Term Paper #1

The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe: In the movie Men in Black

The 1997 film Men in Black came to theatres and became a huge hit. Men in Black is a live-action film that deals with the concept of humans and aliens. It takes place on earth, but in this earth, aliens without homes have immigrated here disguised as human beings to blend in. The Men in Black (MIB) are in charge of keeping the aliens a secret and protecting earth from evil aliens. When human beings have accidental encounters with an alien on earth the MIB come around and flash humans with a “neutralizer”, which isolates the electronic impulses in the memory part of the brain to erase what they just saw. In the case of the aliens, they try to abide by the rules of physics and humanness on earth to blend in, but they clearly have difficulty. This paper will discuss what the aliens have done to defy physics, where the MIB have tended to show super human abilities, and besides the aliens and MIB, how the laws of physics are true to objects on earth.

In the beginning of the movie Will Smith, who plays Jay, is seen chasing a normal looking man. We soon get a hint that this man is actually alien when he jumps off a bridge with ease with not enough squash and stretch. When we don’t see very much squash and stretch after a long fall, humanness is questioned. The creature jumped an estimated 25 feet, but the way he landed made it look like half that height or less. When the alien was falling, he was in a state of weightlessness and in a normal human position, but when he needed to have a strong squash due to the force that impacted him, he only slightly bent his knees and ran off. If the alien had not landed on concrete, but instead a giant pillow, than his reaction to his impact would have been normal. This is due to the principle that says maximizing impact will minimize the force of impact. The alien then jumps about two stories from the ground and then climbs up, what looks like the remaining five stories. Evidently, in this world aliens are not impacted by gravity or the laws of physics.

There are other cases where aliens are in no way like humans. A pawn shop owner, Jeebs, is being angrily commanded at by Tommy Lee Jones, who plays Kay, to show him the alien guns he has hidden in his shop. Jeebs refuses and Kay shoots him in the head. Green slime splatters everywhere in a splashing motion that is done well, with no twinning. After the explosion, there no head is to be seen, but quickly, a tiny chipmunk voice is heard faintly growing deeper as well as a new head reforming on Jeebes body. Apparently aliens can grow appendages back after being obliterated.

Edgar, the villain of the movie, is an alien that is similar to a giant cockroach. When he crashes into earth, he squeezes into human skin that is about 5 times smaller than his size. He must have molding abilities because there is no way that it is possible for this to occur. Let alone for human skin to act like a costume and expand and form like spandex over an alien body. If this isn’t strange enough, he also came in a spaceship that is completely smaller than his body as an alien. In his human mask, he has super strength when he pushes his spaceship out of a hole with hardly any effort. According to Newton’s law of acceleration, the greater the mass of an object, the less it accelerates when acted on by a force. Believing that the human the alien slipped into is say, 200 pounds and the spaceships is well over a few tons. Taking the laws of physics into consideration, Edgar should not be able to move his spaceship. Edgar’s super strength is contradicted when in another scene he his is trying to open a little metal encasement that holds diamonds. He bangs it around and twists, but for some reason he is too weak to open it. He finally manages to open it, but it took too much effort for the strength that he should have had. For the most part, the aliens show us that they are unique and not human in this movie. They can do things on earth that humans cannot, but they try to act and obey the laws of physics that earth supposedly has. Sometimes, during pressing moments in the plot, the MIB tend to have super human abilities like the aliens.

In the beginning, when Jay is running after the alien that could jump and climb buildings, he attempts to get to the top of the building that the alien climbed up. This building is at least 7 stories high. He doesn’t try to climb the outside, but he sprints to the top from the inside. Yes, humans can sprint and get to the tops of buildings, but can it be done in 30 seconds? This is the amount of time that is shown in the movie. In real life, this would be setting a world record. The fastest recorded time of a man that ran up the Empire State Building’s 86 floors, was 9 minutes and 33 seconds. 86 floor/12= 7.17 floors. So, 9.33/12=.77 seconds and these are stairs that zigzag straight up, while Jay had to run the whole size of the floor before ascending up. There is no humanly possible way that it can be made in 30 seconds. Jay was super-human at this time.

