The art of filmmaking is beloved for its ability to tell
a story grounded in realism with a dash of something extraordinary. That being
said, there are some aspects of this visual art form that often, sometimes without intention, push the limits of what is realistically possible, even going so far as to
break the laws of physics themselves! One example of this is how people and objects
fail to respond with the proper type of reaction to opposing forces. While this can be attributed to a production oversight, it is also used a necessary means to
project a specific type of emotional response or feeling. Whatever the case may be, films have smashed
the action/reaction rule of physics in various ways.
In
Disney’s 1997 animated feature film Hercules tells the story of the titular hero with incomparable strength from Greek mythology. There is a
critical scene towards the end of the film where Hercules fights one of the
titans that poignantly illustrates the fallacious use of the action/reaction
rule. 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. Hercules, weakened for the time being and pointedly mortal,
withstands the cyclops blows with nothing more than some bruising despite being
kicked, thrown, and bounced around by the titan. Although Hercules has some
physical reactions during the fight, such as stumbling when prodded, flattening
against a smashed wall, and collapsing after being slammed into the ground,
they are severe understatements as to what would actual happen if this scenario
were to occur in the real world. At another point in the scene, the hero is even lifted by the enormous
titan at one point from the ground all the way up to his single-eyed head, but
Hercules displays little to no visible reaction to the forces that he would
experience while moving such a huge distance so quickly. The fight wraps up
with Hercules using a regular-sized rope to entangle the titan’s gargantuan
legs and pull him to the ground and over a cliff. Not only does the cyclops' inability to bust through a
relatively tiny strand of rope contradict his previously-displayed
strength, but also Hercules would not be able to pull the cyclops down to the
ground without his iconic power. Although enjoyable, the scene is riddled with all kinds of completely
inaccurate interpretations of how the laws of action/reaction work between two characters of hugely different sizes.
Warner
Brother’s third installment of the Harry Potter series, The Prisoner of Azkaban
(2004), is filled with a wonderful amount of impossible, awe-inspiring physics, but there is one scene in particular that has some delightfully peculiar
yet entirely incorrect interactions with the action/reaction rule. The Knight
Bus, a magical triple-decked public transportation vehicle with the ability to dodge the laws of
physics just as smoothly as it navigates the Britain's traffic patterns,
is filled with three-stories worth of inconsistent physics fallacies. Harry is
repeatedly shown to react strongly to the sudden accelerations and extremely
exaggerated stops, yet the other characters riding along show little to no
response to the immense amount of forces that should be altering their weight
and center of gravity. Despite being filled with rolling beds for
long-distance travelers, these wheeled sleeping arrangements move with a
temperamental consistency, only responding with the bare minimum amount of
motion to prove that they are not simply nailed to the floor. Perhaps the
hardest sell on the bizarrely inconsistent laws of action/reaction so laxly
imposed on this bus is the mouthy co-pilot, a shrunken head dangling from a
string, is not influenced by the bus’s motion at all! As egregious as this particular error is, the most
consistent rule break remains the reaction to the centripetal and centrifugal
forces of the vehicle—although the opportunity to impose these forces among the
characters riding onboard is abundant, it is strangely non-existent.
Perhaps
the film that tackles the action/reaction law with the greatest inaccuracy is another
Disney animated film, The Emperor’s New Groove (2000). The heart-warming
friendship that blossoms between Kuzco and Pacha is founded upon a sea of physics lies
as the characters snap through the laws of action/reaction as quickly as the rope and
wood bridge upon which they were standing. They not only have an unusual amount
of unrealistic hang time in the air before eventually succumbing to the pull of
gravity’s forces, the bridge beneath them also breaks
with a sluggish irreverence to the laws of physics. What happens next sets the
stage for one of the most memorable parts of the film—the soon-to-be-buddies
are crammed at the bottom of two tight opposing cliff faces and work together to return to the top
by pushing up against each other’s back to walk up the walls. Pacha very
clearly weighs more than Kuzco, but the latter is not shown to compensate for
this by pushing harder against both Pacha and the cliff—he appears much more
neutral here than he should in this scenario. There are also a couple instances
where Kuzco physically panics and without a questionable doubt fails to provide
the same abysmal amount of force previously needed to support himself and Pacha. As inaccurate as that is, the two characters eventually
return to solid ground by impossibly riding a stream of real, flying bats—it practically
goes without saying that there would be nowhere near enough action to support that
type of a reaction! To wrap up the scene, Kuzco catches Pacha in mid-air before
swinging him to safety after the patch of ground he was standing on crumbles
into the alligator-river infested river below. Again, this series of actions are
presented in such a way that they fail to justify the amount of weight Kuzco
would have to carry, if he could at all!
As
plentiful as these examples of incorrect representations of the action/reaction rule, they only scratch the surface of physics
fallacies found in these films alone. Even though they break the rules of
reality quite generously, that does not necessarily mean it is a bad thing. As
shown in Hercules, it is a perfect example of how the hero can get out of a
situation that is literally impossible so that the audience can still cheer for
him. In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the Knight Bus scene still
conveys the proper amount of quirkiness needed without creating an overly-stimulating, cluttered
scene. The comedy of The Emperor’s New Groove would be greatly dampened
(perhaps even non-existent) if it was bound to the realism of the actual world.
Clearly, the act of bending, breaking,
or completely demolishing the rules of physics certainly has the ability to add even more excitement
and fantastic flare than it detracts.
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