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Mythbusters...ruining the illusion?

Warped9

Warped9

Admiral
Admiral
Since its beginning I've loved Mythbusters. It's essentially an educational science show dressed up as a sort of comedy with good characters. And what a cool job: getting paid to destroy things in the name of searching for the truth. (-:

But I gotta admit that movie watching is affected by a regular diet of Mythbusters. Now you can't see some stunts or speciel f/x without thinking, "There's no way in hell that can work like that."

It's fun, but it can undermine suspension of disbelief. :lol:
 
It can work the other way as well. I saw a video of this korean martial arts expert catching an arrow in mid-flight and later saw Mythbusters where they said it was impossible because their robot hand couldn't do it.

Their methodology does leave a bit to be desired but warts and all, yes, it's a great show for kids (or anyone for that matter) to watch.
 
Yep, sometimes I, too, question their methodology.

But I like the fact that often enough they're surprised with their own results that contradict their preconceptions. It isn't just about debunking myths, but also confirming the plausibility of some.
 
It's no worse than taking a film course in college and afterward being acutely aware of how directors use editing, camera moves, color, etc. to manipulate the emotional impact of a scene. If anything, watching MythBusters helps me appreciate the work of the people who craft the illusion that much more.
 
One of my favourites was in regards to debunking the notion often seen in films during the past twenty some years of people being blown back after being shot.

I also liked learning that a revolver is more dangerous to you underwater than a high powered rifle.

But my favourite remains blowing up the cement mixer. That was just so cool.

More recently, though, they revisited the story of a taxi being blown off the road by a jetliner's exhaust. Seeing that car and then later the school bus being thrown like toys was freaking wild!
 
Personally, I think there are some illusions that are way overdue to be ruined. Moviemakers and FX artists have too many cliches and conventions they fall back on, and they've gotten increasingly out of hand over the decades. In a James Bond film from the '60s, when cars crash, they usually just crash or flip over. In a Bond film from the '90s, though, there's a snowmobile chase where every bad-guy snowmobile goes up in a huge explosion whenever it bumps into a bush or a snowdrift something. The Mythbusters have shown us how fake and nonsensical all those exploding vehicles are. They've also shown us how absurd it is for a huge explosion to go off behind the heroes and have them thrown through the air twenty feet without being impaled by shrapnel or having their innards liquefied by the overpressure shock. And then there's the blown-back-by-bullets cliche that Warped9 mentioned, another thing that wasn't done in earlier movies but keeps getting done more and more as filmmakers try to top themselves and drift farther and farther from reality.

So it's my hope that audiences will no longer be satisfied by these absurd cliches and demand something better. It's high time the industry got forced out of its complacency and stopped falling back on the same old gimmicks.
 
The Mythbusters have found many myths to be plausible or confirmed, and those are sometimes the most delightful surprises. So no, they don't lose any ratings by "failing" to bust a myth. In science -- or in the reasonable facsimile of science practiced on the show -- the only failure is getting no results.

Some of the most impressive myths to be found plausible or confirmed:
  • Escaping from Alcatraz on a raft made of raincoats
  • Waterskier pulled by rowing team
  • Taxi overturned by jet exhaust
  • Jawbreakers exploding when heated in microwaves
  • Salsa can be used to dissolve prison bars
  • Dynamite can clean (a thin enough layer of) leftover cement from a mixer
  • Wineglass broken by human voice alone (first time ever documented)
  • Hiding underwater can protect against bullets
  • A working crossbow can be made from paper
  • A plane can be shredded by another plane's propeller
  • A lens of ice can start a fire
  • Salami can fuel a rocket
  • Pants drenched in farm chemicals can "explode"
  • A pressurized air cylinder can blast through a concrete wall
  • A large drum placed in a hole can detect the sound of a tunneling army
  • A water heater can blow through the roof like a rocket

I'd say it's obvious that confirmation doesn't make the experiment any less intriguing.
 
