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Unpopular opinion: the scene in Gravity where she uses a fire extinguisher to fly is the best kind of bad science
So I was at my buddy Dave's place in Chicago last weekend for a movie night and we threw on Gravity. When Sandra Bullock starts blasting that fire extinguisher to zip around in space, Dave just loses it and yells that it would never work like that and she'd tumble out of control. I brought up that in a vacuum an extinguisher would shove you a little but she'd have zero way to steer it, and the thrust wouldn't last nearly that long. We argued about it for like 20 minutes over two slices of cold pizza. Then he admitted that if they made it totally realistic the scene would be boring and last maybe three seconds. That kinda stuck with me because I usually hate when movies get physics wrong, but sometimes the wrong version is just more fun to watch. Where do you all draw the line? Like when does fake science ruin a movie for you and when does it just make it better?
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grant.jason3d ago
Where do you draw the line though? For me it comes down to whether the fake science breaks the rules the movie already set up. Gravity spent an hour showing off real orbital physics and tension, so the fire extinguisher bit felt like a cheat code in a movie that was otherwise playing fair. But something like Armageddon or Fast and Furious? I don't care at all because those movies never pretended to be real in the first place.
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