The Most Scientifically Accurate Movies Of All Time | Answers With Joe

this video is supported by skillshare when titanic was released in 1997 um neil degrasse tyson took issue with it he didn't have a problem with it being three hours long and he didn't have a problem with the fact that there was clearly enough room on that door for jack to get on there you could have saved him rose you could have saved him no what neil degrasse tyson took issue with was in that scene as rose was laying there on the on the door and looking up at the sky they had a shot of the sky that she was looking at and that sky was incorrect so neil degrasse tyson emailed james cameron and gave him a piece of his mind according to an interview in uk magazine culture james cameron said quote neil degrasse tyson sent me a quite snarky email saying that at that time of year at that position in the atlantic in 1912 when rose was lying on that piece of driftwood and staring up at the stars that is not the star feel she would have seen with my reputation as a perfectionist i should have known that and i should have put the right star field in so neil degrasse tyson sent him the exact star map that should have been overhead at about 4 20 a.m on april 15 1912 and when the re-release of titanic came out several years later james cameron included the correct star field most directors aren't the sticklers for detail that james cameron famously is which is why most sci-fi movies tend to lean a lot more on the fiction than on the science part of the equation so being a science nerd can make watching science fiction films kind of frustrating because you're just constantly spotting all the inaccuracies especially when you consider that science doesn't have to hinder the storytelling process when done right it can actually be the thing that moves the plot forward so i want to do a video where i could shed some light on some science fiction films that make the extra effort to get everything just right [Music] we go to the movies to be entertained to escape to go on a journey but every once in a while almost by accident you can actually learn something and that's why getting the science right in movies is so important it can enlighten somebody's mind and inspire an interest that can frankly change somebody's life and the following films have done exactly that now obviously i have to be able to talk about some plot points for some of these films so there's going to be some spoilers you've been warned first up is interstellar interstellar is of course the christopher nolan blockbuster that came out in 2014 it was co-written with his brother jonathan the movie has a cast including matthew mcconaughey and hathaway jessica chastain ellen burstin john lithgow michael kane timothy chalamet david oyello and matt damon net damien it's a movie about some interstellar travelers traveling through a wormhole in order to save humanity and it's considered one of the most scientifically accurate films of all time if for no other reason then they actually made some scientific discoveries while making it for example part of the story involves a large black hole a fictional black hole called gargantua and in order to get the physics right around this black hole they actually consulted with the nobel prize-winning physicist kip thorne part of the movie involves them traveling to a planet that's orbiting this black hole and traditional thinking would say that a planet would get ripped apart by the gravity of a black hole but kip thorne proved that that might not be true but the biggest thing was this was the first time a black hole had ever been imaged in a film looking like this what's amazing about this shot is that they actually made it using calculations derived by a supercomputer to show how light emitted by a superheated gas forming an accretion disk around the black hole would be bent above and below the black hole itself so the rings you see around the top and the bottom are actually the ring of light behind it this is not just the first time we've seen a black hole visualize like this in a film this was the first time anybody had ever visualized a black hole like this so much so that they had a scientific paper published on the process of getting this image made and to make that even more awesome in 2019 when the event horizon telescope finally was able to produce the first actual image of a black hole it didn't look quite as detailed as that but it was very close but one of the main reasons why interstellar always gets mentioned in lists of most scientifically accurate movies is because they actually used the process of time dilation by black holes as part of the plot when those travelers landed on that planet that's orbiting the black hole that i mentioned earlier they experienced time dilation meaning that time traveled a lot slower for them than it did for everybody else so by the time they got back to their ship like dozens of years had passed that was a main part of the plot you know again it wasn't science making it difficult to have an interesting plot it made the plot possible now one of the things that actually gets probably one of the most criticisms for interstellar is at the end when when he enters a tesseract which is a 4d cube because that's all very hypothetical and there's no real science to back that up necessarily but kip thorne is a fan according to an interview in science magazine in 