Today we’re analysing injuries from the fight scene between Neo and The Merovingian.
BROLL Bullet Stop
The Matrix trilogy is one of my favourite movie franchises of all time. I hope the Matrix
Revolutions can live up to the magic that the Wachowskis created in the first three
films.
This fight scene from the Matrix Reloaded encompasses a lot of the things I love about
the action sequences in these films: incredible fight choreography and stunts that toe the
line between realism and fantasy, wider camera angles and longer stretches without cuts so
you can see every move the actors make. And of course: a couple injuries that are just
begging for us to analyze them…
By this point in the trilogy, Neo has settled into his role as the one. As Trinity and Morpheus
rush off to protect the Keymaker, Neo is left to face the Merovingian and his cronies by
himself. But in his calm collected manner he says:
“I’ll handle them”
The Merovingian is taken aback, but we all know what Neo is capable of.
BROLL fight intro
Six simultaneous opponents, a large staircase, plenty of breakable objects and an unlimited
selection of weapons… The stage is set for a whole lot of fun. As a medical professional,
I would advise participants in this type of melee to be extra careful, especially when
another combatant picks up a large medieval flail. Our first patient gets hit with an
elbow to the bridge of the nose and then struck in the side of the head by his teammate's
mistimed swing. He collapses seemingly unconscious and with the flail’s spikes lodged securely
in his head.
Neo strikes a henchman with an elbow strike in the forehead knocking him backward. We
could expect that this might momentarily stun the henchman, but it does not appear that
the blow was hard enough to render the henchman unconscious. Likewise, without the force required
to knock the henchman out, it would be unlikely that this blow would cause a fracture. Although
there is a suture line in the middle of the forehead, where two bones of the skull have
fused during development, the forehead is quite robust and resistant to injury in most
cases. However, while a backhand elbow strike might not be problematic, a blow with a bowling
ball sized flail might be, especially if it has 3 inch spikes protruding from it. Judging
from the manner in which the flail stuck to the side of his head as he fell unconscious
to the floor, I would think that it was safe to say that at least one of the spikes had
perforated the skull case in the side of the head. Obviously, this would be an open fracture
of the skull, where the bone, and in this case, the brain, were exposed to the environment
outside the body. Which in real life, would be bad. A three inch spike embedded in the
skull would also imply injury to the brain tissue itself. Laceration of the brain tissue
or parenchyma, would be associated with intra-cranial bleeding of some sort, and without prompt
medical attention, would prove fatal.
Weapons continue whizzing and whirring until Neo blocks a vicious sword strike with the
edge of his hand. Were he not the one, I would expect his hand to be: all kinds of jacked
up after this blow. If this blade were sharp, I would actually not expect Neo to have a
hand left at all since a full-force blow with a bladed weapon would easily cut through the
small bones of the hand severing the fingers from the hand relatively cleanly. While an
orthopedic trainee, I was involved with a case where a patient had been injured by a
machete in a fight. He recounted that during the fight he felt like he had been struck
in the hand with a bat or a pipe. Being outnumbered in the fight, he and his friends had run to
their car and drove away from the fight. It wasn’t until they were driving away in the
car that he realized his hand was really hurting. When he looked down at his hand he saw that
his fingers had been cleanly amputated by the machete. He was forced to drive back to
the scene of the injury so that he could collect his fingers to bring to the hospital. On the
other hand, were this blade not sharp, I would expect Neo’s hand to be brutally fractured
by the blow at the level of the 5th metacarpal, between the fingers and the wrist.
But this is Neo we’re talking about.
BROLL jump to second level
But you know what, we’ve gotta recognize his opponents. These guys aren’t exactly
regular joes either. This trident wielding man eats a very clean Twin Sai combo and shakes
it off within a few seconds. And Circle Head takes a sword slash to the nape of the neck
without skipping a beat: A sword blow to the back of the neck would normally be expected
to be an incapacitating, if not lethal injury, depending on the depth at which the blade
had penetrated. Superficially, this would result in only a laceration to the back of
the neck. