God help us all if Moonraker is considered Science Fiction. It shouldn't even be considered a Bond film, really.

wasn't there a simpsons episode (or godforbid, comic) where the three nerds were allowed to do whatever they wanted--and one made the most realistic, science fiction film ever.

and it was just a massive ship sailing through space. when asked where the explosions, laser or fire were, he goes:
"that's silly. why would that happen?"

"Weird depiction of what would happen if a human is exposed to vacuum without a spacesuit, or a "hull breach" to vacuum which doesn't instantly kill the ship's crew"

there is extensive reasearch on this...
2001 got it just about right.

[www.sff.net]

and as for people moving in slow motion in zero gravity...
setting aside creative license, I think generally it's wise to move 'carefully' in zero-G

i think we need the faster-than-light travel to make the genre worthwhile...

and communication with aliens too.. too much plot-lag if you gotta deal with this..

i like the 'people move in slow motion in zero gravity' thing -- it would be better if their voices slow down too just likes in bugs bunny in "Hair-Raising Hare" (y'know, with the red, furry tooth-shaped monster and evil scientist): "s-s-s-t-t-t-t-t-o-o-o-o-o-p-p-p-p-p-p-p...............t-h-h-h-h-a-a-a-t-t-t-t-t-t-t...........r-r-r-r-r-a-a-a-a-b-b-b-b-b-b-i-i-i-i-i-i-t-t-t-t! ! !"

i suspect the reasearch may have included a visit or two to Insultingly Stpid Movie Physics, and if it didn't, it probably should have. Worth a trip to read the "phyiscs" behind "The Core", if nothing else.

There was a physics professor at my university who gave as lecture about science in sci-fi. He actually was on the X-Files once in weird stock footage of scientists, he also used to be the school pres until he got caught crank calling co-eds, but thank god for tenure. anyways..

The one thing that always stuck in my head and gets me thinking about almost all films now is that in Independance Day, the aliens would never have had to attack us because merely having ships with that much mass, that close to earth, would screw up our ecological system and oceans etc that we'd all be dead from that before they fired the first shot.

In anycase.. fun list, thanks.

wait, what was the weird depiction of vacuum on the human body in 2001? i thought it was reasonable. also, neither "the right stuff" and "apollo 13" were science fiction. unless "the longest day" was also sf...

Space Cowboys (Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, right?) had all planets with the same climate? They only had one planet... I don't remember space cowboy's every leaving the Earth-Moon orbit.

I think that check box should be over one to "sounds in space"

Vacuum instantly kills you? Lasers are faster-than-light? (At least you fixed it in the text.)

Why couldn't highly advanced aliens have figured out communications issues?

Yeah, more than a couple ringers in there. The only reason Stargate didn't violate more laws is they weren't applicable to the movie.

Let's see some super stat-crunching, io9, and tell us if movies with "space" in the title tend to have a better grasp on physics than movies with "star" in the title!

How about a column for "Suffers from Horrible Script and Acting"?

I didn't see Serenity, but I would assume they have some kind of FTL drive it they visit other planets.

Re: Serenity: How are you justifying the planetological assertions?

Of course the planets all have at-or-near Earth gravity. Why would humans attempt to colonize non-gravitationally-compatible planets?

Also, how can you, based on only the snippets of each planet viewed, state that the planet's ecology and climate are planet-wide?

@goldfarb:

Agreed, 2001 was highly researched for accuracy. The only problem was when Dr. Floyd, on the trip to the Moon, was sipping his meal through a straw. When he stopped sipping, the fluid peas in the straw fell back into the container. In zero g the stuff would stay in the straw.

Actually, Serenity had sound in space. Firefly didn't. And for the most part Serenity tried to make it sound like the sounds were coming into the ship/suit, until that last big battle. But if an explosion in space is the oxygen bursting in one last huge fireball, wouldn't it make a noise? It jut wouldn't travel...

No clue.

Also:
"Weird depiction of what would happen if a human is exposed to vacuum without a spacesuit, or a "hull breach" to vacuum which doesn't instantly kill the ship's crew"
Didn't io9 post about a month ago on the 'real' effects of space exposure? How it wouldn't be instantaneous death or even instantaneous freezing. In fact, after reading the article I was almost convinced that Farscape was semi-accurate [given advance enough tech to heal what would be a torn up and dehydrated body quickly.

@GentlyClubBillPart2: What about movies with "cyber" in the title?

@jrishel: If you hit "refresh" you'll see that the check mark for Space Cowboys has magically relocated. We actually spotted that problem 30 seconds after the post went live. :)

@EBone: Actually, there's never a mention of FTL in Serenity/Firefly. The assumption from the beginning of the show was that humans found a lot of earth sized moons to colonize and terraform in a specific solar system, so FTL travel wasn't necessary. Course, there are a lot of other issues that arise with that. One being 'earth norm'. Course, if every planet is a moon of some sort and they're all the same size, and humans have been there for hundreds of years, if not thousands, then they'd have adapted to it. But then you get to think about gravity on the ship and how they can fly fast but not FTL and not be squished like itty bitty bugs.

