6 Movie Monsters That Just Wouldn't Work
Here at Cracked, we take science fiction movies very, very seriously.
So when a creature flick comes along that is so preposterously ridiculous, so patently absurd, so monstrously unscientific ... well, we don't actually notice until years later when we need a premise for an article. But then we have no choice but to feel betrayed and scream "BULLSHIT!" at the top of our lungs.
#6.
The Facehugger
As seen in: Alien
The Facehugger was just one of several horrific stages in the life cycle of the alien race in Alien. Basically, the thing was an octopuss-looking abortion of squirming slime, whose whole purpose was to implant the next phase of itself into a host. And it did so by facerape.
It latched on to a guy's mouth and pumped its offspring down his throat, which later burst out of the poor fool's chest.
Why We Call Bullshit:
What do aliens eat? Do the movies ever establish that? Well, they'd better eat the exact same damned diet as humans, since their offspring apparently have to survive on the exact same nutrients found in a human body. After all, a human embryo/fetus requires an incredibly specific set of nutrients, so much so that artificial wombs are still science fiction. And keep in mind, this species didn't evolve specifically to use humans as hosts--as far as we know, they had never encountered humans before the events of the first film.
Alien tries to bullshit its way around this by saying that the Alien's DNA merges with the host; this becomes totally ridiculous when you realize that, despite sharing a good 99.9 percent of our DNA with chimps, we're still genetically incompatible with the fuckers. Since the Alien is way, way less like us than the chimp, this would be like saying a Komodo Dragon could successfully impregnate a human.
Hello, ladies.
But even that analogy breaks down when you realize that the Alien was not only completely different from humans, it was completely different from every living creature on the planet. Yes, unlike carbon-based life (a.k.a. fucking everything), the Alien was a silicon-based creature: At one point in the movie, we see it replacing its exoskeleton with polarized silicon, which would be like if you replaced your skin with glass.
To update our comparison, the Facehugger's reproductive method would be like if your window came to life and made passionate love to you, and then a week later you gave birth to shot glasses.
#5.
The Sarlacc
As seen in: Return of the Jedi
The Sarlacc, for the zero of you who've never seen Return of the Jedi, was a desert creature that strongly resembled a sandy, tentacled anus. It lived mostly underground, except for its gaping pothole of a mouth which, along with its 37,000 layers of teeth were exposed in the hopes of securing some clumsy grub.
Why We Call Bullshit:
There's no way the Sarlacc could get enough sustenance to survive.
First off, the creature you saw in Return of the Jedi--presumably an adult--was completely immobile and relied on prey just rolling down into their mouths, sort of like the pitcher plant. Except the pitcher plant (A) can blend into its surroundings since it looks like another plant and not like a massive hole in the ground, (B) it doesn't live in a fucking desert, so there are actually plentiful insects for it to trap and (C) is a plant, so it has sunlight and photosynthesis going for it. The Sarlacc has none of that.
Enjoy your sandwich, Sarlacc.
Also, the pitcher plant isn't fucking enormous. You can't run the metabolism on a creature that size without a massive amount of food. "But wait," you say, "it's never really clear how large the Sarlacc is - it was buried in the sand, for God's sake!" This is Star Wars we're talking about here. Professor Wookiee Hans Deetoo has it covered:
Can't you leave anything to the imagination, nerds?!
See that tiny bit up there with the tentacles? That's the part you saw in the movie. Turns out the vast majority of the Sarlacc is underneath that, sort of like an iceberg--except icebergs don't need to eat.
According to that image, the mouth is three meters wide; assuming it's to scale, the damn thing was roughly 45 meters long, making it way bigger than even the blue whale, an animal that needs up to four tons of food daily.
Wookiepedia tries to bullshit their way around that by saying that the Sarlacc digested its food over a thousand years, which would be like saying that you could survive on a single Oreo for your entire adult life as long as you ate it slowly enough.
#4.
