I caught an early showing of “2012” today. Coming as it does from the same folks who gave the world “Independence Day,” “Godzilla,” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” I went into it knowing pretty much what I was in for. And I was right… about two and a half hours of high-rez disaster porn. I also fully expected bad science, and I got that in spades. But what twerked me was that I got the bad science within the first two minutes or so of the movie.
I had been wondering what their excuse for the Earth going bonkers was going to be, and I must admit to having been a tad surprised. Instead of the “planetary alignment” causing tidal stresses, it turns out the sun is going into a more active phase. So far, so good. As a result of this, a neutrino detector deep underground in an Indian copper mine is picking up increased neutrino emissions from the sun. Ok, sure, that kinda follows. But where I damn near stood up and shouted “Wrongs! That is teh suck!!!” was when the particle physicist points out that the neutrinos have “mutated” and are now interacting with the matter in the core of the Earth, causing the core to heat up, expand, and go funny.
Fundamental particles “mutating?”
Neutrinos interacting with normal matter, causing a planetary mass of nickle/iron to heat noticably?
“2012” demonstrated a problem common in sci-fi flicks: an issue arises, and an on-screen scientist conveniently explains it, and gets it laughably wrong. This is due either to the writers not understanding science and thus just pulling some nonsense out of their asses, or assuming that the audience is too dumb to understand a more sensible explanation. But there are two solutions to this:
1) Get a scientific advisor who knows his/her business, and can come up with either a good explanation, or alternatively some nonsensical bullcrap that at least sounds halfway good
2) Don’t explain it at all.
I mean, come on. Every time Captain Kirk pulled the trigger on a phaser, did he stop and explain the operating principle? How about warp drive or the transporter? No, he just used ’em, and the audience accepted them without explanation. “It’s a ray gun, goes zap.” So if there’s something truly wacky and fundamental to the story, such as the Earth going bugnuts as in “2012,” if the plot does not require an explanation for the problem… consider not giving one. If the scientists did not know *why* the core was going bonkers, they’d still be able to make predictions, and the story could continue on sans laughable exposition.
And if you *need* to have some sci-fi explantion, why not try something truly unusual?
6 Responses to “Movies that both do and don’t suck: “2012””
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Yes, once upon a time the screen writers/directors made sure that there was some kind of scientific validity to the story because that enhanced the realism for a more or less scientifically literate ticket buyer. But now, that’s not an issue because the morons have been marching out of the public schools for over 20 years. And that goes double for any movie supposedly “based” on history, e.g. “Pearl Harbor”.
If you’re an educated person who is scientifically literate and who takes delight in “getting it” when a story relies on rationality to tell it’s tale, then you’re shit out of luck with anything that passes for an action adventure flick these days.
I’m convinced that if even a significant minority understood the full implications of this phenomena, there’d be high level teachers union officials hanging from every lamp post.
Why that nitpicking? 😉
98% of the average popcorn munching movie goers may have never heard before of ‘neutrino’ anyway and will think that it is a new kind of Italian pasta.
From this view, a new sort of fictional interacting neutrinos isn’t the baddest idea.
Way better than the stopping earth core in ‘The Core’ and startig it again with nukes. *gg*
“Maverick is supersonic, I’ll be there in thirty seconds!”
You are aware that this movie is “based” on the apocalyptic predictions of the Mayan calender, and I am fairly certain they had no idea what a neutrino was, or how it interacted with other,,,,thingies? Right?
I long ago gave up on seeing anything even vaguely like real science in movies, and quit watching disaster movies, other than for the laugh factor, many moons ago. Just a little Indian lingo, to spice things up, ya know!
I reckon one of the writers must have read something about the ‘solar neutrino problem’, and ran with it from there…..
He should have read farther and realized the problem being referenced was the slow delivery of Solar Neutrino Pizza from Dominos, the Noid being on strike and whatnot!