Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction.

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.