Films can be representations of real life
stories, or it can be completely fictional. Yet, sometime it can be really
tricky to distinguish what is science fact and what
is make-believe. When a film wants to be both believable and magnificent, the filmmaker
will try to trick the audience’s eyes by bending the laws of physics without
being noticed. One of the most important components of films is the character. If
the characters merely do the things that normal creatures are capable, then not
a lot of people are going to care about their stories. Therefore, the filmmakers
will give them super powers to break the physics rules of the reality. And the
audiences will feel like: ”Oh, this scene look like it can happen around me.” As
a result, the audiences are wiling to accept whatever happens in the films and
like the characters. One of the most popular laws of physics that the
filmmakers like to play with is the Isaac Newton’s
Third Law. As the filmmakers want to show the difference among the characters,
the effects of actions and reactions between the two characters will be
manipulated away from reality. Base on what I have been observed, there are
three popular ways to play with the law of action/reaction. They are the
recoils of actions, resulting accelerations and magnitudes of supporting forces.
Kung
Fu in all kinds of films almost always breaks the law of action/reaction. For
example, one of Kung Fu’s functions is to eliminate the recoils of actions. In
Kung Fu related films, as a character punch or kick, his or her enemies will
fly away with the Kung Fu master stay in the same spot. It looks like the Kung
Fu masters don’t need to endure any forces or any pain when they punch. That’s
not true.
Let’s look at an example from Kung Fu
Panda episodes-Secret Of The Furious Five.
In the story of Master Mantis’s past, Master Mantis kicks two bugs away and
maintains the same position on the air for a while, with a confident smile on
his face. That’s incredible and impossible! According to Isaac Newton’s Third Law, When
object A exerts a force on object B, the object B simultaneously exerts a force
equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the object A.
Therefore, Master Mantis is
experiencing the same magnitude of force of his fabulous kick as well. Even
though the speed of his body does decrease to indicate that he has some recoil
of his own action, it still doesn’t look like it is the same magnitude of his
kick. But this manipulation of recoil present how well the Master Mantis’s Kung
Fu is. It shows that his slender body can endure huge force without being blown
away.
There is another way to show
interesting relationships between two characters bending Newton’s Third Law.
That is playing with timing and resulting accelerations
of an action. Let’s look at an example from Chuck Jones’s Tom and Jerry-Ice Skating, which is my favorite animation when I
was little. As Jerry and his nephew Nibbles enjoying their skating indoor, Tom silently
holds on to Nibbles tail. The problem is that neither Nibbles nor Jerry notices
it.
Their skating doesn’t even slow down a bit. It look like they don’t feel
Tom’s action because there is only one force that the mice dragging Tom. That
is incorrect! Base on Newton’s Third Law, there is a force exerting on Nibbles
and Jerry from Tom. This force should slow them down. What’s more, Jerry and
Nibbles are far lighter than Tom; they should slow down significantly. I
remember that when I was watching this when I was little, I didn’t know it is
wrong at all. All I think is like “Wow, Tom is so smart!” or “Oh no, Jerry and
Nibbles are going to be in troubles!” Even though that might mislead me about
physics, what I felt from the scene was what the filmmakers want kids to think.
The purpose of this film is to entertain kids, not teaching the kids about the correct
laws of physics. However, as an adult, we should recognize what’s wrong with
it. Yet as an animator, we need to know how to trick out audience’s eyes
without being noticed.
Not only animated movie can play around with Newton’s Third
Law, live action can do it too. Here is about Kung Fu again, which is mean to
break the law of Action/Reaction. In Kung
Fu Hustle, directed by Stephen Chow, as the strongest villain punches the
landlady and her husband, he doesn’t step back to use one leg to support his
body.
This scene looks incredibly unrealistic because the lack of supporting
force for the villain. When the villain exerts a huge force on the two people,
he needs a same magnitude of force from the opposite direction acting on him to
keep his body stand still. In the scene, the only force to support him from the
opposite direction of his action would be the friction from the ground, since
he stands straight up. The magnitude of friction depends on the fiction factor
of the contact surface and the object’s mass. Since the villain is a normal
size adult wearing a pair of sandals, there is definitely not enough friction
for villain to stand still. However, the villain punches without a supporting
force does scare me a lot because it tells me how strong he is. His straight-up
standing distinguishes him from all the other bad or good characters, telling
us that the main character will have a extremely hard time with this villain. I
believe that is what the filmmaker wants the audience to feel. Breaking the law
of physic is not because the filmmaker doesn’t understand the laws of physics,
but because it is a way to tell story, to bring out points.
It is very easy for both animators and live action filmmakers
to make completely science fact production, but the films can be really boring.
So they bend the laws of physics to tell the stories that we cannot experience
in real life. The characters that we can’t see in real life are very attractive
to us. One of the ways to show how special they are is to break Newton’s Third
Law as they doing an action. They can have as little recoil as they want to;
they can have different resulting acceleration and they can beat up people
without reasonable supporting forces. They are not real, but they are fun to
watch.
