Discussion Starter: Movie Mistakes

June 16th, 2009 by CCO

Discussion starter for you: What are the worst movie gaffs that you can think of?

For example, some people would say that in the movie Independence Day Jeff Goldblum’s character wirelessly communicating with the alien mother ship using a PowerBook 3400 (a model which has no wireless capability) and implanting a virus is the worst movie “hand waving” exercise in recent memory. Some people would say that the gaff is that he was able to write (and compile) a virus that knocked out the alien’s shields. In other words the gaff isn’t that there are aliens or that the aliens who are capable of inter-stellar flight aren’t peaceful (which is one theory of alien life that is alluded to in the movie). The gaff is that the crucial plot device couldn’t have worked.

I will now hand wave the second of those two gaffs away. They were able to write and compile the virus because the scientists at Area 51 had the alien parasite fighter to experiment with for years. The computer were capable (and now I’m hand waving) because they’re computer’s and the logic processes were similar. No, strike that– they wrote the virus on the fighter and just delivered it on the PowerBook 3400.

The second gaff I can also explain. Jeff Goldblum’s character worked for a cable company, right? He had triangulated a cell phone signal from his dad’s car, right? OK, so he just rigged up a wireless network interface for the PowerBook 3400 to the fighter via the AppleTalk port (8 pin round serial) and via the fighter to the mother ship. He probably explained it on the way up, but they cut that part out.

OK, here’s one I can’t explain. In the second John McClane Die Hard movie (Die Hard 2, the one where the bad guys take over an airport in DC to rescue a former dictator), you see a bad guy switch from a magazine with blue electrical tape (I think that’s what some people call “gaffer’s tape”) to a magazine with red tape on his submachine gun, and fire at McClane. McClane finds out the blue taped magazine are all blanks, while the red taped magazine are all live rounds. So, here’s my problem with this. How do you make an automatic weapon fire automatically with blanks, and then work with live rounds without removing a blank firing adapter? (No way they cut that out; there wasn’t time. There was barely time to switch the magazines and fire at McClane as he zooms by on a snow mobile.) How do you make a blank firing adapter that will handle live rounds? You can’t, right? The BFA obstructs the barrel in order to simulate a bullet and make the gas from the blank round operate the weapon normally.

OK see if you can fix the gaff or find a worse gaff or both.

Tags: fun, movies

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dgatos Says:
June 16th, 2009 at 9:46 pm

matrix 2 and 3 were missing plot

simple-minded reply on June 17th, 2009 7:45 pm:

win

SPC Hyle Says:
June 16th, 2009 at 10:07 pm

Depends on the specific type of weapon operation. There is still recoil from the blank, and depending on the model, is sufficient to reset for a second shot.

No, the Independence Day gaffe was that there is literally infinite supply of uninhabited worlds with all the minerals, oxygen, and hydrogen an interstellar race could want. No need for invasion. So why invade? I mean, seriously. Much, much, much more energy efficient to just go to an empty world and take the stuff from it.

Tim Covington reply on June 17th, 2009 5:55 am:

This goes for any alien invasion movie, unless they are looking for slaves or lebensraum (more real estate to live on). The living space argument would be dependent on these aliens just happening to have a metabolism that so closely matches our own that the earth is attractive to them. The odds are against this (1 in 16 for carbon based life forms, if I remember correctly).

Arcanum reply on June 17th, 2009 6:14 am:

One “living space” explanation I enjoyed is the self-destructive, semi-nomadic posleen in John Ringo’s Legacy of the Aldenata/Posleen War books. The posleen are mottled yellow, six-limbed, carnivorous, cannibalistic (yes, I’m using the term in the correct sense) reptilian centauroids. Their peculiar culture and psychology causes them to invade habitable worlds in massive waves, eat the existing occupants (if any), use up all the available resources building and sending off the next waves, then crisp the planet in a nuclear war over the scant remaining resources.

Good sci-fi war books. I highly recommend them.

Tim Covington reply on June 17th, 2009 6:18 am:

I’ve read all of the Legacy of the Aldenata books by John (and everything else he has written and is currently available). The Posleen are a special case due to genetic engineering by the Aldenata (damn their interfering trying to be do-gooders ways).
BTW, have you read the e-arcs for Eye of the Storm and The Tuloriad yet?

Arcanum reply on June 17th, 2009 6:27 am:

The posties are a special case, but it’s still a good explanation (including the gengineering). I do love his writing, and introducing other people to it (which tends to get me cursed at). :D

No, I don’t generally read the ARC stuff at Webscriptions. 1) They’re $15 instead of $5. 2) They’re incomplete. I don’t mind waiting. Well, I do, but you know what I mean.

StoneWolf reply on June 17th, 2009 6:53 am:

Well military sci fi written by someone who used to be military is usually pretty good. Just look at Heinlein. Apart from his occasional preachyness, I really like Ringo.

speed reply on June 17th, 2009 12:56 pm:

And it clued me into sluggy.com via the “hull art” of the giant white Bun-Bun.

ltc_insane reply on June 17th, 2009 7:00 pm:

they are good books, John Ringo is right up there with David Weber and Elizabeth Moon as some of my favourite authors.

Signalist reply on September 18th, 2011 6:03 am:

maybe they needed Earth as a supply depot or a bridgehead enroute to a richer world, they could have found an ideal planet for themselves, but after coming to a conclusion that it’s too far away for even their technology to reach without resupplying and/or refueling somewhere enroute, and Earth just happened to be both rich enough and enroute to their final destination.

