The perception of Skeptics as cold, hard logic machines couldn’t really be further from the truth. Especially when it comes to popular culture. When the harsh realities of the world surround you, who doesn’t enjoy a bit of escapism?
Magic – Absolutely!
Dragons – Bring ‘em on!
Superpowers – The more the better!
Paranormal activity – Go on then!
Deities – If you must.
Suspension of disbelief is not a problem. So, set the stage, frame your universe, and stick with it. It’s not that hard. Want to explain a plot point using science of some sorts? Sure, try asking someone with a little bit of knowledge, and don’t stretch things too far. This simple formula seems hard to get wrong, but some still manage.
So, let’s take a look at some of those times when TV and film was spoiled for the skeptical audience. Please be warned though, these spoils also contain spoilers. If you haven’t already sat through them, then we may be helping you dodge a bullet anyway. You’re welcome!
1: Red Lights
In a different universe this could have been a favourite with skeptics; We have an impressive cast including Sigourney Weaver, Cillian Murphy, and Robert De Niro before he blotted his copybook with antivaxxer sentiments, and the plot circles around successful attempts at debunking alleged paranormal phenomena.
The climax of the movie hints at satisfaction too, as De Niro’s character is exposed as a fraud, but that was clearly not enough of a payoff. Instead, we find out that Murphy’s character has real powers, and his lifelong crusade to seek out and test people with such alleged abilities was really a subconscious attempt to find more people like him. Shouldn’t have been given the green light.
2: Interstellar
Another example of a film which should have been a tasty treat for skeptics, but was contaminated by just enough nonsense to leave a bad taste in the mouth. We’ve got a picture of an earth in crisis (which we can certainly empathise with), space and time travel, exoplanets, wormholes, and a more than reasonable attempt to tip the hat towards actual scientific concepts. There’s also strong themes of love, compassion, and sacrifice for the greater good – all fine and dandy so far.
Perhaps it would require a theoretical physicist to explain how the third act of the film collapses into its own hole though, as we see the protagonist finding himself in a five dimensional tesseract and being able to communicate with a younger version of his daughter using morse code (yes, really). Even though that’s hard enough to swallow, the concept of the power of love (not the Huey Lewis / Jennifer Rush / Frankie Goes To Hollywood songs) is overplayed to the point of nausea and incredulity. To quote the movie: “Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends time and space”. Perhaps Christopher Nolan was a bit too ‘into Stella‘ at the time of co-writing the movie.
3: Signs
Back in the days before Mel Gibson had revealed the depths of his religious extremism by venturing into torture porn territory with The Passion of the Christ (and other even less pleasant shenanigans), he teamed up with the poster child of diminishing returns M. Night Shyamalan for the movie Signs. By the time of its release, we already had nearly a decade’s worth of the X-Files to fulfil all our alien visitation desires, so the strong box office showing was much more of a surprise than the premise of the movie.
Jump scares aplenty, crop circles, and literal tin foil hats were entertaining enough, but the movie fell foul in two major ways: firstly, having aliens with the capability of intergalactic space travel visit a planet whose surface is over 70% water when they themselves are harmed by water doesn’t seem entirely plausible. You’d imagine with such advanced technology they might have at least got around to inventing raincoats.
Much more importantly though, divine intervention is given much of the credit for foiling the aliens, with Gibson’s lapsed catholic character returning to church at the end of the movie. Should have been called ‘Warning Signs’.
4: 2012
Disaster movies should be easy. The audience aren’t expected to engage their brains, and the writers barely need to. Think of some form of threat, exaggerate it, pick a random A-lister (or at least a B+lister), then blow the rest of your budget on CGI and marketing. Simple. In this round of apocalypse roulette we have solar flares, and John Cusack – what could possibly go wrong?
Well, firstly, in what might be a gold medal winning round of “this meeting could have been an email”, scientist A travels half way around the world to have a conversation with scientist B. Since they were using words rather than interpretive dance or sign language there was no need for physical proximity, and much of the scary stuff would have really been in the form of data.
More importantly though, it was the nature of the scary revelations that really did the damage, with Scientist B telling us “It looks like the neutrinos coming from the sun have mutated into a new kind of nuclear particle.” A premise so bizarre that it prompted an entire routine from Dara Ó Briain. Truly a disaster movie.
5: Miami Vice S4E07: Missing Hours
Ok, so no-one ever treated Miami Vice as a gritty, realistic portrayal of south Floridian law enforcement in the first place, but as the programme began to dip in the ratings and run short of ideas, at least a shark jump would have been more plausible compared to what we got in this episode, particularly considering the proximity of Crocket and Tubbs’ stomping ground to the ocean.
