hope the new batman doesn't suck

Why would it suck?

NON-BELIEVER!!!!

Throw stones at him!!!!

The fact that you can even recall half of these crappy devices—much less rip them to shreds so eloquently—blows my mind, STC. I've been trying to figure out just what the hell Ra's Al Ghul was up to for three years now.
Remember in "X-Men 2," when Xavier was tricked into using Cerebro to make every human undergo excruciating pain? Wouldn't this have caused massive traffic pileups and planes falling from the sky? Ridiculous. And that's from one of my FAVORITE comic flicks, even...

That's why they're called super hero movies. You don't think actual ppl can shoot lasers out their eyes or fly faster than the speeding bullet, do you? C'mon.

I wish they'd make these superhero movies more realistic...?

Glad to see Blade given some credit for being the first "good" comic movie since the 80s. The first Blade still holds up very well, even after ten years and an explosion of comic-based films...something the first four Batman films don't do.

Hmmm... unfortunately, I find your reasons that these devises suck just as awful as the missle-armed penguins. Especially the batman issue. There are devises that vaporize water and don't harm humans because our body doesn't contain 70% water - rather 70% of our body has water/moisture contained in it. Also - there movies. Relax.

The giant spider from Wild Wild West? The Death Star? The "it was such a good idea the first time lets do it again," Death Star? A frickin Ring? That right there takes the cake. Wow. A ring that can control everyone.

Maybe you should read up on inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and understand the concept a little bit before you denounce Doctor Octopus’s Artificial Sun. The concept in the movie is correct and the federal government has spent billions of dollars building a lab to test this idea (National Ignition Facility).

jmb9039 I think perhaps you miss the point of this article. It's fun and awesome. Lighten up, Francis.

Please stick your head in a microwave oven.

@Brad G. They did. It's called 'Unbreakable'. There was to be a trilogy, but then the masses decided they don't like the behind-the-scenes for superheroes.

Every time I think about it, it makes me want to punch a baby. I would have loved an Unbreakable trilogy.

@Brad G. They did. It's called 'Unbreakable'. There was to be a trilogy, but then the masses decided they don't like the behind-the-scenes for superheroes.

Every time I think about it, it makes me want to punch a baby. I would have loved an Unbreakable trilogy.

Joe--It's not so much the science of Doc Ock's artificial sun that bothers me, it's everything that surrounds it: Building it in midtown Manhattan, inviting the press to see it in action, the fact that he builds this super-advanced AI system as an afterthought, the fact that its explosion gives Doc an unnecessary Woman In Refrigerator, the fact that the movie should be about a spider-guy fighting an octopus-guy and doesn't NEED a big potentially world-destroying science device, etc.

RayLay, Brad--Hey, I'm all for LESS realistic superhero movies. (After all, they're superhero movies.) My point is that unrealistic needn't equal stupid, and these things are all stupid.

JMB--Nope, I'm pretty sure that 60% of our bodies are pure water, like Hydro-Man.

For the 2nd one...the toxin can only be inhaled you dumb
F*ck..as in why its called a hallucinogen inhalant.it cannot be ingested..it is mentioned in the movie, stupid A$$
And the Death Star was the ultimate EVIL weapon..who would not want a weapon that destroys a entire friggen planet!!!

I just saw the new Batman film, and you get the sense that all that shit that made no sense in Batman Begins was David "Blade: Trinity" Goyer's idea. The new film, sans Goyer, has nothing grossly illogical like that microwave emitter was. The gadgetry is pretty sci-fi-y and sometimes unrealistic, but hey, it's Batman. If he didn't have sonar-vision I would wonder what the hell was going on.

