Being a Hollywood Science Consultant Isn’t Exactly Glamorous

Physicist Sean Carroll has served as a science consultant on major studio films such as Tron: Legacy and Thor. And while Hollywood movies may have massive budgets and audiences, the job requirements for a science consultant aren’t exactly stringent.

“The two main things are be a scientist and live in Los Angeles,” Carroll says in Episode 344 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

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Carroll finds opportunities for science consulting through the Science and Entertainment Exchange, which aims to educate filmmakers about scientific concepts. Since Hollywood films are viewed by millions, their gaffes have a way of percolating through the wider culture.

“I hang out with a lot of professional scientists and they complain about movies, and they’re constantly saying things like, ‘Why don’t they just call up some graduate student and get the basic facts right?'” Carroll says. “But the person making a movie doesn’t know there’s such a thing as a graduate student in physics who’d be able to answer this, and even if they did they wouldn’t know where to find them. That’s where the Exchange becomes very, very helpful.”

Being a science consultant in Hollywood also doesn’t come with a lot of power and prestige. “For one thing, you don’t get paid for it,” Carroll says. “You talk to the screenwriter or director or producer—whoever asked for your help—and you chat for a couple hours, and you do your best to give them advice, and then you never hear from them again.”

His most recent consult was for the upcoming Marvel movie Avengers: Endgame. Now he just has to sit back and wait like everyone else to see how the film turns out.

“I gave them great stuff,” he says. “I hope they use it.”

Listen to the complete interview with Sean Carroll in Episode 344 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Sean Carroll on science fiction:

“As a kid I was reading science fiction books. Robert Heinlein was my favorite, but I read Isaac Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon, Roger Zelazny, Anne McCaffrey, Ursula Le Guin, a little bit of Stanislaw Lem and people like that. So I was into science fiction early on. I sort of abandoned it, because life is short and there are only so many things you can do, and I had read a lot of science fiction and I wanted to read other things for a while. But now I’ve come back to it a little bit. I think science fiction has changed for the better. I recently read N. K. Jemisin’s trilogy, which was wonderful, and I’m a huge fan of Iain Banks—I was very sad that he passed away recently. So I love it, and it’s definitely one of the things in my menu of what I consume as a reader.”

Sean Carroll on Kip Thorne:

“Part of what led him into the [film] business was his friendship with Carl Sagan, whose book Contact was made into the famous movie, and Kip played a small role in Contact. … Sagan was wondering, because he was writing a science fiction novel, how do you get somebody across the galaxy in a short period of time? And Sagan himself was a planetary scientist, not a physicist, so he talked to Kip Thorne, his good friend, and said, ‘How would you do this?’ And Kip started thinking about it, and because he’s Kip Thorne and he’s very, very smart, he realized that this opened up a can of worms, including traveling backward in time. And that led to some very interesting, legitimately deep scientific research papers.”

Sean Carroll on Kenneth Branagh:

“One of our first consults was for Thor, and the people in the room were the screenwriter at the time—who was not Zack [Stentz], it was somebody else—Kenneth Branagh, who was the director of the movie, and Kevin Feige, who is the president of Marvel Studios. And it was very clear that Kenneth Branagh could not care less about the science. … [He] was checking his watch, and was basically like, ‘I’ve already planned out this scene, could you give me some good buzz words to make it sound science-y?’ That’s all he really wanted. And that’s fine, that’s not his job. He’s interested in different things. Many people in Hollywood are deeply, deeply interested in the scientific side of things, and some just have no interest at all.”

Sean Carroll on designer babies:

“It’s much like being a professional philosopher, in the sense that science fiction gives you training in exploring hypothetical, speculative alternatives to the world as we know it. And it might give you the wrong kind of training, for all I know. It might lead you astray sometimes. But it certainly opens you up to that possibility. And I do think with things like designer babies it leads you in the right direction, because I just don’t see how—given the wideness of the world and the ambition of certain scientists, companies, and nations—that the world can possibly avoid getting designer babies at some point, as long as it’s technically possible. So I think that’s a place where science fiction-y training helps you get the right answer.”