King Kong
As seen in: King Kong, duh
Aside from a truly stunning view of Naomi Watts's cleavage and yet another reason why Jack Black should stick to comedy, the 2005 remake of King Kong's biggest contribution to film was finally giving audiences a look at the big ape as he would really appear, instead of just a guy in a rubber suit. Or at least it would have, if Kong was even remotely possible.
Oh, it is.
Why We Call Bullshit:
Gravity.
Hint: There's a reason you don't see animals this size wandering around on land. Kong's frame couldn't have supported his own weight, much less been a threat to anyone he couldn't reach from a seated position.
When you "scale up" an animal--or anything--every time you double the size, the mass is multiplied eight-fold. In Kong's case, increasing his height to 25 feet tall (seven times the height of a gorilla) would make his weight 60 tons, roughly 270 times the weight of that same gorilla. There's simply no way to support that kind of weight on two or even four paws; trying to do so would be like trying to balance a space shuttle on its nose.
Turns out this may be more scientifically plausible.
A researcher at the Institute of London who apparently had nothing better to do concluded that in the best-case scenario, Kong wouldn't be able to run, jump or tackle anything without crumpling up into a heap of broken bones. In the worst case scenario, he wouldn't even be able to stand at all. So, going by science, the climactic final scene of the film should really consist of the giant monkey slowly shuffling towards the Empire State Building before tripping, falling and destroyed every important organ in his body.
'Twas a combination of beauty and weak bones that killed the beast.
Why couldn't a race similar to humans exist in another world? Stranger things have happened. no seriously, I'm not sure why they couldn't exist.
ReplyStranger things than human-like creatures on other planets? Why haven't I heard of that...
the Galapagos turtle (c. elephantus) can go years without consuming food or water. and that's right here on earth!
ReplyActually the strength of an animal when enlarged is proportionally enlarged. apes are approximately 4-5 times stronger than the strongest human on earth, and the strongest human on earth can only lift around 1200 lbs and thats struggling and only lifting it overhead for about a second. Apes take 1200 lbs, wipe their ass with it, and then throw it 10 yards. Now porportionaly amp that strenght up to that of a 25 foot ape, and you have something that can very easily lift 60tons. By the way, an average full grown ape is 6-7 feet tall fully erect. Last time I checked 25 divided by 7 is around 3.4... Cracked just lost a bit of credibility with me on this one...
ReplyThat's too bad, because on this point, Cracked is right and you are wrong. Even if muscle strength scales up in the way you describe (it doesn't, humans are weaker than apes because we devote more of our energy supply to fueling our brains and not our muscles), BONE does not. TENDONS do not. SKIN does not. A 25 foot ape that tries to lift 60 tons, even if it had the muscles to do it, would rip those very muscles off its own ligaments, snap its bones like toothpicks, and split its own skin apart with the bulging.
And this would be true even if it somehow had bones made of solid steel.
About #4 King Kong: I call bullshit on that call of bullshit! If King Kong is impossible due to his size then dinosaurs couldn't have existed either. The discovery of the more unbeliably massive sauropods has totally disproven the "square-cube law" which is what those assumptions are based on, but ignoring the fact that things so large that King Kong would look like a kitten next to them walked the surface in the age of the dinosaurs, there was an ape that was a giant ape in reality Giganthropithicus at close to ten feet tall and weighing in at a ton.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesIt's about the build of the animal. Apes aren't structurally designed to be that big.
Reading is fun!
BULLSHITSEPTION
Sorry bud but you're wrong. The sauropods follow the square-cube law exactly, just as every other living thing does. Note how the sauropods are QUADRUPEDAL? And the bone structure of its four massive legs resemble pillars? Or that Sauropods, like all dinosaurs, had hollow bones and probably large air sacs throughout the body to cut down on weight?
In fact, we have used the square-cube laws to predict what the maximum possible size of a sauropod dinosaur would be (if it kept the same overall sauropod body plan), and that size is roughly about 50% bigger (in mass) than the biggest currently known sauropod.
Gigantopithecus is very close to the biggest an ape-shaped creature with an ape-type skeletal design can get, and King Kong is over twice as tall and more than eight times as heavy.
