The Reality of Running Away from Stuff

(Idris Hsi) We’ve all seen movie characters escape from a lot of stuff: some of it almost believable, some of it downright silly. Other times, we see characters unable to run away from things like the walking dead or a giant snake. Hollywood used to be a little better about realism because there were real people who were running away from real dangers – like the good old days where they used real bullets and arrows during filming.

The frightened look on James Cagney’s face as he’s plastered against a wall in one of his gangster movies was not simply born of great acting but was the result of a healthy dose of fear. Now, thanks to cheap computer graphics and better special effects, you no longer have to risk actors or their loyal stunt doubles in situations with real pyrotechnics. Instead, you can show your actors scurrying for their lives as a looming fiery/watery/muddy/temporal wave of death threatens to envelop them.

Unfortunately, many recent directors have been greatly abusing these techniques to introduce suspense and excitement to supplement the lack of story or substance in their movies. For example, the recent movie, The Time Machine, showed our heroes free-climbing up a 100 foot cliff and then racing to safety up a mountain to escape a large explosion. In The Mummy Returns, a hero actually outruns the sunlight streaming over the horizon (really just outrunning the rotation of the earth). Just how unbelievable are these feats of speed?

Here’s a chart showing maximum speeds for some of the more common Hollywood hazards measured against the fastest speeds that an Olympic level human can deliver (all in meters/second).