Stupid Hollywood Physics

BBC NEWS | Technology | When sci-fi forgets the science

Every fan of science fiction film knows that for every genuinely good movie they see, they will have to endure an awful lot of rubbish.

For every innocent gem like Star Wars: A New Hope there is a Phantom Menace. And for every life-affirming classic like The Incredible Shrinking Man there is a soul-destroying Battlefield Earth.

And recently - particularly this summer - there has been an awful lot of rubbish around.

A strange idiocy seems to have over-taken the makers of blockbusters such as The Matrix Reloaded, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and others who are bolstering their creations with some decidedly dodgy science.

One of the golden rules of good SF is that you can take one implausible concept (Faster-than-light travel, psionic powers, self-aware computers, whatever), but you should then follow the implications of that completely logically. Written SF seems follow that rule, but Hollywood SF doesn't. Perhaps its because so many Hollywood films seem to be made by committees, or that Hollywood screenwriters are not SF writers, and have little or no background in science.

Of course, when a good SF film gets made, often the mainstream critics don't understand it and give it poor reviews (much like they did to Peter Jackson's version of Lord of the Rings)