Why can't Hollywood get science right?

[Plain Simple]

I came across this year-old blog post and since it gave rise to some interesting comments so I'm shamelessly going to steal its title and subject for this post. I've thought about posting this in the science forum, but I guess the sf forum is as good or better a place for it.

The main question the blog post asks is

Why is science so unrealistic when Hollywood gets hold of it? Why are movie scientists so "remote and nerdy, evil, or noble," rather than -- well -- human?

The comments to this blog post wander off in different directions as well, so I thought to pose a couple of (perhaps related) questions here.

-Are movie scientists usually stereotypes (evil, nerd, or noble hero) and if so why? ... In most (Hollywood) movies I think they are. But then, probably a lot of professions are portrayed in a stereotypical way. Movie scientist do go over the top often times. The reasons? First and foremost probably the fact that script writers are no scientists and so do not have a good idea of what scientist do in daily life. Moreover, to the outsider (sadly) science if often mysterious and not easy to understand, which facilitates the idea that scientists therefore also must be strange people. Second, real daily life of a scientist (just like most people's) is in the rule not extraordinarily exciting. Hollywood movies usually need some gimmick to spice up their story, so 'ordinary life' is not an option.

-Do movies portray science correctly? Well, I'm not exactly sure how to answer this, since I'm not sure movies portray science at all. Science (in short) is the activity of trying to use consistent testable theories to describe what's going on in nature. Movies usually pay no attention to this, unless you count technobabble as a vague try at that. I think a better question is the following:

-Do movies portray nature correctly? I think here we have a resounding "no". Sound in space, stuff exploding left and right for no reason, 'fun with dna' leading to any and all thinkable and unthinkable result. Now, some of the blog comments reacted with "but it's science FICTION", but of course with the same right I could say "yes, it is SCIENCE fiction". Just because you extend your scope just beyond the boundaries of real science and explore the "what if nature/technology worked in this way" scenario, doesn't mean you need to contradict the things we actually do know. Isn't that just lazy writing, unless you on purpose venture into fantasy territory? But for the standard movie that is supposed to take place in the real world, isn't it preferable that one tries not to mess these things up? I'd love to hear your opinions.

I'm not sure any of my ramblings above made much sense. I don't have the time to put a lot more thought or structure in my post, but I do wanted to get this out here, since I thought it might lead to some interesting discussion.

A nice website on the subject is Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics. For your entertainment.

 

[Plain Simple]

Addition: As if they knew I was going to post this: PhD Comics 4/6/2009

 

[rramarr]

Its a mix that should not be too tightly held to either extreme of being scientific or creatively fictional. A lot of great work would probably not have been completed if the writer was concerned with the reader being awfully critical. The point is did you find the work entertaining excluding prejudices regarding what is factual concrete science?

 

[Kirkman1987]

The fact is it just doesn't matter in most cases whether the science is accurate. films themselves are massive abstraction of real life. unless the science is so terribly done as to be laughable (Superman IV Lacy in space scene) the movei will be fine. Does anyone really want to watch a Silent Star Wars battle? of course not, because it's a fantasy that has nothing to do with real science, and everything to do with storytelling and myths.
Even a movie attempting to be more realistic should allow a fudging of science if it's worth it.

 

[WillsBabe]

My husband is an inorganics/metals chemist. He often comments on the error of science in tv and movies, and will point out how "wrong" labs are depicted on tv and film. I've not really noticed the thing about stereotypical scientist types. Maybe there is a "type" although if there is, I'm not sure that my husband is it.

 

[Lord Lunacy]

Orthodox adherance to Science gets in the way of creativity. I don't want to spend time debating the finer points of scientific accuracy while I am trying to satisfy my need for escapism. If it turns out the science is rediculously unrealistic, it's still good for a few laughs, thus the end result of being entertained is still achieved.

 

[Checkmate]

In regards to the first question, that's just how storytelling is. Cops, archaelogists, astronauts, explorers, scientists... they almost always fall within the noble, evil or outsider/nerdy archetypes. Some are lucky enough to be given a little more depth, but they're still one of those. Even when they're referencing real life figures. Riggs in Lethal Weapons? Noble/Outsider. Indiana Jones? Noble/Nerdy. John Crichton from Farscape? Noble/Nerdy. Hernando Cortez? Evil. Dr. Evil? Evil. So I think that's a pretty lame criticism, all things considered. Unless you're some kind of mook, minion, or otherwise inconsequential or secondary figure in the story, you can probably be described as one or more of those things. Hell, look at a characters like Forrest Gump or Benjamin Button who aren't even professionals. They were pretty much the definition of a noble/outsider character.

As for the second point, it has a lot to do with the fact that science is to modern storytelling what magic was to the storytelling of old. It's a means of bridging fantasy with reality. Storytelling is about being larger than life, and when your story needs a bit of magic, science is a good source if you want to make the story somewhat relatable to your audience. Genetic splicing or quaffing a magic potion; it's all the same.

