Sunday, November 29, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The Physics of Hero
Tarantino’s Version of a Fight Scene
The movie Hero, directed by Quentin Tarantino, classically illustrates Hollywood kung fu. People are capable of manipulating physics as they battle, sometimes they are unaffected by one aspect, while another is enhanced. By choosing to defy certain laws at certain times, however, the film becomes a meticulous work of art. Tarantino intentionally fantasized the fight-scenes in order to enhance composition and drama. In some cases the laws are changed entirely. We can look at one fight scene in the whole of the movie, and get the gist of them all. In it we will see at least three of the laws of physics broken, or otherwise changed. These include two of Newton’s laws, and some rotational dynamics. Although there may be several more, we’ll focus on these for the assignment.
There is a scene an hour and thirty-nine minutes into the movie in which the protagonist, an unnamed man, fights Flying Snow, an assassin against the Chinese king. The scene shows the two of them ringed by the king’s army, lashing at each other in elaborate moves that resemble flight and floatation. Several high jumps are stifled by a lengthy mid-air slide before touching the ground. The characters also change their motion dynamics while in the air; suddenly stopping a spin, jumping in non-parabolic arcs, maybe even dipping and rising again while in the air. In the scene, the laws of inertia, action/reaction, and moment of inertia are all somehow violated, especially by the characteristic motions of Flying Snow.
Part of the law of inertia, discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, states that an object in motion stays in motion until acted on by another force. An example of this would be a rock, drifting through space. If the rock does not experience gravity or friction, and never collides with another rock on its way, it will move onward in a straight line forever. If that rock happened to be spinning as well, it would also continue spinning at the same rate.
In mid jump, characters are capable of stopping rotation (of themselves, their hair, and their clothes) immediately, dropping out of an arched path of action, or stopping on a dime after high-speed movement. Flying Snow does this frequently. She leaps high into a jump, spinning from the beginning, but then freezes while still “falling” forward into her attacks. The spinning, normally, could not be stopped in mid air unless one collides with something. At home, a person might think they are proving this wrong by jumping, vertically, and spinning themselves, then stopping the spin before landing. This is actually an example of the law. In order to stop the jump, the body must twist, rotating energy in the opposite direction. When the force in one direction equals the other, the spinning can’t continue. Flying Snow does not do any such thing. Her rotation varies on a whim. She does not even throw her arms or legs out when she wants to slow it down.
Clothing demonstrates this as well. If a person jumps in place, rotating in the air, their landing would be punctuated by the overlapping action of flapping hair or cloth. Flying Snow has a unique control over this. Her long- sleeved garments and flowing black hair sometimes do not continue past her body’s stopping point. When her movement dies, so does everything else.
Another notable violation of inertia is how Flying Snow and the protagonist change the properties of their jumps. Especially in the case of Flying Snow’s final strike in the scene. In several areas she leaps forward but stops in mid-air, falling straight down. In the final scene she arcs up, then down, then up again. The momentum of her weight should be able to carry her all the way through an arc. In reality, if she jumped at the running speed and height that she did, she would likely rise two feet in the air and reach three feet from her take-off before gravity pulled her back down at the opposite rate that she went up. She might make around six feet of distance total. In the film, she sometimes managed 20 feet or more from her take-off. After a jump that was 20 feet across, one would also expect her knees to pop if she lands in the position she did. It would make much more sense to roll. But, again, she stops her spinning and momentum in mid-air, descending safely anywhere she wishes no matter where she aimed when she jumped in the first place. Obviously there are unseen magical forces aiding these fighters, like digitally removed stunt cables.
The fact that Flying Snow and the protagonist both tend to end their lengthy jumps en-point, in a frigid stance, brings up another fully-ignored law: for every action is an equal and opposite reaction. This is Newton’s second law, and defines what should happen when two objects, say, a falling body the rocky ground, collide. The body would hit the ground after falling, and the ground would hit back. The downward force of the body is almost usually less than the upward, rocky force of the earth. If the body were a normal body, impacting the ground would most likely result in shattered bones, torn joints, what have you. This is not seen in Hero.
Flying Snow falls forward towards the ground, landing with both feet in a ready-and-waiting fight pose. Her arms do not even dip with their own weigh or the weight of her sword. She looks like a ballerina finishing a pirouette. This way of landing is almost equivalent to dropping a plastic army man on your hardwood floor. He will hardly change shape as he hits it, every part of his form will remain just about the same. But what he does do is bounce. Flying Snow does not. Nor is she made of plastic. The moment might look about as odd as a baseball that sticks where it lands, if her clothing did not follow through and sway behind her. There must be another force interfering between her apex and her landing, something that slows her down.
