“It’s an interesting script” said someone on our PR team. It’s pretty common for us to get requests from movie-makers about showing our graphics or posters or books in movies. But the request this time was different: could we urgently help make realistic screen displays for a big Hollywood science fiction movie that was just about to start shooting?
Well, in our company unusual issues eventually land in my inbox, and so it was with this one. Now it so happens that through some combination of relaxation and professional interest I’ve probably seen basically every mainstream science fiction movie that’s appeared over the past few decades. But just based on the working title (“Story of Your Life”) I wasn’t even clear that this movie was science fiction, or what it was at all.
But then I heard that it was about first contact with aliens, and so I said “sure, I’ll read the script”. And, yes, it was an interesting script. Complicated, but interesting. I couldn’t tell if the actual movie would be mostly science fiction or mostly a love story. But there were definitely interesting science-related themes in it—albeit mixed with things that didn’t seem to make sense, and a liberal sprinkling of minor science gaffes.
When I watch science fiction movies I have to say I quite often cringe, thinking, “someone’s spent $100 million on this movie—and yet they’ve made some gratuitous science mistake that could have been fixed in an instant if they’d just asked the right person”. So I decided that even though it was a very busy time for me, I should get involved in what’s now called Arrival and personally try to give it the best science I could.
There are, I think, several reasons Hollywood movies often don’t get as much science input as they should. The first is that movie-makers usually just aren’t sensitive to the “science texture” of their movies. They can tell if things are out of whack at a human level, but they typically can’t tell if something is scientifically off. Sometimes they’ll get as far as calling a local university for help, but too often they’re sent to a hyper-specialized academic who’ll not-very-usefully tell them their whole story is wrong. Of course, to be fair, science content usually doesn’t make or break movies. But I think having good science content—like, say, good set design—can help elevate a good movie to greatness.
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