2014 kip thorm said the tesseract that was created for the film is far more complex than any tesseract one has seen before it's fascinating and it's beautifully designed christopher nolan is kind of known for playing with bending time and space in his movies like inception intended but interstellar was the one that really leaned into the science part of it which is why it earned a place on this list next up is 2001 space odyssey stanley kubrick was kind of famously obsessive about details in his films and the best example of that that i can think of is the one that he shot on july 20th 1969 you know the one about the moon the details in that are just incredible i'm kidding of course please spare your comments but one of his most popular films is also one of the most scientifically accurate and that is 2001. science fiction writer arthur c clarke who co-wrote the movie screenplay with kubrick wrote a short story called the sentinel that was published in 1951 and some people claim that this short story is what kind of got everything started on 2001 which is not really true but it was a starting point clark once said quote i am continually annoyed by careless references to the sentinel as the story on which 2001 is based it bears about as much relation to the movie as an acorn to the resultant full-grown oak in fact the movie and the book were written kind of at the same time the story is about an artifact that's discovered buried underneath the moon's surface astronauts go on a quest to find the artifact's origins aided by a supercomputer named hal 9000 although you could say it's not very accurate because we didn't go to the moon in 2001 it's been a while so how does it wind up on today's list of most accurate films you may ask well here's why while kubrick was shooting 2001 nasa this was 1968 they hadn't quite landed somebody on the moon yet but they were really close and kubrick was really worried that once they landed on the moon his movie was going to be completely incorrect so kubrick hired a couple of science advisors that were actual nasa employees named harry lang and frederick i ordway iii lang worked in the future project section at nasa and ordway was the organization's former chief of space information systems ordway would later write in his book quote kubrick wanted to make certain that every special effects shot would be completely convincing yielding a realism never before accomplished in motion pictures he also consulted with spacecraft contractors from general electric honeywell ibm and rca and because of their contributions the spaceships orion3 and aries 1b in the movie include several sophisticated computer communications and automated equipment developed from these companies and to get the ideas around extraterrestrial life correct in this film he consulted with none other than carl sagan and sagan's advice to kubrick was to not actually show the aliens because we have no idea what aliens might look like but instead sort of suggest them and so that's what kubrick did he also employed a groundbreaking technique of building a spherical set that rotated on its axis to simulate rotational gravity allowing for the famous jogging scene so even if kubrick and clark were you know a bit off in how far space flight would be in 2001 their attention to detail on things like artificial intelligence and the way astronauts perform their duties all the way down to the food that they ate to the time it took for them to reach jupiter all of that was extensively researched in basin in fact you might say it's a space odyssey based on space accuracy next up is contact i mentioned that kubrick collaborated with carl sagan on 2001 well contact was written by carl sagan so you know it's going to be scientifically accurate the movie was released in 1997 and its top build stars were jody foster tom skerritt and matthew mcconaughey where's that name again it was directed by robert zemeckis and written by james v hart and michael goldenberg the story is about dr ellie arroway wait her last name is arrow in way like like she's pointing the way that's interesting anyway on the nose character named arrowway is played by jodie foster she hears a signal from an alien civilization and hijinks and sue just kidding she hears a signal eventually gets to ride on a pod towards a star called vega and first contact is made and there are other things that happen in the movie they're very scientifically accurate in fact study representatives said there's no doubt that contact is indescribably more accurate in this depiction of seti than any hollywood film in history some of the scientists who consulted on the movie include brian butler who's currently a staff scientist at the national radio astronomy observatory in siraco new mexico gerald griffin former director of the nasa lindenbee johnson space center dr tom kuiper is a principal scientist at caltech and jpl and dr linda wald a mathematician who advised about well the math one of the things they pay particular attention to is the jargon of the film for example airway at one point says that the signal is pi times hydrogen what this means is that hydrogen atoms in space emit a frequency of around 1.4 gigahertz and when you multiply that by 3.14 you get a pretty undeniable signal that this is from some kind of an intelligent species other scientifically accurate plot points in the film involve around reserving time on