Science fiction is a very particular niche of storytelling that, sadly, has grown to encompass things that shouldn't really be in there. Science fiction is supposed to be the exploration of "what if?" scenarios based upon genuine science. Today, it's more fantasy than anything else. Especially when you ask people what they say qualifies. Star Wars? Star Trek? Farscape? Babylon 5? Those are all fantasy stories. Instead, real science fiction is labeled as "hard" sci-fi and, sadly, it's very unpopular. Most audiences don't give a fig about how realistic or believable something is. Science is just a prop for the story in most cases.

 

[Goliath]

Science fiction--even literary science fiction--has never gotten the science right.

Even the work of a "hard" SF writer like Larry Niven includes both scientific mistakes and impossible technology.

Take, for example, Niven's Hugo-award-winning short story "Neutron Star." This is widely praised as one of the best examples of entertaining hard SF: it's a scientific mystery story in which the answer to the mystery is based on real physics--namely, the tidal forces exerted on a spaceship travelling close to a neutron star.

But while the physics is realistic, other elements of this story are wildly implausible. To make the story work, Niven had to include a spaceship with an indestructible hull that could travel faster than light. In addition to these fantasy elements, Niven made mistakes: the "fusion drives" that move these ships through normal could not work the way he describes, and a fan of the story later calculated that the spaceship's orbit around the neutron star would have given it a lethal spin. Finally, the last lines of the story are based on the assumption that an alien would not know about tides because its world had no moon--even though any world with a sun would have tides.

If even conscientious and scientifically-literate writers like Niven make mistakes and distort science for the sake of a good story, we can hardly expect filmmakers to do better.

On top of this, I think that hard SF just works better on the page than it does on the screen. When I think of cinematic hard SF, I think of 2001: A Spce Odyssey--a movie that a lot of people hate.

And once again, even the most conscientious filmmakers have included both bad science and implausible technologies. One of the "hardest" SF films of the 1950s was George Pal's Destination Moon. In this case, the filmmakers made a real effort to get the science right. They were advised by Robert A. Heinlein and Chesley Bonestell, and they even included a Woody-Woodpecker cartoon as an entertaining way of explaining the basics of space travel. (This inspired the similar animated sequence in Jurassic Park)

But in the end, the film has its astronauts travelling to the moon onboard a single-stage nuclear rocket that looks like a German V-2 missile. And when they get to the moon, they discover that its waterless surface is cracked, like a dried lakebed:

The filmmakers knew that the surface of the moon would not look that way. They compromised the science and made it look that way for purely aesthetic reasons: to provide a sense of depth and scale to their lunar-surface sets.

As a consequence, I've come to judge SF films by the same standards I judge historical films. Filmmakers are no more interested in strict scientific accuracy than they are in strict historical accuracy. So long as it's not wildly inaccurate, I'm willing to let it slide.

A good recent example would be Danny Boyle's Sunshine. From what I've read, a lot of the science in that movie was pretty bad. But it felt right. And, as in Niven's "Neutron Star," once you swallowed the fantasy elements, the film actually made an effort to keep everything else plausible. That's good enough for me.

 

[hyzmarca]

There are three thing that I know.

Constant thrust equals constant velocity.

In space everything is louder because there is no air to muffle the sound.

Everything explodes. No exceptions.

 

[Deckerd]

Constant thrust equals constant velocity.

I was so disappointed in Firefly's Out of Gas when the implication was the ship had stopped because the engine was broken.

 

[Ayelbourne]

Constant thrust equals constant velocity.

I was so disappointed in Firefly's Out of Gas when the implication was the ship had stopped because the engine was broken.

It's even more ridiculous, because in War Stories they turn off the engine (and everything else) and continue their silent approach at Niskas station.

But in all honesty, science has no sense for the dramatic. Plain and simple.

 

[Carpe Occasio]

Accurate science isn't dramatic enough. Take Destination Moon mentioned above. A nuclear powered rocket is much more dramatic than reality in the eyes of filmmakers. The same with scientists. They need to be romantic leads like in "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" and "War of the Worlds" or nerds like in "The Day The Earth Stood Still" and "Independance Day".

Real life takes too long, has too many compromises, and is often somewhat anticlimactic for the movies. And most real people are not bigger than life like those on the big screen.

 

[Plain Simple]

I've not really noticed the thing about stereotypical scientist types. Maybe there is a "type" although if there is, I'm not sure that my husband is it.

Your husband is not a character in a movie I suppose? I wasn't talking about real life scientists, although some of them can be quite a character. But usually not as over the top and stereotypical as the movie ones.

But in all honesty, science has no sense for the dramatic. Plain and simple.

Accurate science isn't dramatic enough.

Statements like this always really surprise me. I'm not claiming that a dramatic story necessarily has to portray science/nature correctly, not at all, but to claim the reverse, that a story that does portray it correctly cannot be dramatic, seems like you're saying that reality cannot be dramatic. After all accurate science means an accurate depiction of how the world works. Are you claiming that the real world offers no possibilities for drama?

