Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

Science Manipulated for Cinematic Fun

Although what makes movies attractive to most audiences is the sense of escape provided by a good story, where the viewer embarks in a whole new fantasy world, every so often I also enjoy watching films that are focused on action mostly, such as blockbuster movies. Such films can be entertaining because they are deceitfully unconvincing, and I find that in them the most exaggerated actions are the most entertaining ones. These have the laws of physics manipulated for entertainment continuity, and  one of the laws that I’m most pleased to see broken is Newton’s first law of motion, or law of inertia. It states that an object at rest stays at rest and an object stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. In such films the “heroes” perform remarkable feats that ordinary mortals could not pull off. The entertainment value, for me, comes from watching scenes so outlandish that I think “Really?”

 One example that comes to mind right away is from the 1994 thriller Speed. A low-budget fun ride thanks to its premise of an exploding device being wired to a commuter bus which will detonate if the vehicle drops its speed to 50 mph, this speedy bus gives many opportunities for the bending of physical laws for entertainment. As the bus is moving on the highway, the people on the bus are informed that due to road construction, a bridge in the highway is missing a segment. Unable to stop the bus, Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves decide to make the jump over the gap. The bus then accelerates to about 70 mph, and successfully makes the jump. Beforehand the highway is clearly seen as perfectly horizontal and the bridge is level with it. This predetermines that the bus would nose down and hit the ground below. Being aware of this fact, the bus was special effects-modified to depart at an upward angle relative to the horizontal, as if a ramp had been placed exactly before the gap. Even though the bus was tilted upward, as it plunges off it flies on a horizontal line, and furthermore appears to float and stay up in the air as if it was a toy kept suspended, creating a scene that is quite odd. This bus just kept on going!   

Another fun example is from the comedy action film True Lies. During the 80s and 90s James Cameron seemed to be the master of big, over-the-top stunt films. This film is no exception, with absurd scenes so absurd that they outdo being offensive to the lay intelligence. Between a motorcycle jumping between two skyscrapers and a gigantic exploding bridge, the most memorable scene here is the final one, when Schwarzenegger takes to the sky in a jet and snags a terrorist into a missile -- while saying “You’re fired” -- then launches both into the air through the side of a building and toward a passive helicopter. It feels like watching the demolition derby! It’s futile to argue of the nonsense of such scenes, but with the weight of a grown man that missile wouldn’t just keep flying like a bird. But what?!? Lose all that wonderful CGI? Nonetheless, as I’ve read once somewhere, watching this film is like being force-fed “the proverbial Chinese dinner,” leaving me hungry an hour later.

Another example that comes to mind is from the unmemorable film Resident Evil: Afterlife. This sequel is pretty much forgettable, but a scene strategically placed right in its beginning caught my attention. Milla Jovovich, loaded with superpowers and an army of clones, plays the film’s heroine and lands a small red airplane at the roof of a Los Angeles skyscraper. This scene establishes how shallow and unreasonable this whole film is going to be, as if it’s a forced attempt to grab hold of the viewer, and it stalls from there. The absurdity is easy to detect, and the viewer can surely sense that when a light aircraft comes in to land, it needs a few hundred feet to touch down and come to a stop, but our heroine managed to land her bird in a pretty much small area. This landing is emphasized by the large amount of slow motion camerawork, even to the point of self-parody, with the result of every action dragging along. This is a film so “incorrect” and CG-infested that it feels like watching someone playing a videogame. But the again I don’t watch these films to practice my critical thinking.

 Directors and special effects creators work hard to create impressive scenes in movies to excite the audience. Many scenes are created with absolute disregard of the physical laws in our universe. Sometimes the scene is so profoundly wrong that it is hard to be missed. However, by my observations many scenes that bend the laws of physics to the extreme are actually not noticed by every viewer watching. Perhaps this sort of film reinforces passivity, or might even create incorrect scientific attitudes to some, but to me these scenes are so obviously unreal, and the directors are so obviously not trying to make them real, that that’s where the fun resides. The point of these films and their entertainment value lie precisely on the fact that they overreach themselves in unreality, and I go Really? Yeap.