Worst portrayal of science/technology in a film or TV show.

longhalloween · 25-10-2013 11:31AM

OhHiMark wrote: »

There's a little thing called artistic license. Nobody wants to watch a film where the main character stands around for 10 seconds waiting for his call to go through.

It's the same with people knocking on the front door.

No one wants to see the actor get up off the couch, sweep the dorito crumbs off his tshirt and scratch his arse.

Instead, the door is immediately opened.

Hareton · 25-10-2013 11:34AM

OhHiMark wrote: »

There's a little thing called artistic license. Nobody wants to watch a film where the main character stands around for 10 seconds waiting for his call to go through.

I'm sure there is. Same can be said then about how long it takes someone to hack into what ever they're tryin to hack into. It's just to keep the flow of the film/show. I was merely making the point that it's a bad portrayal of how that piece of technology works which is what this thread is about.

pauldla · 25-10-2013 11:37AM

It's been obeserved elsewhere that Kiefer Sutherland can seemingly hold his bladder for 24 hours. Does that count as bad science?

Crooked Jack · 25-10-2013 11:46AM

longhalloween wrote: »

It's the same with people knocking on the front door.

No one wants to see the actor get up off the couch, sweep the dorito crumbs off his tshirt and scratch his arse.

Instead, the door is immediately opened.

That sounds like an art house film or Film Studies dissertation.

kowloon · 25-10-2013 11:47AM

pauldla wrote: »

It's been obeserved elsewhere that Kiefer Sutherland can seemingly hold his bladder for 24 hours. Does that count as bad science?

He just goes, all the action dries it up before long.

Boom_Bap · 25-10-2013 11:48AM

In movies where there is a 'hacker' typing at full tilt.....not once is the backspace key used. Maevis Beacon couldn't even do that.

Cienciano · 25-10-2013 11:49AM

How many times have you seen a defribulator bring someone back to life? For years I thought a stopped heart was restared by a defrib shock thanks to hollywood/bad tv shows.

An of course, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk

RichardoKhan · 25-10-2013 11:52AM

Whilst not necessarily bad science/technology the sheer fact they built huge fighting robots in the first place in Pacific Rim.
When they appear to know exactly where & when these creatures were arriving.

So why not just nuke/blow up/kill them as they arrived?

JoeA3 · 25-10-2013 12:00PM

i read someplace that when Ben Affleck first read the Armageddon script he asked Michael Bay - "Wouldn't it be much easier to teach astronauts to drill rather than teaching bone-headed drillers to be astronauts?"... Bay told him to "shut up"!!

OhHiMark · 25-10-2013 12:33PM

RichardoKhan wrote: »

Whilst not necessarily bad science/technology the sheer fact they built huge fighting robots in the first place in Pacific Rim.
When they appear to know exactly where & when these creatures were arriving.

So why not just nuke/blow up/kill them as they arrived?

Kill them with what? Giant robots?

padd b1975 · 25-10-2013 12:39PM

Those sliding doors in Star Trek (original series) must have looked crazy to the 1960's TV audience.

Birneybau · 25-10-2013 12:55PM

realies wrote: »

Dr who

Come on a phone box...

The_Valeyard wrote: »

EXTERMINATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

EJACULATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guyanachronism · 25-10-2013 01:16PM

One of those awful cop shoes that keeps getting repeated on pick TV. Had such marvels as while the IT gal is working, the system gets hacked and to try and stop it she starts typing furiously, a colleague joins her typing furiously on the same keyboard.

Same show, they're investigating a murder invovling Second Life the MMORPG. They come across a suspect while in game, rather than checking his username and ringing the company with a warrant, there is an in game pursuit to catch guy.

Again same show, they need to get to level 3 of a game to unlock some secret file hidden in the disk. The IT guy is struggling (possibly because there are very few games that use standard level ideas anymore and I am quite sure he was playing Assasins Creed). The detective notices a low level cop watching intently and moving her hands like she has a controller in them, indicating she is an avid gamer and hands it over to her.

All these IT guys never having to use a mouse, ok so short cuts are quite common but I don't think anyone has reached the point where they don't need the mouse occasionally.

Supposedly there is a scene in the directors cut of Independence Day that deals with the OS question, but for the life me I can't understand why anyone would watch the directors cut of independence day. It's not the worst offender.

The whole medical situation in star wars was well mocked by Robot Chicken with the Dr. Ball M.D (the black sphere that was used to torture Leid playing a Dr. House style charachter). when

Padme is dying,

"Dr. Ball M.D." comes in and

"shouts she's lost the will to live!!?!! is your degree in poetry or something?"

or when Luke is in the Bacta (?!) Tank after Empire Strikes Back he comes in and shouts "why not throw some leeches in there while you're at it!

