The Worst Science Fiction Movie Ever! at SF Novelists

Mike Brotherton February 8th 2008

The Worst Science Fiction Movie Ever!

Last month I wrote about the ten best science-based science fiction movies, which was fun and made me think a lot about all the average to decent movies that still fail to make the science grade in one or more ways. It’s too easy to make a list of dozens of movies with the worst science (only including the ones making some effort to making the science plausible), and overwhelming to make it a list of only ten.

The Star Wars movies are fantasy, so we won’t even consider them, even the ones with Jar Jar. Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space is so bad it isn’t really trying. Ditto for Ice Pirates. Something like The Fifth Element has an amazing vision and isn’t trying to be scientifically accurate. Galaxy Quest is a fun farce, and again, not trying. Star Trek movies sort of try, but only fail in conventional ways, exploiting time travel and technobabble (although Star Trek V should be a contender for any “worst of” list). Serenity has a bunch of science problems but has heart. There’s a whole slew of science fiction movies to be excluded because they are really horror movies in disguise: Aliens 3+, Event Horizon, Pitch Black, Hardware, Aliens vs. Predator, The Thing, etc. Superhero movies are their own genre, too, and don’t try to make scientific sense. It’s the movies that are pretending to have a clue I’m here to take issue with.

That leaves a bunch of crappy crap, like Supernova, Johnny Mnemonic, Mission to Mars, The Core, Battlefield Earth, The One, Ultraviolet, Total Recall, Lawnmower Man, Starship Troopers, Independence Day, etc., ad nauseum. The average to bad science fiction movie falls into this category.

Surprisingly, however, I have absolutely no problem picking the absolute worst: Armageddon.

Where do I start? The answer is anywhere. There’s not a minute of this movie that isn’t affront to science or common sense.

According to Wikipedia:

The physics and scientific approach of Armageddon was criticized for its poor adherence to the laws of physics. This has led NASA to show the film as part of its management training program. Prospective managers are asked to find as many inaccuracies in the movie as they can. At least 168 impossible things have been found during these screenings of the film.

Ouch. The movie is only 150 minutes long. That’s more than one impossible thing per minute on average. I’m not the only one to target this movie a the biggest steaming pile of anti-scientific crap. Check out Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy, intuitor.com, and here and here and here. And I could go on. I love Phil Plait’s comment, “Here’s the short version: “Armageddon” got some astronomy right. For example, there is an asteroid in the movie, and asteroids do indeed exist. And then there was… um… well, you know… um. Okay, so that was about all they got right.”
What are my favorite (or most cringe-worthy) moments? When they talk about how only a few telescopes could even see the asteroid (no, even small telescopes could as in Deep Impact), and that you would use Hubble to study this. Hubble is slow to point and not a good choice for initial observations.

The one example I use over and over again in physics and astronomy classes is the “Russian space station” gravity scene, usually back to back with the excellent 2001 scene. The Armageddon scene makes many errors, the most fundamental being that they get the direction of gravity wrong. Every kid who has played on a merry-go-round knows which way they get pulled when spun, but not so the screenwriters or director of Armageddon. They have the understanding of pre-schoolers at best, and I’m being generous. They show many scenes, including very clear computer graphics, and it makes the whole thing seem like a bad dream where the laws of physics have vanished inside Michael Bey’s butt.

I’m being especially harsh because this is a movie that hundreds of millions of people have seen, that made hundreds of millions of dollars, and more likely billions in total gross to date. They try in this movie to be science based. They spin the space station for gravity. They use telescopes to get information about the asteroid. They pretend it’s based on science. And Bruce Willis may as well be drilling in my ass for black gold. Here in Wyoming we’re close to the oil industry (Dick Cheney has had dinner in my neighborhood at the University President’s house), and I know some guys who have worked on rigs. They tell me the drilling stuff is every bit as ludicrous as the physics/astronomy stuff.

I won’t even go into the “space madness.”

Armageddon is just a piece of crap. It isn’t okay that it’s “just a movie.” It pretends that it knows what it is doing, and shovels ignorance down people’s throats with the help of Liv Tyler’s child-bearing hips and Aerosmith’s whiny soundtrack. Sure, Steve Buschemi is a hoot as an insane sex-addicted genius, but he just plays one in the movies. And while Bruce Willis is one in real life, he plays the hero who couldn’t drill a hole with a viagra pill the size of a killer asteroid.

Sorry, I’m afraid discussing this movie makes me get like this. That is what makes it so bad. It drives scientists like myself insane. It’s “movie madness.”

Okay, I’m sure someone thinks some other movie is worse. Let’s hear it. I feel confident I can beat your Core with my Armageddon. If you have to go back to Cat Women of the Moon, you’ll just distract me. Mmm. Cat women…

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1. Ian Sales on Feb 8th, 2008 at 5:03 am

Armageddon may be a piece of crap, but you’re not really trying if you’re looking for really crap movies… What about StarCrash, The Humanoid, Cosmos: War of the Planets, Bad Channels, or Galaxina?
2. Paul on Feb 8th, 2008 at 8:56 am

Nope, I have one even worse than Armageddon. One so bad that it got “Alan Smithee-d”

SOLAR CRISIS:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100649/

The recent SUNSHINE seems to be an unofficial remake of this abomination.
3. Karen Wester Newton on Feb 8th, 2008 at 8:56 am

All your points are valid but I still vote for Event Horizon. Armageddon is an affront to science fiction–it’s what happens when writers don’t care at all about the science–but at least it has a plot. I went to see Event Horizon because I love science fiction and Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne are two actors whose work I always admired. From the movie’s name and the trailers it sounded like science fiction, but after the first 20 minutes it became “how many gruesome special effects can we cram into the remaining run time?” I felt betrayed. And it was my birthday.

