and he goes into the tornado
and then he ejects hey i'm rob scratch
mitchell
a third generation fighter pilot and
director for aviation scenes
watch mojo asked me to use my expertise
and break down popular flight scenes
from film
today we're looking at superhero movies
all right let's see what we've got up
first
oh yes x-men 2 i remember this
so obviously tornadoes are trouble
in any airplane uh even though fighter
jets are really really tough and built
strong
flying through a tornado would have been
instant disaster the g-forces alone
probably would have
15 20 30 g uh it's hard to even imagine
the force it might have ripped the
airplane completely apart the wings off
and so that would have been a little bit
artificial that it flew through and went
into somewhat of a
slow spin as it came out of that tornado
that would have been trouble
and he goes into the tornado
and then he ejects if you're
in the airplane you're probably much
safer than if you
eject in a tornado that would most
certainly destroy you
and parachutes are not very tough so i
wouldn't want to be anywhere near those
winds in a parachute missile alert
and these missiles are flying that
air-to-air missiles
fly at extremely high velocity three to
four mach they're
they're traveling ground and just
seconds are going thousands and
thousands of feet and that jet
was just a few thousand feet behind the
x-men plane when it fired
those missiles would have been there
within a second or two
and so the way they play it out here for
dramatic effect which is fine but
in reality those missiles would have hit
that x-plane
really quickly
boom it hits the x-plane of blackbird
blows a hole into the canopy
or just behind the canopy or the cockpit
area
but they show the jet going into a bit
of a spin
it didn't really affect anything
aerodynamically on the airplane so i
doubt it would have lost control like
that but
yeah i need to make these things a
little bit dramatic right
oh next up iron man because i'm staring
at one right now and it's about to be
blown to kingdom come
that's my engine f22 is one of my
favorite fighter jets of all time
i love this scene overall but there's a
little inaccuracy right now so
we hear one of the fighter policy and
show us that he has a lock meaning a
radar lock
and then he fires his missile and then
which is really cool
iron man says he's launching flares
which is cool because that's a counter
measure against missiles but
flares are used to counter measure
against heat-seeking missiles when in
this case they've actually used a radar
missile so what
uh what iron man needed here is he
actually needed what's called
chaff which are small metal filings and
thousands upon thousands of them
are released and increase a false radar
signature
that confuses a radar missile so iron
man needed
chaff not flares at this point
but love the flight modeling that
they've done with the the jets here some
really good
good cgi work
great sense of flight dynamic and energy
going to guns
too close for missiles going to guns
be re-engaged keep going
iron man saves the day he's a good guy
after all
oh and here we have vulture and
spider-man going at it
awesome flying rig that vulture has
like to have something like that myself
so i really like this retro reflective
panel business
a uh they've taken some you know
inspiration from nature and how octopus
perhaps
blended their environment but they did a
cool job with this
kind of nice touch
yeah i like the way they did i've done
the aerodynamics of this
it would have been even for spider-man
i've been tough to hang on at four or
five hundred kilometers an hour
flying back in the engines things going
in engines is never good and and
certainly with i can't believe that with
vultures
wing part going into there it would have
destroyed that engine but it probably
wouldn't have popped out like this like
a
a cork in a in a bottle they would have
exploded
if that much damage had occurred oh my
god
so spider-man sees this crippled craft
going towards the city
and he does something cool here so
spider-man
clearly knows something about
aerodynamics well spider-man has the
wherewithal that he knows that he needs
to change something on the wings to turn
the airplane he's trying to steer it
away from the city
he actually shoots his web to the flaps
and not the ailerons the ailerons are
more on the outside of the wings and
those are the things that actually
go up and down and turn the airplane and
in fact he used the flaps and those are
what are used just to go down
and actually slow the airplane for
takeoff or landing so
he's got the great idea the right idea
with the wrong execution in this case
get him on board i'll call it in yes the
dark knight rises
the plane hijacking scene is one of my
favorite all times a lot of practical
flying in this
and some cool effects and stunts just
love the flying environment they picked
these hills over scotland it's just
gorgeous
beautiful light first one to talk
gets to stay on my aircraft