There is also little adherence to this law when characters seem to fly to great heights with the slightest tap of the foot. Flying Snow’s feet rise above her opponent’s head when she jumps without a running start. In reality, the upward force she applies wouldn’t even get her off the ground. Attacks also seem to have unequal reactions on each character’s end. In a piece of the scene in which Flying Snow twirls horizontally towards the protagonist, their swords collide and she is flung in the opposite direction. This should have caused the Hero’s arms to reel back, if not he should have been able to carry through the motion. The sudden change in her does not appear balanced with his attack. He neither recoils nor follows through. He stands rigid.
While seeming to float in their spinning attacks, there is one more obvious violation of the laws of physics. The moment of inertia tells us that the farther the mass is from the rotation’s axis, the more force required to maintain speed. This can be demonstrated watching a high-diver leap from their 20-foot-high board. To ease their ability to flip in midair they will tuck their bodies inwards, allowing them to rotate faster and perhaps complete more than one tumble before hitting the water. If applied to the fight scene in Hero, the characters should be doing the same. If they intend to rotate faster in midair they should accomplish it by pulling their arms in. Flying Snow, however, increases her speed of rotation by throwing her arms out. Also, when blocking during a mid air spin, (arms pulled in) she slows. This is about the opposite of what should occur.
The point of rotation itself also changes with no explanation; the character will be spinning one way at one moment, and then gliding horizontally the next. But the body positions will remain the same. They do not twist nor do they hit anything. They simply begin rotating at the hip, and then, when they feel they should land, their shoulders seem to lock while the rest of their body swings down into the landing.
According to all of these manipulations and effects, to consider and apply the laws of physics might have been a hindrance to the art of a Tarantino movie. Hollywood fight scenes are notorious for manipulating such laws for increased drama, mysticism, and character quality. By making Flying Snow and the Hero appear weightless in quality, the fight scenes can be compared to dancers in a ballet performance. Removing the forces of gravity and action-reaction, among others, enhanced the visual composition and texture of movement. Without them, the timed beats of every scene flowed well into one another. The contrast was easily seen, when one character floated and another tumbled and hacked with a sword. We could easily point out Flying Snow or the Hero simply by the way they moved. If someone switched their dynamics in movement, it would be easy to spot. Also, they ways characters fell made the composition far more intricate. Every attack became a graceful arch leading us into the point of collision, without the jarring effects an anticipation or running start might have caused. From this, we can state that the defiance of physics was a successful artistic choice.
The movie Hero, directed by Quentin Tarantino, classically illustrates Hollywood kung fu. People are capable of manipulating physics as they battle, sometimes they are unaffected by one aspect, while another is enhanced. By choosing to defy certain laws at certain times, however, the film becomes a meticulous work of art. Tarantino intentionally fantasized the fight-scenes in order to enhance composition and drama. In some cases the laws are changed entirely. We can look at one fight scene in the whole of the movie, and get the gist of them all. In it we will see at least three of the laws of physics broken, or otherwise changed. These include two of Newton’s laws, and some rotational dynamics. Although there may be several more, we’ll focus on these for the assignment.
There is a scene an hour and thirty-nine minutes into the movie in which the protagonist, an unnamed man, fights Flying Snow, an assassin against the Chinese king. The scene shows the two of them ringed by the king’s army, lashing at each other in elaborate moves that resemble flight and floatation. Several high jumps are stifled by a lengthy mid-air slide before touching the ground. The characters also change their motion dynamics while in the air; suddenly stopping a spin, jumping in non-parabolic arcs, maybe even dipping and rising again while in the air. In the scene, the laws of inertia, action/reaction, and moment of inertia are all somehow violated, especially by the characteristic motions of Flying Snow.
Part of the law of inertia, discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, states that an object in motion stays in motion until acted on by another force. An example of this would be a rock, drifting through space. If the rock does not experience gravity or friction, and never collides with another rock on its way, it will move onward in a straight line forever. If that rock happened to be spinning as well, it would also continue spinning at the same rate.
