Conversation

Rewatching Matrix Revolutions. Realizing something has always bothered me. The squid-like machines move like they’re underwater rather than in the air. They’re in underground air but aren’t underwater. But dynamics look lighter-than-medium. Avengers I has the same problem.
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I’m not sure of my details, but most marine animals are either neutrally buoyant are they? I imagine the air-breathing mammals and birds like whales and penguins do some buoyancy regulation? Even if they’re heavier than water they’re not THAT much heavier.
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Anti-gravity is a fair point, but then why are they “swimming” tentacularly for propulsion? Even underwater thrust+control is more efficient. In air, it’s a lousy way to move. It just doesn’t look right. t.co/Dez9mke923
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These are the things I’m talking about. No matter whether it’s EM levitation or antigravity, the form factor and morphology is off for a heavier than air machine in the air. There’s a reason no birds look like squids.
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Here’s the Avengers Leviathan. Even worse. Nothing this big should move through the air like this. Clearly it’s got anti-gravity and propulsion. The sinuous serpent-like motion has no possible function. Snakes move like this for a reason that doesn’t apply
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Oddly, atmospheric flight designs in spacecraft don’t bother me as much. Partly because many sci-fi spacecraft also enter the atmosphere, like the space shuttle. Partly because even in vacuum, direction of motion affects things. Partly because humans inside add constraints.
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But physics regimes differences could be milked for plot points much more than they are. Like Ender using the arbitrariness of “down” in space to create tactical advantage, because everybody is oriented on “doorframe is vertical”
Scenes inside the matrix are generally better in all 3. They explicitly play with the “the characters know this is made up physics within a physics engine that you can bend/twist” premise. They flip between magical action and mundane physics as a function of mental state.
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The Neo/Agent climactic battle is an operatic setpiece that works that way. They cycle among magic fantasy physics, superhero physics, video game physics, stylized martial arts physics, and real physics. At least 3-4 kinds of inertia in evidence.
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Replying to
hmm this is entirely the point of first movie in the Matrix trilogy too cf Trinity to Neo in the famous bullet scene (still my favorite to this day, esp bc saw in trailer and had no idea what it was) saying "You moved like they do" [this reminded me, just a little, of Petra too]
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