Physics,
whether it’s animated or live action, always plays a key role in determining
the believability of a story. Especially for most modern films, the world of
physics is always changing or being altered to fit a particular feeling for a
story. Without the believability, the audience becomes disengaged from the film
and loses their connection with the characters. It is crucial to have a solid
story when making an animated movie, but I would say the second most important
thing is having solid physics and knowing what the rules are for the particular
story. In this case, I will be analyzing certain scenes from the movie Despicable
Me 2, made by Illumination Entertainment and directed by Pierre Coffin and
Chris Renaud.
The
story leaves off with Cru and his girls (Margo, Edith and, Agnes) living a
peaceful (but far from normal) life together. Meanwhile, an unknown villain has
stolen a top-secret base containing a transmutation Serum known as PX-41 that
turns animals/people into purple monsters. A villain fighting organization
known as the Anti-Villan League has no leads to whom the unknown villain is a
recruits Cru to solve the mystery. One of their Agents, Lucy Wilde, becomes
Cru’s partner in the investigation while they scout the suspects at the Mall.
Eventually, the Villan is discovered to be none other than El Macho, who had
secretly been transmuting Cru’s Minions into monsters. With the help of Dr.
Nefario, Cru manages to defeat El Macho, save Lucy, and finally ask her out on
a date. At the end of the movie, Cru gets married to Lucy and “Lives Happily
Ever After”.
Although
the description is brief, it’s easy to see how many aspects of this movie could
become exaggerated and ridiculous for the support of the characters/plot. For
most movies, even animated ones, this much exaggeration and unbelievable
aspects usually detracts the audience from the believability of the story.
However, since the tone of this film is very comedic as well as absurd, the
exaggerated physics actually comes to strengthen the overall tone of the movie.
We
first see glimpses of the exaggeration throughout the movie when certain
devices/gadgets are used. The first instance of it is at the beginning with the
magnet shaped ship stealing the top-secret laboratory. The ship seems to hover
out of the clouds, magnetize the building and fly away with it into the
horizon. I think it’s easy to deduce that something like a magnetic, hovering
ship is very unlikely to be possible in real world physics, let alone taking
off with an entire building while in mid air. The weight of the ship, let alone
that of the building with no current acceleration/wind speed couldn’t possibly
stay in the air. The way a planes wing works is as the plane reaches a certain
constant speed, the low pressure air “force” on top of the wing and the high
pressure force on the bottom of the wing try to equalize causing the plane to
be pulled upwards. That kind of force is generated by wind speeds, which we
currently don’t see here. Helicopters use the same kind of method for each
propeller blade, but since we don’t see any on this ship, it’s simple to say
they weren’t trying for realism. But by adding believable weight to how the
building gets magnetized as well as overlapping/follow through actions, it
becomes believable and sets the tone for the movie.
We
see this tone constantly with Lucy’s secret agent car. Much like the James Bond
Submersible and Flying cars, Lucy’s car is designed to get her out of any tough
situation anywhere. The first instance
we see her car in action is when she’s driving off the dock and into the ocean
(an almost reenactment of the James Bond Scene). As the car believably floats
to the bottom (rather quickly however), the car seemingly transforms into an
under water submarine, propelling quickly through the water. I was recently
watching a Discovery Channel show called Treasure Quest, where they have a
similar sized submarine as Lucy’s car moving around underwater. With the sheer
size of the sub/robot, it takes a lot of propelling force to push past the
resistant force of the water. Also I
don’t see any Ballast tanks on the car, so it should technically sink to the
bottom of the ocean floor. In a later scene, at the Paradise Mall, we see the
same car burst out of the window of the mall and fall towards the ground before
suddenly sprouting wings like an airplane. For me, this scene was the most
unbelievable because it was falling at a fast speed and then suddenly stopped.
Though the vehicle was in motion, it wasn’t moving in the proper direction to
create the necessary lift force on the wings. There may have been some air
resistance when falling, but not enough to suddenly cause a car to stop falling
when it sprouts wings.
The
characters in the film also had their unique way of moving and breaking
boundaries in this “despicable” world. Similar to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
and The Lorax, these characters at times appear to be lacking joints and even
bones in some cases. We see an example of this when Lucy first lipstick Taser’s
Cru and shoves him into the trunk of her car. Almost immediately his body goes
limp and he falls to the ground after the Taser is gone. Usually, since the
shock is traveling through the nervous system, one is unable to stand with
muscles becoming stiff. Also when she’s rolling crew over to the car, it almost
appears that Cru is a ball being rolled with appendages sticking out. This
appearance is due to the lack in joints of the arms as well as the rather quick
spin of crew’s body.
Edwardo,
or El Macho, is another good candidate to show the characters exaggeration for
the movie. When Cru is first describing El Macho to the audience, we see a
superhuman man completely halt an armored truck with his head. For any standard
person, this would probably kill them by trauma and smashing their skull in.
But this superhuman becomes believable to the audience by the indications of
weight, overlapping action, and snappy animation. To pick up something with a
heavy weight, the character would need to struggle with it and at least bend
over in a way where their center of gravity can continue to support the
structure. In the segment, we see just that, having El Macho Bend over, pick
the armored car up, and support it just above his feet.
The
last unique display of altered physics in this particular movie was seen during
many of the falls and jumps. Probably the most obvious instance of this is
towards the end of the movie when Lucy opens the air lock on a plane door in
flight. Due to the speed of the plane as well as the enormous amount of force
pushing against the plane as it flies forward, any sort of opening along the
planes hull would immediately cause all that force to get sucked in. When we
watch the segment, it doesn’t appear that any air force is being forced into
the plane when she opens the door or any loss of indoor cabin pressure is
occurring. To me, this was one of the most unbelievable moments in the movie
and it stood out b/c it broke the boundaries for the tone of the movie. But
before she jumped out of the plane, some pressure masks dropped from the
ceiling, creating the indication that some cabin pressure had been lost even
though no clear indication presented itself. This was a very effective move in
bringing this scene somewhat back into the believable stage.
Even
in cartoons, some form of physics is needed to make the story seem believable
and connective to the audience. The world of Despicable me 2 present many of
those exaggerated and absurd physics to light, but seem to have a certain limit
to the exaggeration. With the devices such as the car, it had a sense of
buoyancy while as the hand glider showed a great deal of air resistance. These
little nuances, though may appear for only a moment, add the sense of reality
and believability to the segments. Disney movies have a tendency to have
slightly more real world rules to their physics while Sony Animation tend to
have much less. For Illumination Studios, the physics are very exaggerated and
cartoon-like, but also believable by applying certain principles of animation.
In the end, the risk taking an exaggerated form of physics turn out to benefit
the movie greatly by supporting the comedic tone of the characters and
animation.
