10) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Indiana Jones has survived a lot of improbable adventures, be it fleeing ancient spherical boulders or fighting off cult members while dangling off a rope bridge. But few scrapes have tested the bounds of believability more than Indy's escape from a nuclear bomb blast thanks to a lead-lined fridge. The problem is that, even if he didn't get flattened, horribly burned or suffocated (kids, don't hide in refrigerators), Indy almost certainly would have gotten a lethal dose of radiation from the fallout. And that's a lot scarier than snakes.
9) Outbreak
A monkey threatens a small town with a virus that kills everybody in less time than your average DMV visit, and only Dustin Hoffman can stop it. The trouble with a disease that virulent is it kills the host too fast to spread. Otherwise, we would be dead from the Ebola virus. Also, it generally takes longer to make a cure from monkey serum than it does to make a latte. Dustin Hoffman does look great in a hazmat suit, though.
8) Total Recall
The red planet's gravitational pull is roughly 1/3rd that of the Earth's. So if, for example, an Austrian bodybuilder were to visit Mars, he would be bounding across the room like Michael Jordan. Another problem: when exposed to the thin atmosphere of Mars, like bad guy Cohaagen at the end of the movie, you would likely suffer from a raging case of the bends and you would asphyxiate -- both of which are plenty lethal -- but your head wouldn't bulge out and explode like an overused stress toy.
7) Jurassic Park
Having a wildlife park full of dinosaurs would be a really cool idea if it weren't for a few problems. No, not imperfect security or the possibility of spontaneous lizard sex changes. The problem is that it would be almost impossible to clone the dinosaurs based on DNA pulled from the guts of a 25 million-year-old mosquito. The dinosaur DNA's double helix most certainly would have been broken down into individual chunks, mixing together with whatever else the mosquitoes might have eaten along with some of the insect's own genetic material. Any creature constructed from that mess might be the stuff of nightmares, but probably wouldn't look like a T. Rex.
6) The Matrix
Much in the way of physics in the Matrix -- like dodging bullets and running up walls -- gets a pass because it's all within a massive virtual world. But in reality, our supposed robot overlords are a bit dim. Humans are a remarkably inefficient energy source. Instead of turning the human race into Duracells, the machines would probably get more energy just setting those goopy people pods on fire.
5) The Core
In the movie, the Earth's inner core -- a nickel-iron mass about 1500 miles in diameter -- stops rotating, causing the planet's magnetic field to collapse and microwave radiation from space to blast through the atmosphere. But microwaves aren't affected by magnetism, and the radiation that comes from space is too weak to damage anything here. What's more, if the core did stop rotating for whatever reason, we'd have more to worry about than that. The energy stored in the core would have to go somewhere, and the effect on the planet would be equivalent to five trillion nuclear bombs going off at once.
4) The Day After Tomorrow
Roland Emmerich brought his trademark academic rigor to the realm of climatology and the result proved to be so silly that NASA refused to help with the filming of the movie. For one thing, it would require most of Antarctica to melt in order to submerge New York City to the level it is in the movie. If all the rays of the sun were directed at the South Pole, its ice would melt in about two and half years. This ridiculousness drove Duke University paleoclimatologist William Hyde to publicly state, "This movie is to climate science as Frankenstein is to heart transplant surgery."
3) Starship Troopers
Could a band of cave-dwelling, preverbal giant insects really have the sophisticated mathematics and technology to hurl a rock millions of miles through space to crash into Earth? Plus, 70% of the planet's surface is covered in water, so they only had a 3 out of 10 chance at even hitting solid ground, let alone a major city like Buenos Aires.
2) Independence Day
That mammoth mothership hovering over the earth in geostationary orbit would be doing more than just freaking out the world's population. Because of its close proximity and mass -- 1/4th that of the moon, according to the film -- the flying saucer's gravitational pull would cause massive tidal waves, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The aliens wouldn't even have to roll out their anti-matter ray to blow up the White House -- it would already be underwater.
