What action movie sequence should have killed/ seriously injured someone?

[Tyndmyr]

I was watching Disney's Three Musketeers from all the way back in '93 where they did that trope at the end. Where Charlie Sheen - as Aramis - gets shot by Tim Curry's Richelieu at near point-blank range and Sheen ends up surviving because of a crucifix hidden under his robes blocking the bullet, and you get a "there is a God"-moment kind of played for laughs after it's revealed what saved him.


It's usually a crucifix, bible, or maybe a lucky coin of some kind in these situations.

A coin probably wouldn't do it, simply because of physics. If you spread the force out over a large area and/or large weight, it's fine. That's why recoil hurts less than a bullet, despite Newton's guidelines of motion.

A bible...maaaybe. I could see a thick enough book being plausible with a sufficiently old timey gun, as some of the pistols were of quite small caliber. Really depends on the era and model, but certainly within easy handwaving range. The cross as well, I suppose. If it were large, and of very durable composition. Extremely lucky in any case, but at least physically possible. You would still need literally everything to line up perfectly.

But stopping a bullet with a coin would probably result in a coin with a hole in it and the bullet slamming into you. If the coin were constructed of unobtanium, somehow, the bullet would merely slam the coin into you.

Shotguns are not an area of effect weapon. A shotgun with a wide-open choke firing buckshot spreads about 1 inch for every 36 inches of range. By the time this gets far enough to hit more than one person, or even hit somebody that you weren't aiming properly at, the balls will have lost almost all energy. Birdshot spreads more, but generally doesn't do much damage to human-sized targets.

Yeah. Unrealism in movies and games usually is more on the side of the spread being significant. *Most* shotguns do not spread any appreciable amount at room ranges and can be essentially treated as a large-bore rifle for the purposes of portraying what happens.

Explosions also look way too flashy in movies. Almost every movie explosion is a gas explosion. They're relatively controllable in use and friggin awesome to look at, but they're not ideal for most weapon systems. In real life an RPG is barely going to produce any flame effects, it's just going to penetrate your armored vehicle and either kill the engine or the unlucky occupant(s) sitting in that spot.

There is a weird partial exception here for the film T-34, which is a...very Russian movie that is about tanks. There may be a plot, I'm not sure, but mostly the heroes are tanks killing other tanks, and while I would not say everything is realistic in it(at all), the way tank rounds hit other tanks is often surprisingly good, with no fireball at all, merely some liquidification and blowing a small hole through...everything.

This is most definitely not the norm, but maybe interesting to consider if you enjoy watching tanks murder each other in slow-mo.