With God and Luck on our side, one day, we'll make a single movie that violates all these rules. Twice. Michael Bay can direct.

perhaps the vacuum wouldn't instantly kill - i'm thinking the near absolute-zero as having a deleterious effect on the human body -- "ahh shoot, all the molecules stopped vibrating on the left side of my body..."

@goldfarb: I think "moving slowly" is actually from the Buzz Aldren School of EVA, back when the Apollo guys were still trying to figure out how to use a wrench in zero-G.

The Movie, Serenity HAD sounds in space, to my great dismay. It was only the show Firefly that kept the sounds out of the the space scenes.

@Rus McLaughlin: It'll be called Explosions! in Space!

I don't know about Solaris. Its been years since I saw it, but I thought the planet was sort of a sentient being which brought human thoughts to life. I'm not sure if it was demonstrated that the planet had a universal climate. If it was, I'm not sure that would be so unlikely, given the extreme weirdness of the planet. Perhaps it simulated Earth gravity for the benefit of its human guest. Perhaps I'm grasping at straws.

I think laser should be recategorized from faster-than-light weapons to fast-as-light weapons ( which are still pretty fast).

Hardly fair to include "Star Wars" under "Easy to communicate with aliens", since all the "aliens" lived under a Galactic Republic/Empire with a common ruling/governing language. There was obviously multi-lingualism (Han/Chewie understand each other, Lando/Nien, Uncle Owen/Jawas, etc...) and use of translator droids.

"Faster-than-light travel is probably not ever going to be possible."

Isn't this reasoning a little obtuse for a science fiction fan? Sure we'll probably never have warp coils specifically or spooling FTL drives specifically, but to say that ALL of the technological innovations that will EVER take place will still fail to allow ANYONE to EVER travel even slightly faster then that speed of light is something a really old person would say.

Fun list, however I disagree with the rankings for the Alien movies, assuming they mean the Alien/s/3/Rez series!

1) NEVER is it indicated that all planets have the same gravity (Earth-level); the series only depicts two planets (three if we count Earth in AvP). Since the tech level of the series clearly shows that terraforming/colonization is still a very difficult process, I think it makes sense that humanity would deliberately settle on planets as similar to Earth as possible (feasibility of finding them notwithstanding).

2) Again, only two planets are depicted; neither of them shows a great deal of exploration of the surface - in Alien, they are within walking distance of the ship. In Aliens, within driving distance. In Alien 3, they are indoors for probably 99% of the film. I think it is fair to depict relatively small distances with no significant changes in the environment.

3) Interbreeding isn't the word I would use here, but I'm not going to argue.

4) Weird depictions of exposure to vacuum? In Aliens, Ripley opens the doors, explosive decompression, the alien is sucked out. She was wearing a space suit. Only instance I can think of where a vacuum was involved.

@IconoclasticFlow: Exposure to Vacuum: at the end of "Rez", the Alien/Human hybrid gets its ass sucked out a hole in a window...

@Rus McLaughlin: "Awesome!"

Aliens movies have "easy communication with aliens"?

Maybe. Like I have good communication with my lunch...

@foolish-rain: Wait, what? Did we say that? Actually might be an editing error.

@Annalee Newitz: OK, good. We didn't have that box checked. I think you misread it, foolish-rain.

re: aliens.. it's really quite unlikely that one species would be able to use so many disparate other species as hosts.. more likely the chemistry just wouldn't jibe, and you would have a 'dud' alien.

this of course, would still be quite painful, and would still really, really suck. :)

Nice table! But it should have three categories in each box: Bad, Good, and Not Applicable. Some of those movies didn't *have* any aliens, for example. And 2001 and Contact both include faster-than-light travel...

@foolish-rain: 'Interbreeding' is checked for the 'Alien' movies, not 'communication'.

F.Y.I.

According to the show "MANSWERS" that runs on Spike TV, A human being could live up to one minute-thirty seconds in space before he finally dies.

This data was compiled by nasa doing research involving human corpses and test dogs in space. After about thirty seconds major damage occurs to the cardiovascular system and outer layer of skin. Depending upon the outside temperature, after then, you either freeze or fry. They did not say anything about blowing-up or your eyes bugging out.

Umm, did they even watch Stargate?

Easy interbreeding? Um why shouldn't humans be able to mate with other humans.

Easy communication? The whole movie was about Earth humans having trouble communicating with the Abydos humans. Oh wait the mega technological Ra who created Earth society spoke english, gee, can't imagine why.

Earth gravity?
Well, you'd probably only use humans to mine a planet if that planet matched earth in ways that made humans adept at mining it.

And speaking of Stargate. Did anyone watch the SG-1 movie that came out this week? My god, that was crap!

Great list, thanks for this.

The old classic "Destination Moon" tried to be realistic. It was the primative Special Effects that made it look questionable.

Considering stars and planets explode in firey bursts of bursty-stuff, wouldn't it figure that a ship in space would also be firey?

