Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Movie Physics

Dammit! I just saw a trailer for the Fantastic Four movie. I was really looking forward to this one. The FF, Victor von Doom, what's not to love?

Then I saw a scene where a truck is coming towards The Thing (the strong, orange, rocky one) and someone else who was lying on the ground. So The Thing jumps in front of the person, braces himself and hip and shoulders the truck.

The truck crumples around him and stops dead (cool CGI, by the way, he's almost enclosed by the truck due to the crumpling).

But get this... the truck stops. Excuse me for having a brain, but exactly how is he anchored to the road?? Fair enough he's not hurt. I guess he weighs a fair bit too, but not as much as a truck, I'd wager. What should have happened is that he puts a big dent in the truck and gets carried along. It's the whole conservation of momentum thing I'm talking about.

This kind of thing just ruins the illusion for me. It rubs into my face that what I'm watching is not real. It sucks. And it's becoming rampant.

Remember in The Hulk when he's standing on the roof of a building and jumps a few kilometers away? Well, if he applied that much force to the roof of a building, the only thing that would happen is that he blasts the roof out from under his feet and he falls down.

At least let's get some semblance of an excuse for something vaguely resembling realism. Please?

2 comments:

Glen McGregor said...

That's interesting... the things that bug me are physics (as you're undoubtably aware) and fight scenes, as I did a fair bit of martial arts. I guess the areas where we're knowledgeable are the ones that we notice the issues.

Anonymous said...

...given that movie people don't notice this stuff, it would imply that they know nothing!