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I only found the show about a year ago when my family finally got satellite, and I've absolutely loved it! I love watching them doing the experiments and finally seeing what the end results would be. And, of course, you can't beat the fact that when the bust a myth involving small explosives, they aren't finished until they use as much explosives as possible on it. :D
The ones that were most interesting to me was the Robin Hooding an arrow one that they did twice. As an archer, I've always wanted to pull a full Robin Hood, and I was interested by the fact that it isn't possible with actual arrows.
 
Warped9 said:
But I gotta admit that movie watching is affected by a regular diet of Mythbusters. Now you can't see some stunts or speciel f/x without thinking, "There's no way in hell that can work like that."

It's fun, but it can undermine suspension of disbelief. :lol:
Click to expand...


For me it has never been an issue for action movies. I enjoy watching cool sequences that doesn't have to adhere to realism. For example Truth Lies, The Rock, and Face/Off were 3 of my favorite 90s action movies and all of three were gross violator of busted myths.
 
^^I'm not saying it's intrinsically wrong for a film to depict something unrealistic. The problem is that filmmakers have gotten so much into the habit of doing it that it's become an incestuous cycle, with screenwriters basing their scripts on the fake conventions of Hollywood rather than on things external to the movie industry. For instance, stuntmen can smash through fake glass or get fake chairs broken over their heads without serious injury, whereas the same isn't true with real people, glass, or chairs; and yet screenwriters unthinkingly base their scripts on the stunt scenario and don't even realize they've become detached from reality in the process. Unreality in certain contexts is fine, but when filmmakers forget where the line is between reality and fantasy, then the business has just become too introverted and self-referential, too caught up in itself.

So my desire for more realism in movies/TV has less to do with it being more realistic than with it being fresh, rather than just the same old thing for the gazillionth time. The impossible and nonsensical have become so routine in movies that a dose of realism would be a refreshing change, and might even reinvigorate an industry that's become complacent in its habits. For instance, I got deathly sick of Hollywood's huge roiling orange fireball explosions even before I learned that most real explosions don't look anything like that. What bothered me wasn't that they were wrong, but that they were always the same. I'd like to see more realistic explosions just for the sake of novelty.
 
Christopher said:
^^I'm not saying it's intrinsically wrong for a film to depict something unrealistic. The problem is that filmmakers have gotten so much into the habit of doing it that it's become an incestuous cycle, with screenwriters basing their scripts on the fake conventions of Hollywood rather than on things external to the movie industry. For instance, stuntmen can smash through fake glass or get fake chairs broken over their heads without serious injury, whereas the same isn't true with real people, glass, or chairs; and yet screenwriters unthinkingly base their scripts on the stunt scenario and don't even realize they've become detached from reality in the process. Unreality in certain contexts is fine, but when filmmakers forget where the line is between reality and fantasy, then the business has just become too introverted and self-referential, too caught up in itself.
Click to expand...

Well like I said an action movie just isn't the same without at least one character surviving a fall through glass unscathed. :lol:


So my desire for more realism in movies/TV has less to do with it being more realistic than with it being fresh, rather than just the same old thing for the gazillionth time. The impossible and nonsensical have become so routine in movies that a dose of realism would be a refreshing change, and might even reinvigorate an industry that's become complacent in its habits. For instance, I got deathly sick of Hollywood's huge roiling orange fireball explosions even before I learned that most real explosions don't look anything like that. What bothered me wasn't that they were wrong, but that they were always the same. I'd like to see more realistic explosions just for the sake of novelty.
Click to expand...

Why pick realism as the only fresh alternative? Instead of roiling orange fireball perhaps we should have one that is pink. :)

IMO for action movies realism just doesn't work. The end product might be fresh but it's likely to be very dull.
 
Wow, someone refers to a woman and you respond Trekker. And then you talk of... real estate? Unless that was a typo. In which case you brought up a totally different subject than the one here.
 
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