How to ruin a potentially great movie...

Rating: Null/10 (24 July 2011)

Science fiction movies are not expected to be completely realistic and most people understands this. However, what a science fiction movie must at least attempt to do is play by the "logic" it has created within its own world. Contact essentially destroys everything potentially good about the movie by not following this rule. I can give most movies a little bit of a pass if the screw up on this rule in a minor way, or if finding the hole in the movies logic takes some pretty deep searching, but Contact's flaws are so idiotic and obvious that it is truly mind boggling that the director thought they were passable to be placed in the film.
1. The movie tries to play Jodie Foster's character as being somewhat "fringe" throughout the entire movie, even after she makes the most important discovery of all time, yet then is like "Ok yeah I guess we'll let you ride in the worm hole machine to represent all of earth, lol!". The movie wants to make you feel frustrated right along with Jodie's character as no one seems to want to take her completely seriously, but then as soon as it is convenient the movie just drops that notion because, well, she's the star and she's got to be the one to ride in the machine. However, as soon as that is over everyone goes right back to not trusting her again.
2. The nations of the world spend half a trillion dollars on a machine that they believe is an alien contact device, that will most likely work through some sort of high speed travel or "bending" of space time, thus affecting the relative time experienced by the occupant in comparison to earth time. The idea that this is understood within the movie world is made EXCEPTIONALLY clear as it becomes one of the romantic issues with the "OMG everyone might be dead when you get back, but you'll only have aged a few years!" speech.
Yet then the movie tries to make you believe that knowing this the scientists forgot to put an intentional time measuring device inside the machine lol. Worse yet is after they use the machine it is like the entire scientific community forgot all of their previous knowledge on relativity. Jodie Foster gets out of the machine and is like "Hey that split second where you guys lost contact with me was actual many hours from my point of view.......exactly as we all had expected it to work". The film world's response? "Jodie what are you talking about? We only lost contact with you for a split second. Relative time? LOL what is that? You are clearly making things up."
3. The movie ends with the potential that it is all a hoax created by some rich dude. What the hoax all hinges on? That the original signal they received was in fact just sent from a satellite that the rich dude had launched. No I'm not kidding you. The entire movie is filled with references to them verifying the position of the signal and getting various triangulations, from various stations around the world, yet at the end of the movie they actually have Jodie Foster admitting "Yep I guess it could have just been a satellite". I learned how to triangulate a position in 8th grade geometry class, yet the movie, after building the half a trillion dollar alien transport device, wants you to believe that triangulating a radio signal is not possible, even after the movie itself does it numerous times.
4. The insane energy field the machine created, which was witnessed by everyone, that ended up almost knocking over massive tankers positioned kilometers away? Movie acts like it never happened as they grill Jodie on making things up and/or it all being a hoax.
5. Government has no problem revealing to the world that it has received messages from aliens and is building a machine that they believe will allow them to contact said aliens, but releasing the fact that 18hrs of static was recorded from Jodie Fosters camera? Oh hell no, government has to keep that in it's "confidential file" because the last thing they would want to admit to is that the machine they spent a half trillion dollars on actually worked lol.