Physics of Animation

Falling Scenes in Hollywood Movies

Whenever I have free time, I like to go watch movies at a theater. I usually pick an action movie to watch because I love action; and I expect to see good and exciting action scenes from the movie I am watching. Especially nowadays when moviemakers have advance technology to help them create scenes that they wouldn’t be able to create before and help them make the scene look believable and convincing to the audience. Every time when I’m watching an action scene from some good action movie, I usually forget and ignore that what happens in the movie is impossible in the real world. Most people get suck into the excitement and do not realize that sometimes what they are seeing and believing from the movie, is impossible in the real world. One of the most popular types of action sequences that we have seen in movies are sequences where something or someone is falling such as: a character falling from a building, a hero kicks a bad guy and the bad guy falls to the ground from a fifty-story tall building, or a girl is falling to the ground and our hero jumps down to save her. Most of the time when we are watching these scenes, we believe it looks real because the moviemakers make them appear convincing. However, it does not mean that these falling scenes are correct and on the contrary they generally do not follow the principles of physic. Many movies have to ignore the principles of physic such as: rules of gravity or rules of falling objects, by exaggerating the action. Sometimes for dramatic purposes movies have to slow time on the falling sequences. Either way, if we scrutinize these scenes and analyze on how they apply the rules of physic especially through the notion falling objects; we will find that movies typically violate the rules and applied the principles of physics artistically for story and dramatic purposes.

Before I talk about scenes from movies, I would like to refer to Galileo’s law of falling objects and Newton’s laws of gravity. The law says that the earth’s gravity pulls a heavy and light object down to the ground at the same rate so that both objects hit the ground at the same time. Heavier objects which has more mass are pulled towards the ground with twice the force will also accelerate twice as slow, which is inversely related to lighter objects. That is the reason why two objects with different weights or mass will impact the ground at the same time when released from the same height. The falling scenes from the movies that I will talk about will refer to these principles. The first scene I want to talk about is a falling scene from Matrix Reloaded.

In the climatic scene of the Matrix Reloaded, Trinity is fighting an Agent in a tall building. She jumps out of the window and falls down to the ground. At the same time, Neo is flying from the top of another tall building from a couple of miles away. He flies with super speed and catches Trinity before she hits the ground. The whole falling scene is last for one-minute and thirty-seconds. In reality, Trinity’s fall should not be more than five to six seconds and yet it contradicts with Neo's thirty second sequence to fly over to Trinity and save her before she impacts with the ground. According to the properties of the speed of sound, in dry air at 68 F, sound travels about one kilometer in three seconds and about one mile in five seconds. Even if Neo is able to fly at the speed of sound, he still should not have enough time to catch her before she hits the ground. Or one may say that it is impossible for Trinity to take at least thirty seconds to fall from a building unless it was in extreme slow-motion. It would be more plausible if Neo is in a building next door and flies out of the building before Trinity is falling in order to catch her. The relationship of the falling speed and flying speed does not make sense or add up.

Another movie that has a similar error with the principles of falling is Spider-man. In the Roosevelt Island bridge scene, the Green Goblin releases Mary Jane and a cable car full of children from the top of the Roosevelt bridges. Spider-man is standing on the edge just a couple feet lower watching them fall. A few seconds after the cable car and Mary Jane falls; Spiderman jumps down and attempts to save both of them. Eventually, Spider-man successfully saves them by first catching Mary Jane and then swinging his web to catch the cable car afterwards. According to the rules of falling, Mary Jane (MJ) and the cable car should be falling at the same speed. In the movie, after they were released, it took Spider-man four seconds to run and jumped down to save them. After he grabbed MJ, he took another eight seconds to swing his web through the air to save the cable car. In reality, both objects are gaining acceleration and descending at the same rate. The height of the bridge is probably equal to the height of a fifty stories tall building. Therefore, it should not take more than twelve seconds for the cable car to hit the ground. Moreover, if we notice closely from the sequence of the movie, after Spiderman catches MJ in mid-air and swings to the other side of the bridge to save the cable car, the audience will see that the cable car had only just reached the top of the bridge. In other words, Spider-man got to the cable car’s initial point where it was released after he grabbed MJ, which is wrong since both objects are falling at the same speed, the cable car should have fallen a much more significant amount of distance already. What this means is that the cable car is falling slower than Mary Jane, which is a violation of the principles of falling.

The last scene from another movie that shows a violation of the principle of falling is from Batman Forever. In the climatic scene, Dr. Chase and Robin are being held as hostages and they are both hang about 100 feet above the ground. The Riddler pushes a button that causes Robin to fall first and about two seconds later, the Riddler pushes another button to drop Dr. Chase to the ground. It takes Batman a few seconds react and as he jumps down and accelerates with greater speed until he reaches them both and saves them. If everything in the movie is to follow the rules of physic, then Batman needs to be super fast or he must be able to stop time in order to save both of them. In reality, he probably has less than five seconds to save them. However, in the movie, Batman jumps down into the hole and he was able to reach Dr. Chase and save her life first. It takes about ten seconds until Batman can grab her body and put a rope on her to save her life. After he saves Dr. Chase, he continues flying down the hole to save Robin. This sequence takes about twenty seconds, starting count when Robin fell. Robin spent time in the air for almost thirty seconds and the movie did not even show him in slow-motion. It is obvious that the whole sequence was slowed down but it is still convincing enough to make audience believe. They both should have fallen to the ground and died because, according to physics, objects of any size will fall to the ground at the same rate if the objects fall from the same height. In the movie, Batman jumped after they had already fell. It is impossible for Batman to reach them because Batman cannot fall at a greater speed. Although if he could, he should have saved Robin first and then Dr. Chase because of the fact that Robin fell first.

Movies nowadays regardless of how much budget they have, without a good study of physics could cause the scene to feel unbelievable to the audience. It is understandable that many directors have to distort or bend the rules for dramatic and story purposes; otherwise every character that I have mentioned above would have died. It would be sad to see our hero who could not save the girl he loves, or it would be bad if all good characters died from falling. However, I think moviemakers still have a lot of work to do whenever they are shooting a scene because they have to take into account the principles of physic. If the audiences have no knowledge about simple physic, they would never know that these scenes applied the principle of physics incorrectly. These violations are only from the principle of falling. There are more scenes that actually violate other rules of physic, such as rules of action and reaction, rules of force, etc. It is good for us as an audience to be able to distinguish what is reality and what is fiction.

**I have switched from Batman to Batman Forever, and Speed to Matrix Reloaded.**