Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction?

...Fun. Fun is the answer.

Movies are awesome, and Superhero movies are super-awesome. And what makes superhero movies so awesome, besides a compelling story and believable and identifiable characters, tends to be the impressive feats of daring-do that are accomplished in them. So many of these movies are essentially action movies with stunning outfits, so with them comes plenty of impressive stunts. Many of these stunts can blow away your imagination about as well as they can break the laws of physics. Nobody likes to be that guy who ruins superhero movies by pointing out how “unrealistic” they are…okay well a few people do, but I don’t. But there is a point there in that these movies typically play with, skirt around, or even just outright ignore the laws of physics in many ways we may or may not even think about upon watching them in the moment. They can get away with this a lot simply because most audiences only have a rudimentary understanding of how physics work, so many of them can be forgiven if you aren’t looking into the nitty-gritty. But since we’re here to destroy your beloved movie memories, we may as well deconstruct exactly how they tried to pull the wool, or web in this case, over your eyes with the three different versions of Spider-Man that came out over the years. These movies have always been my faves just as they have been everyone else’s, but when it comes down to trying to convey the fantastic feats of an aerial arachnid acrobat (“aracnobat?” hmm…), there can be a few hiccups in some primary physics laws, primarily when it comes to inertia.

            It’s only fitting that we start with the movie that arguably started the whole superhero movie craze in the first place, Spider-Man (2002). Now because this movie is near and dear to not only my heart but countless others’ as well, I want to be a little fair to it. It’s a very early 2000’s superhero movie, the genre wouldn’t be nailed yet until 2008. The acting was cheesy, the story was campy, and the special effects…probably haven’t aged well. So with all that in mind, it’s only understandable that there would be a few leaps in logic with how some of these characters move. Now with that said, there is one particular moment in the film that I don’t see get analyzed as much and it does concern the law of inertia. In the climax of the movie, Spider-Man swings his way over to the Queensborough bridge for one last climactic showdown with the Green Goblin. But from where he enters the scene, a building placed right on the coast overlooking the bridge, he needs to clear the gap in a way that will allow him to stop the Goblin’s destruction as quickly as possible, and simple web-swinging isn’t going to be enough. So for the sake of efficiency and good old dynamic action, Spidey attaches webs to two flagpoles on the building’s roof and with his superhuman strength pulls both of them back as far as they can bend (supposedly) and uses them to slingshot himself over the river. From there he is able to launch a web onto a portion of the bridge and swing himself onto the top of the bridge to confront the villain in a flashy fashion. 

            Now what exactly is the inertia issue here, you might be wondering. Well if you go from the shot where Spidey is launched towards the bridge and then watch the beginning of the next shot where he enters the bridge via web-shot, you’ll notice that he’s moving with a different speed and trajectory than he was in the prior shot. With the speed and force he would have needed to clear that much distance (the bridge looked to be about a football field’s length away or so), he should have been coming in hot enough in the next shot that he should have been flung right outside of the bridge’s structure after the first web-swing. And yet he enters the next shot with a kind of smoothness and control that suggests that he somehow decreased the speed and inertia he was maintaining consistently in the prior shot. An simple fix for this could have been to have him actually show signs of almost clearing the bridge but then making a webshot in an opposing direction that would then pull him back in, but it seems instead they just opted for speedy and blurred movement with just the faintest hints of webs actually connecting with something off-screen. Don’t get me wrong, there’s probably lots of other physics to pick apart in this scene, but I actually like my childhood, so I think I’ll just leave the rest of it alone.

            Instead, lets’ just ruin some other powerful moment in a different cinematic Spider-Man saga, that being Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014). So, I actually really loved this movie series too, and I still have a soft spot for this movie. That being said, let’s crack this egg wide open. Oooh, um, maybe a poor choice of words…So, spoiler alert if you haven’t seen this movie yet, but there’s a whole new version of Spider-Man out there so it really shouldn’t matter. So in heartbreaking climax of the second and last film of the Amazing series, Spider-Man FINALLY manages to incapacitate this version of the Green Goblin enough to finally chase after a falling Gwen Stacey and save her from her untimely death within a dilapidated clock tower. Spidey jumps off the cog he and Goblin were fighting on a moment ago and free-falls towards Gwen, the moment slowed down to match the almost assured dreaded mood that the audience can feel coming. He shoots one last web as he tries to close the gap between them, the web intricately shot at the right timing so that it can miraculously miss all the debris in the way, the end of the extending thread opening up as if it were Spider-Man’s own hand desperately reaching out for the love of his life. The ground is quickly approaching, and at last the web finally hits it’s mark, her abdomen, and Spidey finally manages to halt his fall by latching onto an extended beam with his free hand. However, the web just wasn’t short enough. Gwen’s body is halted and suspended JUST above the ground, but her head was the last part of her that was still moving with deadly speed, and with a loud…noise, it smacks against the pavement beneath her. Spider-Man rushes down to hold her, desperately praying she’s still alive, but that impact did its job, Gwen Stacy is dead. 

