Inertia in Films
Movies often have
to veer away from the realm of physical possibility in order to
successfully create the desired scenes. There are many instances
within films that portray actions and events that would never be
possible in reality, but are quite suitable and acceptable within the
film's unique world. This is mostly true of action thrillers and
science fiction and fantasy movies. As an audience, we don't really
care about these discrepancies, as the crazy fantastical effects are
often used to enhance the tension of effect of whatever scene they
are used in. And so without any hesitation, the normally hard
unchanging laws of physics are broken time and again, and we couldn't
care less. One of the very common laws of physics we break in our
films is the law of inertia, Isaac Newton's first law of motion,
which states that an object will preserve its velocity unless acted
upon by an external force. The sheer amount of incredible scenes in
films involving extreme motion or impact means that this law is one
that is commonly thrown out the window. Any action scene, including
fight scenes or vehicle chase scenes in a modern movie will probably
break the law of inertia at least once in its duration. Films such as
Gravity, the Star Wars Trilogy, and the Matrix Trilogy all have
examples of this law being broken during their intense scenes.
Within Alphonso
Cuaron's space thriller, Gravity, there are many minor and major
physical inaccuracies in the way objects in space behave – from the
gravitational stiffness of Bullock's hair to the behavior of the
space debris as it orbited around Earth. In terms of inertia,
however, there is one specific glaring fluke that is more obvious
than the others. It occurs in the moment when astronaut Kowalski
(played by George Clooney), attached to Bullock's character Ryan
Stone, unhitches himself from the tether connecting the two of them
together after her leg gets caught on the rigging in order to save
her from getting detached and floating off into space. Even though
the two of them stopped completely, the movie treated this scenario
as if there was a constant force pulling Kowalski back into space as
he hung on. In reality however, the fact that the two of them stopped
moving outward completely should have meant that they were at rest
relative to the space satellite, and thus there would have been no
need at all for Kowalski to sacrifice himself by detaching from
Stone. All that would have been needed to get him moving back towards
the station would be a pull towards her from Stone, as there would
have been no force resisting such an action.
The law of inertia
is broken several times in the Star Wars trilogy each time a ship
warps to light speed. But unlike in Gravity, the issue is that the
consequences of inertia are unaccounted for in addition to there
being the application of strange nonsensical forces. For one, the
ships, after charging up their hyperdrives, reach light speed
instantaneously, with little to no acceleration needed to get them to
that point. The amount of force needed to accelerate the ship that
quickly is completely unrealistic, and what's more the ships
seemingly stop travel ling in a state of light-speed instantaneously
as well, with nothing seeming to decelerate them to that point. If it
were handled realistically, the ship would take quite some time to
reach light speed (assuming it could), and a ton of time slowing down
as well. In addition the people on board, along with many of the
ship's components, would probably splatter upon the ship's walls, as
due to inertia they wouldn't be able to accelerate to light-speed at
the exact moment the ship does. They would remain at rest longer than
the ship, which would burst forward, essentially slamming into them.
Perhaps there are some unnamed, odd science fiction technologies that
we are to assume allow them to survive and feasibly pull off such a
jump, but as far as physical plausibility goes, it doesn't add up.
The Matrix films
are full of intense, fantastical fight scenes in which the characters
bend the realm of possibility through the manipulation of the matrix,
the code that runs the reality of our world. The movements and
abilities of the fighters were designed with this in mind, and the
resulting sequences are extremely unreal and unique. This of course
involves breaking the rules of physics, and there are several
instances in which the law of inertia is messed with and broken. A
big example of this is when one of the characters kicks or punches
another with enough force that they fly far back into a wall or onto
the floor several meters away. When this happens, the victim almost
always moves through the air with his body relatively flat and
unbent. In reality, a blow strong enough to send someone flying like
that would cause the rest of the body to bend over the point of
impact, as inertia would cause it to accelerate backward after the
point of impact (assuming he wasn't crushed from the force of such a
blow beforehand). The other obvious issue with the physics is the
tendency for the fighters to maintain their inertia during these
moments when they are knocked back in the air, or simply when they
are jumping to their opponent much longer than they should, without
the force of gravity affecting their velocity. This results in the
characters floating or doing incredible stunts that would normally
not be possible.
In all of these
examples, the laws of inertia are tweaked broken in order to give
their respective scenes more impact. Whether it's simply to enhance
the fantastical nature of certain elements such as the light-speed
technology in Star Wars, to make fight scenes appear more awesome and
impactful like in the Matrix, or to serve as a plot point or an
intense moment like in Gravity, the breaking of these physical rules
is done in order to make each movie unique in its own way and to
capture the imagination of the audience. Realistically, objects would
follow the rules we are used to, and retain their velocities when
appropriate and be accurately affected by external forces. But in
these films, the extreme, odd portrayals of motion only serve as
another method of fascinating the audience.
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