Hackaday: Suspension bridges are far and away the target of choice in America’s action blockbusters. In just the past three years, the Golden Gate Bridge has been destroyed by a Kaiju, Godzilla, a Skynet-initiated nuclear blast, and a tsunami. Americans don’t build real bridges anymore, or maintain the ones that we have, but we sure love to blow them up in movies.
11 comments:
I think the question that this article raises for me is, “Does it matter that it is wrong?” I feel like the producers of movies must know it is wrong, or if they don’t, they could if they bothered to research it. My guess is that they decided they wanted the collapse to look a certain way, regardless of realism, and they relied on the fact that the average viewer is not going to notice it is wrong.
Another thing this makes me think about is what we are willing to suspend disbelief for. The way I see it, I will suspend disbeliefs for the givens of the world. I will suspend disbelief for magic and super powers. I won’t suspend disbelief for plotholes, oversights, or things that are inaccurate in our world and the discrepancy is not justified by the plot. So even if a movie that is completely unrealistic, a suspension bridge not falling correctly would annoy me, but it would only affect how I see the movie overall if the inaccurate collapse was somehow integral to the plot, and the story wouldn’t have worked if the collapse were accurate.
I, like the author of this article, am a huge bridge fan (“huge” characterizes how much I like bridges, not the size of the bridges I like) but unlike this author I am not as well versed in engineering concepts and do not automatically see the problem in bridge collapses like he does. However, I do understand how bridges (in this case suspension bridges) work and once he pointed out how unrealistic most bridge collapses are I could pick up what the problem was. As someone who is fascinated by bridges it is just as cool to see them being built as destroyed. I do think it would be more satisfying if they fell in movies the way they should actually fall in real life. I think people have an inherent sense of physics and gravity and although they may not realize it, the collapses would seem more realistic if done according to physics and gravity. However, for dramatic effect that does not always work, and you are going for dramatic not an engineering lesson when making a movie so I can understand the need to bend reality. (also, I love the title of the article)
Having traveled essentially from coast to coast over the years, I’ve been able to see a range of bridges, and each one has a distinction that sets it apart from others. Such us the amount of span sets that it needs to be able to go the length of the bridge. I’ve never truly dealt with the physics that go behind the construction of those bridges, but I do know that each cable holds a certain distribution of weight, and work essentially hand in hand with the other to allow for flexion if it needed to. It is interesting to see various films, and their takes on how a suspension bridge will end up collapsing and the various structural elements that remain standing even though I’m sure some people say to themselves that that shouldn’t be possible. But film is film, and they can figure out their own looks, and make things happen their own way. Who are we to judge otherwise.
Eh, this article kind of falls in the same realm for me as when people gripe about movies not portraying the military accurately, such as using the wrong vehicles, equipment, uniform camo pattern, etc. Whatever! It's called suspension of disbelief for a reason. There is a fundamental storytelling concept that telling a story in a way that evokes the emotions of the experience does not necessarily mean telling the story in exactly the way it unfolded. So if for whatever reason, having a realistic inaccuracy better tells the story of the moment to the audience or conveys a stronger set of semiotic feelings, so be it, that's what entertainment and storytelling is about. If the biggest problem with a movie is that the bridge didn't blow up correctly, then I would think that it is still a movie well worth watching. And lastly, I think it is a very minor demographic of action movie watchers that actually care about this kind of realistic accuracy.
I think that Ben really conveys the issue at hand here really well. It's not about how it actually happens in real life, it's about the expectation that audiences bring with them into the theater about how a bridge gets destroyed. Of course, a director could definitely choose to make a bridge destruction play out in a realistic way that takes into account the physics of its construction, and the audience would probably buy that too. But the point is that there's no need to, because we have now become accustomed to seeing bridges get blown up in unrealistic ways, so no one really gets shocked by it. What's more important is that the moment carries the story forward, which may or may not require the destruction to be realistic.
All that being said, I don't really know anything about the physics of suspension bridges so I actually really enjoyed reading this article, and it'd be cool to see an accurate representation one exploding in a movie!
