There’s probably a better word or trope name, but it’s not coming to mind.
Everyone knows the iconic scene in the Matrix where Neo sees the code and can stop bullets in mid-air with his mind. The oldest example of this I can think of is Firestarter (1980) by Stephen King, where the little pyro girl can use her powers to melt bullets in mid-air. Was Magneto flinging bullets away in the '60s and '70s? I’m guessing it goes even further back in sci-fi.
I think it’s called “bullet time.”
As to the first use, I have no idea.
I’m pretty sure you’re right, and Magneto was deflecting bullets a long, long way back. I wish I had a cite for you.
Sorta, but not really. Bullet time is slow motion where the camera moves around. Like Trinity’s early scene where she does the fancy kick to the cop’s chest or where Neo is dodging the agent’s bullets on the rooftop. I’m thinking more of the situation where someone is essentially bullet proof but not because they’re Superman or have some sort of fancy armor or force field that makes them bounce off or because they’re super fast and can dodge them all but because they can manipulate or somehow destroy the bullets en route.
“Bullet time” I believe is more in reference to the effect used in the scene on the rooftop of the military building, (when Neo dodges the gunfire from the Agent). The effect where the camera goes into super slow-mo and seemingly pans around Neo.
I think the OP is more referring to the ability to stop the bullets entirely. Near the end of the movie, when he puts up his hand and stops a barrage from all three agents.
To the OP, for the purposes of your query, does deflecting bullets off your bracelets count? If so Wonder Woman has been doing that since first published (~1942)
I have no idea when the earliest such example would have occurred. Magneto’s probably pretty likely. Early SF stuff I’m thinking of pretty much involves force fields, but that’s not what the OP is looking for. Presumably Jedi force powers could do such a thing, but I don’t recall seeing any used against projectile weapons (and that wouldn’t predate Magneto, anyway).
What about the old carny trick of catching a bullet in one’s teeth or hand? I imagine that might serve as a precursor concept to the idea of stopping a bullet in mid-air. Wiki has one of the earliest examples of that as being back in 1581. Bullet catch - Wikipedia
How about the earliest movie to show the effect, which takes out comics and so forth.
Nah, that’s just fancy armor. Even if it takes a bit more skill than just standing there.
The original Flash (Jay Garrick) was catching bullets from his earliest appearances in 1940 (in fact that’s exactly what he’s doing on the cover of Flash Comics #1). Typically he would match the bullet’s speed, grab it, then slow down. To an observer, it would look like he plucked the bullet out of midair.
This was decades before the “speed force” concept, and when I first read the stories in reprint, I saw the problems - even if Garrick can match the bullet’s speed, when he wraps his hand around it and tries to slow down, the bullet still has a huge amount of momentum. If he decelerates quickly, the bullet will just punch though his hand as if he’d been, well, shot.
Maybe he could decelerate gradually enough to slow the bullet without injuring himself, but it seems to me that would involve running with the bullet (even a low-powered pistol bullet) for at least a hundred yards (in some sense akin to just picking up the bullet after it stops on its own), and most of the scenes took place within a single room.
You should submit this to Mythbusters. If you move your hand a few inches, or even a meter, is that enough distance to decelerate a bullet without damaging the person?
Six months after Jay Garrick’s debut, in All-American Comics #16, is the first appearance of the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott. He could deflect bullets with his magic ring, which is possibly closer to what the OP had in mind than Garrick’s bullet-catching routine.
Well, if it’s a cheap .22 pistol firing a 35-grain round that’s a bit short… 80 Joules? A major-league fastball is about 120 J, albeit spread out over the much larger volume of a standard baseball…
So if one had a Kevlar catcher’s mitt…
How is what you describe NOT plucking the bullet out of mid-air?
Well, from his perspective, it’s like catching the bullet. From everyone else’s, it’s like plucking the bullet.
So basically my answer is “whatever.”
Earliest I remember is the movie “Zot.”
Remo Williams did it as part of his training in The Destroyer pulp action series.
In the 1964 “Controlled Experiment” Outer Limits episode, two Martians use a time machine to stop time and deflect a bullet.
Night of the Living Dead?
The bullet catch, in which a performer apparently catches a bullet fired at him in his teeth, or perhaps in his hand, or in some other way, is an old stage illusion. According to Wikipedia it goes back at least to the 17th century, and I believe it used to be quite widely performed before the notorious death, in 1918, of Chung Ling Soo, during a performance. According, again, to Wikipedia, it is still occasionally performed. Anyway, none of these science fiction writers that people have been mentioning had to make up the effect. Some might even have seen it done.