About #4 King Kong....that cry of bullshit is bullshit..if something the size of King Kong couldn't live... neither could the dinosaurs have existed! In fact the discoveries of the larger sauropods has neatly disproven the whole "square-cube" law in all it's horribly flawed glory. Even ignoring the fact that the discovery of dinos so large they make T. Rex look like a housecat disproves that...you still have beasts far larger than King Kong running around on the surface!
ReplyI'd say the main problem with pandoran life is not the lack of diversity (hell, if it can happen once), or even that the planet is a brain (could have been a complete accident). It's the mind-melding stuff, evolving to influence other life forms is something we see between species with pheromones, as cracked has described with corn and wasps. But evolving to allow yourself to be controlled? That requires co-operation to be helpful to survival, and if there's one thing we know about evolution, it's that YOU survive, you need to be sentient to comprehend that others can help you.
ReplyActually, a very common consensus among scientists is that life as a whole is probably going to be pretty similar on other planets (if it exists) than it would seem. Intelligent creatures are famously especially likely to be bipedal ambulatory humanoids with some kind of opposable digits. The combination just makes too much sense...
ReplyApparently Sarlaccs can be bounty hunter according to the new MMO SW game. Read their new description of sarlacc. It's like your mind is slowly fucked for a thousand years.
ReplyThe sarlaac is able to feed its prey, which is kept alive and continues to supply nutrients to the sarlaac for thousands of years. As for the aliens, they are more evolved than humans, thus they are more adaptible and able to survive on many different diets.
ReplyYour knowledge of evolutionary biology is somewhat lacking.
Replyusing alien lifeforms as examples for your scientific reasoning is kind of stupid. Then again scientists are well known for being arrogant enough to assume that all life forms that could potentally exist in this entire universe follow the exact same laws of physics that life here on earth does. Never once do they stop to think that an alien species might not need to breathe anything to survive and have an alternate life support system built into them that operates independently from whatever the atmoshere around them is made of. Or that perhaps there's a species in this universe that is completely immune to the effects of gravity. No we just assume that because all the life we have here on earth has certain preset conditions and laws that are required for survival that means that all the other lifeforms in the universe are bound by those exact same laws and requirements
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesErrrr . . . the idea that physics doesn't apply to other parts of the universe hasn't been seriously considered by anyone since Aristotle ( he said women have fewer teeth than men because they couldn't speak in public ).
Physics pretty much works the same everywhere we can see with telescopes . and that is a long way.
Yeah, um... the thing is, the laws of physics DO apply everywhere. That's why they're called "laws of physics". If they didn't apply everywhere the universe would kinda fall apart.
I gotta say, given a choice between being arrogant and dumb as a bag of hammers I'm glad I chose arrogant. Your choice is all too apparent.
IF that alien life form actually wants to live by PARASITIZING us, then YES it most certainly HAS to obey the same laws of biology as our bodies do. Otherwise it wouldn't be able to eat us.
As for the laws of physics, YES everything must obey them. If even one thing did not, the universe would literally end. And since we can clearly observe that the universe has not ended, we know that nothing of that sort exists.
Actually, it's established quite well what they eat. They eat everything, like a goat, ranging from animals to the metal keeping the ship afloat. It's very well established in the extended Universe and hinted at in the movies.
ReplyThis article could really use some Douglas Adams logic. If the universe is infinite, that means that there are infinite chances for life to occur, that means an infinite amount of possibilities.
ReplyThat basically means that every kind of creature that could possibly exist does. Just VERY far out there, and we'll most likely never find it.
I always kind of figured that the Xenomorphs at people in order to get at the electrolytes and harder elements in us, to help fuel some kind of heavy acid-based chemical reactions their silicon based bodies may thrive on.
ReplyOr something.
Yeah, 1 is wrong. If the human form developed here, perhaps it's just the best-suited form. Why couldn't it develop elsewhere?
