Ten of the Dumbest Things in Science Fiction Film

June 25th, 2009

I’ve been involved in a few discussions recently where some instances of really dumb things in science fiction movies came up.   I’m not talking science here so much (my usual issue to harp on) as just things that are so astoundingly dumb you got to wonder what people were thinking, or if they were thinking at all.

TV has more dumb crap than movies, but you have to start somewhere, and films are generally a lot more memorable and more commonly shared.

Here’s my short list of losers, but I’m sure you can suggest some other ones.   Prepare to groan, laugh, or cry…I’ve dug up some relevant videos for them, but it wasn’t always easy.   Be warned that there are spoilers below, but personally I’d like to be warned about the mega dumb in order to avoid it.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. God lives in the center of the galaxy beyond a great barrier that no one can get through, and that no one has ever gotten through (so how do they know he’s there?), except that the Enterprise can fly there in a few hours and zip in and out without any problems.   (Wish the crew of Voyager knew it wouldn’t take them decades to travel a fraction of that distance.)   God, where to start?   The whole thing was just so very, very dumb.

The Star Wars prequels introducing the midi-chlorians as essentially “sexually transmitted disease” carrying the Force (thanks, Brian, for that way of looking at things).   There was a bunch of other dumb stuff, too, from trying to make the Force sort of scientific, and then making Darth Vader the product of a virgin birth.   Oh, and Jar Jar Binks.   C3PO was the comic relief in the original movies, but that wasn’t enough.   Or how about the offensive racial stereotypes pasted onto the aliens?   Still, I pick the midi-chlorians.

Superman flies so fast, the spin of the Earth reverses and so does time, so he can rescue Lois Lane from the nuclear-explosion-triggered earthquake.   WTF?   I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.   And in the second Superman movie, he and the Phantom Zone criminals start pulling powers out of their asses like those light beams out of their hands.   (OK, not their asses, technically.)   It’s not science, it’s not even fantasy (which would be self-consistent in most cases).   It’s just dumb, almost like “then he woke up and she wasn’t dead.”   And unfortunately, the Superman movies got more and more dumb with additional sequels.

Han shot first in Star Wars! We’ve already got dumb stuff in the creature cantina scene with Han’s line about the Falcon making the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs, something that Lucas didn’t fix when he revised the movie. You don’t just go back and change characters like this and think it’s smart. It’s like da Vinci rising from his grave to put a little frown on the Mona Lisa. It’s dumb! Actually, when I watch the new one, it’s like someone scribbled all over the Mona Lisa. Not that Star Wars was ever the Mona Lisa, but still…

In the movie Signs, these sophisticated and evil alien assholes fly to Earth, a planet rich in life and oceans and rain, and attack the humans with hand to hand combat.   If that weren’t dumb enough, water, WATER, is like acid to them.   Oh, God, yes, about the only substance scientists universally think is likely necessary for life.   Dumb!

In Independence Day, the scientist uses his Mac to upload a virus to help beat the aliens.   WTF?   Computers in movies may as well be totally fucking magic.   Any computer genius can hack a password in a minute with a gun to his head while getting a blowjob (Swordfish), so this fan-altered ending to ID4 may as well have been what happened.

The dragons of Reign of Fire eat ash (lots of chemical energy there), destroy almost all land-based life on the surface of the world periodically yet leave no evidence of this, and have only a single male to fertilize the eggs for the entire species.   I mean, these fuckers hibernate, too, right?   For next to forever, apparently.   The dragons were so cool, fighting them was so cool, but the entire concept as developed was incredibly dumb!

Basing a serious movie like Mission to Mars on the “Face on Mars” is an idea that should have been laughed out of production.   But noooooo…and we’re all the dumber for it.

The plot of The Core.   Bonus points for applying “this is your brain on drugs” type visuals to “this is the Earth without an E-M field.”   There’s a lot of dumb in here.   Microwaves go right through magnetic fields, but not through atmosphere very well, for instance.

Got to finish up with my favorite kick ball, Armageddon.   Any scene in the whole movie is dumb, I suggest.   I’ve ranted about this one before.   More than once.   It’s not only the science that is dumb, however, but a lot of the little complicating details that make no sense.   I mean, these are fucking morons running around in space with 12 days of training coming down with “space dementia” and attacking each other and being general goofs.   Sorry if I’m being too repetitive with this, but I can’t make a “dumbest” list without including this entire movie. Anyway, here’s a ten-minute version of the film that has cut out most of the movie (and hence most of the errors) and should be the official version from now on.

I’m sure there are a lot of equally worthy matches to these, unfortunately.   Somehow there’s always room for dumb stuff in movies, even when people are spending $100 million.

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