House of Eratosthenes

The 20 worst science and technology errors in films

Being a science-geek film fan can be exhausting. It’s hard to watch some films without wanting to shout at the screen “but that’s not how evolution works” or “computers can’t do that”.

It’s pedantic, annoying for your fellow moviegoers, and utterly nerdy, but some of us can’t help it.

So in an attempt to scratch that geeky itch once and for all, here is a list of 20 of the most infuriating science and technology errors in movies.

1. Aliens are basically humans with silly foreheads

The Enterprise, thousands of light-years from Earth, encounters an alien spacecraft. The matter transporter beams one of their number aboard… and lo and behold, it’s Famke Janssen with some makeup on her forehead.

It’s a similar story with Vulcans (pointy eared humans – see also Romulans), Ferengi (grotesquely deformed humans) and Klingons (humans with Cornish pasties attached). Humanity looks like it does through a very specific set of evolutionary circumstances. Why should aliens look anything like us?

Hat tip: Dyspepsia Generation.

Same goes for we nitpicky military types while watching movies that have anything military related in them. The crime against accuracy are egregious, and it takes a bit of discipline to just shut up and take it. I’m sure somebody, somewhere has put together a similar post about it.
- Andy | 10/14/2009 @ 12:59
Oh yes. Let’s start with Generals with full heads o’hair.

Across all branches of service, men who’ve been in the military for a long time have a certain look about them. Hollywood so regularly drapes those four gold stars over each shoulder, and then for the actor they put in that uniform they seem to have done a far superior job of defining these traits of the 35-year military man compared to any list I could put together…and then selected the precise opposite. The teeth are straight and white; not just healthy, but Hollywood glossy. And the hair is more plush than any piece William Shatner ever wore. Good Generals, bad Generals, tertiary-character Generals. Real Generals have thin hair. If it covers everything, like Gen. Petraeus’, it’s still thin. That, or its coverage becomes patchy and the man who owns it opts to pare it down to a buzz-cut 6 setting. Hollywood Generals, it’s like shag carpeting.

And then there are all the problems with their uniforms.

Gah. I’m not even a military guy. Look what you gone ‘n started there.
- mkfreeberg | 10/14/2009 @ 13:52
Cue They Might Be Giants-“We Want a Rock”

If I were a carpenter I’d
Hammer on my piglet, I’d
Collect the seven dollars and I’d
Buy a big prosthetic forehead
And wear it on my real head

Everybody wants prosthetic
Foreheads on their real heads
Everybody wants prosthetic
Foreheads on their real heads
- Tom The Impaler | 10/14/2009 @ 19:57
Not sci-fi per se, but this reminds me of something funny.

Does anyone else remember the cartoon “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?” It ran on Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons, and I speak specifically of the 1989-1991ish incarnation, when the reptiles were something new.

There was one episode in which a humanoid-rabbit character named Usagi Yojimbo was somehow brought into our world from an alternate dimension, one where speaking animals lived in a place which looked like feudal Japan. He wasn’t a mutant per se like the Turtles, but possessed all the same human characteristics – self aware, walking on two legs, etc.

The Turtles captured him and questioned him, and he was able to answer all their questions. Raphael, the wiscracker of the four, turns to the viewer at this point and says, “Not only is he from ancient Japan, but also from another universe. Naturally, he speaks English.”

I had to admit, it was funny to see the cartoon poke fun at itself like that. A shame we don’t see those types of moments more often in our popular entertainment.
- cylarz | 10/14/2009 @ 20:27
4. Alien computers that run Windows
Independence Day, we’re looking at you. It is almost impossible to write a virus that will affect both Macs and PCs. And yet somehow Jeff Goldblum’s character manages to write a nasty little piece of malware that he can upload into an alien mothership’s mainframe and bring down its shields.

This was my favorite. It reminds me of a list going around via email circa 1997, the year after the movie came out. Its title was “40 Fun Things I Learned from Independence Day.”

http://ifaq.wap.org/science/id4lessons.html

Read it. It is a RIOT.
- cylarz | 10/14/2009 @ 20:39
Chased the link – That’s some very good stuff, cylar.
- Andy | 10/15/2009 @ 08:29

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Aliens Are Humans With Silly ForeheadsTuesday, October 13th, 2009

Aliens Are Humans With Silly Foreheads
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009