It's pretty much
expected that on a trip to the movie theaters to watch an action or
animated flick that the film the audience views has the Hollywood
magic of broken physics. It may sound negative at first, but most of
the time physics are broken purposely to make the film entertaining
to the audience. It allows the audience to suspend their belief and
be taken to another world, and be taken along for a visual ride of a
lifetime. One of the most common
broken laws of physics is the law of inertia. In animated and
live action films, the law of inertia is broken to create epic scenes
to entertain the audience. In many of the situations, the events
would not be physically possible, and if they were it is unlikely any
of the characters in the situations would have survived, let alone
walked away uninjured. Films like
the wire-fu epic Kung Fu Hustle,
Phillipe Gamer's short film The Chase,
and the popular animated feature Wreck-it-Ralph
all took the privilege of movie magic to really push the
entertainment factor at the expense of the law of inertia.
Kung-Fu
Hustle is a 2004 action comedy
martial arts film directed by Stephen Chow. The film has quite a lot
of special effects, varying from CG animation, wire-fu, and green
screen. The law of inertia is broken multiple times in this film, to
either make the scene comedic, or to make a fight scene as impressive
as possible. Many times through out the film, the characters fall
from ridiculous heights or are hit with a tremendous amount of force
that would normally kill a person, but they walk away with minor
injuries, if any at all. The easiest scene to discern the broken
physics is at the very climax of the film, when the main character,
Sing, faces off with the big bad of the movie, Beast. During this
fight, Sing makes a key mistake and Beast headbutts Sing in the
stomach, sending Sing flying hundreds of feet in the air. Needless to
say, no human being regardless of how strong they are would ever be
able to headbutt another person even more than a few feet, let alone
headbutt someone with enough force that the victim has enough inertia
to fly a couple hundred feet into the air against the force of
gravity. As the scene continues with Sing flying into the sky, he is
able to miraculously recover mid-air by stepping on the back of an
eagle. Sing reverts his direction and gains control of his fall, and
uses the Buddhist Palm technique to defeat Beast. Right before
hitting the ground, Sing once again reverts his inertia mid-air by
using the compressed air from the Buddhist Palm, and lands perfectly
uninjured. This is absolutely physically impossible by any human to
be able to control and revert one's inertia merely by compressing air
between oneself and the ground, let alone right before hitting the
ground after falling a few hundred feet. Realistically, no amount of
air compression would have been able to slow Sing's falling inertia
from that height to allow him to be able to land safely without
sustaining severe injury, let alone change one's direction of inertia
and land perfectly uninjured. Albeit, as incorrect as the law of
inertia in this film is, it definitely brings up the entertainment
and comedic factor that the film is striving for.
The final fight in Kung Fu Hustle, the headbutt occures at approximately 5:45 into the video.
Another
film that breaks the law of inertia is a short animated film directed
by Phillipe Gamer, The Chase. In this film, a band of 4 daring women race and
elude the cops in a high speed chase on at first what seems like a
normal highway. It is later revealed that in order to escape the
cops, the women must complete a double loop-de-loop on the freeway.
The women are able to succeed in this challenge, and as they go
through the loops, the cop cars chasing after them are unable to
build up enough inertia like them to complete the stunt, and end up
falling and smashing into the ground. The law of inertia is broken in
this scene, as the cars the women are driving would not have enough
power to build up the necessary speed and force they would need to
keep their inertia against gravity and complete the large loops. Even
if the cars were able to gain enough inertia to hold themselves
upside down for that lengthy amount of time, it is likely the force
would be so great they would have suffered some injury due to the
crushing force. It would be more likely and realistic that like the
cop cars, the cars the women are driving would have suffered the same
fate the cop cars had, and fallen as well as they proceeded up the
first loop against gravity. Nonetheless, the scene is well executed,
comedic, and entertaining in the way the camera and music was
handled, allowing the audience to suspend their disbelief and just
enjoy the ride Phillipe Gamer takes them on.
Phillipe Gamer's The Chase, the loop de loop occurs approximately at 2:20 into the video.
Lastly,
Wreck-it-Ralph is a
3-d animated feature film inspired by video games about a “bad guy”
named Ralph, who wants to prove himself that internally he is
actually a good natured heroic person. Through out the film, Ralph
has several superficial attempts at being a “hero” before the
film's climax in which Ralph relies his true potential of being a
heroic person, with him willing to sacrifice himself to save his
friend Vanellope. During this scene, Ralph is picked up by the
mutated Turbo and flown hundreds of feet into the air above the
Mentos' volcano. Ralph decides to give up his life, and breaks free
from Turbo, and plummets down toward the volcano, and breaks the
Mentos into the lava Pepsi with one powerful punch. This creates a
lava beacon, that kills Turbo, and Vanellope is able to save Ralph
before he hits the lava. As heartfelt as this scene is, it is guilty
of breaking the law of inertia From the height that Ralph
falls,realistically ,even if he were able to survive, he would have
definitely broken most of the bones in his right arm when he struck
down on the Mentos crust of the volcano due the inertia and force he
had built up from the fall. However, like the previous films, because
of the stylization and the way the movie is treated it the audience
is able to accept this without questioning it.
The final battle in Wreck-it-Ralph, Ralphs fall occurs at appoximately 1:35 into the video.
The
law of inertia is a physic that many films break, and at the same
time the audience is rarely conscious of it happening as long as it
is well done. In the example films, the audience is introduced to the
physics of the world very early in the film, so they know what to
expect through out the film. In Kung Fu Hustle
they use comedy and well done directing, and in both The
Chase, and Wreck-it-Ralph
the world is extremely stylized to help the audience suspend their
disbelief. By doing this, these films are able to take the audience
on an epic entertaining experience. Even though it can be at the
expense of realistic physics, it's just enjoyable as a viewer to be
able to taken to a world where the physics are laws behave
differently than ours as long as it is well executed.
