Via Slashdot, laws of physics that don’t apply in Hollywood.
With the string of new kung fu films out (they run the gamut from The Matrix to Charlie’s Angels), you just can’t escape the small matter of bad physics. Yeah, the action scenes look great and all, but in reality momentum is conserved, such that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So, when you see a gal kick someone across the room, technically, the kicker (or holder of a gun) must fly across the room in the opposite direction – unless she has a back against the wall.
Pretty much. Read the whole thing. It’s pretty good.
A site I like to visit from time to time is the Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics site. Here, they grade movies according to how “good” of a job they do in portraying accurate physics.
I’ve found that movies demonstrate a profound lack of knowledge of all sciences. One example that I like to use is the god-awful movie Mission To Mars with Gary Sinese. From a guy living in a tent on Mars using only a handful of plants to generate oxygen to the absolutely killer line “We have to find the missing chromosome to complete the DNA,” the movie tries to be a serious sci-fi film but comes across as written by people who never took at least high school biology.
I guess it all comes down to presentation. For example, kung-fu movies and comic book dramas present themselves as being over-the-top and cartoonish, so it doesn’t really matter if the science doesn’t exactly make sense. You’re supposed to suspend belief anyway.