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

[Lvl45DM!]

I'm talking things like leaping off buildings, grabbing a ledge while falling, or taking on beatings which should have sent a person to the hospital.

Any scene where a being strong enough to throw a whole person throws someone into a wall would break their damn back.
Any scene where a being strong enough to lift a whole person up by the throat would crush their throat or break their jaw.
Any scene where a backhand blow strong enough to send someone flying would shatter ribs, crack skulls and pulverise organs.

Die Hard:

4.John is under the table, bad guy is on top of the table with a machine gun. A machine gun that, er, can't shoot through the table top...though John does it with a handgun like seconds later.

OBJECTION
the bullets clearly go through the table, but the guy is firing one bullet at a time because he can't get a clear shot at John, because he can't see him, and John is moving. He keeps herding John until he has no place to go but has to reload, since he figures, since John isn't shooting back, he's outta bullets. But John was just not shooting him because he couldn't get a clear shot and was scrambling for his life.

Also another scene in Die Hard, theres an explosion late in the movie. Its about 50ft feet away from him, and he dives into a pool with a stone wall. He would definitely survive that.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

A rather famous thing that kills you outside of the movies at this point is jumping into/onto water, from high enough. And that happens at lower heights then one might instinctively grasp. Up to about 10 meters in height (about the height of a three story house or ~30 feet, technically more like 33 feet, but one should never used accurately looking numbers when giving broad guidelines) you can do a lot of things wrong, land badly and only get hurt a bit. The old timey circus trick where you belly flop into a very shallow pool is performed with jumps up to around 10 meters. After this the odds of injury go up fast. Cliff diving competitions usually go up to about 20 meters (~60 feet), have professional divers as contestants and still have an emergency medical team standing by. At 60 meters (~180 feet) a jump is almost always fatal. At the very least you typically dislocate both legs and bleed out while you drown. There have been plenty of exception, including people who got slowed by a lucky gust of wind, people who had just the right mixture of a light weight and high bone strength, people whose parachute sort of party opened and the world record waterfall kayaking, but the amount of non-exceptions is much, much higher and it's definitely don't try this at home territory.

(Note on the plus side: large jumps into water tend to happen near large waterfalls in movies, because they look cool. Right underneath a waterfall in the bubbly water is thé place where you might survive a very high jump into water, the bubbles break the surface tension and make the water less dense. You are probably still going to die from hitting the riverbed or getting sucked into the "hole" at the bottom of the falls and drown horribly, but the initial surface contact itself is slightly less deadly.)

I suppose I do not need to mention that any movie jump where someone lands on a car flat on their back with another person landing on top of them would be more much more damaging than a proper landing in water from the same height, not less. It looks cool, but that one meter dent in the roof is not going to save you, and neither is any body armor.

[Lvl45DM!]

I suppose I do not need to mention that any movie jump where someone lands on a car flat on their back with another person landing on top of them would be more much more damaging than a proper landing in water from the same height, not less. It looks cool, but that one meter dent in the roof is not going to save you, and neither is any body armor.

I mean. Body armour would help a little. Depends on how far you fell.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I mean. Body armour would help a little. Depends on how far you fell.

Body armor spreads out the impact. The force of a bullet applied to an area the size of a bullet leaves a hole, the force of a bullet applied to the whole of your torso does not. Falling flat onto your back the force is already spread out. You can't really spread it out further, it's too much force. (Except if you're using sci-fi gravitics that let you spread out the force over all molecules of the body rather than just the front layer, that would work great.)

In sports like snowboarding stiff back braces are used to prevent injuries like breaking your back, but that too is mostly due to spreading out the force. It's for falls onto something like a metal rail from maybe a few meters in height. It would barely do anything coming from the top of the building. It's also a very different design from most body armor.

[snowblizz]

Die Hard:

1.The glass cutting poor John's feet....ok, most of us have stepped on broken glass right...it HURTS. Like "you can't walk on it" and that is just one peice. John steps on dozens of them, quickly...and likely digs them into his feet. Then we get like ten seconds where he pulls out the glass and bandages his feet. I really doubt he would be able to walk after that....