I am all for some realistic bridge collapses in movies. I may be a bit of a nerd but I find realistic physics in movies actually pretty awesome. Often times it requires only a little research to get these little details correct and even if no one notices I think it’s a little closer to the quality of work that we are striving to create.
That being said I think one of the things we have to remember when we get that close to reality is that really, for the most part, no one cares. For example, the last Les Mis movie’s big realism thing was the actors singing live. Unfortunately in their attempt to take advantage of this small little detail that doesn’t even matter to most people they spent so much time in close up face shots that they missed out on so much of the imagery in the songs that make Les Mis what it truly is.
Somewhere along the line, someone must have decided that our Newtonian laws of physics were just an unnecessarily heavy load to place on the creative minds responsible for our much-beloved modern action sequences. While I am not enough of an engineer to know on site whether or not an explosion or collapse is realistic, reading this article made me long for something I had never missed before, or, for that matter, never noticed. Accurate representation of physics in movies is something I'd like to see. Yes, I'll suspend my disbelief when the 10-year-old girl in Kick-Ass bridges two buildings in a single leap. Yes, I suppose I'll do the same for Mr. Incredible, the Avengers franchise, and any other superhero movie that tickles my fancy. However, now that I've read this article, I believe I'll be more of a critical eye when it comes to the destruction caused by my favorite superhero flick's battle royale, or the physical feats of my favorite spies.
This article is awesome. Not only did I learn a little bit about suspension bridges, but also I got to see just how badly movies portray how they blow up.
I think my favorite one here is The Dark Knight Rises, because it’s the only one I’ve noticed in the past. I suppose I never questioned why the rest of the bridge didn’t fail, but I always wondered why the main cable was still tight after the explosion.
I guess I didn’t realize that suspension bridges also aren’t really single point failure proof. If you manage to break the main cable, you can pretty much down the entire bridge.
Also, why don’t we more suspension-bridge type engineering in the entertainment industy? Is there just no reason to?
I can very honestly say that in my 4 years at Carnegie Mellon University, I never thought I would ever read an entire article about bridges. But I did, and here I am, writing about it. I have to say, my favorite part of the article was the completely snarky tone that the author had throughout. For some reason, he believes that the representation of suspension bridges needs to be spot on accurate, and its funny that I disagree with him. When I watch movies, I am usually completely involved in the story as well as the logistics. My brothers and I would have so much fun ripping poorly planned movies apart and seeing all the mistakes that were made. And there usually a lot of mistakes to be found, Mr. Weinberg is living in a world that is definitely not as detail oriented as he is. I am very curious to see if the changes in the film industry will include more attention to detail, I wonder if these kinds of mistakes are made as often in indie movies for example.
Growing up in Washington state, students are required to take a one-year course in Washington State history. Something that is always mentioned without fail is the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse, which happened not far from Seattle. In 8th grade, in 9th grade, in 11th and 12th grade, I was shown a video of the bridge resonating with the wind and turning into "Galloping Gurdy". As cool ad cinematic as a bridge collapse can be in a movie, an actual bridge collapsing is terrifying. Which is why, I think, they always end up getting destroyed in movies. As the article points out, however, often the destruction done to bridges in movies doesn't accurately portray the actual amount of damage that would be done to the bridge and the people on it- it's a dumbed down, less-horrible version. I wonder why those decisions were made, if the actual destruction of a bridge that results from real-world physics is actually worse.
I think the weird thing about this article is that if a bridge was to collapse the way it's actually supposed to in a movie, it would actually be far more terrifying for the audience, so I suppose that I am more confused about why they wouldn't at least show the guaranteed end result of the destruction? Perhaps it doesn't paint as pretty/gruesome of a picture if you can't even see where the structure used to stand? However, I'd say that regardless of this, it's a great article to read if only to teach how suspension bridges actually work. I don't think that I was as deeply affected by this article as the person who wrote it, but similarly to how the YouTube channel CinemaSins ruins the effect some parts of the movie, this could potentially take away some of the fun when Godzilla smashes through something.
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