Second Term Paper

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction?: Super Troopers, Dodgeball, and Zoolander

Within the filmmaking industry the realism of live-action films has always been of main focus, at least in most movies. There are some exceptions in movies where there are superheroes or aliens that can bend the rules of physics. When those characters do this we, as the audience, can believe such drastic physics mistakes because the characters are not human. When it comes to a movie that encompasses human beings doing something physically impossible, that is where a movie can go wrong. As human beings we want to view a film that we can relate to in real life, when the boundaries are crossed and a human does something impossible, our believability level changes and it becomes comical most of the time. The movie industry has picked up on incorrect depictions of physics being funny because it is used frequently in comedy films. It has proven to be a good money maker and good entertainment. Three comedies that have incorrect physics, whether it is on purpose or not, are Super Troopers, Dodgeball, and Zoolander. These movies are analyzed with Newton’s third law in mind and there has been found to be certain scenes where the third law is questioned. It is up to the viewer to decide if the directors made a conscious choice to defy this simple physics principle or not, but the bigger question is: Does it make the comedy movie better to do this?

Newton’s third law states that for every action force there is an equal reaction force in the opposite direction. Action is described as a force exerted by one object on a second object. Consequently, reaction is defined as a force exerted by a second object back on the first object that is causing the action. The reaction is equal in magnitude, but opposite in direction.

For the most part, all three of these comedies are very accurate and realistic when it comes to Newton’s third law, but there are moments that a mistake is made and it then becomes very comical. Some movies will intentionally violate physics laws such as action-reaction for comical effect. The movie Super Troopers was directed and acted in by Jay Chandrasekhar, who also brought audiences the comical movie Beerfest. Super Troopers involves five Vermont state troopers who love goofing off and pulling pranks on people, rather than actually doing their job. There is a scene where they are practicing in their shooting range and Mac comes out wearing nothing but a bulletproof cup. Mac wants Thorny to shoot him to test out the cup. Thorny shows Mac how tiny the bullet he is going to use is and, risking being shot, Mac goes far away to have Thorny shoot him in the groin. Thorny aims and shoots and when it luckily hits the cup, Mac goes flying backwards. First of all, the gun that Thorny uses is a hand gun and the bullets that come from these guns are usually large caliber bullets that travel at low velocities and are relatively easy to stop, unlike large caliber Magnum bullets that are heavy and have a fast velocity. It is said that getting hit by a large caliber bullet is relative to getting hit in the chest with a baseball bat. The bullets used in this scene are small caliber bullets, which would result in an even slower velocity and are able to be stopped much easier. With that said, getting shot with a small caliber bullet and at the distance of about 20 feet, Mac should not have flown that far. The energy of the small caliber bullet would not exceed the weight of its target, which was the cup that a 150 pound man was wearing. The action force of the bullet had a lower magnitude than the reaction force of the cup and Mac. Since Mac and the cup have a higher mass, the reaction acceleration is slower.

The movie Dodgeball, directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, had many well-known comedic actors such as Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn. The movie is about a group of misfits who enter a Las Vegas dodgeball tournament in order to save their cherished local gym from the onslaught of a corporate health fitness chain. In the movie there are many instances where an object is thrown, such as wrenches and balls, and the person’s reaction is really exaggerated. Since we have already covered an object hitting someone with the movie Super Troopers, than I would like to discuss a different action-reaction incident within Dodgeball. In the beginning of the movie there is scene where Justin Long, who plays Justin, a skinny, mousy boy, reminisces about an embarrassing moment that he had when trying out for the cheerleading squad in his high school. He gets up to the stage-space where he is going to perform and the male cheerleader judge, who must feel threatened by him, decides to give him a really heavy girl to lift above his head. Justin looks worried, but since he wants to make the team he puts on a team spirit smile and lifts her above his head with not much effort. There is a point where the weight gets to be too much and she falls on top of him, but the fact that he was able to lift her is what is impossible. He weighs about 130 pounds at most and she probably weighs about 300 pounds. When he goes to lift her he doesn’t bend his knees or anything. His actions do not give him enough energy to even lift something 100 pounds let alone 300. Justin’s weak action force would have had a reaction of a greater magnitude force of the girl and he wouldn’t have been able to pick her up.

Zoolander, directed and starred in by Ben Stiller, is in my opinion one of the best goofy comedies there has been in awhile. That is saying something since it was made in 2001. Ben Stiller plays Derek Zoolander who is a clueless fashion model at the end of his career. The evil fashion guru Mugato, played by Will Farrell, decides to hire Derek to hypnotize him into killing the Prime Minister of Malaysia at the Derelicte fashion show. During the hypnotizing session, Derek is forced to view the classic hypnotizing methods like the repetition of words, images, and of course a spinning spiral. The messages in the session are telling him that child labor is good and that he needs to kill the Prime Minister. When Derek questions this he is shocked by electricity. At the end of the session, that is said to be weeks long from his friends, but only seconds to the movie viewer, he is shown in a blue body suit at the beginning of a runway. He quickly power punches at a faster than human speed and screams. With this same speed he does a cartwheel, a round-about kick, a jump kick, and lands in a fancy position close to the ground near a fake Prime Minister. From his crouched position he then jump-flips over the dummy of the Prime Minister and rips his head off. This whole sequence is defying Newton’s third law. With the speed that Derek’s arms were going with the first fist punch, he should have been lurched forward from his own arms action force. When Derek did his cart wheel his feet were moving so fast that he should have been lifted and flown off the ground from the action force. As for the flip over the Malaysian Prime Minister, even though he crouched down before jumping, it was too powerful and far of a jump for it to be realistic. The action force of Derek pushing off the ground would have been too weak for the reaction force to be as strong as it was. Even though this looked incredibly unrealistic that is what made it funny. At the end of the movie Derek never did kill the Prime Minister because his friends stopped him at the last moment.

In life we can rely on Newton’s third law no matter what, but when we sit down and watch a movie, that is our chance to expand our imaginations and experience a life where Newton is not always there to remind us we are on earth. It is not just the comedies that mess with physics, but if anyone in the film industry is allowed to do this it is them. I believe that if we were to take the bending of physics principles out of comedies than many situations would not be as funny. They are put there for a reason. This isn’t to say that we rely on correct physics not to be applied to our movies, but to a certain extent we accept the bending of rules. Super Troopers, Dodgeball, and Zoolander are just some of the movies that have changed physics for comical reasons and Newton’s third law is no exception.