The Importance Of Scientific Film

Films are visually and viscerally appealing. They enable their viewers to engage with and understand stories with both their minds and hearts. This is the kind of anticipation and delight films bring to their audiences. According to Berlin (2016), films revolving around scientific themes have the potential to introduce scientific ideas to new audiences and even boost the interests of present scientists and other scientifically-inclined people. A scientific film can stimulate comprehensive discussions of science itself as it reaches a wide-range of audiences. Thus, film is an effective platform of communicating science.

Injecting scientific concepts in a film is challenging. In fact, the difficulties of translating scientific knowledge

It makes viewers, especially those who watch science films regularly, skeptical and think that science could be dangerous. In some movies, scientists are portrayed as helpless troublemakers. These scientists and their science cause major breakdowns, extinction and other threats, which can be misinterpreted in real life. According to the National Science Foundation’s findings in 1989 (as cited in Evans, 1996), 37% of adults in the United States actually believe that astrology is a science. It shows that some audiences can easily believe that something they perceive is real. Consequently, people might doubt scientists and not trust their efforts. What is worse is that some people might think of the exaggerated phenomena in films to become real. This will only spread misinformation of science, which could be risky and dangerous for humankind (Evans

Scientific knowledge may be completely different from common knowledge but the most admired sci-fi films prove that it is possible to incorporate scientific themes into movies without making them too scientific and too inaccurate. These kinds of sci-fi movies are still enjoyed by present audiences and appreciated for their excellent integration of scientific concepts and interesting stories. It clearly shows that these films have fulfilled their aim to entertain and inform as they evoke emotional response to their viewers while they grasp scientific ideas that lie behind (Berlin, 2016).

Furthermore, sci-fi movies have also enhanced the value of science. Notable characters in some films have not only amazed audiences at their scientific expertise but touched the hearts of people. They have also remarkably shown that science is the best means to solve a problem that is created by science (Evans, 1996). Examples of these heroic characters in sci-fi films are Joseph Cooper in Interstellar (2014) and Flint Lockwood in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009). Their humane characteristics are valuable to science as they upheld character and passion that drove science to