Signalist reply on September 18th, 2011 6:14 am:

*”but after coming to a conclusion that it’s too far away for even their technology to reach without resupplying and/or refueling somewhere enroute, they decided to just invade some planet enroute to resupply before going for their final destination, and the planet chosen just happened to be Earth”, is what I wanted to say.

Josh Says:
June 16th, 2009 at 10:10 pm

I haven’t seen Die Hard 2 and don’t know what type of gun is used, but theoretically if the firearm had a blowback or delayed blowback (recoil-based) operating system and not a gas operating system you could simply replace the recoil spring with a much weaker one which would cycle the gun even from the significantly lighter recoil of a blank round. This would, however, be a really bad idea as the bolt would strike the rear of the receiver with much more force then normal when using live ammunition as it would not be slowed down to the correct speed by a full-strength spring. It could also allow the bolt to open much sooner then it’s supposed to and before pressures in the chamber were back to safe levels. In short, you might be able to do it but the gun would probably break, blow-up, or both.
Also, in Independence Day don’t they mount some sort of antenna to the bottom of the alien fighter before they go up to download the virus in the mother ship?

steelcobra reply on June 17th, 2009 4:17 am:

Looks like they were using both MP5s and M16s. The MP5 is a roller-locked delayed-blowback, but obviously there no way in hell the M16 would fire blanks in auto without a BFA.

Josh Says:
June 16th, 2009 at 10:14 pm

Oh also my vote for worst gaffe, as a pilot, was the supposed “icing problem” in Iron Man. You need to flying in visible moisture (rain or cloud) for ice to form on an aircraft.

SPC Hyle reply on June 17th, 2009 6:12 am:

I nominate the whole first 30 minutes. Just no fucking way, on any count. No fucking way a VIP would be allowed to go anywhere other than in a helicopter. None. Nobody wears their neck armor. No one uses that shitty ambush procedures, not even leg-POGs. No one wears the goggles on their helmet, and certainly not an entire HMMWV. Weapons demonstrations are in highly secure areas in the UNITED FUCKING STATES, not Afghanistan. Thermodynamics says his heart would have been cooked by that devices heat output, period. No one in Afghanistan shaves their head. If there are any wholly bald people in Afghanistan, they cover it up. There is no way a single man, in a short period of time, working in a CAVE IN AFGHANISTAN, could build a missile, let alone a suit of armor and MAGIC ENERGY DEVICE.

Let’s not even start with conservation of momentum, G-forces on his organs from those ultra-tight turns, the sheer ridiculousness of him falling two inches and then breaking through a concrete roof, some more failing of thermodynamics with his hand bolts…

I’m just sayin’ is all.

TheShadowCat reply on June 17th, 2009 6:48 am:

But other than that, the movie was totally realistic. ;-)

Captcha – packed 28,684,000 – Whatever your packing is going to take a looooong time.

Phantom reply on June 17th, 2009 7:37 pm:

Here’s your explanation for that.

Tony Stark can do anything.

And this is also coming from the same company where a guy can suddenly climb walls and sense things before they happen because he got bit by a radioactive spider.

SPC Hyle reply on June 17th, 2009 10:10 pm:

At least Thermodynamics isn’t violated. It is with Wolverine and plenty of OTHER mutants, but still.

StoneWolf reply on June 19th, 2009 5:00 am:

Wait, how does Wolverine violate thermodynamics?

ShuttleZ Says:
June 16th, 2009 at 11:12 pm

Here’s my contribution. Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus ….. All of it. In fact, add Deep Blue Sea in there as well. There’s 90 minutes of my life I will never get back.

Don’t forget, “Deus Ex Machina” (literally “god from the machine”) is a plot device in which a person or thing appears “out of the blue” to help a character to overcome a seemingly insolvable difficulty. So, yes, you can infect an alien mother ship with a virus simply by typing “Upload Virus”. Meh.

Sweet Sister Morphine Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 12:44 am

I think the most likely explanation for the gaff in Independence Day is: Because SHUT UP. That’s why!

Also, try sitting through Resident Evil with a hazardous materials/occupational health & safety expert who has actually done safety audits on viral research facilities, and has a slight gun fixation, some time.

paula reply on June 17th, 2009 4:03 am:

That was probably even worse than when I (a theater projectionist) had to run “Cinema Paradiso” (about a theater projectionist) some years ago: I was making LISTS of the errors in that thing…. I think I ended up with thirteen major errors, ranging from ‘that equipment physically can’t DO that’ to ‘that wasn’t even invented until decades later’, plus fifteen assorted relatively-minor errors.

Cat reply on June 17th, 2009 6:13 pm:

I’m not a hazardous materials expert, but I did spend the entire opening sequence of the first resident evil movie ranting to a friend about how ridiculous “kill everyone” is as a containment method.

mn Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 1:20 am

Actually… it IS possible to have a gas-operated gun work with blanks, and then work with live ammo without manually removing the BFA.

At least some AK-47 derivatives can do that, with only slight damage to the gun (BFA mounting threads stripped, say).

You’ll be down one BFA, though…

SPC Johnson Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 2:51 am

Pretty much any movie where “hacking” a computer is the same as waving a magic wand at the problem makes me want to hit someone with a chair.