In mid jump, characters are capable of stopping rotation (of themselves, their hair, and their clothes) immediately, dropping out of an arched path of action, or stopping on a dime after high-speed movement. Flying Snow does this frequently. She leaps high into a jump, spinning from the beginning, but then freezes while still “falling” forward into her attacks. The spinning, normally, could not be stopped in mid air unless one collides with something. At home, a person might think they are proving this wrong by jumping, vertically, and spinning themselves, then stopping the spin before landing. This is actually an example of the law. In order to stop the jump, the body must twist, rotating energy in the opposite direction. When the force in one direction equals the other, the spinning can’t continue. Flying Snow does not do any such thing. Her rotation varies on a whim. She does not even throw her arms or legs out when she wants to slow it down.
Clothing demonstrates this as well. If a person jumps in place, rotating in the air, their landing would be punctuated by the overlapping action of flapping hair or cloth. Flying Snow has a unique control over this. Her long- sleeved garments and flowing black hair sometimes do not continue past her body’s stopping point. When her movement dies, so does everything else.
Another notable violation of inertia is how Flying Snow and the protagonist change the properties of their jumps. Especially in the case of Flying Snow’s final strike in the scene. In several areas she leaps forward but stops in mid-air, falling straight down. In the final scene she arcs up, then down, then up again. The momentum of her weight should be able to carry her all the way through an arc. In reality, if she jumped at the running speed and height that she did, she would likely rise two feet in the air and reach three feet from her take-off before gravity pulled her back down at the opposite rate that she went up. She might make around six feet of distance total. In the film, she sometimes managed 20 feet or more from her take-off. After a jump that was 20 feet across, one would also expect her knees to pop if she lands in the position she did. It would make much more sense to roll. But, again, she stops her spinning and momentum in mid-air, descending safely anywhere she wishes no matter where she aimed when she jumped in the first place. Obviously there are unseen magical forces aiding these fighters, like digitally removed stunt cables.
The fact that Flying Snow and the protagonist both tend to end their lengthy jumps en-point, in a frigid stance, brings up another fully-ignored law: for every action is an equal and opposite reaction. This is Newton’s second law, and defines what should happen when two objects, say, a falling body the rocky ground, collide. The body would hit the ground after falling, and the ground would hit back. The downward force of the body is almost usually less than the upward, rocky force of the earth. If the body were a normal body, impacting the ground would most likely result in shattered bones, torn joints, what have you. This is not seen in Hero.
Flying Snow falls forward towards the ground, landing with both feet in a ready-and-waiting fight pose. Her arms do not even dip with their own weigh or the weight of her sword. She looks like a ballerina finishing a pirouette. This way of landing is almost equivalent to dropping a plastic army man on your hardwood floor. He will hardly change shape as he hits it, every part of his form will remain just about the same. But what he does do is bounce. Flying Snow does not. Nor is she made of plastic. The moment might look about as odd as a baseball that sticks where it lands, if her clothing did not follow through and sway behind her. There must be another force interfering between her apex and her landing, something that slows her down.
There is also little adherence to this law when characters seem to fly to great heights with the slightest tap of the foot. Flying Snow’s feet rise above her opponent’s head when she jumps without a running start. In reality, the upward force she applies wouldn’t even get her off the ground. Attacks also seem to have unequal reactions on each character’s end. In a piece of the scene in which Flying Snow twirls horizontally towards the protagonist, their swords collide and she is flung in the opposite direction. This should have caused the Hero’s arms to reel back, if not he should have been able to carry through the motion. The sudden change in her does not appear balanced with his attack. He neither recoils nor follows through. He stands rigid.
While seeming to float in their spinning attacks, there is one more obvious violation of the laws of physics. The moment of inertia tells us that the farther the mass is from the rotation’s axis, the more force required to maintain speed. This can be demonstrated watching a high-diver leap from their 20-foot-high board. To ease their ability to flip in midair they will tuck their bodies inwards, allowing them to rotate faster and perhaps complete more than one tumble before hitting the water. If applied to the fight scene in Hero, the characters should be doing the same. If they intend to rotate faster in midair they should accomplish it by pulling their arms in. Flying Snow, however, increases her speed of rotation by throwing her arms out. Also, when blocking during a mid air spin, (arms pulled in) she slows. This is about the opposite of what should occur.
The point of rotation itself also changes with no explanation; the character will be spinning one way at one moment, and then gliding horizontally the next. But the body positions will remain the same. They do not twist nor do they hit anything. They simply begin rotating at the hip, and then, when they feel they should land, their shoulders seem to lock while the rest of their body swings down into the landing.
