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

one of my favorite “conspiracy theories” is that stanley kubrick was hired to direct a fake moon landing, but he was so obsessed with accuracy that he made them film on location on the moon

I always thought Spaceballs did a great job showing how one would "comb" a desert.

I remember how excited my linguistics professor was when he first saw Arrival he was like that's me! that's what I'm teaching you!!

The running gag of Jason praising his cephalopod script has me laughing everytime

Neil has also said in interviews that James Cameron‘s first reply to him was “yeah, I’m sure it would’ve made a lot more money if I had gotten the sky right.”

Joes chair spin is the best thing on YouTube, the angle, the speed, the lack of audible squeaking from said chair, Joes emotionless dead expression, all culminating into one 2 second work of art lol! A masterpiece lol

"Moon" also deserves a mention. Besides the whole cloning angle, it's pretty solid scientifically.

I think "The Man From Earth" is the best sci-fi film ever produced. It never succeeded in the box-office because it is too cerebral for a general audience, but true geeks really love it for exactly the same reason.

Joe, you know this has to be followed up by a "Most scientifically inaccurate movies, that tried not to be" video, right? Like Armageddon

Good list. My favorite scene in Contact is when she is given the suicied pill. Ellie says she is not going to use it, but the guy points out that the pill isn't really for the 100 things we think could go wrong, it is for the 100 things we have not even thought of. Yeah, that got me thinking about all the unknowns we really don't know about. Love that scene.

"A languages structure can actually change the speakers worldview" - something probably every (or at least most) language/linguistics aficionado and multilingual has discovered for themselves and is a huge part of why so many second language learners end up falling in love with and studying multiple languages <3 I can never recommend learning another language enough. preferably one from a different language family that uses totally different structures to your native language. it makes things a lot more difficult for sure, but it's oh so rewarding.<3

I really need to watch Arrival! I'm not a linguist but I am an ESL teacher and took some linguistic courses in University. I'm also living in Korea and I was thinking about how different their worldview is simply because of some grammar differences. They way they emphasize age hierarchy in their language here really changes the way they think about the world. It's also a really verb heavy language so they don't describe things with adjectives as often and they describe things with adverbs. The best example I can think of is them saying" I ate deliciously" instead of saying "the food is delicious." Also just watched the Martian and I loved it! I really love movies that push people to the edge of survival. Its even cooler when math and science are the tools used to ensure survival, not just instincts and physical skills.

I love how science in The Expanse isn't just a backdrop, but actually affects the plot and character choices.

Im a young radio astronomer:) I got to work with the VLA and operate the green bank remotely and i had the same feeling- i had made it, just like Ellie Arroway i even wrote about her in the essay i used to get my current research position

You should have included George Pal's "Destination Moon" (1950), which was carefully made with amazing and beautiful moonscapes painted by Chesley Bonestell, and very accurate based on the science of the day. The only (semimajor) error was that in '49-'50 no one knew the moon was covered in a thick layer of dust. (This was proven by my father, Dr. Winfield W. Salisbury, when he bounced radio waves off the moon's surface, sometime between 1947 [he told me] and '51, while he was director of research at Collins Radio Co., now Collins Aerospace. In this experiment he used a radio dish--on the top of the Naval Observatory in Washington D.C.--that he had designed and overseen the construction of.) He and I went to see the movie in November '51, and it was one of the most thrilling movies I'd ever seen. I saw it six more times in the theater, a record for me (in those days movies sometimes stuck around for months, even a year or two). For years I wanted to become an astronaut--before the word even existed. The movie is still available on DVD.

So stroked that you've got the Andromeda Strain on this list, I read the book when I was in med school and was blown away at how accurate it all was, and the genius to use human biochemistry and viral contamination to ground the story in reality.

Most realistic Sci-fi movie: Spaceballs. "Even in the future nothing works!" Spot on, Mr Brooks. Spot on.

I'm glad you included Arrival, linguistics isn't usually recognized for being the scientific study that it is.

How the hell did you leave out Contagion. Almost uncanny in its predictions of pandemic response.

Reading The Andromeda Strain, moreso than the movie, really sparked my interest in experimental science. How they made observations, development hypotheses, designed experiments to methodically eliminate things. I've been a PhD research scientist for 40 years, now. I loved Contact for portraying the passion of a scientist and the exhilaration of v making a discovery. Jody Foster is amazing and it's nice to hear that she inspired a number of girls to become scientists.