Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

by Alyssa Raven

           When watching scenes from spectacular films such as Tarzan, Megamind, and so on, rarely do we call into the question the believability of the films. For the most part, great films follow the laws of physics in some way, making an action that would be impossible in a real world situation believable. But some films fall short of that believability, disconnecting the audience from what’s happening in the story and instead focusing on the absurdity of the actions. What I mean by this is when bad physics are preformed or executed in a special effects or animated feature film for the purpose of making it “look cool”. There are scenes from The Matrix: Reloaded, James Bond: Die Another Day, and even The Incredibles that each show how Newton’s action/reaction principle is being broken. When analyzing these scenes using Newton’s 3^rd Law of action and reaction, we find that the proper force resulting from the action doesn’t balance out and therefore makes the scenes seem highly fake or unbelievable.

            One of the most icon films in Hollywood history, The Matrix: Reloaded is almost completely compromised of fight scenes and chases. Though action packed and extremely entertaining to watch, the fight scenes at times are extremely unrealistic. What I mean by this is mainly the physics don’t make sense, resulting in something unrealistic to the mind and making it like an effects fighting scene rather than a realistic one. A good example of this in the movie is when Neo (the super action hero) is confronted by a small army of Smiths (enemy). During the conflict, we see a ton of kicking, punching and pushing, but after a while something just doesn’t appear right about the scene. If you watch the clip again closely, we’ll notice that the action force required to throw the characters back to hard/fast is not balancing out. As a result, when Neo flies foreword and punches a bunch of Smiths back a couple yards, it appears to be somewhat unrealistic. The unrealistic physics could have been on purpose to help make the world feel more “dream-like” or separated from the real world, but for the most part it just helped me notice the wire harnesses and CG added to the film. In order for the fight scene to appear more believable to the viewer, the forces between the two characters need to balance out. What I mean by this as an example is when Neo punches Smith back several yards; he can’t be standing almost completely straight with his feet together beneath him. In order to generate the proper reaction, Neo would need to crouch down and push off with a force equal to the magnitude needed to generate the yardage.  Now I don’t think anyone is real life can push someone back that far in one go, but by change the body position and the appearance of a great force on the feet and legs, the fight would probably look somewhat more believable.

The Matrix Reloaded: Fight Scene

            Probably one of the coolest special effects chase scenes in an action packed feature, Jams Bond: Die another day ha another set of physics issues. If anyone has ever watched more than one James Bond film, they’ll always note the classic Ejector Seat feature in the secret agent get away cars. The idea of being able to “eject” a passenger out of a car with just a click of a button has always fascinated action movie audience members. We’ve seen a similar “seat ejection performed on jets and stealth fighters when pilots are in peril, so the idea of an ejection seat and the believability of it seems pretty self explanatory. But when analyzing the physics, we start to see an enormous amount of force needed to both move a stationary object from rest and counteract the force of gravity pushing down on it. Overall, it’s actually fairly unlikely that an ejector seat in a car would actually work (air speed/force helped with Jet’s). Now the reason I’m talking about ejector seats is because in one particular chase scene during the movie, Die Another Day, we see James Bond’s car skidding upside down across the ice while the villain is closing in with another weaponized car. Just before a small missile hits James Bond’s car, he activated the ejector seat and supposedly generated enough force by the seat propulsion to flip the car back over to its right side. Mythbuster’s actually made an episode on this particular moment and I can accurately say that this action is false. In the Mythbuster’s episode, they set the car up in the exact same way (upside down) and build there own ejector seat mechanism designed to generate a force equal to a human’s weight on the ground. Not only was their mechanism unable to get the car off the ground, but also after adding a large amount of explosives equals to a force 10x a person’s weight, the car still was unable to turn over completely. In order to get the car to turn over, the mechanism would need to generate an action force a little bit greater than the car to counteract the gravitational force and weight. The whole sequence looks very cool, but unfortunately is not convincing.

Mythbuster's James Bond Ejector Seat Episode

            Now analyzing The Incredibles for physics purposes is actually a very picky thing for me to do. The whole movie is centered around great physics and a focus on having constant believability of weight within the actions. But one thing in particular stood out to me, but just one in terms of being unconvincing. When watching the scene when Mr. Incredible first meets Syndrome and Syndrome starts tossing around Mr. Incredible without any reaction other than his arm moving, it jumped out to me as false. Now this is a super Hero movie and I completely understand that “0-point energy” could be something that completely takes the weight, resistance, and force out of an object. But for real life physics, I don’t buy it and it’s just enough to make it unrealistic to me. Much like The Matrix: Reloaded scene I discussed earlier, having some small indication of resistance or reaction could make it more believable in terms of him not moving “thin air” and actually moving a person. The overlapping action created when grapping Mr. Incredible with the beam and then tossing him helps generate the believability, but with out the indication of an action force (moving something with weight) it feels somewhat computer generated for a moment. However, don’t rate the whole move based on this one little nuance, they rest of the film has great examples of physics and believable action/reaction with each superpower.

The Incredibles: Syndrome Encounter

            I cannot emphasize how important physics are to helping a movie feel realistic. “But it looks cool” doesn’t help make the movie feel plausible or a part of a real story. Sometimes in films like The Incredibles, you can cheat little nuances by creating alternative rules for the physics, but without basic principles such as Newton’s 3^rd Law, the sequences just seem very fake. For movies with a somewhat serious tone during the fight scenes such as James Bond and The matrix, its crucial therefore, to make sure that the physics is plausible before going ahead with something that would appear “cool”. Story and believability should always come before the action, which is once again why following physics fundamentals are crucial in spotting Cinematic fiction.