(Photo by David Gamble)
Neil deGrasse Tyson is not only a noted astrophysicist, he is also a galactic movie reviewer. His Twitter-based armchair assessments of movies that purport to be about space have enlightened the scientifically inclined, while also angering those who would prefer their disbelief suspended. Here are a few tweets from everyone’s favorite rockstar astrophysicist under his verified account, @neiltyson.
The Martian
Tyson started his series of tweets about this Matt Damon movie with the chide “Evidence that the @MartianMovie is fantasy: All who make important decisions are scientifically literate.” He followed with “The @MartianMovie—where Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math are highly developed characters unto themselves.” His next tweet said, “The @MartianMovie—where you experience Love, Hate, Envy, Anxiety, Pride, & Heroism, all through the lens of science.” He later concluded, “In the @MartianMovie, they got crucial science right, while enhancing the story by fictionalizing the science that remained.”
Interstellar
For this Matthew McConaughey movie, Tyson tweeted “In #Interstellar: Experience Einstein’s Curvature of Space as no other feature film has shown.” He also said, “In #Interstellar: On another planet, around another star, in another part of the galaxy, two guys get into a fist fight.” Tyson praised the movie in his tweet, “In #Interstellar: The producers knew exactly how, why, & when you’d achieve zero-G in space,” before helping the viewer with, “In #Interstellar, if you didn’t understand the physics, try Kip Thorne’s highly readable book The Science of Interstellar.”
Gravity
Tyson blasted off on the science of this film, firing critical tweets including “The film #Gravity should be renamed ‘Zero Gravity’” and “Mysteries of #Gravity: Why Bullock’s hair, in otherwise convincing zero-G scenes, did not float freely on her head” and “Mysteries of #Gravity: Why we enjoy a SciFi film set in make-believe space more than we enjoy actual people set in real space.” But he did acquiesce “My Tweets hardly ever convey opinion. Mostly perspectives on the world. But if you must know, I enjoyed #Gravity very much.”