            So, this haunting tragedy brings us to an understandably heavy question. Could Spider-Man have ACTUALLY saved Gwen’s life in this scenario? If he had caught her with a web-shot just a few moments sooner in the air, could her death have been avoided?...Eeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhh, probably not…The thing is, even if he did manage to catch her a few feet more above the ground, there’s still the chance that the sudden stop in mid-air would have been enough to still break her neck due to whiplash. Even in the original comic issue this event was based off of, The Amazing Spider-Man #122, Spider-Man manages to save Gwen from splatting against the water’s surface after being thrown off the top of the bridge by the Green Goblin (huh, déjà vu…) by catching her leg with a web-shot. However, when he pulls her up he discovers that she’s already dead. The Goblin claims in said issue that she died just from the fall itself, almost implicating that the shock of falling just caused her to die before Spidey even caught her, but this was later clarified in Issue#125, the creators explaining that it was the whiplash of suddenly being stopped in mid-air that ultimately killed her. So based on what the original source material tells us, movie-Gwen likely still would have died even if her head didn’t collide with the ground. The sudden stop in mid-air still could have broken her neck due to the law of inertia. The only way to prevent it would have been to either aim for a different part of her body that wouldn’t affect her head so violently (like her arm…which would have been dislocated, but she’d still be alive), or more ideally to catch her with his own hands and THEN used webbing to stop their fall or slowing their fall more gradually. Granted, Spidey would still have to get close enough to do that last one, but he could have still fired a web at either Gwen or the debris and use it to pull himself down a bit faster so that he could have physically closed the gap between them. But at the end of the day, in such a sudden adrenaline-filled think, act, or die moment where there’s only a few seconds to react in just the right way, there’s only so much you can realistically do. As far as a narrative goes, Gwen may have always been fated to die that day in Peter’s arms.

            Well I can feel my eyes welling up with tears now, so how about we try to liven things up with a final climax that involves falling down another metallic shaft for some reason? This time we’re looking at the most recent cinematic depiction of the web-slinger, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017). With a much more inexperienced Spider-Man comes a lot more on-your-feet thinking, and that really shows itself in the midpoint of the film (yes we’re actually breaking pattern for once). During a fieldtrip to the Washington Monument in DC, an explosion caused by alien technology results in the elevator inside the monument to be compromised, forcing Spider-Man to franticly race up the monument to force his way in through one of the top windows. After getting slowed down from some height-anxiety and some interfering law-enforcement, Spidey finally manages to break through the reinforced glass window and slides into the observation floor just as the elevator has lost its cabling and has started to fall down the elevator shaft. In a quick instant he is able to web-shot the detached roof of the car to the ceiling of the shaft and then ricochet said web onto the exterior of the car itself (he’s using teched out web-shooters so the gimmick is plausible “enough”), pulling against it with his superhuman strength while fixing himself against the shattered elevator entrance, stopping it’s decent. He sighs relief a little too early however as the weight of the elevator catches up to him and falls a bit further, pulling him down with it. After bumping against some of the shaft, Spidey gracelessly lands inside the elevator, which is stopped against a displaced beam. The sudden addition of his weight manages to shake the elevator car loose however and it resumes falling. Spidey manages to shoot one last web up to the top of the shaft again, which ends up pulling himself against the ceiling of the elevator car, swiftly stopping the car from its fall again. From here Spider-Man manages to maintain a firm grip and slowly starts pulling the car up to safety from the inside, successfully saving everybody (now that’s more like it). He even manages to save Liz Allen from falling to her death when the ceiling eventually gives way by webbing her hand before she can even reach free fall. It’s nice to see some justice be done to Spidey being able to save his romantic interests…even if it only took him 2 reboots to do so. 

            So at this point the Marvel movies have gotten much better at trying to present fantastic situations in mostly believable ways that the audience can follow without scratching their heads. So in essence, you REALLY have to nitpick to find any problems here, not all of them are as obvious as they were in 2002. There is one thing that did jump out to me in this scene though. At the moment where Spider-Man finally stops the elevator from falling, the sudden stop from freefall (well, mostly free-fall, the elevator was falling while it's clamps were sliding against the rails with hardly any contact or friction whatsoever) should have affected the other occupants to some fitting capacity. And yet when the stop happens, they look as though they only slightly shifted in position, as if they were on a bus that came to a moderate stop. The stop should have been much more intense on them, the speed of the fall should have been enough to at least force them onto the ground once the elevator was stopped instead of standing on foot the whole time. It would have been more excusable if they were braced against something, but it didn’t appear that they were holding any of the railings inside, so realistically they should have fallen over from the sudden change of force. Inertia was keeping them moving at the speed the elevator was until the stopped elevator would have stopped them. So unless they fixed themselves to the elevator more securely, they wouldn’t have stood so gently and steadily as they did there.

Still, despite those shortcomings and pitfalls (so much falling…), these movies are still impressive to watch. Inertia is a crucial element when it comes to depicting Spider-Man’s impressive feats of skill, so it can be tricky to try and walk the tightrope between amazement and believability. Most of these issues could be solved with either minimal or super specific tweaks, but ultimately telling a story and causing more wow is what inspires these scenes to go the way they do. At the very least however, the technology behind these movies has helped make the people working on them focus on trying to make each cinematic moment more believable and pleasing than the last. Despite some gaps in logic, these films are still fun and that is the whole point of watching them, to be amazed. And if Spider-Man is anything, he is Amazing.