Last night I watched Fast and Furious 6 on Blu-ray. And I've decided we need a new genre name for this type of movie. I'm proposing "real world fantasy." Why? Well, the movie is supposed to take place in the real world. There are no superheros, science fiction, or fantasy elements. Yet parts of it, the action sequences mainly, are so implausible I burst out laughing. They are basically fantasies that are supposed to be in the real world. And the accuracy is laughable. For example, the climax of the movie involves a cargo plane on a runway that is being chased, and there's fights on board and it's all very exciting visually and dramatically. But, according to my Blu-ray player, the cars entered the runway at one hour and 41 minutes into the movie. The cars reached the end of the runway at 1:54, or 13 minutes later. The cars are chasing an airplane that lands and then tries to take off again. Assume an average speed of 150 mph for this chase. (I think 150 mph is slow because the plane looked like an Russian An-225 cargo plane which needs to be going 287 mph in order to take off and it starts to take off). That means in 13 minutes the cars will have traveled 32.5 miles. According to Wikipedia, the longest runway in the world is about 3.4 miles (18,045 feet).
Oh, and if the plane is going 287 mph I really don't think Dodge Chargers and military jeeps will be keeping up with it.
In addition, people jump from improbable heights to land in or on cars without damage to themselves or the vehicles. I guess like dwarves, they are made of rubber.
But, why do we watch movies? For entertainment. Was I entertained? Yes, even when I was laughing at the improbabilities. Some of the fight sequences seemed to go on forever and I'd rather watch cars and pretty girls. These movies have (starting with #4) descended slowly into the completely implausible. They have become what I am now going to call "real world fantasy." But I enjoyed my two hours plus and will probably rent Fast and Furious 7 (and apparently Jason Statham will be joining the franchise as a bad guy).
I'll give this 3 starts on Netflix.
The amount of time to travel down the runway was increased due to the relativistic effect of traveling at such an incredibly high velocity. ;-)
ReplyDeleteRon,
DeleteYes, you are right, at 287 mph the time will be moving more slowly relative to someone standing still by a factor of 0.00000000000919%.
Sorry, you gave me a math problem and I couldn't help but figure it out.