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The Science of Hollywood: Hacking All the Internets With Only 10% of Your Brain
ElJeffe
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Science in Hollywood, right? Equal parts lolz and roflcopter, right?
Yeah, pretty much. Everyone who understands movies and/or storytelling understands the principle of "suspension of disbelief" and knows that sometimes what's realistic has to take a backseat to what's way rad.
So let's talk about science in the movies! Things that are laughably off! Things that maybe look laughably off, but are actually realistic! Good depictions of science in films! Terrrrrible depictions of science in films!
To begin, I have a question that I probably know the answer to, but maybe someone better at physics can confirm:
Sometimes in films, during a fight scene, a combatant will stick something over their opponents face and then punch it. In a battle from one of the Bourne movies, Jason sticks a book in his foe's face and then punches the book. In Cap2, Cap hits a badguy with his shield and then punches the shield. These scenes look kinda cool, but... wouldn't that have kind of the opposite effect, in real life? Wouldn't, for example, the book transfer the force of your punch, but diffuse it through a wider area, so that you wind up with less pressure delivered to the dude's face and thus less damage? Ditto with Cap and his shield? Or am I missing something?
Yeah, pretty much. Everyone who understands movies and/or storytelling understands the principle of "suspension of disbelief" and knows that sometimes what's realistic has to take a backseat to what's way rad.
So let's talk about science in the movies! Things that are laughably off! Things that maybe look laughably off, but are actually realistic! Good depictions of science in films! Terrrrrible depictions of science in films!
To begin, I have a question that I probably know the answer to, but maybe someone better at physics can confirm:
Sometimes in films, during a fight scene, a combatant will stick something over their opponents face and then punch it. In a battle from one of the Bourne movies, Jason sticks a book in his foe's face and then punches the book. In Cap2, Cap hits a badguy with his shield and then punches the shield. These scenes look kinda cool, but... wouldn't that have kind of the opposite effect, in real life? Wouldn't, for example, the book transfer the force of your punch, but diffuse it through a wider area, so that you wind up with less pressure delivered to the dude's face and thus less damage? Ditto with Cap and his shield? Or am I missing something?
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Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Alternate theory: cap already hit the guy with the shield, so the second hit from the fist is both more painful from hitting the same spot, and a sucker punch that the mook can't see coming.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
To clarify, I don't care either - the point of this thread is more "these are things that are interesting" and less "these are stupid things that ruin our enjoyment of the film."
If someone can't handle some fast-and-looseness with science in their movies, they basically handle handle movies at all.
The shield less so, mostly because of the miracle exception that gets thrown around in comic book movies. The shield could have been engineered by tony stark so that you could punch people through it, somehow.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Like in the Terminator salvation, where John blows up a propane tank not by just shooting it with bullets, but by lighting a flare, THEN shooting it with bullets.
Proud owner of the Veggie, Constellation and Cephalothorax badges
*shoots monitors*
Whew, all good.
I appreciated how, in the second Matrix movie, the hacking scene shows Trinity using nmap.
Not that nmap allows you to hack (it's a tool for collecting information and looking for vulnerabilities; you can't intrude with it) but it was still a lot more realistic than most hacking scenes.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'm not even going to bother spoiler-tagging this because really it's fucking Lost in Space
At the end of the movie, the planet is breaking apart.
Their ship can't escape the gravity well on its own, so they slingshot...
...directly through the center of planet.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
There needs to be an indefinite moratorium on Hollywood using evolution as a plot device.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
http://moviecode.tumblr.com/
It lists computer code/script in movies and TV, and folks at the blog analyze if the code is something real, gibberish, or an easter egg of some sort.
Also: Progress bars leading to 100% on computer screens have become the new digital countdown timer (which, in turn, was a descendant of the old "clock timer"). Ridiculous.
And the idea that we are evolving towards something.
Unlike other examples of Hollywood science, this has actually been harmful to public learning.
It has contributed more towards advancing the idea of "Intelligent design" the anything else.
I am not a rocket scientist, astrophysicist, or any type of science guy, but this one actually makes some sense to me. They can't reach escape velocity using their engines, but using their engines+gravity gives them enough speed to escape the planets gravity well (which I'd assume is lessening as the planet is breaking up around them).
Sure, trying to go that fast through a super dense asteroid field seems extremely risky, and more likely to result in the ship getting crushed by a rock the size of a good sized state then actually letting them launch out the other side, but, movies.
Personally, the thing that got me about that movie was having a sleek, fairly aerodynamic space ship, then hiding it inside a pie pan looking flying saucer to launch it into orbit using the least aerodynamic direction possible. I know it was a reference to the old Jupiter 2, but still...
Or that we are direct descendants of apes. It makes me facepalm every time.
If it weren't an incredibly common and subtly destructive urban myth I would care less about it.
They're also really hoping it isn't a liquid planet core, I assume.
So, here's the scene.
Cap puts his shield in the guy's face, then punches the shield. The shield absorbs every bit of the energy of the punch and doesn't even move closer to the guy. Because it's supposed to be vibration resistant.
I'll try to find it when I have access to something other than my phone.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
THANK GOD, they had a nerd around, because that murderer could have gotten away with it. Unless they could scrounge up an average 10 year old.
NCIS is my wife's favorite show, so I've seen pretty much every episode.
I'm 99% sure that most of the 'hacker' stuff in NCIS is an intentional troll / in-joke that subtly lampshades the stupid technology tropes. They had a fucking 'arrow in the knee' joke for god's sake.
Of course, it could just be shitty TV.
Ohhhh man yeah I agree with this like crazy
BUT ON THE OTHER HAND
I really, really love pokemon-style evolution
It's just the same force over a wider area, which can be just as effective or more so depending on what you are going for. Also would depend on the size of the object.
You also have to take into account the rigidity of the object in question (a shield is harder then a fist and so does more damage) and any force dissipated within the object (ie - a book will absorb some amount of force because of the general elasticity of the materials involved)
I'd say in general a smallish rigid object is probably better as a source of blunt force trauma then a fist. Punching it to achieve this effect, on the other hand, is probably not the best idea since you will lose force into the book and are using said same rigid object on your own fist, which will likely hurt you more too.
It's amazing.
Oh ho! That made #25.
Other movies take the lazy way out and show real ones.
For shame.
Enhance
Angela dissected an entire exchange on a boxing fight by using that machine on a corpse. She was talking about in in excruciating detail like a boxing commentator in real time. I'll never forget that.
Shit, Angela is the artist / programmer / graphic designer / whatever-technical-ability-the-plot-needs character in Bones. Not that they don't do the same thing with every other character, of course.
That fucking show should be called 'deus ex machina.'
Wow, that's even worse than the, "Let's find out what this guy looks like 30 years after his last known photograph of him as a kid" software from Dexter. Which ended up displaying a photograph of the actor playing the guy Dexter wanted to find.