The Laws of Physics in an Action Film

The Laws of Physics in Captain America:The Winter Soldier

In action movies, film directors usually have to exaggerate lots of physics theories in most of the action scenes in order to create a dramatic effect with the intent of captivating the audience's attention and imagination. The movie I choose to analyze is Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which was released in 2014 as an extended story from the first Captain America movie called The First Avenger. In the first Captain America movie, the film talked about the history of Captain America. It included the process of how he turned into a superhuman and fought Hydra who was the evil villain resurrected from a Nazi. At the end of the battle, Captain America chose to sacrifices his own life and save all the innocent people in New York by diving down with a bomb loaded aircraft into the frozen ocean. At the end of the movie, though everyone at the time thought that Captain America had died for saving the country.

He was later found by Shield the national homeland security agency 70 years later. This would lead us to the second movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This film takes us to the modern times, Captain America again saved the world that was under attack from the evil Hydra organization. During his battles, he also met his best friend Bucky who has also became a superhuman during WWII and was a trained assassin for Hydra. In this essay I will be analyzing three physics laws that were shown in Captain America: The Winter Soldier that were intentionally broken by the movie producers in order to achieve dramatic affects within the movie.

Action and reaction is explained in Newton’s laws of motion. It states that if one object hits the other, the other would exerts an equal amount of reaction force back on the first object. In the movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier, this physical law was broken to show the strength of the superhuman by showing reaction without action. For example, at 1:59:30, Bucky the Winter Soldier strikes Captain America with his iron fist but only caused bruises on Captain America’s face. Consider in other scenes of the movie, Bucky was able to break cars and cement walls with his metal fist. The amount of force from Bucky’s iron fist should get Captain America killed.

Another example showing reaction without action in the movie is at 0:36:30, where Captain America was pursuing the Winter Soldier. While he was in pursuit, he was breaking through windows, doors, and walls. None of these obstacles had slowed him down a bit. The force of him breaking the windows, doors, walls didn’t exert back on him. The physical law of action and reaction was intentionally broken by the film makers to show the superhuman abilities of Captain America.

The physical law of gravity is shown strangely in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Although the scenes were featured on earth, gravitation of flying objects in the film seemed to have a constant or slower speed when falling. For example, at 1:56:00 of the film, 3 helicarriers were attacked by guns and fires, these 3 helicarriers were breaking apart while they were falling out of the sky. There were bigger parts and smaller parts falling of the helicarriers almost at the same time, but both pieces were falling at the same speed, despite that mass of the two pieces were different. While the helicarriers were breaking apart in the sky, they were also falling, but the speed of the fall was much slower than it supposed to be. The mass of the helicarrier should make it fall much faster than in the movie. Of course due to gravitational acceleration the objects would start to fall at exactly the same speed but due to their different masses and coefficient of drag in the air some of the larger objects should have been falling much faster then was actually portrayed. 

Another example from the film is at 2:00:00, near the end of the movie. Captain America was unconscious while being dropped from the falling helicarriers into the water on his back with the fall being at least 400 feet. In the scene, Captain America was falling very slowly and still survived even his whole back hits the water from 400 feet.  At 400 feet a falling body would begin to approach terminal velocity.  If a human body hit the water at from 400 feet they would be instantly killed from the impact at such high speed. A lot of these falling scenes were purposely slowed down by the film maker to create the emotional statement and dramatic affects.

According to Newton’s first law of motion, also called the law of inertia, an object is moving would stay in motion with the same speed and the same direction when there isn’t an unbalance force. This physical law was also broken intentionally in the film to create the exaggeration of different action scenes. For example, at 1:58:00, near the end of the battle, Falcon was running inside a building while one of the helicarriers was crashing into the building. He jumped off the building while Fury and Black Widow were trying to catch him with a helicopter. In that scene, Falcon should have fallen downwards by following the law of inertia, instead he jumped upwards. He would never make it into the helicopter in real life. 

Another example in the film is at 0:40:00, when Captain America was riding his motorcycle and trying to escape Shield. Shield initiated a Jet flying 20 feet off ground to fire on Captain America. Then Captain America jumped off his bike where he should have landed on the ground by inertia, instead he flew on top of the jet and destroyed it.

In the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier, physics laws in the film were exaggerated or broken intentionally to create the visual effects that the audience would enjoy. In an action movie, if everything was happening so fast, the audience would not able to catch these little scenes of broken physical laws. Besides that, these scenes provide the audience with the ability to imagine what a superhuman can do differently than a normal human. These scenes with exaggerated or broken physics laws also allow audience to understand the movie with more feeling and emotion by slowing down or exaggerating certain laws of physics.