Shown Their Work/Film: Difference between revisions

* The rocket launch sequence in [[Fritz Lang]]'s ''[[Woman in The Moon (Film)|Woman in The Moon]]'' - in spite of the fact that [[Science Marches On|rockets don't need to be submerged in water]] - was extremely accurate and done entirely to justify the studio's hiring of German rocket scientists for the production. This probably makes it the best scene in the film as it contrasts with how much Lang's wife/coauthor Thea von Harbou [[Did Not Do the Research|made up convenient things]] about the moon: she depicts it with normal gravity, gold-filled caves, and a perfectly breathable atmosphere (what's more, it's a perfect half-atmosphere which exists only on the far side of the moon). All these ideas would have been considered ludicrous even at the time of the film's release.

* At the Pearl Harbor memorial base, there is an informative video that tourists can watch that gives a detailed analysis of the battle, including, at one point, a complete survey of the defenses that they had in place which made them confident that they could resist an attack. The [[Ben Affleck]] film ''Pearl Harbor'' had a character awkwardly quote it word-for-word.

* ''[[Ghostbusters]]'', of all movies, goes to great lengths to show its work, at least when it comes to parapsychology. The script didn't invent ectoplasm: according to parapsychology, it's the residue of telekinetic contact, and having it appear as a result of spectral contact isn't much of a stretch. Virtually every paranormal event Egon and Ray reference, from the symmetrical bookstacking case to the Tunguska explosion, are all real events (although Ray misstates the year of [[The Tunguska Event]]), and the way Peter handles Dana's possession, though played for laughs, follows the advice of both exorcists and secular psychologists about never letting the alternate personality intimidate or take control of the situation. And if there's any doubt that Dana's apartment building was indeed built as a portal for the fictional Sumerian god Gozer, it's dispelled by the fact that the top of the building is an accurate recreation of a Sumerian ziggurat. Most of this research comes from co-creator [[Dan Aykroyd]], whose enthusiasm for the paranormal inspired the movie in the first place, and later led to his hosting a documentary series on the supernatural and producing a documentary film on UFO's.

** Even the {{spoiler|magic decryption box}} is fairly plausible. Like every cryptographic algorithm ever invented except one (one time pad cryptography), public key cryptography has yet to be proven secure. If someone figured out how to reduce the time complexity of prime factorization from exponential to polynomial time, they might be able to decrypt things that we currently consider to be completely secure.

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{{quote| '''Scott''': "I'm really impressed with the authenticity of the way they're doing this. They're so interested in getting this accurate and precise down to not only the word, but the inflection of the word and the meaning behind the word."}}

** The misquote of Lovell saying "Houston, we have a problem" rather than "Houston, we've had a problem" has been stated to have been intentional, with the reasoning being that they didn't like the use of past tense, for whatever reason (perhaps [[Rule of Drama]], to keep the audience's tension in the moment).