9 Laws of Physics That Don't Apply in Hollywood 807
Ant writes "Neatorama lists nine laws of physics that don't apply in Hollywood (movies and television/TV shows). In general, Hollywood filmmakers follow the laws of physics because they have no other choice. It's just when they cheat with special effects that people seem to forget how the world really works..."
Same topics all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Some points aren't valid (Score:1, Insightful)
With the string of new kung fu films out (they run the gamut from The Matrix to Charlie's Angels), you just can't escape the small matter of bad physics. Yeah, the action scenes look great and all, but in reality momentum is conserved, such that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So, when you see a gal kick someone across the room, technically, the kicker (or holder of a gun) must fly across the room in the opposite direction - unless she has a back against the wall.
If I punch a punching bag, the bag moves but I don't. That is because my fist has the energy which transfers to the bag. I don't go flying backwards as the article suggests.
Umm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some points aren't valid (Score:5, Insightful)
Friction, dude. Try the experiment again on roller skates.
#4 and #5 (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The point of the Matrix was to bend the laws of physics. It was rather explicit.
2) The author obviously never watched Bruce Lee in action. If you plant yourself correctly you can send people flying across the room without moving an inch yourself. However, if you're in midair you certainly can't without the mentioned conversion of momentum.
Also concerning #5.
1) If it's a hole with level ends on both sides, it is entirely impossible to jump it on car without a ramp or other device to add a vertical component to velocity. However, in the event of a bridge being raised for a boat, the angle can potentially allow a vehicle to "jump" the gap. Is it likely or feasible? Not particularly, but it is possible.
2) This could have been expanded to include the "Bombs do not drop straight down" category of gravitational violation. A plane flying at high horizontal velocity v over a stationary target is not capable of dropping a bomb without horizontal velocity. Unless it fires the bomb backwards at a relative velocity -v, in which case we can have a semantic argument over whether the bomb is being dropped or fired.
Other laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Never mind hollywood (Score:4, Insightful)
on "no sound in space", "speed of sound", etc (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a matter of perspective. In a movie, the perspective is mutable. Don't think two asteroids colliding makes a sound? Try living inside an asteroid.
"Sound doesn't travel through a vacuum!" and "Sound doesn't occur when things happen to objects which are in a vacuum!" are two different and unrelated concepts.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Outerspace is Cold (Score:5, Insightful)
But I recently found out, from a colleague over beer, that loss of heat from blackbody radiation is actually much faster than I thought. In the old days, in non-cold places, some people (ancient Egyptions among others) would actually make ice, basically by letting water in a deep, dark place radiate it's heat away. Sure it took hours, and it had to be already pretty cold outside, but considering that the water was also being continually warmed by all the air around it, that's pretty impressive for "only" blackbody radiation.
It's pretty easy to calculate heat loss. According to this [wikipedia.org], in our 293K atmosphere we lose 95W. In a 2.7K vaccuum this translates to 640W, due to us not getting any energy back from the atmosphere. With an average human body heat capacity of 3470 Joules per Kelvin per Kilo, a 70Kg person will drop to the freezing point from 305K in less than 3 and a half hours.
Ok, so that's pretty slow. Damn those movies suck.
Re:the most famous example is not mentioned (Score:4, Insightful)
Hollywood still does that. But with modern weapons being capable of holding an indeterminate size of clip (as opposed to the standard six-shooter), it's difficult to call them on it. They just throw a few clip ejections into the fray to make it seem like the characters are really reloading.
You can kind of call them on double-barreled shotguns, but Hollywood has slowly phased those out for pump-action weapons. Of course, those are similarly amusing, but for different reasons. I was just watching an old episode of Sliders the other day where the characters are carrying pump-action shotguns. Every time they cut to a new scene, the characters would re-pump their shotguns. Which was rather amusing considering that they hadn't fired a single round...
Laws of Physiques (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:the most famous example is not mentioned (Score:3, Insightful)
I friggin HATE that! They do the same thing with lever-action rifles. I guess that could be a "Law of Physics"
i.e. "When there is a shell in the chamber of a 12 gauge shotgun, and you work the action, the shell is ejected."
There are plenty of "Laws of Firearms" that Hollywood doesn't obey.
The fact that they have weapons that never need to be reloaded, pistols that can shoot down aircraft or blow up vehicles, and rounds that send the unfortunate victim flying through the air is probably the reason they have such strict gun control laws out there. Not that it matters, because most of the bad guys can't shoot worth a damn anyway.
Do people *want* the laws of physics obeyed? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Outerspace is Cold (Score:3, Insightful)
Two words: evaporative cooling.
That's how the Space Activity Suit keeps you from overheating while working against its resistance.
Re:Some points aren't valid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:9 Bad Excuses for a Fluff Piece (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, they DID jump a bus. BUT, they had a special kicker on the end of the ramp that dropped after the front wheels went over. Watch the scene again... see how the front wheels seem to leap up? There's a documentary around somewhere showing how everything worked and the actual bus jump, but I can't remember where I saw it or what it was called.