Reply Hide All See All 4 Repliesyes, fair point. Look at sharks, dolphins and icthyosaurs . . . parallel evolution.
The human form is ok at best. Besides our brain, we are kinda fragile, and can only inhabit a small portion of the planet we live on, and an even smaller portion when you consider our ability to farm and create shelter. We only work because of our brains.
All known examples of parallel (convergent) evolution here on earth are actually misleading, because they all START from similar starting points. Consider sharks, dolphins, and icthyosaurs. They are all very similarly shaped to be optimized for swiftly swimming through water. BUT they are ALL vertebrates. They all descended from an ancestor with a specific body plan, one with a backbone and paired muscle groups to move that backbone.
It is only because evolution in all 3 cases started with the same body plan is the convergence so clear. Because STARTING WITH THAT BODY PLAN, there is only so many shapes you can evolve into that are good for swimming (and the body patterning genes responsible for making that shape are present in the ancestor!).
Now take another lineage here on earth faced with the same problem of moving quickly through water, but starting with a very different ancestral body plan. And what did evolution produce? A squid.
And yet, even taking all life on earth, a single planet, squid and vertebrates are CLOSE COUSINS. They are all members of a single teeny twig on the great tree of life, the animals.
Now extrapolate to an alien planet which had a completely different abiogenesis event, with a completely different set of starting genetics, and the likelihood of convergent evolution producing a humanoid biped for the niche of an intelligent tool user is vanishingly small.
Or consider the human form for a moment. WHY do we stand upright? Because we evolved from apes that had no tail. If we had had a tail ancestrally, for counterbalancing, then a semi-upright form with a powerful tail for counterbalance (like a theropod dinosaur) is superior to a fully upright form in every aspect of mobility and stability and still leaves the hands free for tool use.
And why do we need to be bipedal to free those hands for tools? Because our ancestors had only 4 limbs. If we descended from ancestors with six limbs (and it is patently obvious that a 6 limbed body form is a very successful design), then there would be no need to be bipedal. And what if our ancestor didn't even use its moving limbs for manipulating the world, but had a separate organ for that use, like an octopus' tentacles, or an elephant's trunk?
The humanoid form is only well-suited IN THE SPECIFIC CONTEXT OF OUR ANCESTRY, even down to the fundamentals of bilateral symmetry itself.
Dumbest. Article. Ever. What makes all of these monsters cool and fun to watch is the very fact that they don't/cant exist. If I wanted to see scientifically accurate "monster movies" I'd just stay home and watch PBS. Besides, how can you pick any one element out of a movie and say "THAT's not believable.... sure, I'll accept the faster than light travel, the laser guns, the giant walking carpet, the ability to manipulate objects through the "Force" the big slug looking dude, and even accept Mark Hamil *could* be a bad ass... but that sarlac thing? Dude... no way. That's just unbelievable."
ReplySorry, but the Kong 'problem' doesn't hold water at all, since THERE HAVE BEEN animals that big, and bigger. Ever heard of the dinosaurs? They didn't crumble with their first step, as I recall.
ReplyBut they also were not physiologically identical to gorillas. I think the argument was that if you scaled up any animal and kept it's ratios the same they would buckle under their own weight at a certain point.
And the dinosaurs had MULTIPLE SPECIFIC ADAPTIONS IN ALL APSECTS OF THEIR BIOLOGY to accommodate their size. King Kong COULD grow to such a size IF IT HAD SIMILAR SPECIFIC ADAPTIONS. But if it had such similar adaptions IT WOULDN'T BE THE SHAPE OF AN APE ANYMORE. And then it wouldn't be King Kong anymore.
(And even with all the adaptions to large size in the world, the kind of ape acrobatics King Kong does in the movie, leaping and jumping and swinging and so forth, is impossible, utterly and completely, for any organism made up of normal matter. He could have bones of steel and muscles powered by nuclear reactors and it still would not have been possible for him to move the way the movie shows (ie move exactly like a regular sized ape). The big dinosaurs DID NOT leap and tumble and jump and swing like that.