no they're really shooting this airplane
this is a uh this is an actual airplane
flying scene this is not cg here
which i like i respect practical flying
in in movies that's
of course what i do
so for the pilots watching this they'll
probably notice a couple things if you
look at this white airplane the hercules
airplane
the flaps are down those are the the
flight controls at the back of the wing
and they're lowered and those help the
airplane fly slow so what likely is
going on here
is that they're probably shooting this
with a helicopter so these airplanes
have to fly pretty slow
i dare say this hercules it's a pretty
big airplane pretty heavy airplane
it's probably at the low end of its
flight regime it's probably going as
slow as it would like to go
right now so we've got these four dopes
on a rope
jumping out of the back of the airplane
the hercules airplane the pilots are
flying way up front
and they can't see down and aft they
might have some communications with
what's called a load master who might be
looking at the back of the ramp
but steering these dangling dopes on the
rope
would have been very very difficult and
to fly them towards
the actual cia airplane would be
immeasurably difficult
you know i love this scene where the
wings tear off as this hercules airplane
pulls a cia airplane out of its normal
flight regime
well in truth at those speeds that
they're trying to
suggest the airplane wings would have
tore off it's unlikely in fact if
anything
the force of that airplane being
captured if in fact they could hold that
cia airplane with with those bolts
might have caused very difficult flight
control for the hercules airplane
the engines were running on the airplane
it would have been pushing that hercules
airplane down would have been very
difficult to control
we had so much force to tear off the
wings but somehow those four guys were
able to hold on to this
slippery fuselage so a little inaccuracy
there
but there again the filmmaker in me just
loves it looks
cool right calm down doctor
now is not the time for fear
that comes later
super cool effect dropping it away like
with those explosive bolts
and so that technology exists to do that
but again
you know a little bit artificial being
able to hang like there but now
they have their final dilemma how do
they get these back guys back on the
airplane
that's a tough fish to reel in
one thing that people don't realize
about airplanes is that
the skins of these airplanes are
actually quite thin
and fragile so even though superman has
great strength
and can lift things he in this scene
he's shown pushing against the top of
the airplane to push the shuttle off
if he had to exert that much force he
likely would have pushed right through
the top of that airplane
through that thin skin so a little
artificial there
in that regard but superman does
something cool here it's in a left spin
but he goes to the right wing
and he starts to pull on the right wing
this actually makes a lot of sense so
superman knows how airplanes work he's
not just a guy that flies around
almost has the spin stop now but tears
the wing off
that might have been a bit arched those
wings are so strong the struts on
airplane wings i think he would have
been able to keep pulling on that and
get it out of the stall
but hey it's awesome and in the movie
right for dramatic effect and then here
we go another wing which i kind of like
because
there's a lot of fuel in these wings and
he flies through it and explodes
with all the heat and kinetic energy of
him going through it i buy that there
was an explosion there so i kind of like
that
it's coming down it looks like it's
about a thousand feet away this
airplane's coming down at probably 500
maybe 600 miles per hour tremendous
speed tremendous kinetic energy
coming towards the earth and superman
has to push this airplane and stop it
this is an interesting part of the scene
and
in one hand i really like what they did
where they show the
the nose of the airplane collapsing a
little bit as he pushes against it
and then that ripple effect as the skin
sort of ripples towards superman as he
stops the airplane
in truth and as we know the skin of
these airplanes is actually quite thin
including the nose
so as superman would have pushed there
with an airplane that's going
maybe 600 miles per hour with that much
kinetic energy
he would have likely pushed right
through the nose right into the cockpit
maybe even right through the airplane
to stop it like that so a little bit
artificial and
i've actually had an incident where i
hit a bunch of
ducks and those air those ducks went
through the airplane skin like
cannonballs at the speed i was going
and it wasn't even going as fast as this
airplane would have been going
in its dive here so it's kind of cool
points that they thought about the fact
that it
crashed but in truth you probably went
right through the airplane to stop it
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