When Trinity’s helicopter crashes into the building, it makes a ripple like water on the building. Is this from the impact on fluid glass, or a strange “bounce effect” of hitting the Matrix?
I thought it was in part Neo’s emerging powers as he tried to save Trinity. I don’t remember, I think she was clear of the helicopter by the time of the impact, but don’t forget that Neo at this point was only starting to see his powers as something he could do without thinking. I think, like the dodging bullet thing, it was a clue to the audience that something Neo’s doing is messing with the Matrix.
I seem to recall that the effect was real, as in, that’s what happens in slow motion in real life. They looked for a bunch of different types of glass to get the effect right. I think they say something to that effect in the comments track on the DVD. So you are actually seeing the pressure wave ripple through the glass and then cause it to shatter explosively. I’m sure someone will come along and tell us if that is actually the way things work.
So, I don’t think it was the same thing as when the world seems to “dollop” (for want of a better word) when Neo comes back to life at the end.
Bingo. I love that movie.
I thought it was because the computer brain running the matrix simulation only had so much horsepower and modeling the shattering glass and everything else at the same time taxed it’s capabilities, so it’s reality sort of “stuttered” like an overtaxed PC will when running a high powered game.
That was my thought as well… it seemed like a glitch (a glitch in the Matrix, not in the film) the way it was done.
I always took the scene as an attempt to mimic a real glass ‘explosion’ like that, not some matrix-related thing.
If you slowed down, say, a wrecking ball hitting lots of glass like that, in super slow motion, wouldn’t there be a pressure wave sort of like that?
Actually, I believe if you slowed down a wrecking ball (or whatever) hitting glass like that, you’d notice the glass that was shattered and ejected outward would move in a wave from the source, but not in a ripple effect like that…That would imply that the first and most powerful wave of pressure didn’t do anything but “bend” the glass, but the lessened effect of the nth wave would shatter the glass. How would you explain that? I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense at all.
If you were to say that it was the air surrounding the glass that rippled and was refracting the light to make the glass look like it was bending, then…okay, sure, I might be able to buy it…
I still tend to agree w/ the “it’s messing w/ the matrix” theory.
i just think the director thought it looked cool, so he put it in there. really, i think that was the justification for about everything in that movie.
Well, I was thinking that if you slowed it down to, say, .0000001x real time (ie way slower than actually shown in the movie), you’d see the pressure wave flexing the glass immeadiately before it shattered - so that you’d have a very very fast (like 10m in a fraction of a millisecond) visible pressure wave (at .00000001x speed) showing the glass being stretched to it’s bending point and then shattering.
Then, of course, the time scale could be greatly exaggerated (so we could see it) to accomplish this effect visually.
But that was just the impression I got. I’m not a physicist, even especially good with physics.
If you slowed it down to say, .0000001x real time, it, as you pointed out, would have been MUCH slower than shown in the movie, but…even if you saw the glass stretching to it’s bending point and then breaking (which, try bending a sheet of glass, and see how far you can get it to bend…it won’t be anywhere near as far as what they showed in The Matrix. Glass is crystalline and tends to fracture easily along molecular bonds. Also, if it were “being stretched to it’s bending point and then shattering”, it wouldn’t have been a ripple effect, it would have been one wave, and following that wave outward would be shards of glass shattering outward.
There are a number of high speed photographs of bullets hitting light bulbs and such, no ripples, just shards.
The way it was framed, Trinity looked like a black widow in the center of a web. Anyone catch that?
The glass used was formulated to shatter in a circular shape outwards from the point of impact. The ripple was CGI added Post Production.
What does it represent? The answering of this question is left as an exercise to the reader.
Hello fellow Earthlings.
I come from the future.
The glass does wobble like this…
Here is proof if you manage to figure out codecs and encoding for videos from future
P.S. dont tell anyone,but you will have to wait untill feb. 2005. to see the video...That’s what I thought at the time, but I suppose it might also have been Neo learning how to do his stuff.
Well, yeah, there’s that too: Rule of Cool - TV Tropes
There was a similar ultra-slo-mo effect when the elevator crashed and Neo wasn’t technically present (he and Trinity were riding the elevator cable in the other direction at the time) so I don’t think it’s supposed to represent any particular effort on Neo’s part, conscious or unconscious, though it might suggest that the entire Matrix (as well as everyone in it, so they don’t notice) slows down when it’s called upon to render something particularly energetic and chaotic such as an explosion.
Similarly, in Matrix Reloaded, there were numerous slowed crashes/explosions, i.e. when Agent Johnson (?) jumps from vehicle to vehicle, and of course for the final head-on truck crash where we can see the trailers rippling much as the glass does when the helicopter hits the building. Neo is only present for the very end of this sequence.
The ultimate justification, of course, is that it looks cool.