Some of this really seems like nitpicking, Topless Robot. Sure, Spider-Man 2 was ridiculous, but wasn't that kind of the point? It's one of my favorite superhero films even though I always knew it didn't make sense. What is in that film that is any more ridiculous than anything published during the Silver (Marvel) Age? Nothing. That's why fanboys love it.

dear chris...die in a fire

that is all

And because no one demanded it! Michelle Pfeiffer in a TORN Catwoman outfit that reveals more than she wanted: http://www.digitalfuntown.com/

I've never really had a problem with the microwave emitter in Batman Begins. They specifically called it a FOCUSED microwave emitter; in other words, it can be aimed, like a laser. Admittedly they only said this once, and never really made it any clearer than that, and yes, there are other problems with it, but I think all the people who bitch because it should have been vaporizing people just weren't paying enough attention.

#1 and #2 you completely failed to grasp the point.

The microwave emitter that vaporizers would indeed kill a man dead (point taken) but just because they only handed you the facts that A - It can only be inhaled not ingested and B - Not everyone drinks poison water at exactly the same time. Just because they didn't hand it to you on on a silver platter single line "ZOMG! That's why." dialog point is a good thing.

The mutant transformer giggity-thingy. Magneto didn't know it would kill them until he was ready to give it a go and then he was like "F#ck it." and used it anyway. Very Magneto.

Otherwise good article. The other Batman films are way too easy to mock but I hadn't considered the sheer ludicrousness of building a mini sun in an Manhattan penthouse.

Unfortunately, Wesley Snipes was defeated by blood suckers recently.

Real Life sucks, thats why we go to the movies. My god, do you have nothing better to do than this? I lost minutes of my life, reading this crap, that I will not get back.

They are just MOVIES people, NOT real life.

#5 - You missed the fact that Doc Oc's fusion reactor was also electromagnetic for some reason. Whats odd about that is that while it magnetically attracted the largely ALUMINUM taxicabs outside the building, the cast-IRON frame of the building was unaffected.

Oh, and comicbookland needs to drop the secret identity schtick. Mary Jane is always the one in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether the villian knows who Peter Parker is or not.

Why doesn't it bother you that Superman can fly? This is the superhero universe, it is overloaded with scientific nonsense, and it baffles me that somebody should waste his and other people's time on such pointless nitpicking. These films were made for children, adolescents, and childish adults such as most of us. Explosions and death rays for me, please, I'll pass the theorems.

You pretty much nailed these, STC. Now I love many of the films here (not so much Batman Forever), but hokey villain super-science has got to go.

You forgot my favorite exchange from the Doc Ock scene (not verbatim:

REPORTER: Doctor Octavius, such powerful artificial intelligence could clearly invade your own brain, because that's how these things work.

DOC OCK: Yes, this is true! That's why I've built in this "Don't invade my brain" chip, which I've decided to place inside a brittle plastic shell on the exterior of the device.

LATER: Oops! My device was broken somehow!

Don't forget the new, like in the Incredibles with the Omnidroid and Syndrome's "zero point energy".

How could you make this list and forget Superman 3's evil supercomputer? ^_^

Wouldn't it be funny if some of these things ACTUALLY came into being through ACTUAL science after you'd written this.

Hmmm... Sean, I enjoyed your topic and found the insight into bad supervillan weapon's interesting but I think the larger point about superheros is that we don't need to apply the "Star Trek" approach to this genre. I agree that penguins with missiles or an artificial sun created in downtown Manhattan doesn't sound like it was well thought through but this is entertainment! These movies are asking us to suspend reality for 2 hours and accept the unacceptable. We aren't watching documentaries on cold fusion or penguin behavior!
Have you considered also that the villains are meant to be flawed? These are psychopathic, deranged, megalomaniacal monsters and they might just have a few screws loose. Maybe Ra's thought the microwave gun was a great idea but didn't stop to think about how it might vaporize the people.
I am not saying that we need to accept poorly made films that ask the audience to be stupid but I do say that we need to be willing to give film makers a wide birth before we criticize all the details.
Ask yourself, was the movie fun? If the answer was "Yes" then let it be :-)

I think you forgot the definition of "Doomsday Device" before writing this article... only #5 and #3 were intended to fall under the category of "a hypothetical construction — usually a weapon — which could destroy all life on the Earth, or destroy the Earth itself (bringing "doomsday", a term used for the end of planet Earth)"

The problem with these doomsday devices isn't that they're unrealistic, it's that they're unrealistic and the explanation that is given is meant to sound complicated and scientific when in fact they're complete garbage and show the writers' lack of interest in making them more accurate. A few minutes on wikipedia and you'd know that tritium is neither rare nor metallic. Also, current research on cold fusion often uses magnetic fields to contain the plasmas which form at extreme temperatures, and hence the device could be "electromagnetic," however, those devices do not expose said plasma to to the people's faces who are 5 feet away, nor do they fit in a Manhattan apartment.