It's an office, likely they do have some kind of safety glass that's not quite as liable to create really bad shards. Yes despite that he pulls stuff out of his feet. At least they do show him being actually hurt. Despite this I have to say I think it's kinda brilliant in how they already in the first scene of the movie set this up with John getting the advice to take his shoes off. And follows on with goons with too small feet. It's not that realistic but honestly, it sort of follows it's own internal logic and I appreciate this "attention to detail".

Now you know what bothers me in this scene? The German terrorists have to speak English to each other to be understood. Seriously, Gruber first shouts in German to shoot the glass but his German speaking minions do not understand him until he screams it in English loud enough for the audience to clearly hear? wtf?

2.John drops the chair of C-4 down the elevator shaft and then "jumps away" when he sees the explosion race up towards him (at the speed of light you know). Ok...kinda simple, you can't "jump away" from an explosion. By the time he saw it...he would have felt it too....

Wait are you claiming an explosion moves at the speed of light? That's just no right. It's totally possible to see the explosion coming towards him. But it's kinda ridiculous because you don't want to be staring at the explosion to watch it go off... and if you *hear* it going off you are dead.

4.John is under the table, bad guy is on top of the table with a machine gun. A machine gun that, er, can't shoot through the table top...though John does it with a handgun like seconds later.

The depiction doesn't actually show it can't, the bad guy isn't really aiming it. He is firing rather wildly into the tabel and around and John is maybe a meter further along all the time. That's sort of the poitn of the last part of the exchange. The bad guy has vented his anger randomly shooting of his machine gun and is about ready to put a whole mag worth of bullets through the table. Basically up util the end of the table he is playing with John. Also a machinegun fires pistolrounds, not necessarily more powerful than every pistol. And it matters what bullets you have, the machinegun looks like something that may actually be specifically equipped with rounds that are made to avoid overpenetration. John may simply have better AP on his rounds. Not that any office furniture I've seen would likely be stoppign either. Just sying ti is possible.
So 1) the terrorist isn't actively trying to hit John through the table at first, 2) the machinegun isn't necessarily more powerful than John's pistol.


At least in Die Hard John tends to be visibly banged up and seemingly in pain. Even though he continues functioning beyond what one might assume. Then again there are recorded instances where people keep performing despite grevious injuries. Usually though in action movies I feel that window for action is ridiculosuly long, ie entire movie almost.

Overall though in movie fight scenes where people hit each other to me it seems they pummel each other impossibly thorougly.

For a fun Twist....a couple actors, like Keenu Reeves and Tom Cruise really DO some of the stunts their character does. In the vast majority of Tom Cruse movies, that is really Tom himself doing the stunt. And sure it's a stunt and "safe"...but still, like Mission Impossible 5: Tom really did hang on to the outside of a plane as it took off (sure he had a harness)...but still he was hanging on to a plane for real!

One of the Mission Impossible movies where Tom jumps between buildings and grabs onto the rooftop he actually breaks his foot IRL doing the stunt. Apparently continuing on for abit running on it to finish the scene.

[Majin]

There was a YouTube channel dedicated to analyzing exactly what injuries John would have received in all of the movies and when, let me see if I can track it down...

EDIT: First movie, movies 2-5. He actually likely would have survived the second one.

Also from the same channel with the same premise, Home Alone. If realistic, those movies would have been pretty bloody. _{Well if you believe the theories, Kevin does grow up to become Jigsaw...}

[Lvl 2 Expert]

O, a funny example of a subversion of the general idea of this thread: when filming The Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger had to punch in a car window. The window had for this stunts been replaced with stunt glass. But through some unfortunate sequence of misunderstandings Arnold punched the wrong window. Luckily for him he was Arnold Schwarzenegger and didn't hold back, so it actually worked and only hurt rather than injured him, which would not be the case for most people (or maybe even when using a less ****ty car). Later in The Last Action Hero he has a scene referencing this experience, when his character comes into the real world and notices that in here punching in a car window hurts.

I'd say Home Alone doesn't count, that's pretty solidly in the realm of slapstick. At the very least all the sequels are.

