Well, you know that the budget to destroy cars and trucks doesn't grow on trees.
And it's still a quality show.
And it's still a quality show.
Mythbusters 12/15: Green Hornet Special
- Thread starter Christopher
- Start date
I think The Green Hornet movie looks like fun.
Now, what they really need to do is find a way to build a "turbo boost" and to see if Super Pursuit Mode's emergency stop feature (consisting of drag spoilers) would really work.
Now, what they really need to do is find a way to build a "turbo boost" and to see if Super Pursuit Mode's emergency stop feature (consisting of drag spoilers) would really work.
Despite the blatant movie promotion going on, that was still a surprisingly fun episode, I thought. And I hate to admit it, but after seeing those clips I'm actually (for the first time) kinda interested in checking out the movie.
If only for the car stunts, at least.
Yeah, everytime they do a car special, I secretly hope they test out the Turbo Boost. Obviously KITT had the whole indestructible, "molecular bonded shell" thing going for him, but it would still be fun as hell to see them try launching a car into the air with rockets.
If only for the car stunts, at least.
Now, what they really need to do is find a way to build a "turbo boost" and to see if Super Pursuit Mode's emergency stop feature (consisting of drag spoilers) would really work.
Yeah, everytime they do a car special, I secretly hope they test out the Turbo Boost. Obviously KITT had the whole indestructible, "molecular bonded shell" thing going for him, but it would still be fun as hell to see them try launching a car into the air with rockets.
Was turbo boost ever specifically established as being rocket-powered (not counting the recent revival series)? I guess it had a rockety sound effect, but the word "turbo" refers to a gas compressor turbine, not a rocket, and we never saw any kind of rocket exhaust, just the car flying through the air (off of a concealed ramp, albeit often a poorly-concealed one).
I think The Green Hornet movie looks like fun.
Now, what they really need to do is find a way to build a "turbo boost" and to see if Super Pursuit Mode's emergency stop feature (consisting of drag spoilers) would really work.
I fully endorse and support this idea.
Well there was an old schematic that showed some distinct rocket-style devices in the rear:
http://www.teamknightrider.com/classic/cast/kitt/kk2.jpg
But yeah, they always kept it pretty vague on the show. As a kid I just assumed it was all done with thrusters somehow.
In order to get the nose up like that without a ramp, there'd have to be rockets in the front too.
EDIT: Ahh, Wikipedia says the following about turbo boost:
So it really should be called "rocket boost." There is no legitimate application of the word "turbo" to that technology, unless the rockets are some kind of ramjets.
(end of edit)
I wonder how many 1982 Trans Ams they wrecked over the course of Knight Rider.
EDIT: Ahh, Wikipedia says the following about turbo boost:
So it really should be called "rocket boost." There is no legitimate application of the word "turbo" to that technology, unless the rockets are some kind of ramjets.
(end of edit)
I wonder how many 1982 Trans Ams they wrecked over the course of Knight Rider.
I would TOTALLY watch that.
But, it would hurt to watch any sort of damage, even if it's just a replica.
God, that was a good looking car... in a totally wonderfully silly way.
I think it does, too, plus it's coming out on my birthday, so I might not even have to pay to see it.
Super Pursuit Mode was mostly accomplished by using high-speed film (which is why you occasionally have things like birds doing Mach 1 across the background); I'll have to find the reference, but I read an interview where Knight Rider's stunt coordinator Jack Gill said that the SPM car started to come apart when you got it above 80.Now, what they really need to do is find a way to build a "turbo boost" and to see if Super Pursuit Mode's emergency stop feature (consisting of drag spoilers) would really work.
Super Pursuit Mode was mostly accomplished by using high-speed film (which is why you occasionally have things like birds doing Mach 1 across the background); I'll have to find the reference, but I read an interview where Knight Rider's stunt coordinator Jack Gill said that the SPM car started to come apart when you got it above 80.
Ahhhhh. So Super Pursuit Mode worked by speeding up the fabric of the universe around it thus making it appear to move faster! Well, that one WOULD be tough to test.
Obviously, I wasn't asking how the show-makers pulled off the effect I was asking to see if it could "really work" if the Mythbusters could pull it off (mostly EBS.) Because explaining how they did it to make the show doesn't really prove anything, does it? Because that goes back to the General Lee jump were some fans complained that the movie car was weighted so that the car flew fairly "level" when, in reality, the heavier front-end causes the nose to dip and the car to crash on its nose. This was a silly thing for fans to point out because how the movie makers filmed the scene isn't how the scene "really happened" in the universe of the movie.
I believe a similar stunt happened recently, with Kari's maternity leave stand-in, where she had to explain to the fans they weren't testing the stunt but they were testing the real-world conditions it was supposed to depict (I believe this was for the Speed bus jump.)
OH!
And another one they have to test is the tank-drop from the A-Team movie.
Actually, an episode dedicated to movie and TV "super cars" would be interesting. Off the top of my head I can think of several Bond cars, KITT, the various Batmobiles...that pink thing in Thunderbirds...
IIRC a few of them have been covered but I think there's plenty of fun stuff to expand on.
