Science in the Movies – Right and Wrong

Science fiction movies are science fiction, right? But that doesn’t mean movie makers are free to completely ignore reality.  The Smithsonian’s Collage of Arts and Sciences recently ran a pair of entries looking at SciFi and fantasy movies that did a horrible job with science and those that stayed pretty true to reality.

The movies on the “good” list include 2001: A Space Odyssey (except for the whole evil computer thing), Finding Nemo (except for the whole talking fish thing), Contact, The Andromeda Strain, and A Beautiful Mind.

Those on the “bad” list include Armageddon, 2012, The Core, Volcano, and The 6th Day. Might I add my own thought that all of the movies on the “good science” list are also good movies, especially 2001 and Andromeda Strain, two of my faves growing up.

And every one of the bad science movies is truly awful, especially Armageddon and The Core.  (And the only reason I can’t say anything really bad about 2012 is that I bailed on it on Netflix about 10 minutes in.)

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