I don't have a problem with people's faces not melting since he doesn't ever say anything about it - that's something that you can gloss over because it's not important - however I do have a problem with all this tritium bidness which could easily have been changed to make the plot more accurate.

Do you even enjoy going to the movies? Your pointing out the obvious...ITS A COMIC BOOK MOVIE!!!!!

Hey, these are after all comic book heroes. You gotta expect comical events to come with the territory.

Wow dude, that was pretty intense wasnt it!

JT
www.FireMe.To/udi

Batman Begins:
Microwave emitter - it emits a direct ray. As someone pointed out above - like a laser.
It was built by the same Wayne Industries R&D team that built all the other Batman's gadgets. Which, within the confines of Batworld, all work but with a small glitch. Too expensive, not quite what the army needs, nobody offered it to billionaire base-jumping/spelunking crowd...
MI's problem (my guess) - short range. Can't really use it to evaporate enemies water supply if you have to haul it in the middle of his base first, right?
But mounting it on a train that goes over the main water line for the entire city... yes, that can be done.

Which is just peachy if you need it to disperse a neurotoxin that turns people into scared maniacs - which is exactly what Ra's Al Ghul wants.
He doesn't need dead people.
He wants the "decadence" of the Gotham City to tear the city apart. He wants that "inhuman hellhole" as you put it, to turn itself into a real inhuman hellhole to the full extent of both those words.

He wants to make it a symbol. A legend.
This is what happens when men forget themselves and build the tower of Babel again.
Bunch of dead, poisoned people won't do that.
Particularly if everyone drinking bear is left unharmed.

As for X-men:
Magneto's plan is quite close to what Ra's Al Ghul wants.
They are terrorists - both of them.
Terrorists don't kill people - that is only a side effect.
They instill terror in their enemies in order to make them think differently.

Why argue and debate about how we are all human beings, yes, but some of us have grown to be more than "just that" - when with a spin or two of this machine you all can be turned into mutants too. How you like THEM apples?

And we can all be a big happy family of world-leader mutants (who may or may not die as a result of this genetic shock therapy) and terrorist mutants who are really all teenagers. They know what is best for EVERYONE!!!
Plan suffers from comic-book science (mutant-powered mutant-maker) and no long term planing but its basic logic should work.

All you dumb fucks out there reading this and bitch to the writer "Who cares? It's only a movie!!" must have missed the whole goddamn point of this web site. It's a NERD website!! This is the kind of shit one writes on this site you stupid, stupid, STUPID motherfuckers. Why write about it? Because it's fucking funny that's why. It's just silly, goofy crap that's fun to read. Jesus-tap-dancing-christ you people suck.

Picking on Batman movie devices is like shooting fish in a barrel :p Also, oi! Comments got nasty quick didn't they :s

I agree with Uncle Soaky, but with more swearing.

Bravo! One of the most well written lists of the year. I audibly laughed on at least three occasions. Unfortunately, it seems most of the comment posters aren't picking up on your satire. Of course the films have silly doomsday devices. That's what makes them super hero movies. Cut the guy a break.

Glad to see the Batman Begins microwave emitter on the list, the majority of that film was fantastic, but the emitter just made no sense whatsoever. I've seen plenty of rationalisations for it over the years but it still just doesn't make sense in my book. Hopefully The Dark Knight won't have any of that stuff in it.

the guy who wrote this is a retard, pretty much plain and simple. he's only write in a few areas, like for instance they shouldve made the poisen in batman drinkable, doc oc shouldnt have been making a mini sun on the edge of new york... and penguins with rocket launchers is really incredibly ridiculous. the microwave is a bit fishy too.

the rest of this is just nonsense. you insult things to try and be funny. really, there are better ways to try and be funny.

