Skeptacular!

Mark Maultby - 1 February 2015

Where popular culture is given a skeptical mark

Game Review: Pokēmon Omega Ruby / Emerald

Nintendo 3DS

So, how to look skeptically at a Pokēmon game? What I want to examine is how well the game treats scientific topics, and specifically what credulous ideas from our world have managed to sneak in.

This is a world in which creatures ‘evolve’ not over millennia via natural selection, but by growing up, or levelling-up to use gamer lingo. In fact, the game uses the word evolution when metamorphosis would be a better word: the Pokēmon ‘evolve’ like insects, from larva to pupa to imago (adult). But, I’ve decided to forgive that word-borrowing. As I say, this is an alternate world, and who wouldn’t want to visit a world where evolution is superrapid and lions ‘evolve’ into lioniods and then into lionasaurs? You wouldn’t? Ok, this game probably isn’t for you.

Science/Skeptical Positives

• Scientists and scientific endeavour are depicted favourably. For example, there are dedicated palaeontologists.
• Good conservation, treatment of environment, messages throughout. Everyone walks and cycles everywhere and there’s a lot of commentary on caring for Pokēmon and their world.
• Correct use of words ‘meteorite’ and ‘meteor’. “There’s a meteor shower tonight.” “You must find the meteorite shard”.
• Features some nice science terminology - craters, meteorites, fossils, evolution etc. (I know we could quibble and say they shouldn’t have used the term evolution, but I would argue at least they used the word at all.)
• It’s an atheistic world - there are no churches. There is some talk of ancient lore and temples etc, but it’s more mythological than religious.
• Extreme ideological thinking is normally given to the negative characters, whose typical gambit is wanting to cast aside the current world for a specific utopian ideal. Come on, villains, you should’ve learnt by now… Science/Skeptical Negatives
• Most of the scientists and engineers encountered are men. Women are more likely to have traditional roles. There are female scientists but not as many at the upper echelons.
• Reflexology clinic - you can go along to this to boost your Pokēmon’s friendliness towards you. How charming. It’s just a shame it isn’t called something else. Is Poke Cuddling just too twee? What about Placebo Clinic?
• Alternative medicine, especially naturopathic, is ubiquitous. Herbs and potions and berries are the carry-around healing methods for weakened, compromised Pokēmon. The worst offender for this woo is in the Herb Shop in Lavaridge Town, where you are specifically informed about the wonders of natural medicines. But, I do like that the herbs from this shop are bitter and lower the friendliness of your Pokēmon, whereas in every Pokēmon Center there’s a machine that’ll heal six Pokēmon at a time with no detrimental effects. Ah, the wonders of science, even fictional science.
• Dowsing machine. A machine used for finding hidden/ invisible objects. Again, it’s a shame they didn’t use a different name. They use Pokēmon for just about everything else in the game, so why not have a sniffer Pokēmon?
• Psychic trainers. I don’t mind that the game features psychic Pokēmon. I think it’s a given that fantastical creatures should have fantastical powers. But, you meet and battle some Pokēmon trainers who are casually labelled psychic and I think that’s a shame. The humans in the game aren’t supposed to be magical or superheroes, so why have psychics?

The Mark: 9/10. My favourite version of one of my favourite game series. A masterful Pokēmon game for newbies and seasoned trainers. As ever with Nintendo, the attention to detail is exquisite.

The Skeptical Mark: 6.5/10. Lots of very good points, but could do a bit better. As a game played by lots of younger gamers, there was a little too much real world woo, especially given that the game’s designers can create whatever they like.

Film Review: Lucy

Directed by Luc Besson

Lucy was probably the movie that got most skeptical tongues wagging in 2014, after Interstellar. Particularly from skeptics who only saw the trailer. Unfortunately, I watched it. Well, part of it.

If you don’t know already, the movie’s tagline is: The average person uses 10% of their brain capacity. Imagine what she could do with 100%.

So, why even watch it? Optimistically, I hoped the unscientific premise would be a very minor primer for 90 minutes of Luc Besson’s signature whacky awesomeness, along the lines of The Fifth Element or Leon. But Morgan Freeman’s character, a professor of some kind, speculates repeatedly to a crowded lecture hall about what might happen when more and more of the brain is utilised. This means you are exposed to lots of nonsense.

We then get to see what happens to Lucy as these hypothesised stages are met. From what I could tell, all the science is completely wrong. No wait, all the science IS completely wrong. I had to hide behind my hands a few times. In my opinion, if you’re going to be blatantly wrong, then don’t even dress it up as science; just go all out The Fifth Element or Avengers. In the end, the level of drivel overwhelmed my puny brain, probably because I was using 15% or something.

Not only riddled with nonsense, the movie did very little to warm me to Lucy herself or her plight. There was no moral centre to her story, she killed needlessly and without remorse. And her quickly gained superpowers seemed to immediately remove any genuine peril. I went from hopeful to annoyed to bored fast.

Forty minutes or so into the movie, we made the call and switched it off. Life is too short. If you saw the rest and it redeemed itself, please let me know.

The Mark: 3/10. 10% interesting visual flourishes and novel techniques, 90% drivel piled upon drivel.

The Skeptical Mark: 1/10. That’s 10%.