Humans are known as a species for
causing nature to change for them, instead of being defined by their
surroundings. Instead of using caves for
shelter, we build homes. Instead of
letting the weather determine our temperatures, we simulate cool air with air
conditioners when the outside swelters, or warm ourselves with heaters and
flame while the outdoors are covered with frost. At nearly every turn to defy, if there is a
way, they seem to seek to attempt it sooner or later. And if it isn’t physically possible, not
something we can feel and create for all our senses, then we will simulate it
for just a few with a different method. Thus,
so follows much of our entertainment, stretching and bending the rules of
physics for a more dramatic, ‘beyond reality’ sort of feel. Intentional or not, it seems to be incredibly
pervasive in today’s entertainment media, be it in movies, the shows we watch
on tv, or the games we play on various screens.
And though few rules have been left untouched as a whole by our defiance,
one most often exploited is the Action-Reaction Principle, as well as laws of
acceleration in relation to a force and the objects it affects. Taking a couple television shows, the popular
show Supernatural, the more tame Once Upon a Time, and the movie X-Men, a few
isolated scenes can show these mentioned stretches of reality for the sake of
entertainment.
But
first, let’s examine the Action-Reaction Principle itself. The Principle states first, that for every
action force there is an equal reaction force in the opposite direction. So someone pushing on a wall will, of course,
be pushing on the wall, but the wall will also be exerting a force back onto
the person. Furthermore, action and
reaction forces always occur in pairs, and are always simultaneous (as with the
wall and the person, the forces acting on each other were, together, a pair;
and they also happened at the same time.)
Another important factor in this is the acceleration of the objects
involved. The magnitudes of the action
and reaction forces are equal, but the resulting accelerations are usually not
equal. And by the Law of Acceleration,
when objects or characters push apart, the heavier one will accelerate less
than the lighter one. This is to say
that while acceleration isn’t the same as speed, it is the change in speed, or more specifically, the change in velocity towards
the direction of an unbalanced force.
The net force, or the combined value of forces acting on an object, result
in the acceleration, and is what is important in finding the acceleration of an
object. So with these few things in
mind, that forces affect all objects
involved, and that heavier objects accelerate more slowly but would need more
force to move them, let’s look at these examples.
The
first instance we can look at with a number of unrealistic depictions of the
Action-Reaction principle is the popular show Supernatural. As its title suggests, it centers around
supernatural phenomena that two brothers track down and attempt to stop from
causing harm to humanity. There is a
particular number of fight scenes in which people get thrown across rooms or
large spans with little effort on the part of the ‘thrower’, and once such case
occurs in Season 9, Episode 23 of the show called ‘Do You Believe in Miracles’
at about 31 minutes and 7 seconds in.
One of the brothers, Dean, is attempting to stab one going by the name
of Metatron who’s attempting to take over heaven and earth. However, what looked like a simply block from
what may have been a side swipe to the neck became a tossing of Dean through
the air of what looked like more than 10 feet away and up high into the
air. Metatron, who did the tossing, didn’t
seem to have much recoil from the block, nor follow-through afterward, standing
simply, nevermind the amount of force it would take to toss someone after only catching
their arm along that far and high. It is
physically impossible, especially with no visible force appearing to affect
Metatron. In this case, the title of the
show speaks well for these actions, however, such a thing between two people
would never be able to occur in the world as we know it now.
The
next show, Once Upon a Time is similarly of an otherworldly scenario, along
with otherworldly physics. The show
itself is less violent, but not without its conflicts, and centers around fairy
tales that have come to life in a place called Storybrooke, with the troubles
and connections of the characters there trying to live together. This particular scene, though, starts with some
unfamiliar side characters. There is an
old sorcerer’s apprentice guarding some sort of box from someone called The
Dark One. The Dark One manages to get
around the apprentice by pushing him back with magic (the apprentice flew
through the air, though didn’t seem to accelerate fast enough for his mostly
straight trajectory; that, or the arcs were wrong for the velocity), and gets
to the box. However, there seems to be a
magical ward on the box that exerts an outward radiating force when the Dark
One gets near. Based on the Action
Reaction Principle, even a very strong force would send the Dark One flying
back perpendicular to where he attempted to get close to the box. However, in this scene, not only does he fly
up in the air at a rather slow acceleration, but flips backwards through the
air 3 times in an incorrect arc spanning only about 14 feet. There didn’t appear to be any additional
force keeping him rotating through all that, other than the outward radiating
force of the box, which only would have acted on him once when he was in
proximity. The box itself didn’t move at
all, and the flying Dark One flipped far too much too slowly for the force
acted on him. This scene can be viewed
at about 2 minutes in during episode 4, season 4 of the show.
And
the last example of strange physics mentioned here is from the movie X-Men
(2000). Following the trend of the extraordinary, the film is about a new
evolution in the human race, people who call themselves ‘mutants’ and seem to
have a particular power of their own.
Though it appears that some of these powers allow them to defy physics, even
when their powers aren’t at play, there are flawed mechanics around the
Action-Reaction Principle. Leading up to
this scene, however, there seems to be one that is somewhat more believable;
Logan has taken Rogue into his trailer, and they’re driving on the snowy
road. Just as Rogue mentions Logan
should wear his seatbelt, and he brushes the comment off, a large tree falls in
front of the car, causing it to crash while throwing Logan out the front window
from the impact and his continued forward motion. However, having the power of essential
immortality and rapid regeneration, he quickly comes to despite his injuries to
find the whole thing was an ambush from another mutant called Sabertooth. From here, the physics get sketchy. Sabertooth leaps from some ambiguous part of
the forest, as though he would have landed on Logan. However, the next scene shows him standing
and seemingly hurling Logan about 20 feet away and 15 feet into the air, with
little to no recoil or effort seen on his part.
This scene is about 19 minutes and 30 seconds into the movie. For it to at least be a bit more believable, Sabertooth would have had to throw his weight
into the toss more, he wouldn’t be standing straight and stiff with feet
shoulder-width apart, and most likely instead would have used his feet and the
ground to give him additional force for the maneuver. Even then, the way Logan flies hardly fits
what the toss would’ve had to be.
Overall, powers or no, the entire scene is very contrived.
In
conclusion, it seems very clear that people often find ways to bend physics in
their entertainment if they couldn’t otherwise do it themselves, as is proven
at least once in the shows Supernatural and Once Upon a Time, as well as the
movie X-Men. Though, really, it doesn’t
stop there, but it would seem that to emphasize just how strong, powerful, or
otherwise ‘unnatural’ something is, one often resorts to using these inaccurate
means. Certainly, it could be done
better and more accurately; and despite attempts to defy nature at every turn, it
seems that not all methods have been mastered yet.