I have never forgiven Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne for ruining my birthday.
4. Kindra Coates on Feb 8th, 2008 at 10:29 am

I agree with you on Armageddon. I waited until video, which my sister provided since she had a huge acting crush on Liv Tyler. She only got to put it in my VCR with the vow that she would mute the damn Aereosmith song that I had every hour on the hour on the only decent radio station I had to listen to and was ready to put a bullet in Steve Tyler. Then she broke her vow because I had to hear dialogue between the two love birds. I finally fumed my way through the movie praying that Keith David (Goliath) would have another line, and he didn’t!

But take Independence Day off the sci-fi list, the director and producers said in the commentary that it is a disaster film, only the disaster happens to be an alien invasion. And when you compare the format to Earthquake and Inferno, it’s pretty obvious.
5. Ryan on Feb 8th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

I could watch Armageddon again before I could watch Bay destroy pieces of my childhood with the abomination he calls “Transformers.” He should leave Science Fiction alone.
6. Mike Brotherton on Feb 8th, 2008 at 4:12 pm

I put Armageddon at the top in part because if it’s big budget, big gross, and amazingly high blooper rate consistently throughout the movie. It does the worst in the biggest awful spectacle possible, and people ate it up. Galaxina at least has some eye candy. Event Horizon at least gets it right about exposure to vacuum (I was sure the guy was going to explode!). And I’ve avoided Sunshine because the premise is so dumb. But this Solar Crises does sound promising…

And if Michael Bay didn’t do science fiction, what would his movies look like? Just actors screaming and laughing and randomly twisting in front of a big green screen…
7. poetryman69 on Feb 9th, 2008 at 8:20 am

I don’t remember this movie. The title looks familiar though. My mind blanks on truly traumatic experiences to save it self.
8. C.E. Murphy on Feb 9th, 2008 at 7:07 pm

I love Armegeddon.
9. Andy Havens on Feb 12th, 2008 at 9:13 pm

Uh… “Waterworld?” Hellloooo?
10. Radish on Feb 13th, 2008 at 8:03 pm

*So* in agreement re:Armageddon. Aside from the tech/sci screw-ups, my biggest gripe with it was the shameless pandering to sentimentality.
11. David B. Coe on Feb 13th, 2008 at 9:09 pm

Have to agree with Andy — “Waterworld”.
12. Sriram on Feb 14th, 2008 at 4:25 am

I didn’t realise it at first, but Starship Troopers is a brilliant satire on American military patriotism.
http://www.otago.ac.nz/DeepSouth/1198/film.html
13. Sammy Nelwan on Mar 2nd, 2008 at 2:15 pm

Compared to Deep Impact which use less special effects etc but contain much more accurate science, Armageddon is more like “how many ‘wow’ you’ll say when watching it”.

And leave away waterworld and it’s not even Science Fiction, there’s even no science there at all. Kevin Costner waste his time playing that film.
14. dyd on Jul 12th, 2008 at 10:44 am

well, the movie is entertaining, and I think that’s supposed to be the point. Besides, after all that effort getting Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thorton, and Liv Tyler all together they got to sway the science a little bit. If they wanted to make the science as accurate as possible they may as well be making a documentary.
15. rich b on Jul 21st, 2008 at 12:00 pm

I agree with every comment about Armegeddon. It was riddled with mistakes. But….when commenting about Starship Troopers you need to note that the Militarism in the movie was the Directors vision and perversion. Heinlein NEVER intended to ridicule the military. He was a Navy man in real life and in his later days a conservative after flirting with the far left as a youth. In the novel he did make obvious references to fascism but that was NOT what the book was about.
16. Emanuel on Aug 14th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

C’mon! Nothing beats Flash Gordon for pure schmaltz, tacky sets and hackneyed dialogue.
17. tom jackson on Aug 14th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

has everyone forgotten “Battlefield Earth”???
18. polesapart32 on Aug 14th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

Event Horizon is a great movie, I don’t know why people bash it. I love anything to do with alternate dimensions of chaos, (ala Doom and Warhammer 40k) and I think Fishburne and Sam Neill are at their best in this movie. I don’t think they could have picked a better actor for Doctor Weir. Some great supporting actors like Sean Pertwee and Jason Isaacs make it a classic sci fi flick. I would have liked it even more had they gone deeper. I love the cinematography in that movie, creates a very eerie and claustrophobic atmosphere, and plays off your nightmares. Black holes? Enough said.
19. polesapart32 on Aug 14th, 2008 at 1:59 pm

And I would have to say, Starship Troopers and Total Recall are great for what they are. Not to be taken overly seriously.
20. Craig on Aug 14th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

Yeah, you kind of lost me when you lazily tossed “Starship Troopers” and “Total Recall” in your bad sci-fi pile. As one poster noted, the former is a campy buy keen satire of American jingoism. And the latter? C’mon, “Total Recall” was an effing romp. It makes me wonder about your criteria. Are judging these movies on cinematic merit, or scientific plausibility? If it’s the latter, you might as well trash “Star Wars,” too.

And, hey, way to go out on a limb with “Armageddon.” Frankly, I get the impression that you don’t see many movies.
21. Ron F on Aug 14th, 2008 at 3:52 pm

C’mon now — you’re forgetting the single worse abomination of them of all. one fans of the masterful book waited breathlessly for! DUNE! Oh, the humanity…

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Mike Brotherton

Professional astronomer, science fiction novelist (Star Dragon, Spider Star). Visit site.

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