StoneWolf Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 4:26 am

You want gobs of pure, distilled, handwavium? STAR TREK VOYAGER. Oh hell, any Star Trek for that matter. I will be a Trekkie till the day I die, but come on! Transporter for one, which was horribly undertutilized. Same for replicator. And all those episodes with “duplicates” where they have to figure out which one is real? You have a magical laser beam that can make people fall asleep! Shoot everyone in the room and sort it out when they’re saftly in the Brig. And every away mission was idiotic. “Oh, we’ll just pop down and…we’re captured.” Send in a platoon of Marines to secure the LZ, then the science team, and finally the Captain or XO if you really have to. I know that kills alot of plots, but they were basically the same mistake over and over. And anybody who mentions reversing polarity will be sumarily keel-hauled. I know its a space ship but I will find a way damnit!

M578Jockey reply on June 17th, 2009 5:45 am:

I always liked it when Dr. Who not only reversed polarity, but reversed the polarity of the neutron flow….

StoneWolf reply on June 17th, 2009 6:15 am:

Argh! Reversing polarity is only possible with EMF and things suceptible to EMF, and even then it probably won’t help. That said, if the Doctor ever showed up in my home town, I would so mug him for the sonic screwdriver. Or bum a ride on the Tardus. You know, whichever worked.

Captcha: 7,337.164 squid-the cost of a sonic screwdriver

Chris reply on June 17th, 2009 12:35 pm:

They could be spin-polarized neutrons? ;)

TheShadowCat reply on June 17th, 2009 7:01 am:

Favorite Dr. Who lines:

Dr – I can reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.

Companion – Will that help?

Dr – No, but I can do it.

SPC Hyle reply on June 17th, 2009 6:27 am:

Here is the real bullshit:

They keep transporter back-ups. So they could just, you know, re-send a killed person. Hey, away team member killed? He’s back! Want to do a major boarding action? NO PROBLEM! Hell, send hundreds of clones of a few people in simultaneously. Don’t tell me “hardware block” because you could JUST FUCKING REMOVE IT.

Bat’leth. Jesus, could a more impractical weapon be designed? No practical cutting edge, it’s two handed so you can’t get a decent swing off of it, the pointy pits are also impractical to use… Let’s put it this way: the Klingons could have invaded Earth at any time in history, and I do mean any time, and just gotten destroyed in hand to hand. Period. Even in the Bronze Age. SPEARS GODDAMMIT! Not to mention weapons with practical uses, like swords and axes. How the hell are they feared? I mean, honestly. “They’re big and strong and have a massively impractical weapon!” “Where are our shotguns?” “Umm….we use these little hand-things that have random effects on various types of matter, either being uber effective or not at all, have no real aiming and cannot use sustained fire.” “What, did we all go retarded or something?” “Apparently, yes.” Given that the FUCKING BORG can’t adapt to machine gun bullets, you’d think that maybe, JUST FUCKING MAYBE, they’d make a resurgence. At least maybe shotguns would. It’s not like the Borg are ninjas. “Sir, the Borg cube is coming at us…and they’re adapted to our phasers!” “Why don’t we have railguns?” “We deserve to die.” That’s another thing of irk. Why don’t they have railguns that shoot metal at .9c? Do you know what that would DO to a ship, shield or no? Punch right through, and destroy the hell out of the ship from the KE transfer. No defense. Especially the fag-ass Borg. Did we all eat paint chips for centuries after we developed the Warp Drive and just FORGOT HOW TO MAKE A FUCKING GUN?

StoneWolf reply on June 17th, 2009 7:07 am:

Yes, because Star Trek was written with a policical, not scientific agenda, by a decent plot writter with little technical knowlege. Starfleet is basically a giant, mostly working Socialist Democracy utopia. They have more diplomats than shooters because Roddenbury believed that “if we just understood eachother” social problems would evaporate. So when it actually came to the shooty shooty, it makes no sense and serves as a demonstration of why diplomacy works better. More recent stuff written after Roddenbury tends to be more violent, but thats just modern TV. The application of said violence is still retarded. Now, if they actually knew what the hell they were doing, it would be alot better. You could probably take any ship in SF inventory with a company of modern day Marines. Hell, if the Borg were inbound I’d rather have an M14 or AK47 and bayonet than anything the Fleet spat out. So in short, StarFleet lives by “Speak nicely and please remember to have a twig in your back pocket in case somebody needs to get poked in the eye.” They would be shocked at “Nuke it from orbit.” and probably pass right out after reading Starship Troopers, let alone realize that some of us consider it a “How To” manual.

Raven Prometheus reply on June 17th, 2009 7:43 am:

YAY!!!! That’s what I’m talking about. Now, if you could find a way and the MASSIVE energy reserves to do it, plasma based weaponry could have a its place (like a GIANT Tesla coil…), but you’re right. The K factor at .9c is just WAY to big (and destructive) to just pass up. What about fleet size battles. That projectile would just keep going, through mulitple layers of armor/shields, meaning mulitple ships. And what about artificial gravity? Just use it to create a massive gravity hole in front of and keep “falling,” who needs impulse engines? Just wait till I finish my book. I think you two, among many SF/F fans, will like it.

Minty reply on June 17th, 2009 9:27 am:

You know, that explains exactly why I stopped watching ST in highschool. For years I couldn’t quite pin it down–I still liked it, but there was just something missing. And now I realize it was because I spent the bulk of each episode imagining some 20th Century “neanderthal” beating the snot out of Riker.

Billy reply on June 17th, 2009 11:58 am:

I am a bit curious about how apparently an old nuke is not only able to break light speed with some modifications, but also, is still air-tight enough for a human to survive in outer space with it. Also, how the hell did that guy get back down?

captcha:chop dogs, how to get hot dogs

StoneWolf reply on June 17th, 2009 12:21 pm:

They yanked the warhead out, probably did a lot of body work. As to how they got down, well, you’ve seen Dr. Strangelove, right?