telescopes which is really hard to come by the struggle that scientists are constantly going up against just to secure funds so they can do their research the idea that intelligent civilizations would use math to communicate and they accurately describe how long it takes for things traveling at the speed of light to reach other planets and in addition to being scientifically accurate it inspired a lot of young women to go into scientific fields astrophysicist and aerospace engineer dr aaron mcdonald wrote on twitter in 2018 that foster's character airway was a big inspiration for her saying quote the first time i operated the green bank telescope all i could think of was ellie and that i had finally made it kim bot a member of the nasa astrobiology institute's virtual planetary laboratory wrote on twitter that she saw the movie when she was 12 and became obsessed with it she said quote i asked to rent it every weekend dad got me the poster and i got himself a telescope i read the book and was convinced it was about me reading the book contact got her more interested in the work of carl sagan and reading other books about biology and astronomy and got her more interested in that field now all that being said the movie isn't perfect and i definitely would recommend going and watching dr becky's reaction video to watching contact she had never seen it before and a lot of people kept saying she needed to see it so she recorded a reaction video and she pointed out some of the flaws in it but also she pointed out all the things that they got right so i gotta direct you toward that it's it's a really great video next up is the martian the martian has popped up on this channel a few times now i did a video where i sort of compared the book to the movie and i also did an interview with andy weir the author of the book so i'll put links to both of those down below but the movie was directed by ridley scott and it starred matt damon jessica chastain and kristen wiig matt damon and jessica chastain have both been on here twice already that's interesting the story is about an astronaut who gets stranded on mars and has to survive long enough to get a signal to earth saying that he's alive so that somebody can come rescue him it's like castaway but on another planet there's no wilson now before i get into all the things that the movie gets right i will start with maybe this this one big inaccuracy which is that uh matt damon's character mark watney he gets stranded because of a big dust storm that kind of blows him uh away from the rest of the crew as they're trying to escape mars and that's actually something that wouldn't happen because the atmosphere on mars is so low pressure it's only one percent that of earth so it wouldn't be able to create enough force to actually knock somebody over this is something that andy weir himself has you know kind of copped to like yes that is you know a little bit of a stretch but you know you gotta have something to kick the movie off so yeah give them a break because everything else they put extensive effort into getting all the details right andy weir did all the math to figure out the flight paths and the fuel usage and calorie intake from potatoes all of that was accurate all this accuracy was praised by retired esa project manager dr rudy schmidt who said quote this is not just a story the author has done real computations one other little detail that the movie got right was part of the story is that mark watney tries to communicate with earth by repurposing the pathfinder rover that landed on mars in 1997. and according to day lavry who is an executive for solar system exploration at nasa this is entirely plausible livery worked on the pathfinder mission and he confirmed that like the batteries would be dead on it but if you could find a way to charge it up or to power the the system everything else would still be operational it's really the little rover that could other things that the movie got right are the possibility of inflatable habitats and the dust storms on mars although you know that first little thing might have been a little bit incorrect but mostly they got the humanity of the scientists right and this is a big one you know most of the time in movies scientists are portrayed as humorless or or very you know kind of weirdos and stuff this movie went the opposite direction and this might be because the screenwriter who adapted the book his name is drew goddard he actually grew up in los alamos mexico around a lot of scientists and he remembered growing up that they were actually really funny and he gave credit to andy weir during a panel discussion for making mark watney a funny character somebody who uses humor and sarcasm and silliness as a way to sort of keep his sanity whilst being stranded on another planet so it turns out on top of everything else that you need to be able to do and know to be an astronaut to travel in space and especially to travel to mars it turns out having a sense of humor might be at the top of the list next up is the andromeda strain released in 1971 the andromeda train starred james olson arthur hill kate reed and david wayne amongst others it was directed by robert wise from a screenplay written by nelson gideon based off a book of the same name by michael crichton the story is about scientists trying to stop the spread of a deadly contagion that fell to earth on a satellite