Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction?

     Psychological Priming is a survival technic humans use daily, its a way of setting our mind to the exposure of one stimulus so that we can better respond to other stimulus. Hollywood has played on this survival technic, when we walk into the theater, we are not priming for accurate physical principals, we are primed to be entertained. Even if you were a hero and a writer reproduced your story, you will be made a legend from the making of that movie, because reality is harsh and boring, super powers are more fun (and highly inaccurate). However, an important component of being an educated adult is the ability to differentiate fact from fiction, even if you like to indulge fiction. I will be exposing violations in Newton's Third Law of Motion from Django Unchained, The Simpsons, and Monty Python's the Holy Grail. Showing that for every action there is an equal and opposite re-action, the equal and opposite re-action will be my focus. Seeing how some of our favorite effects revolve around what should be a relatively small force being distorted and ignored to apply an astronomical force to make a hero.

    For my first example, I will use my favorite writer/director Quentin Jerome Tarantino, the universe that he writes in is so thoughtful and relative. As he offers countless movies where every reaction is not properly represented by the original action, I have decided to focus on Django Unchained (2012). In the movie a German bounty hunter helps a freed slave rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner. In the first clip Dr. Schultz is blown away (0:46) by the force of the double-barrel 12 gauge shot gun. Where this force is the same on the shoulder of the shooter as it is in Dr. Schultz chest. What we should expect is the consistency of the watermelons in FPS Russians YouTube video (below), FPS has a lot of other effects due to the chemicals he introduced inside of the melons to create a fire. Also, we can pay attention to the back fence and compare it to the book shelf explosion. The book shelf implied that the shotgun was a "sawed off shotgun" given that the spread of the bullets incorporated such a large area in such close quarters. This actually takes force away from what should have happened to poor Dr. Schultz, with less accelerated mass hitting him, he probably should have just fallen onto his face rather then being lunched backwards. Instead Quentin made Dr. Schultz looking like an acetylene barrel. However, fallowing this second shot, all other shots were fairly accurate given the rounds of the guns.

     For my second example, lets take a completely different type of entertainment that distorts Newton's Third Law. Lets look at an episode of The Simpsons created by James Brooks, Matt Groening and Sam Simon. In this episode they do a spoof on Lord of the Rings which involves a major fight scene where a castle is to be raided by the American Shipping Service because Bart unlawfully got free boxes from them, and they want them back. As soon as I started looking through the episode, it is riddled with incorrect outcomes given the recipes to each scene. I am avoiding all other inaccuracies and focusing on (3:39) Bart put a square brick in a round cardboard tube. Clearly the fit is not air tight, if the pressure was enough to blow the brick the strength of the cardboard would not be enough. The brick lands and hits a American Shipping Serviceman in the chest and he is forced to the ground given the impact. From that we have to make two assumptions to enjoy the show. First, that Bart can blow a brick with a breadth of air. Second, that Bart's one breadth of air can knock a man over with an exponential force. These two assumptions clearly break the 3rd law, because a 160lb man can not be blown over by a boy, where a man's lung capacity is 6 Liters, so Bart might have 2.5 L given his ration to Homer. The effect of a grown man (6 liters of air) blowing on a candle can be shown by Jack Black in the video below, at a much farther distance Bart's effect would be even less then that of Jack Black's.

    My third and final example comes from the classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) written by Graham Chapman. If you have ever seen the movie you will know that, its such a ridiculous movie, although I find it extremely hilarious. As the king of the Brits goes around asking for direction to find the Holy Grail, he comes across a castle filled with Frenchmen in England. When asked why the Frenchmen are in Britain, the Brits are quickly told to mind their own business and that is where the Brits are unwelcomed. As the Frenchmen provokes them, he ends up throwing a Cow over the wall. Not just from the height of the wall but it is launched hundreds of feet in the air. Other cows and farm yard animals are thrown from the walls of the castle, one lands on one of the knights and the knight gets up and runs away. If the forces from the cow coming off the wall was applied to a human they would be smashed. In other words the man should be just as dead as the cow at the end of the scene given that Newton's Third Law stands correct. Actually, he should be more smashed then the cow given their masses.

     To conclude, we are primed to be entertained when we start a movie or a TV show, and with that we are ready to accept the fiction that comes along with it. Heroes aren't enough for a story line, what we want to see are legends and the writer will make legends, no matter how inaccurate super powers are. Nonetheless, an important element of being a well-educated adult is the ability to differentiate fact from fiction. I was able to show the violations in Newton's Third Law of Motion from Django Unchained, The Simpsons, and Monty Python's the Holy Grail. Showing that for every action there is an equal and opposite re-action that is broken. Quite simply if real life was accurately reproduced by the media, no one would feel the need to partake in the entertainment industry, because it wouldn't be any different from the monotonous agenda many people live. Entertainment needs to break the intuitive laws our universe gives. Breaking these laws gives us a false sense of freedom, in which we all love to dream.