I know it's not technology, but the whole language situation is stupid as well. From the whole foreigners are like Lassie to emphasis how amazing someone is listing them as being fluent in dozens of languages. Yes people can be multilingual, but very few people manage to become fluently multilingual without growing up that way and/or practising or using them professionally every day. Even mutli-lingual interpreters/translators will read books/listen to podcasts or watch TV in their foreign languages, particularly ones they don't use regularly. So when Avengers lists Black Widow as being fluent in 3 or so languages (including a dead language:Latin) yet she doesn't use more than one of them during the whole movie, it makes me think that she probably put it on her CV to get the job and has just been lucky that she hasn't been caught out yet.

I've seen cop shows guilty of this too. The most ridiculous one was CSI, New York I think, where they realised the wood in the victims knee was ash for a hurley, when they went to the GAA pitch which was on the disputed land, the guys playing spoke Irish and the cop was able to answer quite fluently becuse his grand dad was Irish and thought him some of the language . . .

Maximus Alexander · 25-10-2013 01:18PM

While it's not a bad film if you can somehow ignore the entire premise, Sunshine gets my vote. The sun is dying, but we can nuke it back to life? Piss off.

Seachmall · 25-10-2013 01:46PM

RichardoKhan wrote: »

Whilst not necessarily bad science/technology the sheer fact they built huge fighting robots in the first place in Pacific Rim.
When they appear to know exactly where & when these creatures were arriving.

So why not just nuke/blow up/kill them as they arrived?

I don't understand how they lost all knowledge of wireless technologies.

It's very unfortunate that they did, it would have made the movie a lot less stressful if we knew the soldiers were safe and sound 10,000 miles away.

Seachmall · 25-10-2013 01:49PM

Guyanachronism wrote: »

All these IT guys never having to use a mouse, ok so short cuts are quite common but I don't think anyone has reached the point where they don't need the mouse occasionally.

Unless I'm using a web browser I generally don't use the mouse, and even then I make use of hotkeys.

#1337h4xx0r

25-10-2013 02:39PM

That cracked link is very interesting

Keep that image in mind when you consider how American audiences raved about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, while Chinese audiences winced as they watched Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh, Cantonese speakers, stumble through their Mandarin lines. To non-Chinese speakers, the dialogue comes across as nuanced and flowing, while to a Chinese speaker, it is like watching Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice come out of a Chinese martial artist.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_18721_the-5-stupidest-ways-movies-deal-with-foreign-languages_p2.html#ixzz2ijzjJcXf

Had no idea!

Ray Palmer · 25-10-2013 02:56PM

Surprised nobody mentioned lifts

Two common things in tv and film with regard to lifts.

1) They all have hatched you can climb into the lift shaft using. Not once have I seen such a hatch. Maybe old lifts do have them but I am doubting it.

2) Emergency buttons that halt the lift. They are just alarm buttons that don't stop the lift

It is also a bit unlikely that you can for a lift door open with your bare hand or even a crow bar. The locking mechanism is pretty tough and normally requires a key/tool to open manually

Apparently there has only ever been one instance of a lift having all it's cables cut what in theory would mean it would go into free fall. Except the breaking system kicks in once the lift exceeds a certain speed. The lift that had the cables cut was actually caused by a place crashing into the building and was the Empire State Building

The most dangerous part of the lift is actually the doors. The doors can catch you and lift can move. So doing that who sticking your hand or foot in the lift door is actually dangerous

Seachmall · 25-10-2013 02:59PM

Ray Palmer wrote: »

It is also a bit unlikely that you can for a lift door open with your bare hand or even a crow bar. The locking mechanism is pretty tough and normally requires a key/tool to open manually

I forced a lift door open a few weeks ago in work.

It was like 8pm and everyone had left the building so I decided to see if it could be done.

It wasn't that hard. The outer doors (the ones that aren't part of the lift) might be a different story though. It'd be dangerous to make them easy to open in case someone fell down the shaft.

pauldla · 25-10-2013 03:01PM

Ray Palmer wrote: »

Surprised nobody mentioned lifts

Two common things in tv and film with regard to lifts.

1) They all have hatched you can climb into the lift shaft using. Not once have I seen such a hatch. Maybe old lifts do have them but I am doubting it.

2) Emergency buttons that halt the lift. They are just alarm buttons that don't stop the lift

It is also a bit unlikely that you can for a lift door open with your bare hand or even a crow bar. The locking mechanism is pretty tough and normally requires a key/tool to open manually

Apparently there has only ever been one instance of a lift having all it's cables cut what in theory would mean it would go into free fall. Except the breaking system kicks in once the lift exceeds a certain speed. The lift that had the cables cut was actually caused by a place crashing into the building and was the Empire State Building

The most dangerous part of the lift is actually the doors. The doors can catch you and lift can move. So doing that who sticking your hand or foot in the lift door is actually dangerous

The very same happened to a nurse in Shenzhen earlier this year. You may have read about it in the news.

http://beijingcream.com/2013/05/video-of-woman-cut-in-half-by-elevator-is-harrowing/

You can find the video on youtube too, I believe, but I wouldn't watch it unless you have a very strong stomach.