Billy reply on June 17th, 2009 1:14 pm:

No, I have not seen Dr.Strangelove, so no clue still.

Chris reply on June 17th, 2009 12:40 pm:

They used the ICBM booster as a surface-to-orbit transfer vehicle, with a spaceworthy capsule as the payload, just like the US did for pretty much all of its space program pre-Shuttle. The space race was a pretty-looking public face put on a missile race.

johnny reply on June 18th, 2009 8:44 pm:

Just dont cross the streams

captcha: ities up-to-date and how are these ities up to date

Brian Dunbar Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 4:43 am

V. The Visitors came – we find out – because they have run out of water and they’re going to steal ours and take it back home.

See – to get here they had to fly past Saturn. Her rings are 93% water ice.

Free ice! And no pesky monkeys to push out of the way. Dumb lizards.

Other gaffes? Any movie set in Washington D.C. where the characters drive from point A to point B, cruising past the Capitol, Lincoln Memorial etc etc when the only sane route from A to B leads past none of those.

Tzanti reply on June 17th, 2009 5:32 am:

Anything made by Americans that happens in London.

Tim Covington reply on June 17th, 2009 6:22 am:

In V, they were also harvesting people as food, which is not likely considering most animals on the planet think we taste awful (sharks spit people out).

SPC Hyle reply on June 17th, 2009 6:28 am:

We taste a lot like pork to ourselves. Hence the name, Long Pig.

Brian Dunbar reply on June 17th, 2009 7:11 am:

“In V, they were also harvesting people as food,”

I’d forgotten about that part. What are the chances that critters evolved under a completely different sun can terrestrial critters as protein?

Tim Covington reply on June 17th, 2009 7:19 am:

If I remember correctly, the odds are about 1 in 16 for carbon based lifeforms from a completely different evolutionary track having complete compatibility. On just digesting proteins, it is 1 in 4. Though, we haven’t visited enough life bearing planets to test these numbers

Minty reply on June 17th, 2009 9:29 am:

That’s because animals are all pro-organic hippies.

speed Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 4:51 am

I gave up counting the times I have seen these in movies and on TV:
Downloading data or programs from a computer in under one minute.
Pressing a function key on your keyboard to make a computer across town explode without the benefit of any C-4 or semtek.
How about in Anaconda where they shoot a bolt action rifle and pop off round after round without touching the bolt as if it was a semi-auto?
Last month on NCIS where they were moving “windows” around on a large touch-screen. Fact: touch screens freeze and crash with frightening regularity. The larger screen, the more frequent the problems. Their screens appeared to be projection screens – anyone know of a projection/touch screen?

RE Star Trek – you’re going into a hostile zone. Secure the LZ is good AND you have armed shuttles, so use them for CAS. Force the writers to use their brains and not fall back on the same old format time and again.

StoneWolf reply on June 17th, 2009 6:20 am:

Yeah, but I’d put money down they never had a scientific, engineering, or military advisor ever. CAS is nice, and we’ve established that Star Fleet ships can provide some pretty precision orbital fire support. Of course, its anticlimatic if in the Gorn episode Kirk disembarks onto a smoking crater inside a perimiter of redshirts and has no opprotunity to utilze his “amazing” hand to hand skills or rip his shirt. Oh, yeah what about body armor? People don’t even where spandex these days, why the hell would we make uniforms out of them in the future?

Craig reply on June 17th, 2009 7:50 am:

While I haven’t seen the NCIS episode you’re describing, I have seen the device you’re describing, complete with multi-touch (using both hands to expand, contract, spin, and move data windows). There are several companies that make these things (including Microsoft’s Surface). The ones I’ve seen were designed and built by a major US defense contractor, and were intended for use in applications similar to whatever you saw on NCIS. They’re expensive, but they work quite well.

Captcha: olesen supple: either Mary-Kate or Ashley would be supple enough for me…

Minty reply on June 17th, 2009 9:31 am:

So, if they’re expensive, what are they doing in NCIS? Isn’t that the red-headed stepchild of federal agencies?

speed reply on June 19th, 2009 5:24 am:

Heh, they always seemed to have $ to pay bogus informants in the gulf. Two orange alerts and a couple $k later, NCIS believed the rest of us when we told them that “Achmed” was a con-man. I rank them right up there with Army CID: wrote the book from “duh” to “uh.”

Billy reply on June 17th, 2009 12:05 pm:

The last screen like that I saw used in the military was the “smart board” that could have been easily replaced by a projecter screen and some washable markers. I say that because I never once saw them used to the full ability that justified the expense.

captcha: orbemard addition, what the hell is that supposed to be?!

Cat reply on June 17th, 2009 10:09 am:

It’s the government. They have all sorts of neat gizmos that we don’t know about. Like the only perfectly working copy of Windows.

captcha: $200 chichi…wow, that’s some expensive chichi.

johnny reply on June 18th, 2009 8:47 pm:

that was a light table mounted on the wall and ive seen and used one theyre fairly reliable

Signalist reply on September 18th, 2011 7:23 am:

“Their screens appeared to be projection screens – anyone know of a projection/touch screen?”
actually, yes, I have seen someone turn a projection screen into a touch screen with a Wii controller and thermal sensor (also Wii -stuff), the guy demonstrated it by projecting an image of his computer desktop on a wall and using it by touching icons with his fingers, true it was not as effective as using the Wii controller/some other IR device to move the cursor by pointing the desired spot on the projected desktop, but it works, I am trying to find a video.

