Outline for the Second Term Paper

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction? Action/Reaction

I. Introduction:
            a. Sources for each of the scenes: Hercules, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Emperor’s New Groove
            b. The laws regarding action/reaction are severely broken in film for various reasons

II. Body
                         Hercules—cyclops fight

a.       The cyclops is already portrayed as a monumentally huge, incredibly strong creature that can level buildings and smash stone with little to no effort whatsoever

b.       Hercules, weakened and pointedly mortal, impossibly withstands the cyclops blows with nothing more than some bruising despite being kicked, thrown, and bounced by the titan

c.       Although Hercules has some physical reactions to (stumbles when prodded, flattens against a smashed wall, collapses after slamming into the ground), they are nowhere near as impactful as they should be

d.       The demi-god is even lifted by the enormous titan at one point from the ground all the way up to his head, but with no visible reaction to the forces that he would experience after moving such a huge distance so quickly

e.       Hercules finishes off the cyclops by entangling his legs in a regular-sized rope; not only should the titan be able to bust through the rope, but also Hercules would not be able to pull the cyclops down to the ground without his powers
 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban—Knight Bus scene

a.       Merry-go-round, teeter totter, and swings all move independently without any explicable means (“ominous gust of wind” isn’t a good enough reason for the laws of physics); playground equipment can still be seen moving in the background even after the Knight Bus shows up and the wind has died down

b.       Harry reacts strongly to the bus’s sudden accelerations and extremely exaggerated stops—yet the other characters do not

c.       The talking shrunken head dangling from a string at the front of the bus hardly responds to the bus’s motion at all!

d.       Even the rolling bed Harry’s sitting on does not move as consistently as he does

e.       Centripetal and centrifugal forces—all the passengers, including Harry, do not respond much, if at all, to these external forces

3.                                    The Emperor’s New Groove—Kuzco saves Pacha

a.       Filled with inaccurate interpretations of the laws of physics, but what a fun movie!

b.       After fighting in the dangling strands of a rope bridge, Kuzco and Pacha fall after an unusually long air hang-time when the whole structure breaks in a delightfully cartoony, far from realistic way

c.       Both characters are wedged in a tightened gap at the bottom of two opposing cliff faces—Pacha weighs considerably more than Kuzco, yet Kuzco is not shown to compensate for this by either pushing harder against the cliff face or Pacha—he appears much more neutral than he should

d.       The entire heartwarming, character-building sequence of Kuzco and Pacha working together to climb up the cliff is riddled with incorrectly-used action/reaction principles; Kuzco flails more than once yet is somehow able to still support Pacha

e.       The buddies finally make it up to solid ground by riding a stream of bats escaping their cave—not enough of an action to prompt that kind of a reaction

f.        But the solid ground was a trick! Kuzco grabs Pacha at the last second after his tiny patch of cliff crumbles into the alligator-infested river below—and Kuzco is miraculously able to catch, swing, and throw Pacha without any limitations based on the latter’s aforementioned weight

III. Conclusion

a.       Inaccurate portrayals of the laws of physics, particularly action/reaction action is not always detrimental

b.       It can actually add to the fantastic element of visual storytelling