There is a time where Jay hits an intergalactic glowing ball accidently; sending it flying through the building hitting destroying things as it goes. It is going at super speeds. When it comes to Kay he snatches it with no harm done to his hand. He is seen holding a metal contraption on the back of his hand, which could have helped bring the ball to him, but he should have been knocked down or had his hand broken for the amount of high speeds it was going. Newton’s law of inertia talks about how an object moves at a constant speed until acted on by a force. The force, in this case, was Kay’s hand. The object would have reacted, but had a large follow-through, since Kay’s hand was a weaker unbalanced force.

Close to the ending, Kay demands Edgar to eat him because Edgar had eaten his gun and Kay wanted it back. It was a drastic measure for such a tiny problem, but Edgar eats him with pleasure. Kay is in his stomach for about 4 minutes. An average person in good health can hold their breath for 2 minutes, but 4 minutes is pushing it for Kay, who didn’t seem to be preparing himself for the journey. In fact, he used most of his energy and breath yelling at the creature to eat him. When he explodes out of the stomach he is very conscious and not searching for air. Also, at the start when the creature does eat him, he should also have been punctured by the sharp alien teeth that are seen. Kay must have super lungs and skin to be able to survive such a journey. Even though the aliens and MIB tend to show signs of super abilities, objects tend also to obey the laws of physics on earth

Jay and Kay jump in the MIB mobile to stop Edgar from leaving earth with the galaxy. The MIB mobile is not an ordinary car because it can transform itself to have giant jet engines by pressing a red button. Jay presses this while they are in the tunnel with traffic and they speed all the way onto the ceiling of the tunnel. Ignoring the fact that this technology does not exist in cars and that it may not be designed to go upside-down, this could be feasible. If the car is going fast enough and creating enough downforce that the force weighs more than the vehicle, the car could drive upside-down. This is counting on the tunnel being perfectly cylindrical and long enough for the car to reach high speeds, which the movie seems or pretends to makes happen.

Another moment where laws of physics are correct, is when a baseball player hits a baseball all the way to outer field. The baseball has a nice parabolic arc in the perspective of it coming straight for the camera. It gives a first person view of the ball headed straight for them, towards the foreground. Even with this perspective, the arc is very believable. If you estimate the “fourth down at half time” rule on the arc and know that it is coming towards the foreground it tends to straighten out as it comes towards the camera.

Right after this scene Kay and Jay shoot down the spaceship that is in the shape of a giant disk. The way that the spaceship falls down is very realistic because of its shape. Since spaceships spin, their direction is always changing, which when interrupted by say, a space gun, causes it to fly in a different direction. Since the force of the gun pushed the spaceship, the spaceship will then push back at a right angle from the force. That is why the spaceship seemed to move in the other direction. Since the spaceship was wrecked it moves downward in a wide circle and arcs back up. Gravity pulls it downward again and it swoops back down in a wide arc and smashes into the ground. The falling of the spaceship was very real, but the crashing was not. Kay and Jay are standing right near where it crashes and the huge pile of dirt and debris is headed straight for them. They stand still and the spaceship comes to a stop right in front of them. There is just a poof of dust surrounding the air and huge concrete boulders and metal pipes all around them. How were they not hurt, let alone covered in dirt? This scene was purely done with the movie essence in mind.

Men in Black is clearly a fictional movie that relies on the rules of physics to be bent in order to make the movie exciting and keep audiences captivated. Aliens having super human abilities and so do the MIB, who at times possess out-of-this-world abilities. All of this is part of the excitement and helps keep the imagination alive, but for the most part, in order to captivate your audience, there is a need for more realism than fiction and “Men and Black” does a great job at encapsulating this. This movie is one that is recommended to watch for its comedic and semi-true physics.