According to all of these manipulations and effects, to consider and apply the laws of physics might have been a hindrance to the art of a Tarantino movie. Hollywood fight scenes are notorious for manipulating such laws for increased drama, mysticism, and character quality. By making Flying Snow and the Hero appear weightless in quality, the fight scenes can be compared to dancers in a ballet performance. Removing the forces of gravity and action-reaction, among others, enhanced the visual composition and texture of movement. Without them, the timed beats of every scene flowed well into one another. The contrast was easily seen, when one character floated and another tumbled and hacked with a sword. We could easily point out Flying Snow or the Hero simply by the way they moved. If someone switched their dynamics in movement, it would be easy to spot. Also, they ways characters fell made the composition far more intricate. Every attack became a graceful arch leading us into the point of collision, without the jarring effects an anticipation or running start might have caused. From this, we can state that the defiance of physics was a successful artistic choice.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction?
Tarantino’s Version of a Fight Scene
The movie Hero, directed by Quentin Tarantino, classically illustrates Hollywood kung fu. People are capable of manipulating physics as they battle, sometimes they are unaffected by one aspect, while another is enhanced. In some cases the laws are changed entirely. We can look at one fight scene in the whole of the movie, and get the gist of them all. In it we will see at least three of the laws of physics broken, or otherwise changed. These include two of Newton’s laws, and rotational dynamics. Although there may be several more, we’ll focus on these for the assignment.
2nd Scene with protagonist fighting Flying Snow: In the scene, the laws of inertia, action/reaction, and moment of inertia are all somehow violated.
*Inertia: object in motion stays in motion until acted on by another force.
-In mid jump, characters are capable of stopping rotation (of themselves, their hair, their clothes) immediately, dropping out of an arced path of action, or stopping on a dime after high-speed movement.
-Based on this law, the momentum of the characters should be able to carry them all the way through an arc. It should also require them to tumble after landing.
*Action/Reaction: for every action is an equal and opposite reaction.
-There is little adherence to this law as characters seem to fly to great heights with the slightest tap of the foot, and attacks seem to have unequal reactions on each character’s end.
-The height of jumps must be laced with a magical element to carry characters as high as it does. They should only be able to reach a height of 4 feet, at a normal jump. Much less with the force they apply to attain these motions.
*Moment of inertia: the farther the mass is from the rotation’s axis, the more force required to maintain speed.
-Flying Snow increases her speed of rotation in mid air when her arms are spread out. Also, when blocking in a mid air spin, (arms pulled in) she slows.
-These spinning dynamics are backwards.
Conclusion: The laws of physics are not followed as seen by this evidence. Hollywood fight scenes are notorious for manipulating such laws for increased drama and mysticism.
The movie Hero, directed by Quentin Tarantino, classically illustrates Hollywood kung fu. People are capable of manipulating physics as they battle, sometimes they are unaffected by one aspect, while another is enhanced. In some cases the laws are changed entirely. We can look at one fight scene in the whole of the movie, and get the gist of them all. In it we will see at least three of the laws of physics broken, or otherwise changed. These include two of Newton’s laws, and rotational dynamics. Although there may be several more, we’ll focus on these for the assignment.
2nd Scene with protagonist fighting Flying Snow: In the scene, the laws of inertia, action/reaction, and moment of inertia are all somehow violated.
*Inertia: object in motion stays in motion until acted on by another force.
-In mid jump, characters are capable of stopping rotation (of themselves, their hair, their clothes) immediately, dropping out of an arced path of action, or stopping on a dime after high-speed movement.
-Based on this law, the momentum of the characters should be able to carry them all the way through an arc. It should also require them to tumble after landing.
*Action/Reaction: for every action is an equal and opposite reaction.
-There is little adherence to this law as characters seem to fly to great heights with the slightest tap of the foot, and attacks seem to have unequal reactions on each character’s end.
-The height of jumps must be laced with a magical element to carry characters as high as it does. They should only be able to reach a height of 4 feet, at a normal jump. Much less with the force they apply to attain these motions.
*Moment of inertia: the farther the mass is from the rotation’s axis, the more force required to maintain speed.
-Flying Snow increases her speed of rotation in mid air when her arms are spread out. Also, when blocking in a mid air spin, (arms pulled in) she slows.
-These spinning dynamics are backwards.
Conclusion: The laws of physics are not followed as seen by this evidence. Hollywood fight scenes are notorious for manipulating such laws for increased drama and mysticism.
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