Even though science is their own field, scientists cannot easily enjoy science (SF) films. When a scene that does not make sense scientifically appears, the thought of wanting to correct it lingers for the entire film. Still, there are a few films they like. The black hole-themed Interstellar and the magician thriller The Prestige are prime examples. Both were directed and written by Christopher Nolan.
The international journal Nature, commemorating the United Nations (UN) designated International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, announced on the 24th (local time) the results of a survey asking scientists about their favorite movie scenes. This year marks the 100th anniversary of when German physicist Werner Heisenberg proposed the idea that became the basis for the uncertainty principle explaining the quantum mechanics of the microscopic world. In the same year, Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger also completed the Schrödinger equation, a core of quantum mechanics.
◇Director who gained interest in science through SF films
Nature interviewed physicists to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of quantum mechanics. While scientists differed on how a 100-year-old theory of quantum mechanics describes reality, Nature said they found some consensus on favorite SF films. Works frequently cited in multiple interviews for portraying science well were the 2014 film Interstellar and the 2006 film The Prestige.
Nolan, the director of both films, won the Academy Award for directing for the 2023 film Oppenheimer. In his acceptance speech, he said that gaining an interest in physics through the SF film Star Wars he saw as a child and the TV program Cosmos hosted by physicist Carl Sagan became the impetus for making a film spotlighting the scientists behind the development of the atomic bomb.
The protagonists of The Prestige are magicians Robert Angier (played by Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (played by Christian Bale) in late 1890s London, rivals who each captivate audiences with a "teleportation" act. Borden deceives the audience with a hidden twin, while Angier, with help from the renowned scientist Nikola Tesla (played by David Bowie), builds a teleportation device.
Nikola Tesla, also well known as an electric vehicle brand, was a real scientist who developed the alternating current system and fiercely competed with Edison, who developed the direct current system. Edison, who swayed public opinion at the time, held the upper hand, but the final victory still went to Tesla. The fact that we can freely use electricity at home today is thanks to Tesla's alternating current transmission.
Barry Luokkala, a professor in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University, told Nature, "The Prestige is truly an excellent film," adding, "Above all, it captures well the allure of wonder and magic experienced in childhood, and it takes a bold fictional leap from the scientific knowledge of teleportation."
◇Scientist who vetted a film and also won a Nobel Prize
When Nolan released Interstellar eight years later, both the public and scientists cheered. In the film, retired astronaut Joseph Cooper (played by Matthew McConaughey) travels through a wormhole to explore habitable planets near a black hole on a mission to save humanity imperiled by climate change. Physicists rated Interstellar as portraying science very well.
Claudia de Rham, a theoretical physicist at Imperial College London, said, "Interstellar is real science, and it is based on real physical phenomena pushed to the extreme." Kai Liu, a professor in the Department of Physics at Georgetown University, said, "The ideas presented in the film about space, time, and parallel universes are captivating," adding, "The concept that one can look back in time and see the universe from a different perspective is also intriguing."
Interstellar depicted science accurately because the black hole scenes in the film were vetted by Kip Thorne, an emeritus professor at the California Institute of Technology. In 2019, the international collaboration Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) announced that it had simultaneously observed with radio telescopes the M87 black hole at the center of the Virgo Cluster and confirmed its appearance for the first time. The black hole image released then closely resembled the computer graphics in the earlier Interstellar. That is how thoroughly Professor Thorne vetted it.
A black hole is an astronomical object whose gravity, the force that pulls objects, is so strong that it swallows all matter. Even light cannot escape, hence the English name "black hole." Scientists confirmed the shadow of a black hole through light from matter orbiting around it. In 2017, Professor Thorne also received the Nobel Prize in physics for his contributions to detecting gravitational waves predicted by Einstein 100 years earlier.
◇Journeys to the past and future also win praise
Physicists also praised SF films that depict journeys to the past. The 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home has the crew of the starship USS Enterprise encounter an alien probe threatening Earth and travel back in time to find extinct whales. These whales are the key to decoding the probe's signal and averting disaster.
Professor Luokkala said, "What's remarkable in this film is that engineer Scotty (played by James Doohan) trades the formula for manufacturing transparent aluminum for a single sheet of Plexiglas." When the film was released, transparent aluminum was a new material only recently patented. Luokkala said it was "truly astonishing" that cutting-edge materials science appeared in a film so quickly.
The 1989 film Back to the Future Part II also portrayed technology that later became reality. In the first film, Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox) goes back in time to arrange the romance of his young father and mother so that he is born. In the sequel, he goes to the future to help his children, who are in unfortunate circumstances.
Professor Liu focused on the hoverboard McFly rides in the film. At the time it was only imagined, but now it has become reality. In 2014, the U.S. Start - Up corporations ARX PAX laboratory unveiled a hoverboard made by applying superconductor technology. Like a maglev train, it levitated objects through the attraction and repulsion of magnetic fields.
In addition, scientists rated the 2018 animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as a good introduction to science. In the animation, the villains build a particle accelerator to open a parallel universe. Calderón de la Barca Sanchez, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), said, "When I saw the scene where a henchman installs a particle accelerator under Manhattan, it really looked exactly like CMS, one of the detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland."
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 2011 confirmed traces of the Higgs boson, which imparts mass to matter, popping out as protons collided head-on in the CMS and ATLAS detectors. Professor Peter Higgs, who predicted the Higgs boson, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2013.
References
Nature (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03440-7