Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe

            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.

             Another nice touch is when Lucy is falling and she whips out her makeshift hang glider. Though I’m pretty sure falling at a vertical angle would not create the necessary lift for the hang glider to gently stop and start flying forward, there is a sense of realism to the animation. The hang glider, the way it catches the air and then pulls up, seems more like a sky divers parachute than an actual hang glider. But we still get that sense that it’s right when we watch it, due to the large surface area of the glider and the slight buckle when it catches the increased air resistance.

            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.