Scanning through television of late, I have noticed several previews for the movie Vertical Limit. Now, I’m usually very good at suspending my disbelief, but there are moments when my disbelief instead tap dances on my skull, screaming “no way, snookums!”
There is a scene in the preview where Gee Dog McChoade, a noble mountain climber, jumps off a cliff whilst wielding an ice axe in each hand. With his arms windmilling, he then proceeds to plant the axes and himself on the next cliff over, albeit many feet downwards. Does anyone care to join me in a chorus of “What the hell?”
Is this move actually possible? I haven’t seen the movie, so for all I know Gee Dog plummets to his death. I’m just curious, however, if this were another thing to make us gasp in awe, or if it were feisable. Special equipment? Biceps to die for? Anyone?
I was wondering about that too, andy. Looks like it’d be “goodbye, arms” IRL, or at least dislocated shoulders; but it’s a big-budget movie, so the laws of physics don’t apply to him
That just depends on the person and the width of the gap. In the case of the Vertical Limit stunt, I think clearing the gap wouldn’t be too hard for Carl Lewis or Mike Powell. Unless I’m confused, Jackie Chan did a huge jump from a parking garage to the fire escape balcony of another building for the film “Rumble in the Bronx”. As long as you’re running fast enough and stay airborne long enough, you can jump any distance horizontally.
B-Could one hold on after a jump like that?
This is the question that is a little bit more complicated. I haven’t seen the trailer recently, but I recall that the height difference was at least 60 feet. If we assume that Ol’ Man Chris weighs 100kg with his gear and would accelerate at 10m/s/s, things get simpler. He’d be going 20m/s when he reaches his landing point, 60 feet into his fall. 100kg * 20m/s will give us a force of 2000 kg/ m/s. If two ice axes are only connected to his hands, I doubt his hands wouldn’t either let go, dislocate his shoulders, or rip off some segment of his arm. Then again, I have no idea how strong arms or hands really are. If he could use bhis whole body to disperse the force, it might be doable.
“Verticle Limit” is a movie about falling, not about climbing. Virtually every scene that has anything to do with climbing is woefully inaccurate. There’s no way that jump could be done; ice axes and crampons don’t work like that. They need to hit the ice at the proper angle, and it’s a swinging motion for ice axes. The angle that the pick hits the ice is very important.
That’s ignoring the forces involved would shatter the ice and make him bounce off. If somehow the ice tools managed to catch, his body would splat against the rock or pull apart from the force. When climbers fall, their ropes give quite a bit to disapate the forces on the human body. Stopping short from any distance is a Very Bad Thing.
Bottom line, there has never been a halfway decent climbing movie made by Hollywood.
This topic somewhat reminds me about a college professor I had a while back, a British History professor actually.
Whenever a new dealing with a period of English or European history was released, he felt it obliged to point out ever flaw the day after its release. I thought this… irritating.
So what if its not accurate?
Personally, when I go see a movie, I go to escape reality, not complain about why something couldn’t happen.
Besides these guys in the movie are heros. Heros are not subject to the same physical laws we are. This includes heros in movies, video games, or any other form of fictional entertainment.
Your magnitudes are right, but actually what you are calculating there is momentum, not force. The units would be kg m/s. The force required to stop an object with that much momentum would depend on the time in which the object stops, which in turn depends on the elasticity of the guy’s arms. If he had rubbery arms like Plasticman, he could probably survive the stop, because the stopping time would be long (like in bungee jumping), but regular human arms would stop him right away.
Regardless, I agree that jumping like that would undoubtedly rip his lil arms out of their sockets. Consider that you can break your neck by tying a rope around it and jumping off a stepladder.
When Chris O’Donnell was on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart asked him if he did any of the stunts himself. Chris’ reply: “Remember, I’m a superhero!” Then he explained that he only did a few of them.
As I recall the scene in the trailer, the cliff he’s headed for is not vertical, and it is mostly bare and craggy, not an ice wall. So, I think he would have an ok chance of holding on, if he retained consciousness. I think the biggest problem is that his whole body will be hitting this rock, and he’s brought the iceaxes to grip with. He hasn’t got anything to keep from splattering his face on the rock. His arms might hold on, but his torso and head would be a bloody mess.
Still, I feel my disbelief could comfortably hang on that same rope. I find it easy to enjoy watching people do impossible things for a good cause. I guess my romantic heart just wants to believe that a pure motive will protect a hero from the realities of life.
Amongst the things that were humorous: four people bouncing on a static line with insufficient anchorage; returning from a 50 hour rescue mission with (only) slightly chapped lips, climbing El Cap without a knife (sorry Dad, you deserve to die)
Pretty special effects, but be sure to disengage your brain before entering the theater.
I’m guessing that hitting the side of a mountain at that speed, I doubt there’d be any sort of bounce…
(make a watermelon bounce from the 10th floor balcony)
Suspension of disbelief is a big part of watching any action movie.
