I liked Hidden Figures but I wish they didn't include a few silly scenes. I thought the scene at the start of the movie was pretty silly with how they started their stalled car. One of the leads bypassed the starter motor with a screwdriver and some sparks flew and the motor started. If that is all it took to start a motor, why do we even have starter motors? I know they wanted to show that these women were mechanically inclined but they could have had them push start a diesel car or change up the scene somehow to show the same without being silly. I think if the same scene was played with male leads, they would have been given more credibility like with solution being tightening up the timing belt, something real that shows that yeah they know cars.
The second scene that I thought was a little silly was when one of the leads was trying to figure out how to solve those hard orbital differential equations. Costner ,the head NASA guy, is like "only if there was a different old method on how to do this?" and one of the black female leads brings up euler's method. I know they wanted to show that these women weren't just glorified accountants or calculators but it was kind of silly because NASA had already in the movie purchased these huge computers, which would have been used explicitly for the purpose of using numerical methods to solve differential equations. The movie makes it look like the computers were purchased before they figure out that they needed to use Euler's method ,an almost 200 year old method by one of the most famous mathematicians, to numerically solve their orbital equations. I get that movie wants to recognize their contributions and they should be recognized. The amount of harassment and belittlement shown in the movie was probably heavily marginalized to keep the movie light hearted. The hurdles they overcome to be recognized as legitimate contributors were likely larger than any technical problem they came across.