Czarcasm · 25-10-2013 03:16PM

The woman with three tits in Total Recall.

Most awesome case of polydactyly ever, or just plain wrong... I'll have to give it another watch before I make up my mind :pac:

EDIT: Dear God, it's actually a REAL condition! :eek:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_breast

wp_rathead · 25-10-2013 03:24PM

Czarcasm wrote: »

The woman with three tits in Total Recall.

Most awesome case of polydactyly ever, or just plain wrong... I'll have to give it another watch before I make up my mind :pac:

EDIT: Dear God, it's actually a REAL condition! :eek:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_breast

"You make me wish I had three hands"

Ray Palmer · 25-10-2013 03:35PM

pauldla wrote: »

The very same happened to a nurse in Shenzhen earlier this year. You may have read about it in the news.

http://beijingcream.com/2013/05/video-of-woman-cut-in-half-by-elevator-is-harrowing/

You can find the video on youtube too, I believe, but I wouldn't watch it unless you have a very strong stomach.

I have seen enough of that before. There was terrible picture of a delivery guy lying on the ground still holding the order but then you notice his head is gone and there is a smear on the lift door.

It is not that unusual

Plazaman · 25-10-2013 03:39PM

Die Hard 4 tells us

* You can connect a Nokia flip phone to anything and hack it
* Randomly typing on a keyboard you can send email "spam" bomb
* But if your trying to prevent it just tap faster. Make sure though you emphasise pressing the return key to show you've sent it (and shout "See how you like that" when doing so. I love doing this in work when sending emails)
* If you're a hacker, once you're in your mammys basement, despite a power cut in the city, you can still "divert" power to your house with more frantic keyboard typing.
* Hacking into a fighter jets communication system just needs a laptop in the back of a van and, yep you guessed it, fast typing skills.

pauldla · 25-10-2013 03:39PM

Ray Palmer wrote: »

I have seen enough of that before. There was terrible picture of a delivery guy lying on the ground still holding the order but then you notice his head is gone and there is a smear on the lift door.

It is not that unusual

Let me say that I haven't watched the vid in question, not have I any intention of doing so. The description alone is enough.

When I go, I hope it's not in the doors of an elevator.

paperclip2 · 25-10-2013 03:42PM

jill_valentine wrote: »

You absolutely do. There's an awful lot of crappy SyFy mockbusters out there to be laughed at, but Sharknado takes the cake by a long shout. Everything else - yes, even Sharktopus! - pales in comparison.

I dunno, Ghost Shark could give it a run for its money I think :eek:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Shark_(film)

Due to the great white's new spectral form, it can attack and kill anyone as long as there is even the smallest amount of water nearby, including swimming pools, baths and showers, puddles, rain, and even a cup of water,

GhostSharknado. Now that would be a winning combination!

bodice ripper · 25-10-2013 05:25PM

Absolutely everything on Bones.

Capt'n Midnight · 26-10-2013 12:00AM

longhalloween wrote: »

True, but thats why elephant rifles were invented.
Hitting godzilla with an anti tank round would definitely do some serious damage
Maybe...

Some hunters were able to kill elephants with IIRC even a .22 into the brain from the side of the skull

elephant gun is for massive damage when you have no aiming skill

Capt'n Midnight · 26-10-2013 12:08AM

gobnaitolunacy wrote: »

Machine guns with inexhaustable magazines and gun silencers that work with a barely audible 'phut' sound.

In Soviet Russia ammunition is silenced.

Seriously the cartridge is sealed so no gas escapes so sudden expansion or gas to carry sound away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSS_Silent_Pistol

On firing, the piston delivers enough impulse to project the bullet from the barrel to an effective range of 25 meters. The piston then seals the cartridge neck, preventing noise, smoke, or blast from escaping the barrel

Anyway , bullet can only go 25m , and never ever supersonic.

For that matter silencers on revolvers, the chamber can be fully sealed so there will always be noise. ( wasn't there a Russian revolver that had a thingy that moved to seal the back of the chamber ??)

FouxDaFaFa · 26-10-2013 12:17AM

I won't hear a word said against The Net. That film is still wildly entertaining.

And, to be fair to it, it came out in the mid-90s when the internet was still complete sorcery to the general public.

I had to stop watching Bones after they had one of the characters, an art graduate, render a physical 3d reconstruction of a victims face from some miniscule evidence.

HOW?

Worst portrayal of science/technology in a film or TV show.

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