[factotum]

The trope where the hero and explosive both blow up in the water and it's safer? That's abject nonsense. Compressibility is a good thing in the fluids between you and things that go boom, and air is way more compressible.

But on the other hand, the shockwave will have a harder time moving through the water because of its density, so it won't have as much effect if you're at a distance. When Barnes Wallis was designing his famous bouncing bombs, the whole reason he had to do that was because dropping a bomb even a few yards from the dam wall just wouldn't stand any chance of breaking it--the blast would be dissipated through the water before it reached it. In order to break the dam wall the bomb literally had to be almost touching it, in which case the incompressibility of the water worked to your advantage and ensured most of the blast went into doing damage.

[Traab]

Bullets dont travel through water well. You see a lot of action flicks where the hero dives under water and there are bullet trails moving all around him, bullets travel, at best, two feet before either breaking apart into harmless debris or just stopping due to resistance. It was wild to watch mythbusters test this. The stronger the gun, the sooner the bullet shattered. A sniper rifle bullet basically disintegrated on contact with the pool.

[Brother Oni]

Sword fights - the vast majority of sword fights ended in the first couple of passes, with a ridiculous percentage ending in mutual kills. It's only something like 5-10% of sword fights end up like the movie style back-and-forth duels.

Knife fights - both people are getting cut and at least one of them are going to hospital.

Hand to hand fights - unless you take them out in the first technique or so, it devolves into a very messy back and forth. John Wick is a great example of both as he takes out guys in the first hit or two then ends up in a wrestling match if he misses.

Getting shot by a handgun generally isn't debilitating - I've seen a news clip where a lawyer was attacked by a gunman outside a court and shot with .38 multiple times. Fortunately the lawyer managed to keep a telegraph pole between him and the gunman, so the rounds didn't hit anything vital, and walked away while the gunman stared in bemusement as he didn't bring a reload.

Again, compare to John Wick or Collateral where opponents are shot multiple times to make sure they're dead or stay down.

Bullets dont travel through water well. You see a lot of action flicks where the hero dives under water and there are bullet trails moving all around him, bullets travel, at best, two feet before either breaking apart into harmless debris or just stopping due to resistance. It was wild to watch mythbusters test this. The stronger the gun, the sooner the bullet shattered. A sniper rifle bullet basically disintegrated on contact with the pool.

The faster the round, the quicker it disintegrates in water. Sub-sonic munitions penetrate just fine into water - the Russians even have a series of rifles that's intended to be used underwater by their frogmen (most recently the ASM-DT amphibious rifle).

[Peelee]

Knife fights - both people are getting cut and at least one of them are going to hospital.

The loser of a knife fight dies on the street, the winner of a knife fight dies on the way to the hospital.

Spoiler: If you cannot avoid a knife fight, here's a good video on defensive fighting.

Show

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Getting shot by a handgun generally isn't debilitating - I've seen a news clip where a lawyer was attacked by a gunman outside a court and shot with .38 multiple times. Fortunately the lawyer managed to keep a telegraph pole between him and the gunman, so the rounds didn't hit anything vital, and walked away while the gunman stared in bemusement as he didn't bring a reload.

Double tapping is a standard military/hitman tactic to ensure you've really killed someone, sure. And there are a bunch of known cases where people initially didn't even notice they got shot. But I wouldn't go as far as saying that getting shot with a handgun is not a big deal in general. Especially not based on one example where the target took cover. It's not getting shot if you don't get shot. That's getting shot at. I don't have any exact statistics handy, but a lot of people who get shot die. At best it's a lottery, 1d10 damage on a hitpoint total of 8.

[Lord Raziere]

Double tapping is a standard military/hitman tactic to ensure you've really killed someone, sure. And there are a bunch of known cases where people initially didn't even notice they got shot. But I wouldn't go as far as saying that getting shot with a handgun is not a big deal in general. Especially not based on one example where the target took cover. It's not getting shot if you don't get shot. That's getting shot at. I don't have any exact statistics handy, but a lot of people who get shot die. At best it's a lottery, 1d10 damage on a hitpoint total of 8.

also people can bleed out even if nothing vital is hit, thats why we bandage people so that they don't bleed from wounds, if he really got shot he would need get his wounds cleaned and bound so people don't lose it over a longer period of time. just because you don't die immediately doesn't you mean you aren't still in danger of it.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Again, compare to John Wick or Collateral where opponents are shot multiple times to make sure they're dead or stay down.