I'm not saying that every movie should be set in the 'real world' or anything like that. After all Science Fiction's defining feature is that it stretches science beyond its current borders. But to claim that a movie that is set in the real world couldn't be dramatic seems ridiculous.

Or does 'science' in these quotes refer to the professional occupation of scientists. Real scientists working for years in a lab to get a result are less dramatic than movie scientists who figure everything out in two hours? If that's what is meant, than I can easily argue the opposite. What is more dramatic, giving years of your life to some research where you do not even know if it will lead to an outcome, or spend two hours and save the day? There's a good time constraint reason movies usually choose the latter option, but that doesn't necessarily make it more dramatic. It might help the rest of the movie being more dramatic, but the science is then only there to propel the plot forwards. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but I don't think it necessarily needs to be like that, always.

 

[John Picard]

My husband is an inorganics/metals chemist. He often comments on the error of science in tv and movies, and will point out how "wrong" labs are depicted on tv and film. I've not really noticed the thing about stereotypical scientist types. Maybe there is a "type" although if there is, I'm not sure that my husband is it.

I am former military (Navy). Don't get me started on the myriad of inaccuracies when US Navy ships, protocol, or any other facet of the Navy is presented.

 

[Mistral]

There are three thing that I know.

Constant thrust equals constant velocity.

In space everything is louder because there is no air to muffle the sound.

Everything explodes. No exceptions.

You forgot that exposure to the vacuum of space acts as a cryogenic effect, freezing the victim in the last position they were in. Oh, and if you just hold your breath you can cross short distances of vacuum as safely as swimming underwater.

 

[Carpe Occasio]

Accurate science isn't dramatic enough.

Statements like this always really surprise me. I'm not claiming that a dramatic story necessarily has to portray science/nature correctly, not at all, but to claim the reverse, that a story that does portray it correctly cannot be dramatic, seems like you're saying that reality cannot be dramatic. After all accurate science means an accurate depiction of how the world works. Are you claiming that the real world offers no possibilities for drama?

I'm not saying that every movie should be set in the 'real world' or anything like that. After all Science Fiction's defining feature is that it stretches science beyond its current borders. But to claim that a movie that is set in the real world couldn't be dramatic seems ridiculous.

Or does 'science' in these quotes refer to the professional occupation of scientists. Real scientists working for years in a lab to get a result are less dramatic than movie scientists who figure everything out in two hours? If that's what is meant, than I can easily argue the opposite. What is more dramatic, giving years of your life to some research where you do not even know if it will lead to an outcome, or spend two hours and save the day? There's a good time constraint reason movies usually choose the latter option, but that doesn't necessarily make it more dramatic. It might help the rest of the movie being more dramatic, but the science is then only there to propel the plot forwards. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but I don't think it necessarily needs to be like that, always.

I included a caveat by saying "...in the eyes of filmmakers." But audiences can feel that way as well. Take a movie like Contact, a personal favorite of mine. Not a big box office hit because it was perceived to be too "nerdy" with not enough action. But as sci-fi movies go it tried to stay true to Sagan's book and real science. And that was the problem as a studio executive would say. On the other hand, Bruckheimer flicks like "Armageddon" are fast and loose with the science but generate big box office because they are more dramatic in the secondary definitions sense: 'striking in appearance or effect.'

 

[Ptrope]

I was so disappointed in Firefly's Out of Gas when the implication was the ship had stopped because the engine was broken.

It's been a few months since I watched this - did the ship actually stop? They were out in the middle of Nowhere and Nothing - there wasn't really a frame of reference for showing or stating that the ship was not moving, only that it was without power. Plus, they did apply a bit of reverse thrust when they opened the cargo bay and exhausted the atmo. Kaylee said the ship wasn't moving, but that could just as easily mean that she wasn't under power, not that she was stopped.

 

[WillsBabe]

Your husband is not a character in a movie I suppose?

Nah, these days we don't even make home movies...

 

[miraclefan]

Because real science in movies to the average moviegoer is B.O.R.I.N.G. 2001 anyone?(I love that movie by the way)

 

[blockaderunner]

While you're at it you should be asking Mary Shelly why she didn't get the science of biology right in Frankenstien, ignoring the fact that it's one of the greatest works of literature in the 19th century.

You get where I'm comming from? Hollywood, hell, most works of fiction, aren't obligated to give a science lesson. If scientific accuracy was paramount, works like the aformentioned Frankenstien, Buck Rogers, just about every comic book, Star Wars, and, yes, even Star Trek, wouldn't exist. All there would be left is 2001: A Space Oddessy. And while it's a great film in its own right, I can count the times I've seen it on one hand. While I've lost count with the many times I've seen Star Wars and Star Trek. You get my point? Only the geek minority is concernced with scientific accuracy. And that number isn't enough to pay for the required cocaine and Russian hookers needed by Hollywood bigwigs. But more importantly, if the characters and believable and relatable, and the story is good, who gives a flying frak about the science. It's science-FICTION and not science-FACT.