Instead, we get a credulous plotline about alien abduction, a pre-SNL appearance from Chris Rock, and a truly baffling cameo from James Brown. You won’t feel good. I know that you won’t.
6: Lucy
Ok, so many might have written this movie off pretty early-on due to the shaky principle the entire plot sits upon about humans only using ten percent of the potential of the brain. It’s clumsy and it’s wrong, but that doesn’t really matter. All it needed was a quick rewording for Morgan Freeman’s character (whose name isn’t important, as he was portraying movie cliché Morgan Freeman): how about something like “The right stimulus could push our already powerful brains into overdrive, and the limits are almost endless”? There, fixed it!
From that point onwards Scarlett Johansson getting increasingly intelligent, intertwined with some cool fighty-shooty stuff, would have been reasonably fine in the universe the movie was set in. What we see instead is ascending levels of ridiculous as our protagonist repeatedly breaks the laws of physics (intertwined with some cool fighty-shooty stuff). Just make it a superhero movie – that would have been fine!
All we can say with confidence is that Luc Besson was clearly using less than ten percent of his brain when writing it.
7: Manifest (tv series)
When I was a teenager I got talking to some Mormon missionaries. They were a few years older than me, and American, hence cool. We talked about music, skateboarding, and not religion (which is my favourite aspect of religion). They came to my house a few times over the course of a few weeks. As things progressed they slowly introduced some of their real message, and on what turned out to be their final visit, they said that they wanted to save me and have me baptised. That was awkward. I asked them not to come round after that.
This is exactly what Manifest does, with the excellent sci-fi concept of a plane landing after a routine flight only to find they’ve been missing for over five years. With a few hints along the way, it took multiple seasons to finally confirm that the who in the whodunnit was God. I presume my Mormon ‘friends’ enjoyed it though.
8: The New Scooby-Doo Movies
Generally hailed as a great piece of skeptical television, the initial series Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! featured a strange collection of free-range teenagers and their talking dog encountering and solving mysteries which appear paranormal at first, but always resulted in the unmasking of a very real human. Inspiring enough to get a shout out in Tim Minchin’s ode to rational thinking Storm, but sadly those good times were never going to last. The 1972 revamp of the franchise saw a different format, with longer episodes, and real ghosts. Zoinks!
This terrible disappointment was however put into perspective with the introduction of Scrappy Doo in 1979. Perspective helps.
9: Phenomenon
1994’s Pulp Fiction is generally regarded as a classic, with a plethora of awards to its name. This was not all good for the world of cinema though as it’s widely credited with reviving the somewhat ailing career of controversial actor John Travolta. It would be another six years before he fully shot himself in the thetan with Scientology shambles Battlefield Earth, which doesn’t make this list because you need to achieve a reasonable level of quality in the first place in order to be ruined.
Eighteen years before Lucy, Phenomenon was ahead of the game in terms of its ‘superbrain’ plot, but was sadly lacking in cool fighty-shooty stuff. It did however explore some interesting themes about small town mentality and friendship. It’s not long before Travolta’s superbrain starts breaking the laws of physics, but with the door open to the cause of his ‘condition’, including alien or divine intervention, the audience are kept onboard right up until the reveal.
The reveal is both dissatisfying, and somewhat tasteless, as the real cause is a brain tumour. He dies, although thankfully that happens before the terrible Eric Clapton soundtrack kicks in. Merciful.
10. M*A*S*H S6E25: Major Topper
Watch the full episode on Daily Motion.
It’s hard to call any fault with such a long running, consistently excellent show. M*A*S*H managed to squeeze great comedy out of the medical horrors of war for over a decade, and on the occasions when it got serious, the impact was huge. With a very strong content warning, you can watch Hawkeye’s breakdown scene for an example just how dark and brilliant it could get.
With a reasonable attempt at realism of the difficulties of running a mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean war for the vast majority of the show’s long run, they fell out of line seriously on one occasion as they mistakenly endorsed the placebo effect as a real treatment. With a bad batch of morphine proving to be unusable, the team conjure up the idea of giving out sugar pills to their badly injured patients to get them through the night, and the results are quite literally unbelievable.
For a deeper breakdown on the episode and the legend of the wartime placebo check out this article from friend of The Skeptic, Jonathan Jarry, and Mike Hall’s excellent talk on the Placebo Myth from QED 2022. It’s a little sad though that the only sour taste left by such a great show was caused by sugar pills.
Once again, a big thanks to my friends in the skeptical community who helped me crowdsource input for this article. If your suggestion didn’t make it into the list then either you got it wrong, or I was too lazy to watch the film/show in question (or even read the plot synopsis on IMDB) – you can decide which.
If you want to fight me about my selection, you should probably get a hobby, but you’re welcome to seek me out on twitter anyway!