Signalist reply on September 18th, 2011 10:35 pm:

ok, here’s four link:

http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/2007/12/low-cost-multi-point-interactive.html

http://groups.google.com/group/cwelug/msg/fdc31300fd432f7d

http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ&e

Signalist reply on September 18th, 2011 10:36 pm:

four links* does my keyboard hate me, or what?

Tim Covington Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 6:00 am

What about the absurdity of the ranges and maneuvers shown in most space battles. I’ve only seen a couple of shows get the maneuvers right (Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica remake). Nobody gets the ranges right, because it would look dull and boring. 100 kilometers would be considered knife fighting range in space. typical ranges would probably be anywhere from 1000 kilometers to 1,000,000 kilometers.

Arcanum reply on June 17th, 2009 6:20 am:

Real space battles would probably resemble the battles in David Weber’s Honor Harrington books: Lots of waiting while you (hopefully) get into missile range of your targets, more waiting while the missiles fly, short periods of stark terror and death.

Tim Covington reply on June 17th, 2009 6:24 am:

Then there’s the aftermath. All of the missiles that missed and ran out of fuel plus all the debris flying around. It would be a hazardous area to fly around in for awhile.

StoneWolf reply on June 17th, 2009 6:26 am:

And whatabout that stray KE round that exits the system and thousands of years later slams into a flegling civilizations first space ship, destroying it and killing all onboard and setting them back decades before they abandon space travel all together? Sort of a random idea I had I turned into a short.

SPC Hyle reply on June 17th, 2009 6:30 am:

Space is empty. Not that hazardous.

StoneWolf reply on June 17th, 2009 7:10 am:

Oh, yeah I know its empty. It was just a “What if?” I thought up. Astronomically low odds, but shit happens.

SPC Hyle reply on June 17th, 2009 10:12 pm:

Ender’s Game has a similar plot. I say similar, but only a little.

StoneWolf reply on June 17th, 2009 6:24 am:

Good series. The Naploeonic broadsides are forced, but other than that minor detail overall tactics are very good.

StoneWolf reply on June 17th, 2009 6:23 am:

Yup. Plus there’s all that velocity. Space battles would be more like drivebys with KKWs or nukes. Survivors swing around for another pass or just keep running. You would never actually see eachother on anything but radar/sensors. The only exception would be holding actions near planets or other gravity wells, where the attackers have a distinct advantage by holding the high ground (farther out of the G well).

SPC Hyle reply on June 17th, 2009 6:41 am:

Not necessarily. Try aiming, even with a computer, a target one meter wide a kilometer away. This target is also moving. Your bullet travels at 100 m/s. Good luck hitting it. That is an exact analogy of long ranges. Star Wars has huge ranges, but they still fight at point-blank range sometimes just because of the difficulties in aiming over large distances. Your target isn’t even visible. Even with very, very sensitive equipment, they’re hard to see, let alone hit, at that distance. And those are the BIG ships, a mile or longer! Imagine trying to hit a 100m long ship at a distance of a 10000km. It would subtend such a small arc, you’d have no chance of hitting it.

But lasers you say! WRONG! Lasers disperse out from their aperture, which means the energy is dispersed over increasingly large areas. At a few hundred KM, even with really good lasers, you’ve got a beam a few meters across. Yeah, that’ll punch a hole real quick.

You’d want to be within a few dozen KM just to have a chance of hitting them with your weapons. 1000km? Nope. Any sanely designed ship would have omnidirectional thrusters. Completely fuck up aim at that distance. It’d be more on the order of shotguns, with huge spreads of dangerous flechettes. Even then, with the proper EM fields, you could alter their courses around you.

Space combat would be something rare, if ever, like modern surface fleets. They’d just destroy each other in minutes. They exist to project power from a base, and defend against non-modern nation’s attacks. So it would be with a space fleet.

Captcha: Fantaisie pedantry. Yeah, that’s what this is.

Leon reply on June 17th, 2009 1:54 pm:

I think you could film a “realistic” space battle and still have excitement (or something). Shoot it like Das Boot, concentrate on the actors – let them tell the tension and fear. There’s also an obscure comic series called “Albedo” that goes the hard sci-fi route with space combat.

SSG Hay Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 6:33 am

You want movie gaff? Mutant Chronicles. From the props to the action sequences (it’s an action movie that screws up the action sequences, how bad is that?) to major plot points (oh, the protector of the sacred book has a sword shaped just like the missing key and no one noticed? BS!!) to everything about it. This is a movie that should have gone straight to DVD. No, strike that, it should have gone straight to a fiery grave and all those responsible should have been shot and buried before their perfidy became public. I like Ron Perlman, and a clean death at the end of primary filming would have been better than the ignominy suffered at heading the cast list for this awful drek.

Captcha – 10:20 behave – okay, it’s 8:30 now, can I misbehave for the next two hours, then?

Minty reply on June 17th, 2009 11:23 am:

That doesn’t sound so much like “gaff” as “dreck.” And honestly, what do you expect from something with a title like “Mutant Cronicles?” All the people involved in making films, and no one could think of anything better?

SSG Hay reply on June 18th, 2009 5:53 am:

I could make the same argument about Independence Day – not a gaffe at all, just plain drek. *shrug* It’s all in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I’d like to have seen James Cameron at the helm of an ID4 sequel where the remaining aliens (survivors of the so called “Goldblum/Smith Debacle”) go guerilla, in a action-thriller movie in the style of Aliens. But that’s just me. The original was just a little too feel good for my tastes.

