Top 10 Most Scientifically Accurate Fiction Movies
Many movies are so implausible, inaccurate, or ridiculous that it can take away from the overall movie watching experience, or can make the movie seem less personal and more detached from you. However, there are some rare movies that were made to be as realistic and accurate as possible, even in totally unreal situations, with careful regards to science. In this list, we're going to be looking at some famous fiction movies that are scientifically accurate, whether due to mind blowing yet true science or due to accurate depictions or predictions of things in our everyday lives.The infamous 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey," directed by Stanley Kubrick, has been praised for its accurate portrayal of spaceflight and the vacuum of space, at a time before either had really been experienced. Before starting the film, Kubrick sought technical advice from over 50 organizations to predict what things would look like in 2001, and it definitely paid off. Many NASA engineers praised it as "perhaps the most thoroughly and accurately researched film in screen history with respect to aerospace engineering."
It accurately presents outer space as not allowing any sound, whereas almost every other space movie from that time includes audible explosions in space. It has a much better portrayal of weightlessness than almost any other space movie, and its approach to how space travel is engineered was highly accurate. There are some slight inaccuracies in this film, perhaps more than later items such as Interstellar and The Martian. However, considering 2001: A Space Odyssey was made so long ago (before the moon landing), it's incredible how well they portrayed everything. To this day, it remains one of the most realistic science fiction films ever.
In the making of Interstellar, the famous space movie starring Matthew McConaughey traveling through a wormhole in search of a new home for humanity, renowned director Christopher Nolan hired theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner Kip Thorne as a consultant to ensure everything was as accurate as possible. Almost all the space-related elements and the depiction of Earth in 2067 are theoretically possible, even though they can't be proven.
The way time slows down near the black hole, causing 23 years to pass in just a few minutes, is actually true. The depiction of the wormhole was also accurate. According to Kip Thorne, neither wormholes nor black holes are usually depicted in movies the way they would actually appear. It's no surprise that Interstellar's portrayal of Gargantua, the black hole in the film, was lauded as the most accurate depiction of a black hole ever.
Gattaca, the 1997 science fiction film featuring Ethan Hawke and centered on genetics and space travel, is a very scientifically accurate movie. So scientifically accurate, in fact, that NASA itself picked it as the most scientifically plausible sci-fi movie of all time, which tells you something about it.
One interesting aspect of this film is the idea of designing your baby's genetics, giving them genes for higher immunity to diseases, choosing hair color, etc. While this may seem far-fetched, Gattaca might become a reality sooner than we think. Since 1978, with the creation of the first "test-tube babies," a procedure where sperm and eggs are combined in a lab to create embryos that are then implanted into a woman's womb, we're already not far off. Other advancements, such as PGD (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis), where you can identify possible genetic abnormalities, have also come into play. Many experts agree that the world of Gattaca could become real in just a few years, and the science depicted in it might closely resemble future realities.
Yet another space movie on this list is Ridley Scott's "The Martian." Just like the book, which was scientifically accurate due to its author Andy Weir, who is not only a programmer and a software engineer but also a hobbyist of orbital mechanics, relativistic physics, and other scientific topics, the movie adaptation is very accurate. It revolves around Matt Damon having to survive on Mars after his crew evacuated the planet during a terrible storm, leaving him behind because they thought he was dead.
He has to survive all sorts of obstacles using his brain, and surprisingly, his solutions to them are all quite possible and scientifically correct, though sometimes embellished. Even the dramatic twist where the crew uses Earth's gravity to slingshot back to Mars is possible, and the rescue of Matt Damon's character, while depending heavily on luck, had a scientific basis. There are a few hiccups in terms of its science, but overall, The Martian is an extremely accurate movie.
The famous Steven Spielberg movie starring Tom Cruise makes it onto the list because many inventions in that movie, which seemed futuristic at the time, have become real and are now quite common. Driverless cars, which seemed crazy at the time, appeared much sooner than 2054, when the film takes place.
There are many driverless cars today. Facial and optical recognition, which seemed entirely new at the time, are a reality now, as well as personalized ads. Even things like voice-controlled homes, though uncommon, exist. By 2054, it's quite possible that the world Minority Report predicted will become a reality, perhaps even sooner.
It wasn't a very popular or praised film, but the 2009 movie about an astronaut on a 3-year mining mission on the moon, where he mines a valuable material called Helium-3 (because in his Earth, that material provides 70% of the Earth's energy), is pretty accurate. Although we have not yet been able to mine Helium-3, the lunar mining and harvesting of helium-3 depicted in the movie align with scientists' theories on the subject. In the future, it's quite possible that humans will need to mine Helium-3 to help provide energy for Earth.
Not only is this 2013 movie starring Joaquin Phoenix very good (it was even nominated for Best Picture), but some of the interesting concepts that fuel this romantic sci-fi movie are also very likely to exist in the near future. In the movie, Phoenix's character is a lonely and depressed man who buys an artificial intelligence virtual assistant, eventually falling in love with the AI, which he calls "Samantha."
This may seem ridiculous to imagine, but once humans succeed in creating artificial intelligence, they will almost certainly add virtual assistant functionalities. Many other high-tech concepts in the movie either already exist or will exist soon.
What might shock you (it certainly shocked me) about this list is that Finding Nemo made its way on here. Usually, Disney animated films are not accurate in any way. However, if you disregard the talking seagulls and fish, it's very true to real life. The filmmakers hired marine biologists to design the sea flora, swimming mechanics, and even the social behaviors of the fish in the film.
Many minor details about the fish in the movie are accurate, such as the fact that clownfish do live in sea anemones. Surprisingly, clownfish like Nemo and other tropical fish occasionally end up in Sydney Harbor during the summertime after being carried away by the East Australian Current.
Deep Impact might seem like a generic and perhaps even sloppy disaster movie at first. However, surprisingly, some aspects of it are actually very plausible. According to many critics who examined the science of the movie more closely after watching it, the location and everything related to the asteroid's impact in the film are quite solid. Even the famous and renowned planetary scientist and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says that the science in it is good. He also mentions that the scenes using grappling hooks in space accurately depict what a landing on an asteroid in real life would look like.
One movie known for striving to be scientifically accurate is Contact, a film about interpreting a message from an alien race and humanity's reaction to it. In most movies revolving around highly scientific concepts such as outer space or communication, many complex aspects are overlooked to prioritize entertainment over accuracy.
However, Contact did not compromise on accuracy, incorporating extensive dialogue that may have seemed unnecessary or incomprehensible to most viewers but made perfect sense to astronomers. The movie also included seemingly nonsensical phrases like "pi times hydrogen," which are scientifically plausible.
This movie is about a volcano that is on the verge of exploding. Despite Hollywood's usual wild exaggerations in disaster movies, this one provides a reasonably accurate portrayal of how bad a situation like this can be.