Even a car will always land hard on its front wheels (if you're lucky) or its nose or roof (if you're not) after going off a static ramp.
Re:Outrunning explosions (Score:3, Insightful)
For the most part, what I see is not a race between the heroes and the explosion, but a race between the following two things:
Mostly, this is forgivable. When the heroes start running, the explosion hasn't usually happened yet, you can certainly see that they are not literally outrunning the blast front of the explosion. The shot is cut together to make it appear "close" (always), and the explosion is represented by something graphic (burning gasoline), because this is visual storytelling, not a filmic document. This just has to do with the way the thing is shown, for the most part no one in the movie's world is claiming implicitly or explicitly that the heroes can run faster than an explosion.
You need to look at these things through this lens of visual storytelling. Consider how fragile the human body is in horror movies. You would think we are all thin bags of blood and meat just barely hanging on to a skeleton of matchsticks and topped with a skull no tougher than a watermelon. People pop, break, are pulled apart, etc. In reality, people are mostly tough. Their structure is elastic and strong, the connective tissue hard to break. However, visually seeing human bodies as fragile in this way is shocking and horrifying, which is precisely the point. Saying that it's unrealistic is missing the point.
Re:Never mind hollywood (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm more concerned that people watching 24 will believe that terrorists are that capable. Seriously, I've heard people say that 24 shouldn't be aired because it will give terrorists working ideas on what to do. It's also sad that people believe there are an endless stream of highly skilled mercenaries and inside-men in the U.S. willing to murder thousands of innocent people for a million dollars.
Re:Same topics all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW, "2001, A Space Odyssey" was true to the no sound in space law and used it to dramatic effect. All you heard was the dull whir of systems in the pods or the astronaut's breathing.
Re:Never mind hollywood (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:9 Bad Excuses for a Fluff Piece (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless, of course, there is some sort of incline for a takeoff (ever notice how the Duke boys always manage to find that conveniently placed incline?)
The Duke's of Hazard jumps weren't 'special effects', just 'stunts'. They actually had cars do those jumps, and thus were constrained with the actual laws of physics.
Of course, those jumps also completely trashed the cars, as it's impossible to land a car flat from a jump like that. So either there's a lot of work on the car, evening out the weight and installing special shocks and framework, or the car isn't going to be able to drive away.
Smash cuts don't exist in real-life, either. Yet we don't complain about those. Slow motion is an entirely artistic thing, and is not related to the physics of the situation. At all.
Yeah, that complaint was just dumb. We might as well ask what sort of vehicle can smoothly go from miles up in space right up to the action with no reentry problems, for those long pan-ins. Or what allows the camera to teleport from location to location, sometimes even backwards and forward in time, and what sort of fairies put up those location descriptions at the bottom of the screen or why they do that. Or how the camera manages to go through walls and people's bodies and stuff.
The camera does not obey the laws of physics, because, duh, the camera does not exist in the movie universe, neither does how it alters our perception of the action exist in the movie universe, barring some fourth-wall and meta-narrative comedies. (There are plenty of interact-with-the-camera moments in comedy, but I'm also thinking of the 'running in slow motion' gag in one of the Scary Movie movies.)
Slow motion isn't the only issue here. Think about the camera effects in Traffic, where different 'worlds' had deliberately different 'camera styles', or cartoons where camera glare is added in. A whole movie could be displayed upside down or back to front and that won't alter the physics of the movie universe, although it would be very confusing. There are conventions film makers follow, just like people who write books often use 'chapters', but that has nothing to do with the world the work of art is describing.
Physics in film? Fugedaboudit (Score:2, Insightful)
This is wayyy to easy! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Outerspace is Cold (Score:2, Insightful)
Come on... this is Slashdot! Reading articles just takes time away from posting comments!
Re:Outerspace is Cold (Score:2, Insightful)
What about the others? (Score:4, Insightful)
2. If you find a single hair at a crime scene, it always will be from one the criminals, not any of the hundreds of other people who walked through the place recently.
3. If you run out of bullets, you are requirecd to throw your gun at your foe. You will also never be able to hit him with it.
4. Searching for a fingerprint in a computer database requires that every fingerprint in that database be displayed on your terminal. Also, when trying to break a password, you must display every single password being tried.
Superman picking up heavy stuff (Score:2, Insightful)
a couple of problems (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the author is confusing conservation of energy with conservation of momentum. In an elastic collision, in which energy is conserved, two people of equal mass will head in opposite directions. In reality, both the kicker and the kickee will absorb some of the energy of the kick, thus resulting in an inelastic collsion.
"For instance, in space the hero shouldn't be able to shout out instructions to the other astronauts from a spot several yards away."
That's what radio transmitters are for, and if you're wearing your helmet, you probably have a radio.
Explosions are what are particularly interesting. You will hear something as particles from the explosion collide with the hull of your ship, but it probably won't sound like an explosion.
Streets at night are always wet (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pet Gun Peeve (Score:3, Insightful)