You can stop building that underground bunker now. NASA has named ultimate disaster movie 2012 the most scientifically ridiculous movie ever made. We may have predicted that would be the case. [The Guardian, via The Australian]
Director Roland Emmerich, helmer of the equally “disastrous” Independence Day, “took advantage of public worries about the so-called end of the world as apparently predicted by the Mayans of Central America, whose calendar ends on December 21, 2012,” said Donald Yeomans, head of NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission.
2012, with John Cusack as a father racing against time to save his family from a global cataclysm, is one of the guiltiest pleasures of 2009, cashing in on the Mayan prophecy nonsense and flooding NASA with worried mail. “The agency is getting so many questions from people terrified that the world is going to end in 2012 that we have had to put up a special website to challenge the myths. We have never had to do this before.” Yeomans told The Australian. (Check out the website, it’s pretty funny.)
NASA has consulted on such science-y films as Armageddon, but now regrets these decisions. NASA and the Science & Entertainment Exchange (SEE) – a group of physicists and others (including backer Dustin Hoffman, who was a chemist at Maxwell House before finding Hollywood stardom) campaigning for authenticity in science fiction – have compiled a list of the most scientifically offensive movies in existence.
The Day After Tomorrow‘s accelerated global warming made the list, along with Chain Reaction‘s ludicrous bubble fusion McGuffin. Yeomans walked away (likely shaking his head and muttering) after reading the script for 2003’s The Core, which saw Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart piloting a drill into the center of the earth. Also on the list are Volcano (for having that volcano beneath L.A. where no volcano could possibly exist), What The Bleep Do We Know? (for misleadingly selling itself as a documentary) and The Sixth Day, the forgotten 2000 Arnold Schwarzenegger flick about a conspiracy of evil clones taking over the world.
NASA praises the “good” sci-fi movies, like Blade Runner (it looks Los Angeles really might become a perpetually-drenched smoking crater of a city within eight years) and considers Gattaca the most scientifically realistic film.
I understand Yeomans’ ire, but it’s called science fiction for a reason, right? Movie studios – and Americans in general – aren’t about to let irritating facts get in the way of a hefty popcorn flick.
Have you head for the secret transport off the planet? What did you think of 2012?