What are some common Hollywood medical faux pas?

[JaredJames]

Oh, well, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

There's technology, then there's hearing me say "I just farted" and being able to grasp my entire language.
(Strictly speaking my native language is Welsh, a language I'm not convinced most Welsh speakers fully understand, let alone any computer.)

 

[nismaratwork]

There's technology, then there's hearing me say "I just farted" and being able to grasp my entire language.
(Strictly speaking my native language is Welsh, a language I'm not convinced most Welsh speakers fully understand, let alone any computer.)

All I know is that Welsh has far too many W's and F's for me to translate. You'll always have Catherine Zeta Jones however, so that's a point for Welsh genetics if not the language.

 

[JaredJames]

The Welsh language is like the physics in movies. You know someone, somewhere understands it, but no matter how hard you try it just doesn't work in real life.

 

[nismaratwork]

The Welsh language is like the physics in movies. You know someone, somewhere understands it, but no matter how hard you try it just doesn't work in real life.

I hear you. I've found a study of cuneiform, proto-saxon, and Russian to be easier on the brain than Welsh... although it is a lovely a language to hear spoken.

To me the economy is like the Dutch language, I'm told it makes sense, but I have my doubts.

I could imagine "Welsh" or "Celtic" in place of Dutch.

 

[leroyjenkens]

Speaking of inflicting paralysis and death...

In Transformers, Sam falls off the roof at the end, plummets for a few seconds and is caught by Optimus. Now this applies to any film this happens in, but catching a person falling by simply 'stopping' them during the fall would kill them. Some major blunt force trauma there.

In the movie Hancock, he throws that boy up in the air extremely high and then catches him. Throwing him that hard would kill him and catching him would kill him.

He also grabs a whale by a small part of his tail and throws him extremely far. The piece of tail he's grabbing would easily tear off way before he even moved the whale.

99% of aliens look like and talk like humans.

Star Trek is guilty of that. They have aliens that look exactly like humans except for a wrinkly nose, a few spots on their head or a metal eyebrow.
And they all speak English. Sure, some have their own native language, but they speak English with no accent.

 

[Danger]

Or they/we can either pick up the language very quickly to the point of fluency or some computer can analyse a few 'sounds' of the alien language and instantly translate anything said by a human into it or from alien to human. In real time. In fact, in some cases they claim the listener doesn't hear the spoken language, but hears only the translation from the computer.

What I truly admire about the sophistication of their translator technology is that it also holographically overprints the speaker's mouth with lips synchronized to English for the benefit of the deaf.

 

[JaredJames]

What I truly admire about the sophistication of their translator technology is that it also holographically overprints the speaker's mouth with lips synchronized to English for the benefit of the deaf.

You know, I've never thought of that. Well noticed!

 

[nismaratwork]

Heh... as deeply unscientific as it is, the only series to address that issue was Stargate: humans were seeded across the galaxy, so they're not aliens to begin with. The only "aliens" are the Goa'uld, and they interface with the host brain. Then again, they're going back and forth through a wormhole without considering the issue that they'd also be traveling in time so... yeeeaaahhh... bit of a trade-off.