Superheroes from Marvel and DC assist with their abilities. Sometimes they were born with them, gained the power accidentally, or use complex technology for it. A physicist explains in a video how realistic some scenes from the movies actually are.
What kind of video is it? On their YouTube channel Insider, Business Insider regularly invites experts to showcase various movie and series scenes to them. The experts then explain how realistic or scientifically accurate a portrayal is. They did this, for example, with the action from John Wick.
In a YouTube video about Marvel movies from 2019, physics professor Jim Kakalios explains how realistic some scenes from superhero films actually are. He himself is a comic book fan and has even written an entire book (The Physics of Superheroes) on the subject.
In the video, he discusses, among other things, the first Iron Man:
The Iron Man Suit Has 2 Problems
What does Kakalios say about the Iron Man suit? A part of the video focuses on the Iron Man suit from the hero’s first film. The gold-titanium alloy that Tony Stark later uses to solve the icing problem, he finds not very realistic. It would mainly be used in our world in dentistry.
Most of Tony’s technology does exist in our world, with one exception. He mentions exoskeletons, coatings, and rocket boots. The major problem, however, is the power supply. In Iron Man, his small reactor in his heart provides the energy of 3 nuclear power plants.
Currently, this is impossible in size. Fundamentally, the suit would work as long as there is a huge and long cable that permanently supplies the suit with power.
Another quite realistic thing according to Kakalios is that Tony never presses a button for his attacks and his boots. Through his helmet, Tony can perform actions solely with his thoughts. Kakalios explains that there are universities developing helmets that can enhance thoughts and transmit them to another device. He gives the suit a rating of 9 out of 10.
You can see even more scene analyses here:
A Scene from Spider-Man is More Realistic than You Think
What about other scenes? In the video, Kakalios responds to other scenes from the Marvel Universe. One of them comes from Ant-Man. He is not that thrilled about it. He criticizes mainly that it is never properly explained how the size of atoms changes when Ant-Man gets bigger or smaller.
A scene that surprisingly is rated as quite realistic comes from Spider-Man 2. In an iconic moment, the neighborhood hero saves a train by stopping it with his strength and webs. He gives this scene an 8 out of 10.
He calculates how strong the tensile strength of Spider-Man’s webs must be to avoid breaking. He arrives at a value of 1,000 megapascals (the value for tensile strength). Real spiders can reportedly reach a tensile strength of 1,200 megapascals, according to Kakalios. The Industrial Journal indicated a value of 1,100 megapascals in 2005.
In the first Avengers film, there is a scene where the actually weaker Captain America blocks a hammer blow from Thor with his shield and knocks the god away. The physicist also rates this scene quite positively.
Aside from the fact that vibranium does not exist, the shield works quite realistically with its properties. He notes that the comics are more plausible because there the shield consists of steel and vibranium, giving it several properties. He can block Thor’s strike because the vibranium in the shield absorbs the energy and converts it into light. Vibranium is a perfect sonoluminescent material.
As unreal and superhuman as many scenes and fights in superhero films may seem, they can be represented quite realistically, at least if enough is explained in the films. There are indeed consultants who are knowledgeable about such topics.
Kakalios himself has been a consultant for films like The Amazing Spider-Man or Watchmen. Historical films and series can and should also be as accurate as possible for many fans. Series like Game of Thrones or The Witcher were evaluated by an expert in sword fighting: Expert in sword fighting explains how well Henry Cavill fights as a Witcher
