Hollywood Science

A talking, self-driving car that carries Will Smith in I ROBOT. A gadget-packed Aston Martin with a license to kill. The personal jet packs used in Minority Report. These may seem like pure fiction – but we show how some have already become or have the potential to be a reality in Amazing Vehicles.

For more than a century, the car chase has been a staple of big-screen action. But how realistic are they? And what’s the automotive science behind these spectacular sequences? Director James Cameron and stunt experts explain the tricks behind those all-action high-speed scenes in Car Chases.

Films such as The Poseidon Adventure, Titanic and The Perfect Storm, all inspired by actual events, have cashed in on audiences’ primal fears. Thrilling onscreen highlights and interviews illuminate the fine line of maintaining scientific integrity while achieving maximum entertainment value when depicting Disasters at Sea.

From Enemy of the State to the adventures of James Bond, Hollywood spies have fascinated us for decades – in part because of the amazing Spy Gadgets: a video camera the size of a pinhead, an exploding briefcase, instant tracking devices. But how much of this is Hollywood creativity? And how do these fictional gadgets inspire real-world inventors?

Jan de Bont’s Twister. Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow. Wolfgang Petersen’s The Perfect Storm. For decades, filmmakers have taken their cues from the Forces of Nature. We look at the films that accurately reflect scientific data and a platoon of others that sacrifice plausibility for unadulterated entertainment. (Source: http://natgeochannel.co.uk/programmes/hollywood_science)