I can think of several. These are all great movies, but they require a huge suspension of disbelief. I believe they all have a pay-off that is worth the cost*, but I guess that is really in the eye of the beholder.
- Dune (any version). The biggest gap is the idea that interstellar space travel will be feasible only with the abundant supply of mind-altering drugs. The reason given is that ‘computers’ (however that is defined), are illegal and human brains have to be adjusted in such a way as to mimic the functioning of a computer. Either simple computers (think calculators) need to be available for space travel or space travel is impossible. Wet-ware (human brains) are simply not good enough at math the perform the millions of calculations necessary to establish orbit, or land a spacecraft or any of the tasks necessary.
- Event Horizon: This movie is too silly to even exist. Ghosts live in black holes, which are really just white dwarf cores, with their interiors manipulated by electromagnet fields. And astronauts can pass into and out of them when the lights line up. And nature gets pissed off when you break her rules. Along the same lines as ‘The Black Hole’ but much worse.
- Dark Star: The astronauts have extended lifespans because of the ‘time dilation’ effects of relativity. This isn’t how time dilation works. Time dilation does not ‘pick and choose’ which effects of time slow (aging) and which don’t (subjective experience of time). It’s all or nothing. Travelling across the galaxy at relativistic speeds, I might live to be several thousand years old (by Earth time) but my experience of time would still be on the order of a hundred years.
- Deep Blue Sea. The idea that making a shark’s brain bigger would make it smarter is a misunderstanding of how brains work. Smarter brains do tend to be bigger (compare the human brain to, say a squirrel brain), but simply making the brain bigger does not make it smarter. Think of a car. Making a car bigger, does not automatically make it faster. Making the engine bigger could make it faster, but only if done in the correct way. Making the cylinders larger while keeping the injectors or the fuel lines the same size would only make a car that constantly stalls out. I could go on, but I’m not an auto mechanic.
- Abbot and Costello go to Mars. They actually end up on Venus. And Venus is actually nothing like pictured. Neither is Mars, for that matter.
- Capricorn One: The technology used to send the astronauts to Mars is obviously just Moon landing technology. The lander pictured landing on the Martian surface is clearly nowhere nearly powerful enough to launch the astronauts back into Martian orbit. The command capsule is much too small to hold provisions for a two year trip, etc.
- Earth Girls are Easy: Earth girls aren’t easy. I checked.
I’ll stop at seven.
Footnotes
- At least some of them are.