1) Armageddon
We could put together a long list of all the things wrong with Michael Bay's feel-good ode to global destruction, but NASA has already and they counted at least 168 mistakes. But perhaps the biggest problem is that the plot itself -- splitting a Texas-sized rock in two with a single nuke -- has a Texas-sized hole in it. We don't have a nuclear bomb anywhere near powerful enough to do the job. As strange as it might seem, this is a case of a Michael Bay movie not having a big enough explosion.
Does this list look to be accurate, or can anyone else name a few mentionable movies that didn't make the cut?
I made the matrix point in 1999. Cows, blue wales...or various other large animals would make for MUCH better sources of heat energy than a human. But that wouldn't be a good plot, would it?
And if the machines figured out how to make floating machinery...then why couldn't they figure out how to suspend solar panels right above the cloud line?
In fact, with their awesome machine calculating abilities...wouldn't they be able to harvest enough materials, in the hundreds of years they had humans as energy sources, to make the entire outside(well...there'd probably be blank spots at the poles) of the planet one gigantic sheath of solar panels? Certainly a lot more thermal energy to be collected from the sun than a human body.
Wait so the fact that are nuke isnt quite as powerfull as the one used in the movie is less realistic than the entire concept of the matrix? This list is retarded.
I always thought that was from atmospheric decompression or something.
__________________ "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."-Abraham Lincoln
"We thought that by making your world more violent, we would make it more 'realistic,' more 'adult.' God help us if that's what it means."-Grant Morrison to Animal Man, Animal Man
One time my parents* were watching some "erupting volcano threatens small town" movie on the Sci-Fi Channel (kind of a poor man's Volcano or Dante's Peak), and one of the characters got hit by the erupting lava and got badly burned. Mom complained that the guy should've been instantly disintegrated the second the lava even got near him.
*Yeah, I live with my parents; wanna make something of it?
__________________ "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."-Abraham Lincoln
"We thought that by making your world more violent, we would make it more 'realistic,' more 'adult.' God help us if that's what it means."-Grant Morrison to Animal Man, Animal Man
Two movies that should've made that list: Frankenstein and The Island of Dr. Moreau.
One thing that always annoyed me are movies that try to give a science to vampires like Blade and Underworld. Just let the supernatural stay supernatural.
__________________
Last edited by Impediment on Mar 26th, 2018 at 09:56 PM
I don't think the Machine's using humans as batteries in Matrix was meant to be scientifically accurate or efficient or anything. Rather, it was meant to be the Machine's going "Haha, you lost your war with us and now we're going to enslave you for the remainder of time".
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I'm pretty sure they did that because the Humans took away their prime power source, sunlight. So... they made a deal with the Humans after nearly wiping them out that they would allow them to live as long as they could be harvested as energy for the Machines.
"Hand over your flesh, and a new world awaits you. We demand it."
I guess that the machines were just too stupid and lazy to find another source of energy. I mean, if they can build a computer generated reality, why couldn't they undo Operation: Dark Storm?
That doesn't even make sense. The machines would have died if they didn't get the humans as a power source(or rather, get a power source), one explanation could be that using humans would be quicker than building solar panels above the clouds or destroying the clouds, but it has been many years since they first enslaved the humans, there is no logical or scientific reason why they could not of spent some time and recources making solar panels, then, kill the fvcking humans.
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Well considering that was directly stated in the Animetrix... it doesn't really matter if it makes sense. Canon is canon. And the Machines in the beggining did not even want to kill the Humans in the first place. If you were to watch the Animetrix it turns out that really Humanity is the bad guy, as they started essentially commiting robot genocide until the Machines got sick of it and retaliated, promptly wiping the floor with the Humans. Even in the end of the war though they were willing to make a sort of truce because they did not want to kill their original masters and creators. Putting the remaining Humans in a type of statsis and harvesting them was both a form of mercy and a form security. The Human is harmlessly in statsis and being harvested for energy, beneficial to the Machines, yet doesn't feel any pain and lives a normal life in their mind.
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Aug 2nd, 2008 06:15 PM
