Fatal Flaws in Sci-Fi Films: which ones drive you mad? I'll start it off...

[ReaverReject]

So I watched Fantastic Voyage again after a long break (at least 15 years) and one glaring problem struck me as a fatal flaw, aside from the actual sci-fi miniaturization concept itself:

So they miniaturize the Proteus to its Phase One size, then drop it inside a huge syringe filled with water or saline solution. OK, fine. Then they seal it with the massive plunger and miniaturize the entire syringe, further shrinking the Proteus and its crew. OK - I'm hip to that as well. But when the Proteus is injected into the patient, all the fluid in the syringe gets miniaturized right along with it... about the volume of a very larch residential water boiler, if I recall correctly.

...see where I'm going with this yet?

Now in the 45 minutes they are inside the blood stream, heart, lungs, brain, lymphatic system, inner ear, etc., all this miniaturized fluid has traversed pretty much throughout the patient's circulatory system and vital organs. So how come at the end of those 45 minutes doesn't the patient explode when all those millions of shrunken water molecules expand back to their original size???? :lol

One might ask: "ok, but what about the Proteus itself? Even if it was devoured by antibodies, the molecules & atoms that comprise it would also have to expand." My answer would be: "maybe they surgically removed it before it could be decomposed." But obviously they didn't, which makes the water issue now completely moot, because the Proteus was shrunk TWICE.

I don't think any members of the Academy asked themselves that question before awarding the film the Oscar for Best Special Effects...

Did they ever address this issue in Inner Space? I can't remember - it's been too long since I've seen it.

Incidentally, a very young James Brolin (Josh's dad) of Westworld and Capricorn One fame, plays a technician in the movie and is seen briefly as he secures the hatch on the Proteus before it's shrunken:

Discuss!

RR

 

[SgtFang]

So I watched this movie again after a long break (at least 15 years) and one glaring problem struck me as a fatal flaw, aside from the actual sci-fi miniaturization concept itself:

Now in the 45 minutes they are inside the blood stream, heart, lungs, brain, lymphatic system, inner ear, etc., all this miniaturized fluid has traversed pretty much throughout the patient's circulatory system and vital organs. So how come at the end of those 45 minutes doesn't the patient explode when all those millions of shrunken water molecules expand back to their original size???? :lol

Discuss!

RR

Hmmm... It was... metabolized by the body while still miniaturized... thereby negating the miniaturization effect? :confused

...or the guy REALLY had to whiz when he woke up.

-Sarge

 

[ReaverReject]

Hmmm... It was... metabolized by the body while still miniaturized... thereby negating the miniaturization effect? :confused

...or the guy REALLY had to whiz when he woke up.

-Sarge

So the subatomic particles themselves in every shrunken atom of oxygen and hydrogen would have had to permanently stay in their miniaturized state in order to successfully be metabolized - explain that one to me, lol! Even for the sake of argument, let's say you're right - the Proteus wouldn't have been completely metabolized in the 5 minutes the crew had left after abandoning it and swimming up to the tear duct (and yes, by all means let's ignore the MILES they would have had to swim in their miniaturized state in that time! :lol )

RR

 

[robn1]

Thanks for pointing that out, now I can never enjoy this movie again.

(Thinks of Raquel Welch in skin tight wet suit), OK, I'm good :love

 

[scarf man]

A wizard did it.

 

[CessnaDriver]

Thinkin' just shrinking a human body down that much would mean it couldn't function properly and they would die.

 

[hansicle]

I like how, in 2001, the astrounauts take their EVA pod and park it a half a football field away from the Discovery, then just basically Jump from one ship to another instead of riding really close to it, and using a teather. I guess the whole situation is supposed to evoke the sense that, they are in this VAST space, and in a way, they are still relatively close to the thing.... Oh well :lol

 

[DaddyfromNaboo]

Thinkin' just shrinking a human body down that much would mean it couldn't function properly and they would die.

Sssshhh, you´re ruining the movie !!! :lol

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Thinkin' just shrinking a human body down that much would mean it couldn't function properly and they would die.

Yeah, how would they breathe without miniaturized air?

 

[ReaverReject]

Yeah, how would they breathe without miniaturized air?

That wouldn't have been an issue had they stayed inside the Proteus or worn their EVA suits, all of which contained tanked shrunken air... that is, until Donald Pleasance sabotaged the air tanks and they had to go pop an alveoli and suck in some 1:1 scale air. So you're right - same problem in reverse - how could their lungs break down giant air molecules?

CessnaDriver: I suppose I'll give the film a pass on the miniaturization concept itself. Perhaps they discovered a way to reduce the orbital distances and resonance structures between subatomic particles without a massive expenditure of energy, thus shrinking atoms uniformly while maintaining peripheral covalent and ionic bonds, but the potential energy pushed into each atomic nucleus wouldn't be able to remain in steady-state for longer than 45 minutes before wanting to relax and restore its subatomic equilibrium.

:lol

Sorry...

RR

 

[robstyle]

I always dislike the awful time frames not being set far enough in the future. Both Escape from NY and BladeRunner are prime examples.

 

[Colin Droidmilk]

It's not the films' fault but all future-set or high-tech civilisation SF films (and novels) made before the digital age now bug me with their reels of datatape etc. It's amazing how so many SF professionals seem to have failed to predict the IT revolution , even though in some cases it was only about ten years away (Star Wars).

 

[Nwerke]

Yeah! It's not necessarily even a matter of predicting specific things - just make your futuristic world *different*. Otherwise your movie's gonna date, big-time.

Although on that front, the worst thing that dates Blade Runner is, er, the timeframe subtitle at the start of the film. Oh, and I guess magazine stands; those might be gone in a few more years, who knows. Aside from that, they did a brilliant job. Then again, I might be failing to predict the rise of personal teleportation, which killed cars off in 2014. So - all those cars in Blade Runner, man! What were they thinking??!

 

[robstyle]

In Blade Runner, there is too much that doesnt add up in the time frame. It should have been 100+ years into the future and not around 35. The easiest way to understand this is look back 100 years, then, follow the time frame forward to the present. All those changes that make areas unrecognizable and rapid technology. Your looking at 100 years as is for the city scape alone.

 

[Ttaskmaster]

Time Travel - Paradox.
'nuff said!!

I'm almost instantly turned off by anything that features Time Travel these days.

I actually liked The Time Traveller's Wife, because it had an interesting approach. It followed Dr. Who's description of "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff". Didn't make sense, but didn't have to.

 

[SgtFang]

(and yes, by all means let's ignore the MILES they would have had to swim in their miniaturized state in that time! :lol )

RR

Ehh, they just rode the current, like those stoner sea turtles in "Finding Nemo".

-Sarge

 

[SmilingOtter]

ESB - an otherwise awesome movie, but Han, Leia, and Chewbacca walk around an unpressurised space slug's stomach, using only repirators.

 

[Treadwell]

So I watched this movie again...

Do you realize you never named the movie?
(Yeah, I figured it out. :lol)

 

[jackdoud]

Back to the Future 3. Doc blows out the fuel injection system and says it'll take him a month to rebuild it...completely forgetting that there's ANOTHER delorean (the one he burried) that they could pull parts from and just add it to the list of fixes to be made in 1955.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Back to the Future 3. Doc blows out the fuel injection system and says it'll take him a month to rebuild it...completely forgetting that there's ANOTHER delorean (the one he burried) that they could pull parts from and just add it to the list of fixes to be made in 1955.

Funny.