reviews of the book from 1969 praised how accurate it was in its depiction of spaceflight and microchemistry and biochemistry and that's not by accident michael crichton was actually a medical student at harvard university when he wrote this book so he used a lot of what he was learning to put into the drama of the storytelling for example he made sure that the equipment used in the facility in the book was the highest technology at the time and very accurate to what would actually be used for that and the book and the movie both go to great pains to show exactly how scientists form hypotheses and and test for those hypotheses and come up with conclusions and and accurate ways of attacking problems an example of this is given by david kirby author of lab coats in hollywood science scientists and cinema where he says quote there is a scene where they're trying to figure out how big the microbe is that they're dealing with from modern eyes it ends up being a very slow boring scene but that's because it's realistic it's this idea of let's try two microns oh that's too big let's try point five oh that's too small let's try one the science in it is accurate they are experimenting but it doesn't make for very gripping cinema and while the story's premise was kind of considered fear-mongering at the time the whole idea that microbes could fall from space and infect us since then scientists have confirmed that microbes can survive in space so sure the the protocols and the procedures of determining all this the way it's depicted in the movie might be a little bit boring but it is accurate so maybe the most accurate thing about this movie is that sometimes science isn't exactly sexy but it works next up is a rival you might have heard me talk about a rival on this channel before because i actually i really really like this movie and i think it's a great example of just how difficult it would be to actually communicate with an extraterrestrial species because there's a good chance these life forms would have a form of communication that we couldn't even fathom a rival was released in 2016 and stars among others amy adams jeremy renner and forest whitaker denise villeneuve directed it from a screenplay by eric heisserer who based on a story by ted chang chang said that the story grew out of his interest in the variational principles of physics the movie tells the story of extraterrestrials arriving on earth in spaceships that hover in random places around the world and amy adams character louise banks leads the linguistic project to communicate with the mysterious beings that kind of look like cephalopods by the way i have a video about cephalopods that you might enjoy it's possibly the best written script i've ever had on this channel it's it's something that actually kind of blows the doors off of what's possible from from a youtube video it's reading it is like discovering a new play by shakespeare one that blows open the doors a possibility how scripts could be why did jason write this into the script why did why did jason write that oh he wrote the cephalopod script jason scamp long story short amy adams character finds out that the being's language actually kind of changes your perception of time for example you could view future events almost like memories advisors for the movie during pre-production and filming included linguist jessica kuhn seti astronomer seth shostak and physicist and mathematician stephen wolfram and they did a really great job of digging into the theories around linguistics and putting it on screen in a way that you don't really see in movies very often linguistics is a science that doesn't get a lot of screen time in a wired interview consulted for the movie jessica [ __ ] she talked about how you deconstruct a language to try to get to the big question she says quote you have to really understand some of the smaller pieces of grammar before you work up to the big question because there's a lot of potential for misunderstanding the movie brings up something called the superior wharf hypothesis which argues that a language's structure can actually change the speaker's world view and expanding on that is the idea of linguistic relativity which argues that different communities can actually experience reality differently because of the language that they speak and then there's an even further version called linguistic determinism that that again argues that the language you speak can change your view of reality or reality itself now while the movie takes some liberties with the details around these theories the fact that it's brought up and used as a plot device at all i think is really impressive so rival kind of just takes a science fiction concept and uses that as a vehicle to explore how language determines our view of the world and i think that's really cool and last but not least is deep impact deep impact was one of those movies that came out at the same time as another movie on a very similar topic this one being armageddon so deep impact and armageddon came out literally within weeks of each other if i remember correctly but while armageddon was well a michael bay film deep impact tops a lot of lists for most accurate scientific movies it came out in 1998 and it stars robert duvall taylor leone elijah wood vanessa redgrave and morgan freeman among others it was directed by mimi later and written by bruce joel rubin and michael