IIRC a few of them have been covered but I think there's plenty of fun stuff to expand on.
There's quite a bit of neat things they could do with "super cars." Now, granting that the way (in the cartoon) Inspector Gadget's police-cruiser transformed into what looked like a Pontiac Transport mini-van isn't possible but it'd be interesting to see if they can fabricate a car that can move parts around to turn from one form to another.
Hell, in one of the Green Hornet's promotional shots there's a picture of The Black Beauty with the body off and we see how various parts, like the fender guns, are hidden. But neat to see the, do this too.
And there all sorts of cool stuff they could do with Bond, including driving a car, remotely, with an iPod Touch.
That'd be a very interesting episode and, hell a double-episode special on Bond stunts alone would be entertaining. Certainly better than what many of this current batch of episodes is offering because, really, after these last few episodes and having also seen some older episodes I'm left... cold.
I think there's a bit of a "sell-out" here as the old, gruff, "Go eat a cookie, baby" Jamie doesn't seem to be shining here when he's grinning about how cool Seth Rogan's personal island is. I think the dynamic is being harmed a bit when they're trying to promote other people's work. The Green Hornet special is okay and certainly not too much different than the POTC episode they did but really it just came off as a commercial for the movie more than anything else.
I mean, is it really a "movie myth" when the movie is a month away from coming out and making it's stunts questionable? It's one thing to "mythbust" Speed, McGyver, Bond, The Dukes of Hazzard or the few other movie/TV myths they've done years or decades after the "myths" have become mythological but to do this stuff to promote a movie? I mean, we've not seen the movie so was anyone really wondering if the elevator could chop a car in half and if it could drive afterwards?
Hell, in one of the Green Hornet's promotional shots there's a picture of The Black Beauty with the body off and we see how various parts, like the fender guns, are hidden. But neat to see the, do this too.
And there all sorts of cool stuff they could do with Bond, including driving a car, remotely, with an iPod Touch.
That'd be a very interesting episode and, hell a double-episode special on Bond stunts alone would be entertaining. Certainly better than what many of this current batch of episodes is offering because, really, after these last few episodes and having also seen some older episodes I'm left... cold.
I think there's a bit of a "sell-out" here as the old, gruff, "Go eat a cookie, baby" Jamie doesn't seem to be shining here when he's grinning about how cool Seth Rogan's personal island is. I think the dynamic is being harmed a bit when they're trying to promote other people's work. The Green Hornet special is okay and certainly not too much different than the POTC episode they did but really it just came off as a commercial for the movie more than anything else.
I mean, is it really a "movie myth" when the movie is a month away from coming out and making it's stunts questionable? It's one thing to "mythbust" Speed, McGyver, Bond, The Dukes of Hazzard or the few other movie/TV myths they've done years or decades after the "myths" have become mythological but to do this stuff to promote a movie? I mean, we've not seen the movie so was anyone really wondering if the elevator could chop a car in half and if it could drive afterwards?
All I meant by my behind-the-scenes explanation was that they never got the SPM car up to a speed even close to what was being portrayed (~300 MPH).
I'd love to see them test the EBS flaps, though; I'm curious if they could even deploy at those speeds, much less realistically assist in braking.
Well, to be fair, I doubt they ever got the pre-SPM car up to the speeds or accelerations portrayed. (And, IIRC, the pre-SPM cat got up to near 300mph too. I guess SPM did it faster...? Pretty impressive considering Bonnie rebuilt KITT with a bunch of street toughs in an abandoned warehouse.)
Apart from the gauges counting up during the opening credit sequence, I only remember them taking the car into the 300 MPH range once, when Michael converts KITT's turbine engine into a ramjet so they can escape the desert after KITT got totaled in "Goliath." I'm sure there might have been a couple other instances, though. Pre-SPM, though, they could at least get the car way above 80 without speeding up the film.
In "Knight of the Juggernaut," Bonnie says that SPM provides a 40% increase in speed. If we accept ~300 MPH as the upper limit of SPM and I did my math right, that makes KITT's old top speed ~215 MPH.
In "Knight of the Juggernaut," Bonnie says that SPM provides a 40% increase in speed. If we accept ~300 MPH as the upper limit of SPM and I did my math right, that makes KITT's old top speed ~215 MPH.
I thought looking at the "death ray" again was bad but this episode sucked. How do you make blowing stuff up suck? You get Seth Rogan in every other scene and… his laugh? Obnoxious. I hope they get back to actual "mythbusting" and not more film ads. This episode made me think this stinker of a film had already come and gone. No such luck.
It might be a sellout but if the makers of The Green Hornet picked up the tab for the episode then it could mean extra money in the kitty for a big episode latter in the season.
And money is probably what it comes down to with the myths they test. Save money in one ep, makes it available for a another - it's the Mythbusters equivalent of a bottled show.
And money is probably what it comes down to with the myths they test. Save money in one ep, makes it available for a another - it's the Mythbusters equivalent of a bottled show.
I'm still waiting for the guys to build their own jet engines from scratch. Primitive ones like pulse jets aren't actually that hard to build.