As for the name of Mutant Chronicles, the movie is based on a role-playing game of the same name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutant_Chronicles Still, they could have indeed come up with a better name… script, plot, everything.

Captcha – $53 betrays – This weekend only, get your Betrayals at the low low LOW price of only $53! This weekend only! Don’t miss it!

TheShadowCat Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 7:00 am

TheShadowCat reply on June 17th, 2009 7:02 am:

please ignore that last post. Stupid CAPTCHA screwing things up.

Shadowydreamer Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 8:55 am

I’m shocked.. not one person mentioned Top Gun. :D But since I’ll skip the obvious for once.. how about Jurassic Park?

How did the Tyrannusaurus get into the end building? No door was big enough and there was no hole in the building. Where did the huge cliff come from? There was the T-Rex pen on one side with a goat and no drop, there was the Tri-tops on the other side, which was nice and flat. Oh, and “Unix! I know this..” Strangest Unix interface I’ve ever seen.

But they did eat the lawyer, so it’s all good.

Bane reply on June 17th, 2009 10:01 am:

But they completely killed the book…
Changed too much

Leon reply on June 17th, 2009 1:57 pm:

Ugh. Top Gun. I can’t find 2 aircraft at pointblank range doing gentle banks “exciting”. With all that airforce involvement why they didn’t show a real furball is forever beyond me.

Billy reply on June 17th, 2009 2:22 pm:

Sadly, that was navy, the only people left who could think the F-14 tomcat was awsome, and even they know the F-16 would slaughter it.

Leon reply on June 17th, 2009 2:31 pm:

Doh. Navy, meant navy. How’d I screw that one up?

Captcha: midriffs 170,000,000 – All in favour of that.

Twan reply on June 22nd, 2009 9:20 pm:

The whole Jurrasic Park concept was impossible from the beginning since Dinosaurs didn’t have diaphrams and wouldn’t be able to breathe in earth’s current atmosphere with it’s lower levels of oxygen. But I guess it could be possible to give them diaphrams when their genes are spilced with an embryo’s. But oh wait, they got the DNA from the blood inside prehistoric mosquitoes, an incomplete genome I might add, and used *drumroll* FROGS! Dinosaurs weren’t even amphibians and how could they not catch the “saurus = lizard” thing.

Cat Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 10:12 am

God knows I’ve been a Trekkie most of my life, but Honor Harrington could kick Starfleet’s ass and take over the planet blindfolded.

captcha: lowdenbeath gmetic – what happens when you reverse polarity?

StoneWolf reply on June 17th, 2009 11:29 am:

Honor Harrington, Paul Muad’Dib, Gen. Petraeus, LT Rico. That list of who could succesuflly invade Starfleet is very long.

Leon reply on June 17th, 2009 1:59 pm:

A boyscout with a .45 could take over Starfleet. But picking on Star Trek for science/logic errors is like kicking a one-legged drunk that’s lying on the floor. Too easy and you should feel ashamed of yourself after the first few swings.

StoneWolf reply on June 18th, 2009 4:29 am:

Oh come on, Star Trek may be a one legged drunk, but its our one legged drunk. If you can’t poke fun at your friends, who can you poke fun at?

SPC Hyle reply on June 17th, 2009 12:45 pm:

The only reason Starfleet has survived so long is the stunning and staggering incompetence of its enemies. Klingons still carry bat’leths around. Romulans, who have huge amounts of empty space to avoid people not to mention invisible ships, still can’t seem to do more than hold their own. The Borg, despite being able to become IMMUNE TO WEAPONS still aren’t gaining ground. This just defies reason.

Hell, technological disparities aside, the Empire would destroy the Federation. So would His Most Holy Emperor’s Imperium of Mankind, and these guys think that having a bunch of guys stand shoulder to shoulder while charging a wall of metal that shoots machine guns and mortar rounds at them is a sound tactic.

The real short list is the list of sci-fi regimes that COULDN’T take the Federation, and we have to exclude the other morons from Star Trek, since they are literal morons.

ltc_insane reply on June 17th, 2009 7:24 pm:

well it’s not as if the federation could beat the brute force approach of the Emperor’s Navy and Imperial Guard :P of course if they were Space Marines the Federation would be screwed so fast they wouldn’t know what hit them. Hell a 5 man tactical squad could take out a Federation capital ship without breakign a sweat.

SPC Hyle reply on June 17th, 2009 10:08 pm:

Imagine if they teleported a Terminator squad in there. And they could, since Trek shields do not protect against the Warp (non-Trekkies: this is an entirely different warp. Demons live there. It is a bad, bad, bad, bad place to be.)

SPC Wilson reply on September 1st, 2011 10:25 am:

Shit, Rogue Squadron has more energy output than all of Star Fleet combined.

The Enterprise should really look into hiring Hammer’s Slammers. Not cheap, but if you need an LZ secured, by god they’ll make that the most secure LZ in the sector.

Sequoia reply on June 27th, 2009 8:18 pm:

A Frenchman could beat StarFleet.

Billy Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 12:16 pm

Oh yeah, don’t forget behind enemy lines, in intel we made fun of the “sam of death” where the missile made far more turns than any missile can do, and seemed to have infinite fuel and avoid any and all counter missile measures

Leon Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 2:16 pm

I’d like to nominate Starship Troopers. Gad I hated that film. They reintroduce napoleonic columns for the infantry, there’s no oortillery support and only one instance of air support (which showed how incredibly vulnerable the bugs were).