tolkien and the story is all about how humanity deals with a comet that's destined to hit earth and end all life in the movie the us government tries to keep the news from the public but a journalist finds out the truth which causes the us president to have to let people know his plan and that plan involves an astronaut team landing on the comet setting some explosives and blowing it up and do they succeed well we're still here the aforementioned professional nitpicker neil degrasse tyson called it a very good science movie he told buzzfeed in 2014 quote when they go to the comet you see that the gravity is very low you need grappling hooks just to pull yourself down to stay connected the gravity is so low you could conceivably just jump and jump into orbit comets are outgassing catastrophically so you'd have to be careful walking around them as they captured in deep impact and he also praised how the movie depicted a piece of the comet slamming into the ocean since most of the planet is water that's the most likely place that a comet or asteroid would actually hit cities though would get destroyed by tsunamis which is exactly how they depicted it in deep impact us astrobiologist karen j meach says the movie got a few things correct including the comet's appearance the impact energetics and the global consequences but she says they also got some things wrong like observing what the light's on orbit determined from a single data point a boulder in the comet's tail outgassing at sunrise and a tidal wave size and speed industrial light and magic scott farrar who worked in the visual effects for the movie said think tank sessions were held with astronauts and scientists the movie could be scientifically accurate scientists including planetary astronomers carolyn and eugene shoemaker astrophysicist joshua coldwell physicist chris b lucini former director of nasa's linda b johnson space center gerald d griffin and former astronaut david m walker and the advisor said that they gave the the producers everything that they knew at the time although their information was limited because we had never really seen a comic close up at the time which was true until 2014 when the rosetta mission got close-up pictures of comet 67p pictures that were pretty darn close to what they had in the movie so kind of like interstellar they sort of imagined something that then turned out later to be true but it wasn't just imagination they used science to get there there are actually a lot of other movies and tv shows that i could have included on this list like alien the expanse gattaca her jurassic park minority report upload and even wall-e all these movies give us the chance to dream to wonder and sometimes be frightened but those emotions that we feel only inspire us to further look into the science behind these movies and the more accurately they get that science right the better it is for all of us and i think filmmakers now have to put a lot more effort into getting the science right because the internet has made more information available to more people so a lot more people are more scientifically aware when they go in to see these kinds of movies but even when they don't get the facts 100 right these movies help people to open up their eyes to wormholes in space and and asteroids hitting the earth and language and communicating with alien species all of this only helps to seal in the minds of the public the role that science plays in our lives and that's a blockbuster achievement so what's your favorite scientifically accurate film discuss in the comments but maybe you're watching this video and you've got an idea for a science fiction film that you'd like to get made well you're actually lucky because the tools for movie making have never been more ubiquitous if you want to get a movie made you can do it and if you want your movie to stand out among the rest you should check out the course indie filmmaking get the blockbuster look on a diy budget by new young yen on skillshare nidian is a montreal-based sci-fi filmmaker who walks you through his whole process of getting a film made from creating a mood board to working with actors to shooting for visual effects he teaches you all the tricks he uses to make a low budget indie project punch way above its weight class and this is of course just one of hundreds of courses you can take on skillshare covering all kinds of subjects like photography but also photo editing film and video production graphic design music as well as productivity courses and business classes skillshare's online classes are super affordable at only ten dollars a month but the first thousand people to sign up with my link below will get thirty percent off an annual premium subscription so you can explore your creativity so shake things up try something new and learn something just click the link down in the description below thanks to skillshare for supporting this video and a huge shout out to the answer files on patreon that are building an awesome community helping to keep the lights on around here and grow a team and just being generally awesome people i got some new names to murder real quick we've got demolosity uh ben 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Channel: Joe Scott

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Id: wWU8aDEuQ-c

Length: 23min 12sec (1392 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021