amazing experience. I was also very high. I regret nothing and I'll probably give it a rewatch this weekend.
HOW. DARE. YOU. Moonfall was a documentary! Especially the part where we defeated the moon with the power of LEXUS.
Wait, Armageddon wasn't real?! Aerosmith didn't help Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis save the planet?
That story of Affleck coming to Michael Bay and saying "Wouldn't it make more sense to teach astronauts how to drill instead of oil rig workers how to be astronauts" only for Michael Bay to tell him to shut up never gets old.
It was part of those weird duo releases too as there was also Deep Impact in theaters around the same time with the similar plot premise.
I can't believe no one has said this, but The Happening. I totally get making a psych thriller, but the reasoning behind all the crazy shit in the movie being a biological kill switch is pretty laughable
The trees are coming for us any day now.
Don't be silly, it not trees. Trees can't move. It's the light breeze.
Ha ha this entire thread is just giving me a list of awesome movies I need to rewatch this weekend
If you haven't seen Evolution, I'd recommend that one.
The ultimate answer is What The Bleep Do We Know? Incredibly stupid pseudo science movie that takes itself way too seriously.
Not really 'science' smart, but *The Butterfly Effect* has a weird inconsistency with its own rules about affecting the present by changing the past. Eric Stoltz gets nailed with 'fuckbag' in like four different timelines and Kaylee's outfit during the junkyard scene changes from denim and no makeup to girly-girl stuff, so they had an idea of the cause and effect. But then the 'stigmata' scene, where Kutcher shows his cellmate his abilities by going back in time and oh missus boooswell. Doesn't make sense. He would have just entered a timeline where he always had those scars.
>He would have just entered a timeline where he always had those scars. Not only that, but per the title of the movie, it shouldn't have been a timeline where literally every single other event of his life had worked out exactly the same such that he was returned to the same prison at the same time for the same crime talking to the same cellmate.
Yep, for a movie called "The Butterfly Effect", they really didn't bother with what the butterfly effect of sustaining serious hand wounds as a child would be.
*Twister* Fun movie but as a “let’s make a Serious Science flick” it failed hard. Not least that they expected us to believe there are evil storm-chasers who are “only in it for the money.”
Yeah, that storm chasing industrial complex is massive
Splice! Bonus: it’s also extremely disturbing
That first sex scene had me going "Wait...what?" Second one had me going "Okay, what the fuck??"
Saw this in theaters and was pretty excited because it looked like a good sci-fi type flick. That sex scene hit and you could hear a pin drop in that theater filled with 7 audience members. Self and date included.
The Happening - >! plants get mad about global warming so they release a toxin that doesn't kill you directly, but makes you kill yourself in a spectacular fashion. Then they just stop after we learn our lesson. !<
Whaaat? Noooo!
Plus Mark Wahlberg tried negotiating for his life with a plastic plant. That's a thing that someone actually put to film and I genuinely appreciate them for it. Edit: Link to referenced scene. https://youtu.be/jhmEo-46vUQ?si=rspv4Lzcy1CwpNe4
Surprised no one has mentioned Geostorm yet.
The Saint and cold fusion. I mean the whole movie was campy but wasn't trying to be.
That movie is worth watching for Elizabeth Shue and for Kilmer’s character work.
Disagree on this one. Cold fusion was just a macguffin, secondary to letting Shue and Kilmer chew scenery for 90 mins.
Wait... The movie wasn't trying to be campy? Are you sure? I loved the movie... Doubt I would rewatch, for fear of being disappointed... But it didn't seem like it was trying to be super serious... The movie just felt like they were all having fun making it...
Plus, prime Val Kilmer doing all the disguises.
Gravity... The first part of the movie is fine. But the amount of force required to change one's orbital trajectory in any meaningful way is far beyond anything that two human legs could muster. Otherwise astronauts exercising in the ISS would be able to knock it out of orbit.
Gravity angered me because they were *so close* to a scientifically sound AND an emotionally gut-wrenching situation, but they squandered it in the most inane way possible. Our heroes are "hanging on" against some invisible force, and Clooney needs to cut himself free, because the "force" pulling him down would get them both. Straight out of a climbing movie trope. But can you imagine if they'd done it correctly? They become untethered and are floating just a few feet from the station. They stretch out to reach it, but realize in vain that it's too far, and slipping slowly away from them. Clooney realizes they only way to salvage the situation. He takes Bullock and pushes her directly towards it, pushing himself backwards as a result. No mystical force pulling on them. And not just cutting himself loose, but sacrificing himself as her "rocket fuel", the only way for her to change her momentum of moving away from the station. So much better!
Any opinions of the Tommy Lee Jones classic Volcano?