Dustin Hoffman Is On A Mission Of Scientific Awesomeness

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

BA Blog: Scientists in the movies

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Hurrah on both counts!

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

He definitely needs to make up for "Sphere"....

Totally for this, tho has anyone ever read "The Physics of Super Heroes" by James Kakalios?

It's an awesome book which deals with the science in comics. The Golden Age fo comics actually had very good representations of sound science, but this usually came after the "Miracle" Element. For example: Golden Age Superman was an Alien from Planet Krypton (there's the miracle element right there) but beyond that fantastical start, all physics continued as it would in the normal world: he could only "leap" tall buildings in a single bound, not fly at supersonic speeds (that came later). You could actually calculate (and Kakalios does) his mass, and work what kind of parabolas Superman could leap, what the tensile strength of his thigh muscles were, and what limitations he had as a flesh-and-blood being.

OK - my point: is it still acceptable to have a "miracle" element as the inciting incident of the story, from which springs sound physics, or are we yearning for real world incidents through and through?

Lo, these many years ago, I saw Face/Off in the theatre; blessedly, I didn't pay for it. The guy I saw it with said something that I've thought worth noting ever since. He said that every story gets one great implausibility or impossibility. In the case of that movie, it was the concept of face-switching. Okay, we'll pretend that makes some kind of sense, even though it really, really didn't. However, as more and more ridiculous stuff happened (and, no, I don't remember what they were; I have not bothered with the film since that ill-fated date--my then-boyfriend had a thing about people without faces, and the choice of movie was his), it got less and less interesting. I do recall the stupid maximum security prison with the magnetic boots. Not worth the price of admission, and all because they violated too many rules without explanation other than "hey, that's shiny!"

As has been said before, it's internal consistency that matters. On the other hand, that clip in the Wolverine movie from the trailer, where he jumps at the helicopter? I'm perfectly willing to accept the X-Men universe for what it's worth, but that's out of line with the character and therefore the universe's rules.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Has anyone ever seen cube?

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Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.
- Ptolemy,c.150 AD
For I dipped into the Future, far as the human eye could see; saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1842
It is but sorrow to be wise when wisdom profits not.
- Tiresias, to Oedipus, by Sophocles

Heh, Niven's "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" comes to mind in regard to superman, but that's all I can say on that.

It would be indeed great if we had better science in movies. Things like "the core", "10.5 the big one", and its followups are so excruciatingly silly that they really should be turning people off the whole genre.

I don't know why you would say that. Its simply another version of his speedball special where Colossus throws him at various targets. They did that a lot in the comic books. My personal favorites were the one's where Colossus throws Wolverine and Nightcrawler teleports to where Wolverine is headed then grabs Wolverine and redirects him in another direction.

D11011101

I have not read that book, although I look for it every time I'm at a bookstore.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

There's a difference between jumping and being thrown.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

If you watch the trailer he is riding the inertia of the flipping and exploding truck. He is not jumping. He is basically being thrown from the vehicle which he is riding on top of.

D11011101

LOL. Guilt is always a good motivator for a conscientious person.

I would LOVE to be an archeology consultant on a big movie when I'm older.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Yes, I hated it. Physically possible SF, sure, but the awful acting and let-down ending killed it for me.

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If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

For the adults, its here: http://www.larryniven.org/stories/Ma..._Kleenex.shtml

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"Everybody's playing the Game
But nobody's rules are the same
Nobody's on nobody's side." (Tim Rice)
No matter how strong, or brave, or pure of heart you may be; sometimes the dragon wins!

Phooey, reality is a crutch for those unable to handle science fiction!

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The dog, the dog, he's at it again!

I do not agree at all

Movies are not made for facts in books .

science-fiction means human mind at work

Movies are made for Entertainment ...

We could have also said that about twilight zone

Just because it's entertaining doesn't mean it can't also be right. All Mr. Hoffman is suggesting is that movies be as plausible as possible.

Belief can only be suspended so far; after that it snaps into either fantasy or idiocy.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

I totally agree.

To my mind, one of the factors that distinguish between a good science fiction film and a bad one is the questions it makes you ask. Good ones make you ask philosophical questions; bad ones make you ask irritating questions, such as, "Why is he going to so much trouble to lift that fallen girder on the spaceship when he can just turn the gravity off?"

You may appreciate this scene, then:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_lis...&v=4M--u739kKc


Fast forward to 4:40 to 5:08.