John does have a habit of parking the last round in the brainpan to make sure they're dead. Also, pistols are used at a range of a couple meters for the most part, not halfway across a ballroom.

Also, firearms do not pack rocket ammo that makes your body fly back forever after you get hit.

[Tvtyrant]

John does have a habit of parking the last round in the brainpan to make sure they're dead. Also, pistols are used at a range of a couple meters for the most part, not halfway across a ballroom.

Also, firearms do not pack rocket ammo that makes your body fly back forever after you get hit.

*Unless they are gyrojets.


On the handgun front; larger, slower bullets tend to be more effective than smaller ones. We use small bullets for the ability to fire rapidly in assault rifles, expecting most shots to miss (seriously the relationship between shots fired to hits is hilarious in every war from invention to 1850, and then from 1900 to now. Brief accurate blip in the latter half of the nineteenth century.) With a handgun .45 is better for stopping power (hitting something vital and/or making the target go into shock) but also heavy and slow firing and very noticeable on your belt. So tradeoffs.

[Traab]

The faster the round, the quicker it disintegrates in water. Sub-sonic munitions penetrate just fine into water - the Russians even have a series of rifles that's intended to be used underwater by their frogmen (most recently the ASM-DT amphibious rifle).

This is true, however, that takes a very specialized gun to work underwater at all effectively. Regular hand guns might fire bullets into water that dont shatter on impact, but they are inaccurate and lose momentum very quickly. Get more than a couple feet underwater and those machine gun toting goons are very unlikely to hit or hurt you without following you in and clubbing you with their guns instead.

[Peelee]

*Unless they are gyrojets.


On the handgun front; larger, slower bullets tend to be more effective than smaller ones. We use small bullets for the ability to fire rapidly in assault rifles, expecting most shots to miss (seriously the relationship between shots fired to hits is hilarious in every war from invention to 1850, and then from 1900 to now. Brief accurate blip in the latter half of the nineteenth century.) With a handgun .45 is better for stopping power (hitting something vital and/or making the target go into shock) but also heavy and slow firing and very noticeable on your belt. So tradeoffs.

There are two schools of thought on this:

• Heavy is good, heavy is reliable. If it doesn't work, you can always hit them with it.
• I want a normal gun for a normal person!

I think each of those quotes make up 5-10% of the dialogue in each respective movie that can be quoted on here without resulting in a sea of asterisks.

[Tvtyrant]

There are two schools of thought on this:

• Heavy is good, heavy is reliable. If it doesn't work, you can always hit them with it.
• I want a normal gun for a normal person!

I think each of those quotes make up 5-10% of the dialogue in each respective movie that can be quoted on here without resulting in a sea of asterisks.

I don't know which movies those are from. There is great shame in me now

[Peelee]

I don't know which movies those are from. There is great shame in me now

Snatch and In Bruges. Both of which I wholly recommend. Crime comedy is a super fun genre when done well.

[Tvtyrant]

Snatch and In Bruges. Both of which I wholly recommend. Crime comedy is a super fun genre when done well.

I'll have to give those a shot! Hot Fuzz is one of my two favorite comedies (the other is Death of Stalin) so tangential relationship.

[Peelee]

I'll have to give those a shot! Hot Fuzz is one of my two favorite comedies (the other is Death of Stalin) so tangential relationship.

So they're not going to be as well-made as Hot Fuzz (in the sense that nothing made by not-Edgar-Wright is going to be as well made as anything made by Edgar Wright. They could teach entire film classes on him alone), but they're still incredibly strong movies, and In Bruges tops most other crime-comedy movies for me (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the undisputed leader, and a few other Shane Black fiicks also compete with In Bruges for the next four slots, none of which I really have set).