While not really an error but not including power suits from the book was IMO idiotic. The coolest thing about Starship Troopers was the suits and they left it out. I’d also nominate the part (going by memory from my first and only viewing) where a flying bug snatches up a soldier and takes him to a nearby ridge to start carving the squaddie up. Tough Sgt takes aim and shoots the soldier “to put him out of his misery” instead of shooting the bug and calling for a frickin medvac.

Cat reply on June 17th, 2009 6:35 pm:

if I recall correctly, the guy who made the movie really really hated the book. You were supposed to hate the movie, and through hating the movie hate the book.

StoneWolf reply on June 18th, 2009 4:34 am:

In point of fact, the asswhole who butchured Heinlein’s work never read the whole book. He started it, scimmed some, and wrote from there, choosing to focus on the military aspect and portray it as fascism instead of showing what the book was really about, which was Civic Duty and behaving like adults. And for all those other people who rip on Heinlein for Starship Troopers or Friday, read the fucking book first! I’ve read so many reveiws of Heinlein’s work that prove the idiot writing the review either did not read the book or utterly failed to understand it drives me nuts! Ok, sorry, end of rant.

Sgt. Spooky reply on June 20th, 2009 5:26 am:

“Tough Sgt takes aim and shoots the soldier “to put him out of his misery” instead of shooting the bug and calling for a frickin medvac.”- Um, That wasnt a sgt. Im sure you menat Lt. Razachk played by Micheal Ironside. Oddly enough he, and Jeff Goldblum are the only two actors represented in this list in two seperate movies each? (Ironside- Starship Troopers & Topgun, Goldblum- ID4 7 Jurassic Park)

ShuttleZ Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 5:45 pm

IMHO, The only shows/movies that came close to accurately depict (or should that be “predict”) what a space based battle would be like were Babylon 5, Battle Star Galactica, Space: Above and Beyond, Firefly and Serenity.

You are still bound by Newtons’ laws of motion!

1. A body at rest stays at rest, and a body in motion stays in motion, unless it is acted on by an external force.

2. Force equals mass times acceleration (F = ma) (or alternately, force equals the time rate of change of momentum).

3. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

One a last note, as far as I can remember from my High School Physics, space is essentially a vacuum and as near a perfect insulator as you can get, so it would not conduct ANY FRIKING SOUND!

Minty reply on June 18th, 2009 9:04 am:

I’m actually watching BG right now, and I did notice how comparatively quiet the space battles were during the Pilot/Miniseries. Sure, there is a little sound (otherwise fans would whine, because that’s what fans do), but it’s mostly very soft. I thought it was pretty neat.

StoneWolf reply on June 24th, 2009 6:42 am:

Oh it gets better. Somebody realized that in space there is no such thing as “I can’t shake them!” If you get tailed you just whip nose to ass and, while flying backwards, shoot your pursuer in the face. That, along with other realitic manuvers, is wonderful. There’s a wonderful scene late in the show of a strafing run where the Vipers are all flying sidewise (long axis of craft at 90 degrees to direction of travel) and pumeling a stationary target.

Leon reply on June 24th, 2009 8:17 am:

Bah! Babylon 5 did it first! (young whippersnappers…) Some anime series have been doing that for ages.

Ever since that series came out, I find the dogfights I so used to enjoy from SW look utterly silly.

Minty reply on June 25th, 2009 7:31 pm:

Yeah, it’s pretty yummy. . .

Wyvrex Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 7:59 pm

How about in any recent movie that contains military, How could they not have ONE single person to tell these people,

“My god, Do this with the beret, shape and wear it like this, you guys look like you are in the super special forces”

d Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 9:10 pm

worst gaffe? the heating-cooling bit at the end of fantastic four…the metal might get brittle, but not stronger!
then again there are too many physics gaffes… there’s probably one worse

Inquiry Says:
June 18th, 2009 at 7:49 am

I’d like to introduce the James Bond movies. They are, essentially, one gigantic string of gaffes. “Moonraker” in particular is more a comedy than a spy thriller. There are so many gaffes in that movie alone that it would take me hours to list them all. So I’ll just point out one particularly funny one.

In “You Only Live Twice” SPECTRE has, at several points in the movie, video feeds from places where there couldn’t possibly be cameras. The best example is probably the case of a tiny television in the spaceship control room which always is showing the one spaceship they have. How exactly are they filming the spaceship?

StoneWolf reply on June 19th, 2009 5:06 am:

Its BOND! There are exactly three reasons to watch any bond movie. 1) Stuff dies, often explosivly. 2) Bond Girls. 3) Nifty (but utterly bullshit) spy gadgets. Watching Bond for realism is like watching Survivor to learn how to not die in the woods.

paula Says:
June 18th, 2009 at 9:56 am

The movie Blade Runner! That piece of dreck managed to trash not just one, but TWO books totally different books at the same time: ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ by Philip K. Dick and ‘Blade Runner’ by Phillip Nourse. Two books that have NOTHING in common; ‘Androids’ being about, yes, androids, while ‘Blade Runner’ is about a medical dictatorship.

Hell, Philip K. Dick was so ticked off by what they did that he purposely ceased taking his heart medications, knowing that it would — and did — cause his death within days.

SPC Hyle reply on June 18th, 2009 1:44 pm:

Uh, no.

http://www.philipkdick.com/media_twilightzone.html
After I finished reading the screenplay, I got the novel out and looked through it. The two reinforce each other, so that someone who started with the novel would enjoy the movie and someone who started with the movie would enjoy the novel.”

