Lousy Science, Again

a visit from Max Brooks.

There are MANY definitions of 'science fiction'...numerous...

Some you may agree with and others you may not.

Here is just one example:

http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/SF-Defined.htm

So...

I don't have a need to perseverate on what is or what is not 'science' about this film. That was not the focus.

It had monsters in it. Monsters don't exist. The writers played with them the way they wanted to.

The characters did not present themselves as 'scientists' so I didn't expect them to provide any scientific exposition. They were just dealing with what they were dealing with. And that is what is presented to the viewer.

And, although the monsters definitely had a major part in the story, this movie wasn't all about them or their origin story.

I liked this film. I liked the story. Accidentally ran across it and was surprised how it drew me in. Too many films labeled as 'sci-fi' or 'speculative fiction' or 'horror' just don't do that for me these days -- too many are a great big CGI and/or jumpscare-at-every-turn yawn fest. And I liked the final battle -- the overhead split-room shots were a great touch.


The monsters did not 'take me out of it' -- except for the minor nods to Signs (monsters), 28 Days Later (monster kept on chain), and Walking Dead (monster de-armed).


In any event, to me, it's a 'what if' story, given the elements with which we are presented. I didn't find blatant internal inconsistencies regarding those elements as portrayed (pet peeve of mine is when a movie breaks its own rules in a big way -- that WILL take me out of a film).

And, there are many films not placed in exactly the correct 'genre' just as many trailers don't depict what's really good about a movie. C'est la vie.

JMHO!





"Shake your hair girl with your ponytail"

Just watched the movie. Clearly, they're not zombies (inexplicably animated corpses). They're living creatures, former human beings transformed by an unexplained infectious agent. Not sure why you thought otherwise.

You're correct, of course, in your point that writing a story in the genre of science fiction or horror is not an excuse to ignore logic and basic science. It does, though, allow for a lot of very speculative fiction. The mysterious pandemic that collapses civilization in this movie is darned unlikely, but I'll accept it for the sake of the story, the same way I accept FTL travel in Star Trek.

What I haven't been able to figure out -- and I feel embarrassed -- is: why is it so cold? My impression was that it was permanently snowy. Did they coincidentally have a nightmarish world-ending pandemic and a sudden new period of glaciation at the same time?

"The truth 24 times a second."

There's nothing more hilarious than a big goof unleashing his "zombie knowledge" upon the masses, as if it was scientific knowledge.

Keep it up! It's entertaining!

Don't get me wrong, I'm usually the first to complain about poor science (because I'm a big science & skepticism nerd), so I do sympathize. And obviously, there is no great science genius behind this writing. However, as long as we're getting our nerd on, you have an unstated major premise; I don't see why you would even assume that these are zombies of the "undead" persuasion. They seem more like the "infected living mutant" type to me. In which case, they would be warm blooded.

The infected still wouldn't evolve unless they reproduced (though the parasite infecting them might), but people abuse that word all the time, so we may assume that the characters are likewise misusing it.

I'm not sure I completely agree with the issues you mentioned. The invulnerability to loss of limb and cold temperatures is a bit silly, but I'm sure you could come up with some hand-waving far-fetched but not totally insane hypothesis about improved blood clotting and biological anti-freeze equivalents being released by the parasite to explain those away. Lack of starvation is not completely explainable either, given that we saw them eat foxes and other animals.

Still, there is the issue of how these traits would be acquired, and that is I think generally the worst offender for "infected mutants" like these.
Obviously, it's ridiculous to believe that a parasite with adaptations that complex could just pop up out of the blue. In fact, it's not obvious how there could be any selective pressure for those kinds of adaptations to evolve at all. This is especially true if the parasite is a microorganism, given that any single parasite that evolved such an adaptation would be unlikely to impact the host's chances of survival significantly, and thus would not have an advantage over its cousins until its phenotype had a significant presence in the host body (in other words, you'd need the discredited variant of group selection to explain how such traits evolved). The only other way to do it would be to make these traits exaptations, that is, epiphenomena (i.e.: happy side effects), of an adaptation that benefited the individual infecting microorganisms, but then the sheer number of adaptations defies plausibility, especially given the very short time available for this evolution to occur.
And of course, if the adaptations evolved in one host, they would not be present in other infected hosts - but they established that the infection was no longer contagious, so there's that problem to deal with.
Plus, what are the odds that the parasite just happens to render them blind and improves their hearing at the same time? Though I suppose the improved hearing might have evolved first, after which the eyesight was lost because it was no longer needed.

Nevertheless, the thing that bothered me more is that people kept feeding the dog chocolate.

Who said that? Do you have a zombie in your backyard?

Maybe they aren't zombies at all, just infected/transformed people. Just because they bite and become mindless savage beings doesn't point necessarly to zombies

Man I bet you just hated Star Wars. And 99% of anything that calls itself "science fiction". So many things that couldnt possibly exist scientifically... Im glad Im able to suspend belief when I watch movies and not get hung up on every pedantic nitpicky plot point that may not jive with the realities of the NON FICTION REAL world...

And anyway maybe aliens created these creatures once the zombie disease they introduced petered out and didnt wipe out all the humans on earth so they could take over. Maybe there was a dimensional rift and these things wondered through. Maybe human scientists wound up creating these things while experimenting with the zombies on a cure for the original disease and they got out... Use your imagination. Since its FICTION anything like that is possible...


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