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"Time travel gives me a headache." - Capt. Kathryn Janeway

Quite right. Now, I've known movies that had obviously ridiculous science that I was able to enjoy anyway, but I have also had lengthy conversations about what they get wrong.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Ding! Ding! Ding! And a movie which sets up a premise and then promptly deficates all over it a few seconds later is one of the worst. Case in point, Peter Jackons' remake of King Kong. In one scene they have a long conversation about why they will not allow a character to have a gun (because he's never used one) and a few scenes later, that same character is using a machine gun to shoot giant grasshoppers off of people!

I can buy a giant gorilla, I can buy giant grasshoppers, I cannot, however, buy a guy with no firearms experience being able to skillfully shoot a weapon, especially after other characters in the film have said the same thing!

I wish Dustin Hoffman all the luck in the world, and I hope he's successful.

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04 K.I.L.L. S.M.U.R.F.S.
Tuckers! Automotive Oddities! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast Save the planet, by leaving it! "To be second in space is to be second in everything," LBJ.

I make films, had a few in awards and won quite a few over the last few years.

One thing I can say for certain is that Science and Filming are totally incompatible. The only close attempt to make a film reasonably scientific was 2001 a space odyssey. This was fine for the enthusiasts, but most did not enjoy or even understand the plot. It was indeed a flop at the box office only to have a resurgence as a cult classic later on.

Films need to entertain, with the rules of physics being so well known and fixed it is almost impossible to make any kind of film that applies them to the letter of the law and make it entertaining at the same time.

Even non science fiction films break the rules. Every fight scene would have a doctor cringing in agony at the punches thrown, the guy should be dead, but he gets up and asks for more.

A great pity and an honest crusade. But if we need to try to get films to include more science I am afraid Dustin is not the man for the job. Sphere Argghh.

I saw Cube. Excellent idea, well executed (forgive the irony).

Tell us more!

We're not asking for physics lecturers, we're just asking for films that are not obviously, in-yer-face, egregiously wrong. All we're asking for is some films that don't demand that you leave your intelligence at the door.

And 2001 was not the only one. Solaris, Blade Runner, and even Jurassic Park spring to mind.

As has been said many times, nobody minds if you suspend a law if it is in the interest of a good story. Audiences - including highly intelligent ones - accept faster than light travel, time travel and things like that. Our complaint is with the sort of disregard that actually damages the entertainment for anyone with an average education.

Agreed. This is one of the reasons why lengthy fight scenes are so boring. They depart from reality, but the fantasy they move into is not actually interesting.

You may be right.

I liken it to spy fiction. Everyone (well many) likes James Bond films. They're totally implausible and utterly removed from what spies really do, but everyone going to see them understands that.

On the other hand, for those who would prefer realistic spy fiction, there are occasional adaptations of the John Le Carre books.

By comparison, there are plenty scifi films that might have been adapted from kids' comics from the 1950s (with contemporary references and lots of swearing shoehorned in) but there are hardly any examples of movie equivalents of literary SF.

Yes, and a good example of doing imaginative science fiction on a low budget.

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Nothing beautiful was ever made from gravel.

Welcome to the board. Make sure you hit up the FAQ at the top and give the rules a skim. This isn't like most forums.

That goes back to what I said above about the limits belief can be suspended.

There is junk in most movies, sure. To say that movies and science can't be compatible is wrong. Take most of the works of Alfred Hitchcock. Most of his films were entertaining and few if any were not plausible.

James Bond is another example. With the exception of From Russia with Love, all Bond films stretch plausibility to the limit, and maybe a little beyond [cough]Moonraker[/cough. We can nitpick them to shreds, but in the end the fun outweighs the "yeah right" factor enough that we don't care. If James were to, say, suddenly leap in to the air and fly off like Superman, there would be a problem. When he uses a jet pack to do it, we take it in stride.

Star Trek 6 was another one. Put just about any degree of thought in to it at all, and the whole film falls into one of it's many plot holes. But it was still one of the best ones, and remains one of my favorites, even given the idiocy.

Heck, look at Apollo 13. Sure there were liberties taken, but one of the key dramatic bits was finding a start up sequence that didn't blow out the electronics. As far as I can tell that was done with reality in mind, if not in the same room. The objection most of us here have are the vast number of movies where the solution would be to put a fuse in backwards so the current gets less resistance, and Poof, even the microwave works again.

There was one movie that someone talked about on here where the Sun was swelling up and the effects were basically cooling the Earth. At the last moment, the Handsome Male Lead realized that someone had used a + instead of a - in an equation. As soon as he fixed that mistake, the world was safe.

