Mission Impossible 3

Mission Impossible 3

In the movie Mission Impossible 3 there are a lot of scenes that just don't make to much sense when it comes to looking at the physics behind them. These scenes take the what seems impossible and makes it possible hence the title of the movie. Even though these scenes make look cool and convincing in the movie, in reality none of these stunts would have really been possible to make. In this I will be looking at three scenes and the physics behind them and state why the scenes do not make sense if they were to be done out in the real world.

The first scene that we will be taking a look at is the scene where Tom Cruise is on top of a tall building in Shanghai and wants to swing across to another building. The question that needs to be awnsered is "is it possible for Tom Cruise to swing from the taller building to the smaller building?"
When looking at this problem there are several quantities that you have to look at. One is the height of the building, next is the angle that he must swing at, and lastly the speed that he would need to swing over to the other building. The height of an average skyscraper is about 262 feet or 80 meters however the building being jumped from is a bit taller so it is about 90 meters. Also the angle at which Tom Cruise wishes to swing at is about 45 degrees. When jumping from one skyscraper his speed is another issue. Tom Cruise will be falling at about 53 m/s which is the average speed of someone falling from a height with air resistance. When you take all of these into account is it actually possible for him to make the jump. I believe the answer is no because there are a couple inconsistencies like how does he swing over if he jumps straight down, and how does he have enough speed to swing all the way over, and also once he makes it over how will he stay on top. 

The next scene that I would like to analyze is the scene where Tom Cruise is running through the city to find the building his love is in. In the movie we are told that she is over a mile away from where Tom Cruise is currently at. One mile is about 1609 meters which while most people can run a mile preatty quickly Tom Cruise runs it in about a minute or two even with e\people and traffic getting in his way. An average mile time for a normal human is about 10 minutes while about 4 to 5 if you train yourself to be able to handle it. While Tom cruise is a great agent I don't think it was possible for him to run at 30 mph and reach his destination in time. He would have to run double to triple the average human speed in order to reach his destination and that doesn't even consider him having to stop for people and traffic.

The last scene that I would like to analyze is the scene where Tom Cruise base jumps from to low of an altitude and ends up perfectly fine. A typical base jump is anywhere from 150 meters all the way up to 600 meters yet Tom Cruise does it at about 80 meters. For example if you were to free fall from 150 meters up you would hit the ground in about 5 seconds. Considering that Tom cruise is half that height at 80 meters he would hit the ground in about 2 and a half seconds. In the movie he waits about that much time but manages to get his parachute out and still have plenty of time to safely hit the ground below. The movie blows time and speed completely out of proportion and there is no way that Tom Cruise should have been able to base jump at 80 meters and survive the way that he did.

In conclusion while Mission Impossible 3 is a good movie and impossible is in the title, what was done in the movie could not actually have been done in a real life scenario. However since it is Hollywood anything in a movie is possible even if it doesn't make sense and breaks the laws of Physics.


Comments

  1. Prof. Chris FragileSeptember 8, 2019 at 10:35 AM

    In the future, you should consider adding images or even clips from the movie relevant to the scene(s) you are analyzing. This makes things easier and more enjoyable for the reader. There are lots of grammatical mistakes in your post; this isn't a writing class, but you should take more pride in anything you publish. You came up with some interesting quantities that you thought might be relevant and ways to estimate them (e.g., the terminal velocity of a human), but you failed to use information that was given to you in the movie. For example, the movie stated that the building Hunt jumped from was 226 meters tall, way higher than your estimated 90 meters. Also, I don't see where you gave the physics of this movie a rating.

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