Someone loved Starship Troopers after all!
February 23rd 2010 06:53
You sometimes have to wonder whether scientists have enough to do. After all, isn't the world supposed to be worried about climate change, or global warming, or the sun frying us up or a meteorite hitting us full bore? Yes, all those and more, but what is physicist Sidney Perkowitz doing? He's created a set of guidelines for Hollywood to make sure it keeps to real physics (and presumably other forms of science) when it's making movies.
No more science of stuff that can't possibly happen. Prof Perkowitz just won't have it.
I'm not sure whether he's really quite up with the play, since one of his criticisms is of a movie that came out in 1997. (I mean, did they have science in 1997?) He debunks Starship Troopers for having giant bugs that couldn't possibly carry their own weight. (Surely he would have been better debunking the movie, one of the worst sci-fi movies of all time - but he actually quite likes it.)
Seemingly, according to the Prof, if you scale up something like spidery creatures to that size, they'll just collapse. Too big for their own good. To my way of thinking, if they can cope with their weight on those feathery legs when they're tiny, why can't they cope when their legs have been increased in size in proportion to everything else? Apparently not.
Equally apparently, Prof Perkowitz seems to have forgotten that this is a story - more, it's a
sci-fi story, in which anything can happen, just like in fairy tales. (There's very little difference really - for instance, both are far more moral genres than most 'ordinary' stories.)
I quote from an article on the subject: The Science and Entertainment Exchange is backed by Dustin Hoffman, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote the screenplays for The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Perkowitz said: "The hope is that it will get better science into film while still making them interesting."
Dustin Hoffman has backed this? Has he ever made a sci-fi movie in his life? Oh yes, that daft thing about the monkeys infecting humans, in which a whole town was shut off from the outside world. And teenagers stopped thinking about the best acne treatment for a few minutes of their otherwise impoverished lives. And in which Hoffman's lack of height gave him no mana at all.
The Prof goes on: "If you violate that [a lack of scientific coherence] you are in trouble. The chances are that the public will pick it up and that is what matters to Hollywood. The Core
did not make money because people understood the science was so out to lunch," he added. Yeah, right. Does anyone else actually remember The Core?
The science is more often than not out to lunch. Who cares? If the movie is exciting, well-made, full of drama and humour, has some nasty beasts or strange goings-on, that's what we go for. Not to check out the science.
No more science of stuff that can't possibly happen. Prof Perkowitz just won't have it.
I'm not sure whether he's really quite up with the play, since one of his criticisms is of a movie that came out in 1997. (I mean, did they have science in 1997?) He debunks Starship Troopers for having giant bugs that couldn't possibly carry their own weight. (Surely he would have been better debunking the movie, one of the worst sci-fi movies of all time - but he actually quite likes it.)
Seemingly, according to the Prof, if you scale up something like spidery creatures to that size, they'll just collapse. Too big for their own good. To my way of thinking, if they can cope with their weight on those feathery legs when they're tiny, why can't they cope when their legs have been increased in size in proportion to everything else? Apparently not.
Equally apparently, Prof Perkowitz seems to have forgotten that this is a story - more, it's a
sci-fi story, in which anything can happen, just like in fairy tales. (There's very little difference really - for instance, both are far more moral genres than most 'ordinary' stories.)
I quote from an article on the subject: The Science and Entertainment Exchange is backed by Dustin Hoffman, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote the screenplays for The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Perkowitz said: "The hope is that it will get better science into film while still making them interesting."
Dustin Hoffman has backed this? Has he ever made a sci-fi movie in his life? Oh yes, that daft thing about the monkeys infecting humans, in which a whole town was shut off from the outside world. And teenagers stopped thinking about the best acne treatment for a few minutes of their otherwise impoverished lives. And in which Hoffman's lack of height gave him no mana at all.
The Prof goes on: "If you violate that [a lack of scientific coherence] you are in trouble. The chances are that the public will pick it up and that is what matters to Hollywood. The Core
The science is more often than not out to lunch. Who cares? If the movie is exciting, well-made, full of drama and humour, has some nasty beasts or strange goings-on, that's what we go for. Not to check out the science.
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