You have to be willing to believe. Believe in vegetarian vampire lovers and child wizards, in Russian double agents and in homicidal maniacs who will hunt you with a pitchfork – you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief for the hour and half it takes for the movie to come to its end. However, there are those of us who insist on some semblance of realism – you see, we’re far more tolerant of the simply fantastical than we are of the illogical.
There’s nothing like a gigantic, glaring hole in the middle of your plot to make things interesting for the nitpickers among us. Yes, that’s me behind you, booing and throwing popcorn at the screen.
Independence Day
America saves the day again and we’re all terribly grateful. Alien spaceships are clearly the equivalent of Apple ipods – so easy to use, so intuitive that even Will Smith can fly one with zero training. Even if you’re willing to overlook this because Will looks so cute smoking a cigar, it’s hard to get past the fact that the two managed to solve earth’s problem by uploading a virus to the Alien mothership – a virus so potent that it brings down the force fields of an entire fleet of ships. Hacking into the alien network – minus the internet - is a breeze for Jeff-Genius-Goldbum. And sure, they’re light years ahead of us in technology, but when it comes to Operating Systems, Windows has clearly gone intergalactic.
The Matrix
Ah, this movie has my undying devotion, but the scientifically inclined among us have been known to snigger cynically when the topic comes up. The problem, apparently, lies at the very heart of all the hullaballoo – the endless fields, where ‘human beings are no longer born, we’re grown.’ The thing is, human beings take a lot of energy to ‘grow’ – far more than what could be harvested off us. The idea of a human being as a battery is laughable – and the machines get an F for the efficiency of their energy plan. Plus, we’re told they have developed highly effective fusion reactors – human beings, with their rebellion against a vast and convoluted Matrix, their messy, demanding bodies and low energy output just doesn’t seem worth the bother of keeping around. But then, we wouldn’t have a plot to start with.
Star Wars vs Star Trek
Whose explosions are more realistic? Nitpickers love to point out that in any case explosions in out of space don’t go bang – sound doesn’t travel in the vacuum of outer space. But the Death Star’s noisy demise might be least of the loopholes in the Star Wars set - which, let’s face it, seems to take quite a few liberties simply on the basis of it being set in a ‘galaxy far, far away.’ Fans of George Lucas however, will be pleased to know that at least one astronomer – a certain Phil Plait – declared that the ring produced by the explosion of the death star was far more realistic than that produced by the explosion of the Klingon Mining Operation in Star Trek VI.
The Lord of the Rings
Why not ask the eagles to do a fly over mount doom and drop the ring right in the first place? Sigh. Need a diversion? Let Sauron know that there are two hobbits bumbling around somewhere in his kingdom.
Ocean’s Eleven:
Everyone loves a good heist, but Soderbergh’s robbers clearly have supernatural assistance. Remember the bank vault and the bags filled with flyers? Carried out of the vault and into the van, these decoys are supposedly filled with money. However, Danny and Linus couldn’t have taken them down there and there is no room with the Chinese contortionist. They also have to have been carried out to the van before the SWAT team appears, which means they’d have to have been in the vault to start with. The cherry on top? Steven Soderbergh acknowledges that there’s no explanation in his commentary. Ah, Hollywood.
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