King Kong would probably have had similar lung troubles to the Starship Troopers bugs, presuming he is simply an oversized gorilla and not some actually-possible alien/mutant. However, who's to say that the bugs in Starship Troopers did not have some way around the whole lung issue? Also, it isn't such a stretch to think that maybe they evolved with titanium carapaces that are just black.
Reply#1 is actually semi-justified.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesWhile it would be improbable for an alien species to look EXACTLY like a human (the Na'vi even have the same freaking tooth dentition as humans, for christ's sake) a human-like body plan is the ideal shape for a sapient species.
We have a tall, upright frame, so that our creature can stand high and view the world clearly.
We have a pair of eyes on the front of the head, so that it can see things clearly with depth perception, binocular vision and all that other good stuff.
We have a pair of dextrous hands, which allow our creature to pick up and manipulate objects in its environment. We humans would be nowhere without our hands.
We have a large head to hold/protect whatever it thinks with (it has to be large).
So there you are. Dolphins are almost as intelligent as we are, but they'll never become a successful civilization because their best form of manipulation and grasping is done with their mouths. Compare them to the dinosaur Troodon, which was all set to go to evolve into a sapient species because it had grasping hands.
James Cameron originally wanted to design the Na'vi with gills and a crest, and I wish that he'd taken that route, because that way they'd look more alien.
Also, Dolphins aren't able to create fire, which scientists say is the key.
People need to stop complaining about how much the Na'vi look so much like humans. Just look at Star Trek! They barely even have a different skin color!
Actually, most scientist tend to agree that the humanoid form is horribly flawed, in context of survival. We only survived due to a long string of good luck and specific conditions and mass extinction events. The odds of any other intelligent life taking on humanoid form is so minute as to be laughable.
Star Trek also was a TV show with a much smaller budget than Avatar. But yeah, I've always felt the Star Trek aliens are pretty laughable. I mean...Bajorans are just humans with a wrinkly nose.
No, a humanoid body plan ISN'T the ideal body plan for a sapient species. It's just one of the few ideal body plans IF YOU START OUT WITH A BASIC TETRAPOD VERTEBRATE AND ARE RESTRICTED TO JUST MODIFYING THAT BASIC VERTEBRATE IN A STEP-WISE FASHION.
Take your four criteria alone and one can easily envision thousands, if not millions, of alternate non-humanoid body forms that would fulfill the exact same criteria. Which one you end up with depends on what you start with. If you start with a squid, you're not going to get a humanoid. It might well stand high to get a good view (or maybe just have eyes on stalks), it might well have paired eyes (it won't have a head) for binocular vision, and it will have 10 tentacles to choose from to evolve dextrous appendages, so it won't need to be bipedal and it won't need to have hands.
The only reason WE'RE BIPEDAL is because it just so happened that the vertebrate species that colonized the land only had 2 pairs of fins, leaving us with only 4 limbs for evolution to play with. If we had descended from 6 limbed critters, for example, we wouldn't have needed to be bipedal to have hands for tool use, and we'd get to keep all the vast advantages that a quadrupedal running gait has over a bipedal one.
I COMPLETELY agree about the facehugger! Everything about that creature is contrived and didn't make evolutionary sense!
ReplyBut it may interest you that they explain the Sarlacc (which is supposed to be part plant) was intentionally 'planted' where it is in the Dune Sea by Jabba, where it is fed a steady stream of prisoners. Anyway, I suppose if it did have a slow-enough metabolism it might work... I mean, look at what deep sea creatures are able to accomplish.
Also! there actually was a very large species of ape that got to be 10' tall called Gigantopithecus, which isn't 50' but still, there were mammals that got pretty big like Megatherium.
What about the giant space worms that swallow the MIllennium Falcon?
It's often suggested in the expanded Alien universe that the Aliens were engineered as a form of bioweapon. So, they may not have actually evolved.
In a more practical sense, their design was simply intended to look cool, rather than make biological sense. Go watch the special features on the DVDs and the people who made them will admit to that.