
Insultingly stupid movie physics – The Core (2003) - swatkat
http://intuitor.com/moviephysics/core.html
======
credit_guy
Can I confess that after about 20 minutes of Interstellar, I stood up and left
the movie theater? I was initially annoyed by the fact the movie makers
ignored the tyranny of the rocket equation: a reasonably normal looking rocket
took our heroes to some faraway planets. Guys, you need an absolutely huge
rocket to just go to Mars. We'll never make it out of the Solar system with
chemical rockets only. But somehow, in a world with rusty trucks you get a
rocket to take you to some planet that obviously is not one of the seven
planets in our neighborhood. Now, you can suspend your disbelief, and accept
that in this movie-universe the humankind was more advanced. But then they
reach the ocean planet, and instead of getting whatever information they came
for via radio transmission, they need to land to pick up a robot. And they
couldn't just retrieve a memory stick from the robot, they needed to take the
whole thing with them. That's how much I saw from the movie before I decided
enough is enough.

~~~
brtkdotse
I read this in my head with Comic Book Guy's voice and it made my day.

It's funny how once you get hung up on a minor detail it spoils the entire
experience. I had a friend who refused to play Jedi Knight II because the
light saber physics didn't work like they did in the movies. Each to his own I
guess ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
thicknavyrain
I think there was actually a cheat code in Jedi Knight II that _did_ enable
movie style lightsaber dynamics.

------
nyx_
Also has DJ Qualls as Rat, one of the dumbest computer hacker stereotypes to
ever be committed to film. After the FBI knocks to raid his apartment, he
rushes into his computer room and starts microwaving CDs and shoving floppies
down the garbage disposal... then once they have him, they tell him they need
him to control the information on the entire Internet. He says yes, but only
on the condition that he's given "an unlimited supply of Xena tapes and Hot
Pockets." Quality stuff.

------
aniijbod
I tell everyone that The Core is the science community's most derided movie,
and yet it is in fact an excellent science movie for an important reason,
which is simply that it puts science and scientists on a world-saving
pedestal. The fact that just about everything that is in the film is in fact
unscientific doesn't detract for a moment for the deep implicit respect for
the value of science to humanity that the film promotes. This script would
likely never have been given the kind of budget it got when it was made and so
we need to count ourselves lucky that something so entertaining also offers so
much to those looking for a scientific stick with which to beat the Hollywood
studio system.

~~~
GrumpyYoungMan
Apollo 13 was a much better movie to point to with regards to STEM types
saving the day, despite the artistic license it takes.

------
ahartmetz
Uhm, I'm a physicist by education and I like The Core. I see it as action-
comedy that is played with a straight face. Of course it's all nonsense! It's
not insulting if you never think you were supposed to take it seriously. The
"unobtainium", the talk about money and timeline to build the ship (to anyone
who has done anything remotely similar) and the uber cliche (and very funny)
hacker type should be obvious clues.

------
Camillo
Here is the oxygen grill video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sab2Ltm1WcM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sab2Ltm1WcM)

------
dylan604
It's funny to me how a sci-fi movie gets chided for being so fake, but people
are so willing to oblige fantasy movies like
LoTR/HarryPotter/Superman/Avengers/etc with a suspension of disbelief. And no,
I'm not white knighting this waste of celluloid.

~~~
cwillu
It's almost like there's a difference between the genre of science-fiction,
and that of fantasy.

~~~
ironmagma
Is there, though?