[Gnoman]

On the handgun front; larger, slower bullets tend to be more effective than smaller ones. We use small bullets for the ability to fire rapidly in assault rifles, expecting most shots to miss (seriously the relationship between shots fired to hits is hilarious in every war from invention to 1850, and then from 1900 to now. Brief accurate blip in the latter half of the nineteenth century.) With a handgun .45 is better for stopping power (hitting something vital and/or making the target go into shock) but also heavy and slow firing and very noticeable on your belt. So tradeoffs.

This is obsolete thinking, to a certain extent. The famous (or infamous) tests that lead up to the adoption of the .45 ACP were really, really bad. They were basically just firing bullets at random into animals, and taking that as gospel. More recent statistical analysis is that all of the major handgun calibers have roughly similar effectiveness, and the key factor is shot placement rather than ammunition choice. Any rifle bullet is so far beyond any handgun bullet in effectiveness that they won't really fit on the same chart.

Also, the "most bullets miss" is a consequence of most bullets in combat being fired with no intention of hitting anything. Most are "suppressive fire", which are rounds fired in the vicinity of the enemy to keep him under cover and not shooting at you while you maneuver your own troops to flak him out.




On the thread subject, a lot of movies have the hero being shot, but fine because he was only hit in the leg or shoulder. While there's no really good place to get shot, those are actually among the worst - there's lots of important blood vessels that are very likely to be damaged, and you're virtually guaranteed to destroy a lot of important bones. If you survive, it almost takes a miracle to avoid lasting impairment.

[factotum]

This is obsolete thinking, to a certain extent. The famous (or infamous) tests that lead up to the adoption of the .45 ACP were really, really bad. They were basically just firing bullets at random into animals, and taking that as gospel. More recent statistical analysis is that all of the major handgun calibers have roughly similar effectiveness, and the key factor is shot placement rather than ammunition choice. Any rifle bullet is so far beyond any handgun bullet in effectiveness that they won't really fit on the same chart.

I recall reading an article posted by a doctor after an American mass shooting where he described just how horrible the wounds caused by an assault rifle are. Those rounds may be small, but they're travelling so fast that the shockwave generated as they pass through causes enormous disruption to a person's internal organs. Where a handgun round might cause a lot of damage to whatever it hits, assault rifle rounds can cause damage to organs way off their direct target.

[Gnoman]

A full-rifle round is even more destructive - it is a consequence of total energy. Basically any film where somebody gets shot with little result is extremely unrealistic, unless they were shot with something a .22 or .25 ACP.

[Tvtyrant]

This is obsolete thinking, to a certain extent. The famous (or infamous) tests that lead up to the adoption of the .45 ACP were really, really bad. They were basically just firing bullets at random into animals, and taking that as gospel. More recent statistical analysis is that all of the major handgun calibers have roughly similar effectiveness, and the key factor is shot placement rather than ammunition choice. Any rifle bullet is so far beyond any handgun bullet in effectiveness that they won't really fit on the same chart.

Also, the "most bullets miss" is a consequence of most bullets in combat being fired with no intention of hitting anything. Most are "suppressive fire", which are rounds fired in the vicinity of the enemy to keep him under cover and not shooting at you while you maneuver your own troops to flak him out.




On the thread subject, a lot of movies have the hero being shot, but fine because he was only hit in the leg or shoulder. While there's no really good place to get shot, those are actually among the worst - there's lots of important blood vessels that are very likely to be damaged, and you're virtually guaranteed to destroy a lot of important bones. If you survive, it almost takes a miracle to avoid lasting impairment.

Were these tests assuming anyone on Earth uses shot placement? Because military and police are trained to fire center of mass for maximum chance of hitting something, they aren't picking target points. It also ignores the whole animal defense problem, where we know larger calibers are better at stopping targets because we use them for that with wild animals on the regular. If you are using a pistol you are seeing the elephant, its going to be close range and panicky.