I don’t go to “Movies for guys who like movies” with my girlfriend anymore because of this. I almost have to quit watching movies with her altogether.
For me, like many people, watching a movie is all about putting my woes on hold and being pandered to for a couple hours. I have a very hard time watching a movie with someone who is either
A. Constantly making disbelieving noises such as “snort! That could never happen.” and “Whatever…”
or
B. Constantly guessing the outcome. This very effectively spoils the movie for me, especially since the average movie is not hard to figure out. That coupled with the fact that my girlfriend has the deductive reasoning skills of Sherlock Holmes means that she effectively tells me what’s going to happen right before it does. ARRRRGGGH!! I want to pull my hair out or backhand her, but luckily I do neither.
When I go to a movie, especially a John Woo or Jerry Bruckheimer film, I know to turn off my bullshit-o-meter and just enjoy the action. I don’t care what you do, just don’t ruin for me, okay? I may enjoy the film, but I’m not sitting next to you whooping and hollering and being annoying, am I? Noooo. So kindly keep you analysis to yourself until we are exiting the theatre or you write your column, or someone starts a thread about it on the Dope.
Take any year’s US Men’s Olympic Gymnastic team. Have them jump off a platform, under which, at increasing distances down is a horizontal bar, some modest distance (0.5 m) horizontaly from the top of the platform. Assume the bar is rigid, and 5cm in diamter (comfortable to grab). So they step off the platform, fall mostly straight down, reach out and grab the horizontal bar as they fall by and try to hang on. At what distance would 50% of them fail to hang on? (I’m guessing around …
Bad guess follows, based on physics mistake.
After falling 20m you would be going 20mps = 45mph. That sounds pretty far to me. The platforms used for diving are 10m, right? I bet that would be enough.
Just so you know, Lexicon, I’m a very quiet movie watcher. At least in theaters. At home I reserve my right to MST3K anything.
I’m remarkably good at suspending disbelief. I’m a hard core Buffy fan, after all.
But there’s a breaking point for everything. I mean… there’s rules for every game. If you start watching a movie and it’s established right from the start that people can fly and aliens are in the process of attacking the earth, then it’s all good and I’m in for the ride when Zorgon comes after Bob the flying accountant. Every film, movie, story, or what have you, has the rules of it’s universe.
However… when you shoot for the realistic genre, I for one want there to be some artistic integrity in the crafting. There is absolutely no reason why a wonderful movie could not be made about mountain climbing wherein nothing but utterly realistic climbing stunts would be done. It’s shoddy writing, and there’s no excuse for it.
Okay, enough soapbox.
So is there any way to stop a fall in an avalance without involving blood and splatter?
Sweet, me too. It’s really fun to do this. In fact, my brother and I used to get loaded and watch movies and do this. It was a blast and I miss it.
So am I. So much so that if it’s a movie, I don’t expect things to be totally realistic. Even if it’s set in the “real world”. Any action flick is going to have a certain amount of “No way that could happen!” in it. That’s just the way it is. It’s Hollywood, that’s how they do things.
You’re absolutely right, and there was a movie like this. It was called “Everest” and it was in Imax theatres across the country. Didn’t see that one, eh?
In any case, it’s not a big deal. I guess I’m just not as prone to have a movie be ruined for me by having something fantastic happen. There is a line that can be crossed wherein the movie moves from the incredible and unlikely to the utterly impossible and stupid. But most of those movies you can go into expecting that, so you don’t have the movie ruined when the fantasic and incredible, well nigh miraculous happens.
Take for example True Lies, Charlie’s Angels, Mission Impossible Two, The Replacement Killers, Desperado, and any Jackie Chan flick. All of these were great flicks, and all of them had many scenes where one could easily cry “Bullshit!”. The movie is so much more enjoyable if one goes into the experience wanting to be entertained.
People who go to movies and say “That could never happen, that’s not possible.” strike me as strange as someone going to see an illusionist (magician? whatever) such as David Copperfield and saying “that can’t happen, that’s impossible, that’s not real” instead of enjoying the show. It’s like they’re missing the point, or something, I don’t know.
Here’s one more wrench to throw into the scene. The group was clibing K2, right? At those altitudes, even the fittest people are absolutely starved for oxygen, and this manifests itself as extreme fatigue at all times. It’s literally difficult to speak, and even harder to force oneself to take one step after another, let alone to sprint across the ice, launch oneself through the air, and somehow have the energy left to snag a cliff (all other physical considerations aside.) My guess is that even if he somehow found the energy to expend on the run and the leap, he would essentially have used up his body’s oxygen supply in one fell swoop, rendering him rapidly unconscious and thus unable to adhere to the cliff.
Just a SWAG. If, of course, they were climbing a much lower peak, then oopsy, mea culpa.