What you should have mentioned is the magnetism effect of the mini-sun in spider-man 2, which seemed to be affecting things miles away yet metal right there was barely being pulled.

Doc-Oc was brilliant, brilliance and science do go to together so its no stretch to say that he could invent things from a multitude of fields. and he doesnt do it as a sidethought, he has a whole bloody presentation about his wonderful invention of giant arms. he only brushes it off because of how much MORE important the mini-sun is too him.

As a site for nerds, i find you to be someone of incredibly low intellegence to be insulting great super-hero movies that don't warrent insulting.

You dont even have any basis of fact on your supposed "#1". You have nothing of an explanation at all. Because its complicated its stupid?? get a brain man. he invented something that turns people into mutants. thats all there is too it. its a good plan, turning the leaders into mutants.

why dont we just go ahead and call television screens ridiculous pieces of tech just because they are really complicated and not even engineers truly know why they work??

in short,
no0b.

Incidentally, I liked the rocket-launching penguins.

But what about Superman III's "Ultimate Computer" designed
by Richard freaking Pryor that has the ability to create artificial kryptonite or some bullsh-t. I don't see how that's any less dumb than Superman Returns' self replicating crystals.

Seriously, go watch Superman III. It's got a drunken, evil Superman sitting in a bar drinking scotch. No, really. It does.

Everybody is expected to be smart EXCEPT the ' superhero genre '. I get the argument. Fun, fun, movies all around right. And if you think otherwise, you must be a ' geek ', or a ' nerd ', or a goddamned ' lowlife '.

Oh, what BULLSHIT.

I don't know where you people come from, or the inbred that birthed you on the planet, but DAAAAMMMMNNNNN. This storied bias towards a PARTICULAR form of story, a GENRE, stupefies me beyond belief. You say ' it's cinema ! ', and I say ' it's a STORY '. What is with this type which SCARES you guys, that you have to SURMOUNT it and UNDERMINE it to no end, or else it will murder your damn kids. Why are you so damn afraid of its form & its implications that it has to be dumbed down, like BURIED in order for the world to make sense to you, huh ?

The predudice against this is the most unintelligible thing to me, since racism, or misogyny. At least you know those last things come from reality. Which is what you ought to be deal with about yourselves.

Jesus Christ, ' The Dark Knight ' has been unleashed, and we've had enough.

Well, at least last bit in ' Superman Returns ' is not a product of people purposefully dumbing down their plots to satisfy an erroneous, unporductive mindset. It's the result of the writers simply being dull.

It's pretty much besides the point they've done a fuck-up of a superhero movie; it's beyond the conclusion anyway. But the fact they get away with their outright stupidity in a MOVIE ?!? Dammit. Akiva Goldsmith at least has this certain tinge of self-aware idiocity as the worst screenwriter in Hollywood blockbuster history ( even in ' The Beautiful Mind ', of Russell Crow forming a ' figure infinity ' in his bicycle ride; sweets ), but these writers are just earnest in their imbecile. They've got no impeccable Mark Millar / Grant Morrison X-men writing to coopt, so they pillage basic Grade School crystal science experiments - and dish it to make themselves more sophisticated than YOU.

So to all these people who hate on the nerds for calling out their facetousness, FUCK YOU.

Goddamn you all. Ya ain't worth shit. Weasels.

The things these films say in the least is we really cannot trust mainstream Hollywood to tell our superhero stories TO us in their image. Neither their drama nor their ' fun ' should stand in our way as they are. They are as myopic as their money, and are limited by its perspective. There should at least be some dialogue between these forms, and a mutual recognition of each other's strengths. Nolan knows that. We know that . You are sorry, right ?

Did I miss omething? What are we talking about?

Gay gamers get a life noob

batman is the shiz tho so dont diss, those penguins would f**k you up boi