9 Dumbest Weapons In Sci-Fi Movies

Science fiction is a treasure trove of speculation and wacky concepts. But unlike fantasy or sci-fi's basement dwelling younger brother science fantasy, you're typically expected to be a bit more grounded in your ideas.

What makes really good, hard science fiction is the notion that everything that happens in the story could actually happen to us. The science fiction author opens a window to another world and says "look upon this alien landscape and know that these could be our empires, our cities, our prosperity and our doom".

Which of course makes it all the more noticeable when what those authors show us is just plain silly.

Now, silly definitely has its place, but when you hold out, say, a weapon to someone and say "this could actually exist" that puts it under a brand new microscope than previously. Tools of combat are the way they are for very specific reasons. They are meant to help the human anatomy cause as much pain as efficiently as possible. these weapons...don't do that. At all.

These science fiction weapons may claim to run on actual science, but when you think about them for more than a few seconds, you realize that any sane man would stay far far away from using them.

Alien is one of the absolute best science fiction franchises of the last 50 years, and Aliens is one of the best science fiction sequels of all time. It's so damn good that it makes you forget how utterly impractical the M56 Smart Gun is.

The M56 is a MASSIVE gun, one you might otherwise find mounted on top of an armored vehicle. It takes two hands and a harness to hold it up. With all this in mind it should come as no surprise that the marines get their asses annihilated by the xenomorphs. A gun this big makes it almost impossible to carry it around and maneuver with any sort of speed or efficiency. The user would tire themselves out in even a normal gunfight, and against the agile and stealthy xenomorph you may as well have a massive bullseye painted on your back.

And even barring that, the kick a gun this size would give off would make it impossible to aim. This is why here in the really real world, we don't give guns this big to soldiers.

The marines who went to take on the xenomorphs were already asking for it by being a bunch of macho jarheads refusing to heed the advice of the only woman who's survived an encounter with one of these things. But thinking they could do the job with these big metal liabilities is grounds for awarding the entire military a darwin award.