HOLLOW MAN MOVIE REVIEW HOLLOW MAN 2 MOVIE REVIEW HOLLOW MAN !!!THE SCIENCE MOMENT!!!

THE HOLLOW MAN SCIENCE MOMENT

SCIENCE MOMENT BY KELLY PARKS

HOLLOW MAN

Much to my own surprise, I have very few objections to the science in this movie.

Invisibility in the usual sense, basically being perfectly transparent, isn't really a workable idea because you wouldn't be invisible any more than very clear glass is invisible. Difficult to notice, sure, but that's all, much like the creature in the PREDATOR movies. However, THE HOLLOW MAN isn't transparent. Instead, he's been "quantum phase shifted" so he's out of synch with regular matter. What does that mean? Not a damn thing, but at least they made a pseudo-scientific effort which is all I ask.

The one thing I will mention is something they point out in the movie but don't carry to its obvious conclusion. Sebastian is sensitive to light because his eyelids are transparent so he can't close his eyes. Alas, this also means his retinas are transparent so he'd suffer the fate of all invisible men: he'd be blind. So much for the girls' locker room.

SCIENCE MOMENT BY E.C. MCMULLEN JR.

The human retina is excited by photons on the optic disc due to its chemical composition, not because its opaque. It doesn't matter if the human retina is transparent (which, in fact, it are) or not. In fact, our optic disc is behind a virtual spiderweb of nearly opaque veins and arteries. They are so close and so small as to be forever out of focus.

Speaking of focus.

An invisible man would still be "legally" blind as our eyes have to focus light on our optic disc for us to see clearly. If the very physical nature of our eyes make them too oval or egg-shaped (near-sighted or far-sighted) then the muscles that assist in our focusing light on our retinas via our pupils can't work optimally, which is where eye glasses and contact lenses come in.

But the muscles that control (to a degree) the shape of our eye balls are assisted by our pupils and those holes are maximized and minimized by our largely opaque pigment colored sphincter muscles known as irises - which control light and focus reaching our optic disc.

In addition to the invisible man's invisible eyelids, he also has invisible irises - no pigment. Which makes the iris useless in controlling light and makes the world an indecipherable and often painfully bright blur to an invisible man.

Sunglasses will dim the light, but they won't focus it.

Remake Solution (because you know they won't stop making invisible people movies). You know how the movie could have avoided this whole vision problem, which really doesn't serve the story beyond being a gimmick?

Don't have it.

In the case of HOLLOW MAN, Sebastian Cane, aka the Invisible Man can be a matter of our limited perception. Animals evolved to see the world around them. Thousands of animals can see in more than human binocular vision (most reptiles have 3 eyes - the 3rd known as a parietal eye - and spiders may have up to 8 eyes) and millions of times more colors than humans, who can only see in a color mixture of RGB with our 3 color receptors, and the tonal qualities (bright or dim) of those colors. We may see the exact same object that, for example, a Dragonfly with 20 different color receptors can see. But with its ability to see millions of more colors than us, the Dragonfly may be able to differentiate between a predator or prey that is camoflaged to blend into the tree it is against, where we can only see the tree.

In HOLLOW MAN, Sebastian is "Quantum Phase Shifted", whatever TF that's supposed to mean. Since it is made-up jargon to represent - in this case, a scientific discovery we aren't fully aware of yet, it can mean any damn thing. For example, Sebastian can exist in a "Quantim Phase Shift" bubble where his actual body is still there but this so-called bubble he is in, which allows food, light, air, and nearly everything else to pass through, bends light.

No matter how he moves photons bend around him so we can't see him. We can see his effect on, say, smoke, water, objects, but not him directly because his bubble is constantly bending the light around him.

A writer could even play around with the idea that his bubble doesn't bend all forms of light, only the light we are able to see. Animals with more color receptors in their eyes migt see him. Radio or Gamma waves (both forms of light) might harm Sebastian.

SCIENCE MOMENT BY KELLY PARKS

HOLLOW MAN 2

The writer of this movie apparently didn’t actually watch the last movie because he changed the method of invisibility from “making you out of phase with normal matter on a quantum level” to “making you transparent”. The out of phase thing doesn’t really mean anything but it makes the concept of actual invisibility more believable (in a suspension-of-disbelief way) for that reason. Being transparent, on the other hand, would make you see-through but still pretty visible as light refracted through you every which way.

Apparently the writer Joel Soisson didn't take this movie seriously, like At All.

Not with secret drugs clearly labeled in close-up, "Kindasortacyn" and "Somethinesleacyn".

So was it the Writer Joel Soisson (THE PROPHECY 3: ASCENT, DRACULA 2000) or sole Producer David Lancaster (DRACULA 3000, RIDING THE BULLET, THE BREED, DARK RIDE), who came up with the idea of this second invisible man merely being transparent? You know, like a glass of water. Or just the water!

Did it go something like,

Lancaster: "Forget that whole Quantum fade whatever."

Soisson: "Quantum Phase Shift."

HOLLOWBACK GIRL (Science Moment Pending)

This SCIENCE MOMENT copyright 2025 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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