Hard to say it’s my favorite, but “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids” explains the shrinking ray (and forgive me, it’s been decades since I watched it) working by getting rid of the space between atoms, squishing them together to reduce the size of the object. Okay, I’m sure that’s patently ridiculous in and of itself. But realistically, even as a kid, I knew enough to recognize that it would mean a shrunken object would still weigh the same amount (volume shrinks but mass does not).
No way an ant is going to be able to carry the weight of a full grown human. Nor would grass. And honestly the amount of force of so much weight in such a small space would cause all kinds of issues. You literally could not casually lift the weight of a child with a spoon without noticing when you’re built like vintage era Rick Moranis, let alone the fact that the weight of kid concentrated to the size of an ant would not float in milk, even with a cheerio life preserver. Practically the whole movie is a plot hole.
If I’m not misremembering, that’s the exact explanation they use for pym particles in the first Ant-Man movie. And yeah, mass and forces we see in that movie aren’t consistent with that rule at all either. In his shrunken form he can go from riding flying ant bareback to punching a guy with the force of a regular size dude (not concentrated to the size of bb though, he should be punching holes in people). Furthermore, at the climax of the film he needs to “go subatomic” to squeeze between atoms, but he keeps shrinking out of control and ends up in a crazy abstract environment many times smaller than the smallest particles we know of…but don’t pym particles just make atoms get closer to each other? Not shrink? It’s a fun movie but I need to turn off my brain to watch it.
And then in later movies when he grows, shouldn’t he also be the same mass then too? Think about it, he’s as big as a parade balloon and a fraction of the weight, the dude would need to hold onto something just to not blow away.
A lot of people have the head canon that Hank Pym (the only person able to make Pym particles) intentionally throws out disinformation in order to prevent people from copying his work
Which is a great theory, but I’d love to see an explanation for the “ultra tiny universe unaffected by time” that you somehow reach when you get super small.
Ant man is from the 1960’s, it sucks that they have to use the same reasoning that was given then, as well as the same character abilities. It’s inconsistent as hell. Wish they would have been able to at least update the science to fit the capabilities better. But of course we know of no science that could explain what they want him to be capable of doing. But then they get to make shit up, they love making up plausible sounding sciencey words.
They a little bit try to make it seem like there is a cost for going super big, in that he gets tired really fast… but even that keeps slipping to being less and less immediate or important.
I feel like the cost is literally the most important part of super heroes. Whether it be time constraints, or energy usage, or personality problems… having a tangible cost is what makes them “heroes”, instead of just hypercapable beings doing awesome stuff for spectacle alone.
Hard to say it’s my favorite, but “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids” explains the shrinking ray (and forgive me, it’s been decades since I watched it) working by getting rid of the space between atoms, squishing them together to reduce the size of the object. Okay, I’m sure that’s patently ridiculous in and of itself. But realistically, even as a kid, I knew enough to recognize that it would mean a shrunken object would still weigh the same amount (volume shrinks but mass does not).
No way an ant is going to be able to carry the weight of a full grown human. Nor would grass. And honestly the amount of force of so much weight in such a small space would cause all kinds of issues. You literally could not casually lift the weight of a child with a spoon without noticing when you’re built like vintage era Rick Moranis, let alone the fact that the weight of kid concentrated to the size of an ant would not float in milk, even with a cheerio life preserver. Practically the whole movie is a plot hole.
Let us not even speak of the sequel(s).
If I’m not misremembering, that’s the exact explanation they use for pym particles in the first Ant-Man movie. And yeah, mass and forces we see in that movie aren’t consistent with that rule at all either. In his shrunken form he can go from riding flying ant bareback to punching a guy with the force of a regular size dude (not concentrated to the size of bb though, he should be punching holes in people). Furthermore, at the climax of the film he needs to “go subatomic” to squeeze between atoms, but he keeps shrinking out of control and ends up in a crazy abstract environment many times smaller than the smallest particles we know of…but don’t pym particles just make atoms get closer to each other? Not shrink? It’s a fun movie but I need to turn off my brain to watch it.
And then in later movies when he grows, shouldn’t he also be the same mass then too? Think about it, he’s as big as a parade balloon and a fraction of the weight, the dude would need to hold onto something just to not blow away.
A lot of people have the head canon that Hank Pym (the only person able to make Pym particles) intentionally throws out disinformation in order to prevent people from copying his work
Which is a great theory, but I’d love to see an explanation for the “ultra tiny universe unaffected by time” that you somehow reach when you get super small.
Holyshit. You just blew my mind. 🤩😱🤘🏼
Ant man is from the 1960’s, it sucks that they have to use the same reasoning that was given then, as well as the same character abilities. It’s inconsistent as hell. Wish they would have been able to at least update the science to fit the capabilities better. But of course we know of no science that could explain what they want him to be capable of doing. But then they get to make shit up, they love making up plausible sounding sciencey words.
They a little bit try to make it seem like there is a cost for going super big, in that he gets tired really fast… but even that keeps slipping to being less and less immediate or important.
I feel like the cost is literally the most important part of super heroes. Whether it be time constraints, or energy usage, or personality problems… having a tangible cost is what makes them “heroes”, instead of just hypercapable beings doing awesome stuff for spectacle alone.
Also they throw enlarged salt shakers at cars, which are treated as if they now suddenly weigh more. So somehow making things bigger adds mass?
I was disappointed that when things got bigger, they didn’t get more fragile. Good sci fi/fantasy needs rules and limitations.