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she blinded me with science

Popular Science Picks the 2012 Movie With the Sloppiest Science

by Rebecca Pahle | 2:00 pm, January 2nd, 2013


Science in sci-fi movies is rarely all that accurate. We get that. It’s OK. Space battles wouldn’t be nearly so visually interesting if there weren’t any impossible explosions taking place in a vacuum. But some movies take their disregard for the basic principles of science to the next level. And according to Popular Science, the worst perpetrator from 2012 is…

Prometheus. Never saw that coming, did you?

The crew at PopSci called Ridley Scott‘s Alien prequel (hey, screenwriter Damon Lindelof gave the go-ahead on calling it a prequel, so darnit, that’s what I’m doing) “a funhouse of ridiculous and horribly distracting violations of science–and common sense.”

Among those violations: Scientists who take off their helmets within minutes of setting foot on an alien planet, the crew of a high-tech mission never having met before the start of said mission, and a super-sophisticated android who can’t tell time (“when asked how long the mission has lasted, [David] says, “2 years, 4 months, 18 days, 36 hours, 15 minutes,” not “2 years, 4 months,19 days, 12 hours and 15 minutes”).

They conclude:

“Just about the only thing that Scott got right with Prometheus was the organizational ineptitude of the mission, which was essentially a doomed-to-catastrophically-fail season of Big Brother on an alien world.”

Ouch.

The others on the list, from least-to-most offensive, are: The Amazing Spider-Man, Looper, Skyfall, The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, and Total Recall.

(via: blastr)

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  • Anonymous

    the best part of the article (aside from the Prometheus slams) is the comment section wherein almost every comment is correcting science and relevant plot points the author got wrong

  • http://twitter.com/Steambrew Bruce Townley

    I learned from the second Spider Man movie that if you’ve got a runaway fusion reaction just dump it in the nearest river and everything will be just fine.

  • Ben English

    The fusion bomb thing bothered me too in TDKR, but they suggest that Batman recovered from his injuries in a few days: it actually took several MONTHS before he was even able to stand up.

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