Waterworld
Or, "How to grow gills in less than an epoch and ignore basic scientific principles like Archimedes'!"
Well, where to get started on this one... The premise is actually kinda cute - just like lots of movies, right? 300 years in the future. Polar ice caps have melted. All land is covered by water. Thus the name Waterworld, duh. Costner is a Submariner. Has grown gills and feels totally at home living under water. Meets girl. Meets bad guy who wants girl. Bad Guy, played beautifully by Dennis Hopper, is Capt of the Exxon Valdez. Costner saves the day. Finds land. Leaves girl for the open water. GET REAL! I know this is all fake because NO MAN in his right mind would leave that woman behind! Geez!
Well, a few errors and/or problems popped up along the way;
- First, and formost to a Fizzoid like myself, is the underlying theme that if the polar ice caps melt, we are all under water. Horse Hockey, as Colonel Potter would say! There just ain't that much ice AND the followers of this doomsday theme seem to keep forgetting that ice floats for a reason! Most of the ice at the poles is already displacing it's mass/weight in water! When an ice cube melts in a soda, the soda level remains constant even though the ice cube is ABOVE THE LIP OF THE GLASS! Check out my Overflowing Coke demo. The most accurate calculations of the volume of ice at the caps in conjunction with the amount of that ice that is already floating yields an average loss of only 10 meters of shoreline around the world in the event they all melt! That's why I'm buying up all the "crappy" Jersey shore properties 15 blocks from the shore! In 300 years, they'll be PRIME BEACHFRONT! Muah Ha Ha!!!! I'll rule the world!!! Ahem...sorry...Where was I?...
- Another huge problem from the outset is the rampant disregard for the real Laws of Evolution! According to both Darwin and Lamarck, evolutionary change takes place over a hugely huge timeframe. Darwin and Lamarck disagreed on the "why" and "how" of it all, but did accept the vast timeframes needed. So, along with these spontaneous DNA changes prevalent in Hollywood now - Spiderman, The Fly, X-Men, to name a few - this growing of gills within a 300 year span is absolutely impossible. Consider that 300 years is no more than 15 generations... Just keeps perpetuating the DNA/Evolution/Clone myths.
- Aside - A great one-liner is contained in this stupid science movie. When Costner meets Hopper and tries to lie to him, Hopper says, "You're all dry"! Cool pun on our "You're all wet" thing...