Pte Walker Says:
June 18th, 2009 at 5:32 pm

Ok, random divergence from topic, as inspired by SPC Hyle’s above comment.
“Movies that are an insult to the book that inspired them”
I’ll start with a recent one, Angels and Demons. thanks for cutting half the story, changing character affiliations and botching/utterly changing the beginning and ending

paula reply on June 18th, 2009 7:21 pm:

but other than all that, how did you like it?!?

StoneWolf reply on June 19th, 2009 5:09 am:

It was retarded. The plot was painfully predictable and nobody apparantly realized that, appart from the difficulty of making that much antimatter, taking it above the Vatican turns it from a groundburst into an airburst which is worse. I’m sorry, after it goes boom we now have the Vatican Crater.

StoneWolf reply on June 19th, 2009 5:10 am:

Oh, also I must say I have not read the book, I was simply analzying faults in the movie. My brother says the book is quite good.

Random reply on June 19th, 2009 10:27 am:

Waitwait. Dan Brown? Wrote a book where he isn’t completely talking out of his ass? Are you sure about this?

Personally, I wanted to extend this to BOOKS that depend on massive gaffes, and crown him king of the whole thing. I have yet to see a Dan Brown work that wasn’t thoroughly ridiculed by anybody knowledgable in whatever field he was bungling at the time. (The deal-breaker for me was “polymorphic cleartext ciphers”.)

StoneWolf reply on June 19th, 2009 5:11 am:

I Robot. Seismic tremors were detected from Asimov’s grave and Will Smith can go fuck himself.

David Dylan reply on August 14th, 2009 3:28 pm:

Seconded, thirded and fourthed!

speed reply on June 19th, 2009 5:48 am:

Tom Clancy swore that it would be cold day in hell before he let anyone make one of his books into a movie due to the last two. Why is it that any book featuring Islamic terrorists must have the bad guys changed into blond haired, blue eyed nazis in the movie?

And what’s up with all of the jacked up berets? How hard is it to shave it, woolite it, shape it and wear the damn thing til it dries?

A buddy of mine who, thru a friend of a friend, was watching the filming of a segment of Band of Brothers, ended up as a “military expert” for pointing out some glaring uniform/equipment mistakes. He said much of it was still screwed up in spite of his work.

Killiara Says:
June 21st, 2009 at 4:07 pm

For gaffes, it’s not an obvious one, but… the hieroglyphs in the original black and white Universal studios Mummy movie. They could have copied from actual exhibits and what not, but, the hieroglyphs I recognise on those sets are the ancient egyptian equivelent of asdfghjkl;qwertyuiop.

And, Bane in Batman and Robin. Just… just Bane.

Shadowydreamer reply on August 14th, 2009 8:45 pm:

I think you can just say “Batman and Robin” and cover it..

pfc4life Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:40 am

the missle flying in the objects in mirror are closer than they appear on a car. c’mon how many times are they gonna use that.

Twan Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:31 pm

The movie “Ice Queen” is just one giant gaff and is so terrible it made me want to vomit from beginning to end. It’s about an intact homo erectus is found and then she escapes and kills people at a ski resort, but then is felled via hot tub. It’s only redeeming quality is this conversation:

Scientist: (something along these lines, it was a long speech full of horribly wrong “science”) The homo erectus’ metabolism is the complete opposite of ours giving it unparalled speed in the cold and the abilty to freeze its prey.

Evil pilot that just killed the actual pilot for unexplained reasons: That’s wierd.

Scientist: Not really, some animals have the ability to change their gender and will even eat their own young.

Evil pilot: Yeah, they’re called liberals.

Billy Says:
June 24th, 2009 at 10:03 am

Of course, if you want a lore gaff, there is the movie Silent Hill, in which, pyramid head shows up, despite the fact that he doesn’t show up in the game until the second one. And if you read what he is supposed to represent, his appearence in the movie makes no sense. But I don’t nitpick about this kind of stuff, so I still enjoyed seeing Mr.Head rip off a girls skin. And shove a gigantic sword through a thick steel door as if it was made of tinfoil.

Billy Says:
June 24th, 2009 at 10:10 pm

Wait, I have a real gaff when it comes to video games, Frogger. How does a frog succeed in drowning, despite being the size of a car, and in a world where alligators are the size of a truck. Wait, forgot, damn nile crocs.

Maven Says:
June 25th, 2009 at 12:10 pm

Let’s not forget that – in our own minds anyway – we are Apex Predator. That means that we concentrate all the dioxin, DDT, heavy metals, etc. we consume through our prey. BLEECH! I doubt that’d be very appetizing to someone looking for a snack.

Billy Says:
June 27th, 2009 at 3:46 pm

Anybody remember the show Sliders? At one point when 2 of the guys were imprisoned, to make up for another few inches of wire to override the lock, they went for a small tub of tap water, and said it was the worlds best conductor. Now, ignore the fact that they were able to magically know how to tear apart the electric door system and be able to override it at all by messing with a few wires. Water, unless it has a bunch of particals, or if its something like salt water, it conducts like crap. It is nearly the opposite of the worlds best conductor, next to air and the vaccume of space. Now, I know enough not to stand in water and play with electric crap, but still, unless the tap water was salted heavily, or full of crap, it may not have been a good enough conductor to open the door, depending on how much electricity was going through those wires. (though it couldn’t have been a whole lot as the smart guy was playing with them stripped and not wearing gloves of any type.)

captcha Mr jibbing, no, I don’t think that was the name of anybody on Sliders.

Sequoia Says:
June 27th, 2009 at 8:25 pm

Plan 9 from Outer Space. ‘Nough said.