Also Universal made Joss put sound into the space battle in Serenity, he was against it as there is no sound in space (except for your screams!!!!), this was accurately portrayed on Firefly.

In Serenity it is never stated or implied that all of the planets have "earth gravity," nor has enough of each planet been seen to state that there is no climate difference around the planet. In Serenity/Firefly the planets are terraformed to create artificial gravity and climate, so if there are technically "machines" or something controlling this, wouldn't it logically mean that climates planet-wide would be almost indistinguishable from each other? When they thought that Miranda was a "black planet" it was implied that it was thought that the terraforming didn't take on the planet, further suggesting that such planetary manipulation was necessarily perfect and that some planets didn't successfully terraform to be inhabited by people.

Not that I'm a dork who spends too much time thinking about Firefly/Serenity or anything...

Star Wars does not contain planets with gravity like Earth's. We have neither Earth nor Earth persons present in the series to use for comparison.

@foolish-rain: @Annalee Newitz: Technically they did have communications with Aliens, just not the Xenomorphs. In the first one they pretty easily detected a distress signal from the derelict craft which was also alien. How they knew their beeps and boops were a distress signal is beyond me.
I'm rather shocked actually that that giant elephant man in the chair has never gotten more play.

"Planets should have diverse climates, instead of one unified climate across a "desert planet" or "forest planet.""

Given an atmosphere and a lot of other assumptions, sure. Otherwise, I disagree; in our own solar system, we know that Venus, Mars, etc., have pretty uniform geography and climate over the whole shebang. As do the moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune.

what you wrote about Solaris (72) is complete bullshit.

So I guess a one-world-climate means that none of the other planets in our solar system exist? As far as I know Earth is the only one with a wide range of climate.

Mercury would be the molten lava planet.
Venus would be the "swamp" planet.
Mars would be the desert planet.
Jupiter would be the storm/wind planet.
Etc.

I guess Earth would be the "garden" planet?

Sure, we'll never go faster than light.

Just like how we'll never fly.

@Zantor: not that I'd ever dispute a MANANSWER, but it sounds like they didn't take (or at least, mention) decompression sickness. Hole in spaceship = you get the bends.

@blackeyedgurl: I'm fairly sure what they're talking about is a fire, burning in space, not a fast-fading explosion that ends when the oxygen's gone.

I'm thinking it was an episode of B5 where somebody observed you could always tell who was winning a space battle by the color of the explosions. Orangey fires were oxygen fires from human ships; greenish fires were more sulfaric atmospheres from alien ships.

@Huxleyhobbes: If we were meant to go faster than light god would've given us Tachyon legs.

Wait a minute..."easy communication with Aliens" for CONTACT? How is that Bad Science, exactly? The whole plot is centered around the fact that the advanced civilizations of the galaxy have been watching us for centuries and have decided to give us a test to see if we're ready to join the universe around us. And given how much trouble it takes for mankind to solve a riddle that was meant to be easy for us to solve, essentially, I would hardly call it easy.

The aliens spend an untold amount of time (although centuries are implied, at a minimum) studying mankind, learning about them and then following a well-tested procedure for inducting new races into their hegemony...and then using advanced psionics to talk down to one of mankind's representatives...AFTER they construct a giant device the alien riddle tells them to build whose exact function we don't really understand.

If that's 'easy' communication...I'd hate to see what hard was like.

@Garrison Dean: Well, distress signals, though.

The distress signal for the Navy is SOS for a reason: it's the simplest, most unambiguous signal you can send with morse code.

It's not like the alien distress signal in Alien was like, "Oh, hey, alien craft landed here. I'm in distress! Also, I've got some hideously dangerous cargo on board, so watch out for that."

I don't think it's especially unrealistic to assume that aliens who have built a giant spaceship might also have developed a simple radio transmission that could easily be interpreted as a distress signal.

@Rus McLaughlin: Consider the source, it is MANSWERS. They also claim that it takes a 35 lb "Boob" to crush a beer can. I just report...You decide!

@Huxleyhobbes: It's a little different from that, buddy. At light speed, all matter becomes energy. Faster than light speed is a whole new story. At least flying was something most people could conceptualize.

@braak: Ahem... Actually Mr. Know -it-all in Ridley Scott's 2004 anniversary Director's Final Work Print edition of Alien, for a split second you can see on Mother's display screen early on, the translation. And it reads as such.

"OH HAI. hit a snag. little help. when you get here, don't go downstairs. END."

boosh

Oh lord, Armageddon made the list... damn you Michael Bay! Why would NASA put a multi-barrel machinegun on a "mining" vehicle meant for space exploration? Just in case the "greys" or "skinnies" decide to come outta their holes and shoot mini-nukes at us!?! Decepticons on that meteor too perhaps?

@CmdrHunt: um... because its AWESOME?!

Wierd depictions of vacuum - I thought Sunshine got it right too - much like 2001, bodies survived for what, 40 seconds, protected from the elements.

(Not that I'm advocating this movie as being great or realistic)