Slashdot Mirror
Impossible Movie Stunts?
ThousandStars asks: "After watching Spider-Man, I noticed some miraculous physics like Spider-Man falling faster than a girl to save her and the girl catching the cable car at the end. It reminded me of a list of 12 problems with the plot and science of Independence Day, which brings me to my question: What are the most implausible, impossible and sheerly rediculous science-related things you have seen in movies?"
The Open University in the UK had a series of short programmes called "Hollywood Science", which checks out the scientific credibility of scenes from films, presented by Robert Llewelyn (of "Scrapheap Challenge" aka "Junkyard Wars" fame).
They have a website here with information from the shows.
The simulation of Paul Newmans stomach in "Cool Hand Luke" was particularly gruesome...
-Baz
If you drop a hammer and a feather in an atmosphere, the hammer will win. Also note in the movie, when Spider-Man (don't forget the dash (tm)!) dove after Mary Jane, he did so in a nice Olympic-approved diving form - Mary Jane was falling in a nice frat-party-got-her-drunk type crouch. He probably had a much lower coefficient of drag. Plus, didn't he shoot her with webbing and pull her to him, then shoot webbing above to divert their fall? I can't remember if he did both web shots or just the latter one. Too fast, too many action scenes for me to remember the picky details of each one. And I missed Lucy Lawless in the movie - but didn't know she was in it until afterwards, so wasn't looking. *shrug*
:) Plus, let's face it, Kirsten Dunst has it all over realistic physics, any day of the week.
Still, much more realistic than M&M's floating in a nice double helix!
Movies aren't supposed to be real. As someone pointed out allready, "isn't the fact that Peter Parker was bit by a radioactive spider and turned into spider man impossible?"
Movies only attempt to reflect reality when convenient and/or feasible. Lets look at the X-Men. A great film. Are any of the stunts possible if you're not some kind of a mutant?
Now, I get really pissed off every time I see a computer in a hollywood movie and it looks like they just made up some wierdo TV-like screen and pretend its a computer, if only to satisfy some director's need for artistic clarity. I yearn to see real PC's be they linux or windows or whatever, just because it is so easy to represent PC's accurately, and hollywood never does.
But my favorite physics challenged stunt? That would be how they managed to the lovely rewrite Lt. Yar in STTNG back into the script by having her killed, sent back in time through a portal in an alternate universe, and having her half-romulan daughter who some how is in the present time the same age that Yar would have been and looks exactly like Yar even though she is half-romulan. Man, that's a stretch.
But looking for reality amongst the tale-spinners is at best a nebulous task. It is better to look for reasons that a movie makes us want to look the other way at those cheezy comuter screens, the conveniant plot devices, and even something obvious like how fast an object will fall to the groud.
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
This site is dedicaterd to the topic of infamously bad science in movies.
Look no further for humorous reading.
Me.
Well no, but there is a literary technique called Suspension of Disbelief. Authors create a self-consistent universe in which we accept the fact that certain things happen. In Star Trek they have transporters, in X-Men they have mutant powers, and in Star Wars Luke can use the Force. But in the case of a good movie/book, these things are clearly delineated, and have limits. Storm cannot, for instance, shoot lasers from her eyeballs because that's not one of her powers. Captain Picard can't transport the entire Enterprise across the galaxy because their transporters just can't do that.
On the other hand, a bad movie will violate their own rules (and/or other accepted rules like physics) when convenient to advance the plot. Tom Cruise jumping off the nose of a helicopter, which happens to be flying in a tunnel, and landing on the nose of a 200MPH train is my favorite example. Prior to this, we are not presented with a self-consistent universe in which Tom Cruise is part superman. He is just a regular guy. We are not told that he has adamantium bones, and therefore will not break every bone in his body when hitting a 200MPH train. We are not told that this is a special magical helicopter that can fly in tunnels without being sucked up to the ceiling. The scene was created solely for the purpose of advancing the plot, and is inconsistent, and sucks.
Many of the greatest novels/movies of all time have created a self-consistent universe, and then explored the limits of that universe. No, it doesn't match with our universe. Yes, they can do things that when taken out of context in and of themselves are incompatible with what we know. But, in general, we know about these "powers" before they are used, and new "powers" are not invented on the spot. When some new "power" is introduced, it is well explained, and becomes part of the universe. For example, using EMP pulses to kill the squiddies in The Matrix. The device has become part of the Matrix universe, and I imagine will be used in future movies with little explanation. Some examples of great universes: Dune, The Matrix, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Asimov's Robot novels (3 laws of robotics).
If you're going to violate laws of physics in particular, authors had better be prepared to create an entire universe with different laws of physics. Because as far as I know, you just can't do it. Physics is an accepted, implied characteristic of a universe, whether the author spells it out or not. There are only a handful of exceptions that we as audiences have come to accept. Namely: faster-than-light-travel and/or wormholes/hyperspace/stargates. But hey, I am a physicist, so maybe I'm biased. ;)
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.