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.