Polly Sue falls off a bridge but Super Sam is there to grab her arm as she falls past. His arm stays in socket because he's a super mutant and we all accept that. What made HER arm so strong?

Stuff like that takes things too far.

2/3 of the phrase "Plausible Science Fiction" is "Plausible Science". Why can't the movies be that way too?

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

Thanks Tog_, and yes I will. I would hate to upset anyone on my first day at School.

Oh I just make the odd animated movie. I have won several awards for them though and had one shown at last years Cambridge film festival. Nothing special though.

As a director of little repute, making movies is not as easy as you would think. There is a hell of a lot of ground work that goes into something that may turn out to be a flop if the basic rules are ignored or bent too much.

Nearly all directors follow a set of rules, they are not set in stone, but they are used as a guideline for what works and what does not.

All plots fall into the 36 rules for dramatic situations written by Georges Polti. Screenwriters use these rules to decide what a plot should be. This then forms the core of the films story.

Actually shooting a scene causes the director to again follow the basic rules of camera work, blocking and staging. Stepping outside of these rules will not ruin the film, but it will make the film look cheap and unprofessional. Not many directors deliberately break the rules, but there are a few notable exceptions. Tarrentino for one.

The golden rule for filmaking is "Entertain". To this end the old adage is to "start and end in, a big bang". If you do this the audience will tend to forget everything in-between.

Yes, the audience is who you are trying to entertain, and you have to be very careful about this as they are so fickle you can lose them in an instant. Another generally followed rule is to never have a cut longer than 3 seconds, you will find that on average you get 14 cuts per minute.

The reason for this is that it was found that audiences brains stopped being interested in any image if it was presented to them for longer than 3 seconds and they tended to look away from the screen.

Now the words entertainment and audience draw me to the conclusion as to why Science is poorly followed in mainstream films.

Unfortunately most of your audience is not science literate. They do not want to have to think about what they are seeing, they want to be entertained and not challenged by things they are unfamiliar with, it makes them uncomfortable.

A well known director once said, you must think of the audience as a six month old child sitting in front of you in a room full of performing clowns. It is your job to keep the child looking at you and to stop it being distracted by the clowns. Now you get an idea of how hard it can be.

If you are educated, and you do really want to think when watching a movie, look away from the big studios. You will never find what you want there. Start looking at Art house and independent filmakers. They are more inclined to provide the high brow stuff with good science as they are aiming for a target market and not simply trying to shotgun the public to get bums in seats.

I really enjoyed the film "Apollo 13". Having read the book and studied the electrical engineers reports it was a very good attempt at telling the true story. Yes there were liberties taken, in the story and in the science. But where do you draw the line as a director. When do you say, I can get away with this, the scene will still carry ?

For example, these bloopers from Apollo 13 would never even be noticed by most people away from these forums.

Near the end, from one window of the spacecraft you can see a full moon. From the other window, there is a "full Earth." If you're between the moon and the Earth, one or the other would not be full.

The astronauts are shown taking their suits off before docking, but in real life they were not allowed to do this, in case of sudden cabin depressurization.

When the cabin temperature drops, an astronaut's breath is visible. His visible breath rises as he exhales. This is an effect of gravity.

And one for the real critics.

When Lovell's daughter is complaining that the Beatles have broken up, she slams the album Let It Be into her rack. The scene takes place on the day of the explosion, April 13th, 1970. Let It Be was not released until May 9th, 1970.

I'll buy that. I think it is something that Walt Disney referred to as 'the plausible impossible'. I don't mind suspending belief to an extent - I enjoyed the Hitchhiker's Guide (radio series and books) and so on - it's done on the right level.

What gets me is stuff like that film Armagedon where they send up two shuttles. Apart from them weaving about like aircraft as their wings grip on nothing (!) they are doing it to avoid a storm of rocks rushing by at high speed. These rocks came from where??? If they had that relative speed to the asteroid, they'd have vacated the area (or should that be volume) a very long time ago.

When you have some knowledge of basic science, some errors are so glaringly bad they distract, I find. I guess everyone has a different threshold but I find film-makers have an atrocious knowledge of science in the main. As has been said in the thread, you can have a gripping plot and film without having to totally abandon any attempt at reality.

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But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.
(Wonko the Sane, from "So long and Thanks for all the Fish" by Douglas Adams)

Blessedly, Hitchcock had more sense than that.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

As did Orson Welles.

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04 K.I.L.L. S.M.U.R.F.S.
Tuckers! Automotive Oddities! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast Save the planet, by leaving it! "To be second in space is to be second in everything," LBJ.