So, I found this in the NY Times – Quantum Teleporting, Yes; the Rest Is Movie Magic. Take your MIT physics professor to the flicks!
Now, I know that this is something that the Bad Astronomer has expressed a SERIOUS desire to do: consult on a Science Fiction film that features Astronomy as a key element and be able to help sort out the plot before it becomes putrid. Good ambition. Is it possible?
The film in question that came under scrutiny is Jumper, starring Hayden Christensen:
The evening was the brainchild of Warren Betts, a veteran Hollywood publicist who has helped promote a number of movies with scientific or technological themes, including ?Apollo 13.? Mr. Betts said he had gotten excited after a Caltech physicist told him that teleportation was actually an accomplished fact in the quirky realm of quantum physics.
Mr. Betts arranged for clips from the movie, scheduled for a Feb. 14 release, to be shown, and then inveigled Dr. Farhi, an expert on quantum computers, and Dr. Tegmark, a cosmologist, to participate in a panel discussion. They agreed, as long as they could talk about real physics.
?What do I know about movie production?? asked Dr. Farhi, calling himself ?clueless.? He said, ?If the students learn something, it?s fine, I?m happy.?
This is something that has interested me in the past – except to do with portrayals of cloning in the cinemas. What are we really learning?
Having taught GATTACA for several years, I was keen to attend a lecture held by Biotechnology Australia last year, at the Science and Technology Education World conference:
… how well are the science and social issues of cloning portrayed in box office hits such as The Island, Multiplicity, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and Jurassic Park? These movies have enormous reach and undoubted influence, and are therefore worth analyzing in some detail.
This study looks at 33 movies made between 1971 and 2005 that address human reproductive cloning and it categorises the films based on their genre and potential influence.
If you’d like to read the whole PDF, it’s an excellent read – their conclusion?
“The study concluded that the science was, for the most part, seriously flawed, and that while the films may raise awareness, the quality of public debate on biotechnology is not generally enhanced by its depiction in films.”
When issues like GM foods, cloning, birth rates and genetic engineering is part of government policy and greatly influenced by campaigns that are misinformed… shouldn’t Hollywood take a more informed stance on how they portray scientific concepts then?
After reading this NY Times article, I sent a few emails around to some friends. Because I noticed in the past a little quirk they collectively had whenever they saw the ’scientist’ in a film say something utterly nonsensical or clearly wrong.
These particular friends hold various degrees in a range of postgraduate levels in Computer Science, Biology, Mathematics and one-with-something-posh-to-do-with- a-special-field-of-statistics-but-they-work-in-management so we’re never quite sure how to classify that (but we know that they can kick our collective arses in witty comebacks and they sure know how to navigate a wine-list).
They have a habit. Whenever a character starts to yell about “Segment X is doing Y, just as the theory Q and P said by G!” or starts to fervently argue why it is such a bad thing to cross the streams / push the button / communicate with the aliens / let the hackers into the mainframe / let the dinosaur out – I glance sideways to look at them in the gloom of the theater.
Usually, as one, they smirk and chortle, not realizing that they’re doing it in unison. Then I crack up and then they wonder why I’m laughing at them. What leads them to laugh every time? Is there really such bad science in movies that you can’t help laughing every time?
Their responses are as follows:
“I didn’t realise I did that. Honestly, I thought the last time I laughed was the pathetic attempt to hide Jessica Alba’s boobs when she got nekkid on the pavement in FF – Silver Surfer, so don’t think that it’s merely just the poor efforts to communicate a difficult scientific concept. Bad film is bad film.”
“I can never keep a straight face. It’s called techno-babble in Star Trek; the notion of ‘Goes Nowhere – Does Nothing‘ is in fact a joke label on their equipment and they talked about it in a few documentaries on the series. Most Science Fiction films ‘go nowhere and do nothing for science’, as far as I’m concerned – but it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the escapism and a good night out.”
“What do I call fake or made-up Science terminology in movies? Typical.”
“I gave up on thinking they’d ever bother to get it right after Dr Brian Cox was a consultant on Sunshine. Still fell asleep half-way through it and I got deja vu when I saw the Doctor Who episode that pretty much had the same plot but cost less.”
So – should we give up? Will the entertainment factor mean that despite the nod to the ‘S’ in ‘SF’ we’ll always have a bit of a laugh at the ‘mad scientist’ or the befuddled boffin (‘Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You’re beautiful!’ – mp3 live version) that makes us groan over the poor portrayals of concepts?
Well, the review of Jumpers had this conclusion:
Dr. Tegmark asked what scientists could do to help the movie makers.
‘Watch Jumper,’Mr. Christensen answered, ‘and then get to work and figure out how to do it.’
Sorry, ‘Baby Darth‘ – I’d rather we’d all get to work and make it work in both industries.
Enjoy this clip of the BA talking to Dr Brian Cox on science in the movies – here’s hoping Hollywood does more of the same.
Edited to add – Thanks to PopSci for the following!
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That New York Times article has a few entertaining science gaffes of its own: photons do not just “transmit” light, they are light; and you don’t factor prime numbers.
Funnily enough, I saw Sunshine a few weeks ago in the same lecture hall where that Jumper discussion took place — it was one of the flicks in this year’s MIT Science Fiction Marathon. I sat in the front row with some friends who’d brought liquor to shoot every time the science turned stupid. My impression of the movie? Well, it’s all kind of fuzzy. . . . The biggest problem I had, however, was not with a particular technical detail, but rather with an attitude: when you send a mission into space in order to save the Earth, you should crew it with astronauts instead of actors. Trained professionals would not have a mission where only one man knows how the payload they’re supposed to deliver actually works, trained professionals would not let a critical mission maneuver depend upon one guy’s arithmetic, etc., etc. To adopt a comparison made by Russell Blackford, they sent the crew from the Rama sequels instead of the original.
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