A book review I wrote: “Hollywood Science”

I was asked by the Journal of Screenwriting to do a review of the book “Hollywood Science: Movies, Science & the End of the World” by Sidney Perkowitz, a physics professor at Emory University. I enjoyed the book quite a bit and for those of you interested in science fiction movies, I definitely recommend it. Here is an excerpt of my review which was recently published in the Journal:

In his analysis of Hollywood science, Perkowitz critiques numerous movies including Armageddon (1999), which “has it wrong: even a hydrogen bomb couldn’t save the Earth from an object the size of Texas” (p. 65), Waterworld (1995), where there “just couldn’t be enough melted ice to make the whole world one big ocean” (p. 87), and Jurassic Park (1993), because “if you could extract DNA from a mosquito, it’s more likely to be mosquito DNA than dinosaur DNA” and you “would need a dinosaur egg, not an ostrich egg, to properly support the embryo — and with a living dinosaur egg, you wouldn’t need to do any cloning in the first place” (p. 141).

However Perkowitz is eager to extol real science when he sees it in movies. After analyzing three classic 1950s sci-fi films — The Thing from Another World (1951), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), and The War of the Worlds (1953) — Perkowitz notes that while there is, “as yet, no established science of aliens; there is, however, solid science that supports one remarkable result, which is that our odds of actually encountering alien life have increased hugely since these films were made” (p. 35), due to the discovery of water on planets and moons within our own solar system, and 200 “extrasolar planets” (p. 39). In another chapter, he states, “there’s a lot of truth in collision films, from When Worlds Collide onward. Massive, fast-moving objects from space can dig enormous craters, raise giant waves, and threaten whole populations” (p. 57). While negating some of the science in the apocalyptic climate change spectacle The Day After Tomorrow (2004) — “One effect it shows is impossible, hurricane-like storms with central eyes forming over land” — Perkowitz validates a major plot element: “The freezing of the Northern Hemisphere in the movie is, however, based on the way the world really works” (p. 88). Later he challenges Hollywood’s treatment of robots, but also observes, “Despite the many ways movie robots and A.I.’s outstrip their real counterparts, there’s one basic idea some movies get right. That’s the notion of an artificial mind evolving in power and depth of thought” (p. 163), a story dynamic notably at work in 2001: A Space Odyssey and the robotic character HAL: “Will you stop, Dave… my mind is going… I’m afraid” (p. 144).

By the way, Perkowitz gives the Golden Turkey award to two movies — The Core and What the Bleep Do We Know? — for their “quantum loopiness.”

For more information about the Journal of Screenwriting, you can go here.