This isn't true either. Yes suppressive fire is important, but even ignoring machine guns humans are really terrible shots. Without professional training they tend not to fire at all at long ranges, then hide behind something and fire wildly and rapidly in the hopes of not getting shot. The movement to automatic small arms was based on the reality of large groups of barely trained soldiers from 1900-1980, and militaries adapting to human psychology.

[AvatarVecna]

It's difficult to really engage with the question, because "basically all of them" is the correct answer. People are fragile blood balloons and it's not that hard for them to get popped, but how hard it is in movies, and how much it matters when they start bleeding everywhere, depends entirely on whether they're special or mooks, good or bad. You know why the first thing they teach you in a self-defense class is how to fall down correctly? Because you're gonna fall down a lot in life, especially if you find yourself in fights a lot, and you don't have to be falling down from any height higher than "standing on your own freaking feet" to accidentally hurt yourself in life-altering/ending ways. Yeah sure there's stories of people surviving an inordinate number of shots or stab wounds, but those are freak accidents - getting shot or stabbed anywhere is going to be bad news long-term, and almost certainly short-term too (at least partially because you're actively getting shot or stabbed and they're probably not gonna stop at just one).

You could roll randomly on a list of action movies, and guaranteed something happens in the first fight that should've killed a participant and didn't. It's a lot the same in superhero movies. I'd be surprised if there's a single Batman movie that doesn't have at least one time a mook should've definitely died because of Bruce's actions.

[Gnoman]

Were these tests assuming anyone on Earth uses shot placement? Because military and police are trained to fire center of mass for maximum chance of hitting something, they aren't picking target points. It also ignores the whole animal defense problem, where we know larger calibers are better at stopping targets because we use them for that with wild animals on the regular. If you are using a pistol you are seeing the elephant, its going to be close range and panicky.

Center of mass is where you want to put the shots for proper effect. That's where the important organs are. A lot of shootings (the most publicized being a few rappers who's names I can't remember who were famous for having a bunch of bullets removed) are "just blaze away in their general direction without even lining up a shot", leading to the bullets impacting at random points and not hitting anything that wasn't treatable. Meanwhile, once you compare center-of-mass shots, there's no statistical evidince that .380 ACP is worse than 9x19 is worse than .45 is worse than 10mm auto is worse than .357 Magnum. All perform almost identically.

The trials leading up to the .45 were basically "tie up an animal, blast away at it randomly, and see how long it takes to die." A few of the test animals had to be dispatched with a hammer because the testers didn't manage to kill them with guns at all. The only animals that died quick were those that got holed in an important organ, regardless of caliber. There's several cases where a "lesser" round was an instant kill and the notes say "we're going to ignore this".

[Tvtyrant]

Center of mass is where you want to put the shots for proper effect. That's where the important organs are. A lot of shootings (the most publicized being a few rappers who's names I can't remember who were famous for having a bunch of bullets removed) are "just blaze away in their general direction without even lining up a shot", leading to the bullets impacting at random points and not hitting anything that wasn't treatable. Meanwhile, once you compare center-of-mass shots, there's no statistical evidince that .380 ACP is worse than 9x19 is worse than .45 is worse than 10mm auto is worse than .357 Magnum. All perform almost identically.

The trials leading up to the .45 were basically "tie up an animal, blast away at it randomly, and see how long it takes to die." A few of the test animals had to be dispatched with a hammer because the testers didn't manage to kill them with guns at all. The only animals that died quick were those that got holed in an important organ, regardless of caliber. There's several cases where a "lesser" round was an instant kill and the notes say "we're going to ignore this".

Edit: I think we are derailing this thread enough as is. I will just agree to disagree here

[Bohandas]

The faster the round, the quicker it disintegrates in water. Sub-sonic munitions penetrate just fine into water - the Russians even have a series of rifles that's intended to be used underwater by their frogmen (most recently the ASM-DT amphibious rifle).

My understanding was always that it was the transition from air to water that messed with the bullets moreso than the water itself and that guns in general would fire fine underwater

[Rogar Demonblud]

Not really. Water is a denser medium and doesn't compress at all, so there's a serious possibility your barrel will burst, especially under full auto like Hollywood likes to show. Beyond that, your power falloff will dramatically cut the effective range.