Everyone loves a good science-fiction (well maybe not everyone, but a lot of you out there). Something that a lot of great sci-fi movies and stories out there have in common is taking a brilliant story and sprinkling it with real-world science. It adds to the realism, makes it sound more intellectual, and sometimes really brings in a 'wow' factor. Occasionally, however, they just deflate the entire scene. Here are two scientific--real life--terms that really should have been left out of the story.
Fantastic Four (2005 Version--I am honestly not picking on this one first because of the new one that just came out)
In the scene back at Reed Richards laboratory, the team is still learning how to use their powers and what there limits are. This builds up to the Deus Ex Machina introduction of Jonny Storm's--AKA The Human Torch--moment in a machine to test how much heat he can generate. During the heat of the moment, Jonny almost torches (I'd say I'm done, but I make no such promises) the machine and they are forced to extinguish him before he goes super-nova and incinerate the world. Now, just before that moment, Reed Richards uses scientific terminology saying:
"He's heating up from his core."
Now, this comes off as sounding impressive, Johnny is after all generating thermal energy from inside him. The issue is easy to miss if you don't know what core temperature is. Medically, core temperature is your true temperature as opposed to the conventional under the tongue, inside the ear, or on the skin measurements, which are all close guesses. "Core temperature" is how hot a person really is, and considering how much heat Johnny's packing, that says something; however, the way to test it is by using a rectal thermometer. That means, that while Johnny was 'going supernova' to the point where he would extinguish all life on the planet, he's temperature was being taken by a device that was up his butt and was being monitored by his sister and her ex-fiance! This information completely removes all previous and future intensity/astonishment that this scene could possibly create to the point of being laughable. Now, one could argue that they have better technology in this movie so maybe they have a better way to test core temperatures, and that's assuming a lot for modern scientific term that was inserted into a movie and not created. Besides, Reed spends the whole movie trying to recreate the event that created them in space, he seems like the guy who would respect the tried-and-true methods.
Anyway, enough about The Human Torch's burning sensations, for the next term we must go somewhere far far away--and find out people really need to learn how to read maps or gauges.
Star War Episode IV: A New Hope (and yes, this is a widely considered true-blue Star Wars film, just incase any of you thought I was bringing the prequels into this)
In the Mos Eisley cantina, the heroes Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi meet with Han Solo and Chewbacca for the first time. There's a lot of challenging and water-testing between these two groups as they try and figure out how to best serve their own needs. During the intense scene, where the heart-throb roguish space-smuggler is introduced, Han defends the honor of his ship when Luke asks if it is fast, saying:
"You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon? It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less then twelve parsecs."
Now, Han's statement doesn't sound like anything to snuff at, after all, a parsec sounds pretty impressive in space travel terms; however, this one line reveals that either Han Solo or George Lucas have no idea how space or speed work (considering how many George Lucas fan-girls are out there, I think we all know who's gonna get blamed). That being said, this is a line that has remained canon, that means when Disney whips out the new movies, this is totally in there. Anyway, the reason why this line is so counter-intuitive of the scene is this, a parsec is not a unit of time, it's a unit of distance--namely, about three-and-a-quarter lightyears. While this is a big distance, it doesn't say anything about how fast the ship can go (unless you get on board the whole fantbased theory that Han actually shortened the distance between two points of space). As an example of how bad this line is I want you to do this, the next time someone asks how fast your car goes, I want you to tell them "Well, it can get from LA to Santa Barbara in less than a hundred miles!" Han lives in space, and to be honest the only reason why this line didn't completely destroy any trust in his abilities as a space pilot (so really, he should know this stuff), in a universe where people regularly travel at speeds greater than light, is because the two people he was telling it to happened to be an old hermit and a farm boy who probably wouldn't know the difference.
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Originally, I wanted to do a list of these, but it would've taken longer to post and would have been a bigger blog. So, instead I'll just do these two and hope to post more on this topic in the future. If you guys enjoyed me cutting the heart out of sci-fi moments that have now forever been tarnished in your mind, leave a like and let me know. Also, don't forget to share with your friends!
What is your favorite line from a movie/book/comic/et cetera that just really destroyed what it was trying to accomplish? Leave in the comments below!
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