I’m not talking about action-movie violence which is impossibly over-the-top and the hero fires 200 rounds out of a 10-round magazine while flying through the air – that’s done for effect; an exercise in artistic license and reliance on suspension-of-disbelief. No, I’m talking about where they get it wrong for no apparent reason. For instance:
In Elizabeth, Walsingham’s servant boy turns out to be a Catholic spy tasked with killing him. Walsingham talks him out of it and then, just to be on the safe side, cuts this throat. Good plotting, good characterization. But he kills the boy simply by drawing a knife across the larynx, creating a short, shallow cut, and the boy drops dead instantly. That wouldn’t work; short of infection, it wouldn’t kill you at all. If you want to kill with a knife to the throat (without going so deep as to sever the spinal cord or trachea), what you should do is cut either the carotid artery under the left ear/jawline or the jugular vein under the right, and then there’ll be a whole lot of blood and it’s ever so messy, and then unconsciousness and death follow quick. I’m neither a doctor nor an assassin but I know that much, it’s basic anatomy.
Virtually any movie scene ever where someone is stabbed. In real life, all this does is make people scream and thrash about a lot. But in the movies, a torso hit with a thrown switchblade cause the victim to collapse instantly, without a sound. Ditto a rapier thrust through the lower abdomen. The bad guy always dies instantly from this, instead of suffering weeks from peretonitis.
*Planet of the Apes *(2001). Big, ultra-violent battle scene at the end, literally one (one) drop of blood. I wasn’t expecting lots of gore, it was PG-13, but one drop of blood?
Chronicles of Narnia - Lion, Witch, Wardrobe. Arguably, this was targeted at children, so I didn’t expect much blood. But no blood at all? Again… big battle scene at the end, the main (good) character has been hacking, slicing, and poking bad guys with his sword for the past ten minutes, then holds up the sword to strike a pose before having at the main (bad) character, and… no blood on the sword. It glints in the sun. It gleams. Gleams, I tell you.
Minor nitpick. The carotid artery and jugular vein are paired structures, so everybody has one left and one right version of each. I’m not sure how this effects throat-slashing, but maybe it doubles your chances of hitting something important when using the technique described above.
As to the matter at hand, can we count people flying backwards (and through a window) after being shot, or is that more properly considered artistic license?
I hated the part in “Blackmail” where the girl stabs the man about to rape her. It’s not shown (it’s in a bed with curtains pulled) but it’s a knife on his bed side table. I think it’s a bread knife. And there’s no blood anywhere. She’s totally clean. And she stabs him once and I don’t think he even fights back or screams or anything.
I know that picking something inacurate from Heroes is a bit like picking something wet from the ocean, but right now I’m thinking of that scene in season two when Sylar is holding a big pair of kitchen scissors in his hand and his (probably) mother bumps casually into it and dies accidentally stabbed. What was that woman made of? Silly Putty?
I second the whole stabbing thing. People are frequently stabbed dozens of times without dying immediately. And if you DO want them to die ASAP, the target should be either the sides of the neck, the brain (through the eye) or the heart.
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[li]Gas tanks do not explode when hit by a bullet.[/li][li]Hydrogen tanks do not explode when hit by a bullet.[/li][li]Propane tanks do not explode when hit by a bullet.[/li][li]Scuba tanks do not explode when hit by a bullet.[/li][li]Septic tanks do not explode when hit by a shotgun blast.[/li][li]Cars do not explode upon impact when going over a cliff.[/li][li]Gas does not ignite when a cigarette is dropped on it. [/li][li]A lit stream of gasoline cannot travel through the air and ignite an airplane at takeoff velocity.[/li][/ul]
In popular fiction, human necks are the most fragile things in the universe. You even LOOK at 'em funny, and they’ll break.
I’ve even noticed escalation lately, as well. It used to be that it was the mark of a tough guy that he could snap someone’s neck, and it was a big deal… in most movies nowadays, though, all it takes is a quick gesture at the chin and back of the head, and the victim drops like a rock, stone dead.
In the movies, all blows to the back of the head, especially by the butt of a pistol, hilt of a sword, or a broken lamp, provoke instant unconsciousness.
Yeah. In real life a blow to the head that renders someone unconscious is worth a trip to the emergency room. You know, with the risk of fractured skull, concussion, brain damage, and so on.
An blow severe enough to render someone unconscious is severe enough to be potentially lethal, or cause permanent injury. Humans don’t come equipped with an off switch.
I remember seeing one movie where the protagonists are robbing a South American drug dealer, and they have some minion at gunpoint and don’t know what to do. So one guy hits the minion on the back of the head with his pistol, and the minion falls down clutching his head and screaming in pain. It was pretty refreshing.
That reminds me of this shoot we had where we were shooting at, among other things, a running lawn mower (the kind with the gas tank above the engine). It took a lot of hits before it caught on fire, and it certainly didn’t explode.
A guy I knew in high school was killed when he was punched in the back of the head. I guess it was a really hard punch and placed in an extremely unlucky place, for both parties involved.
