Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics takes filmmakers to task

Jeremy Fogelman — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:00:50 +0000

Movie nerds and nerds alike will love this takedown of hilariously terribly movie physics.

There are some people out there that I would affectionately call “nerds”. Sometimes I say it to my face. You may be thinking “Oh, I’m not really a nerd”. But if you’ve ever watched a movie and thought: “What? No, that’s not possible!”, then you should read this book.

Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics comes from the website Intuitor Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics, where it grades several popular movies on a scale of decent “Good” physics to “Extremely Terrible” physics. It is the site that proudly proclaimed the pretty stupid disaster movie The Core to be the worst physics movie of all time, and is therefore hilariously watchable. But you don’t need to know a lot of physics math or formulas to like this book, although if you do, you will adore this book. The book is great for movie buffs or physics students wondering how to grasp some key concepts. Of course, the very start of this text admits that enjoying some movies (like fantasy) allows for more than a little suspension of disbelief.

But here is the book’s radical treatise: Maybe movies don’t have to be realistic to be fun.

So we get in-depth and amusing looks at how guns actually work, how The Matrix‘s biggest plot hole could have been easily avoided (hint: humans aren’t batteries), and how to make space battles exciting and realistic (in a scientific sense). That last one is interesting because of how much most space movies portray space battle like everything’s either planes or submarines — but the truth is, there’s a lot of weird potential to the craziness of space. Recently I rewatched the classic James Cameron action thriller True Lies, which has a few… shall we say “leaps of logic” despite being enormous fun. But this book will help you use actual physics to correctly plot out how that flying motorcycle would jump through the air — you won’t find that in your physics textbook!

There’s a lot to recommend this fun book about movie mistakes and real world physics. Whether you like really overthinking movies, nitpicking them, enjoying them, or merely are confused about physics, this book is quite a bit of fun. And for the fervent Star Trek versus Star Wars fans out there, you will quite enjoy the chapter that pits these two sci-fi juggernauts against each other. Let the biggest nerd win!

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Photo Credit: https://www.intuitor.com

CliqueClack » Insultingly Stupid Movie Physic

Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics takes filmmakers to task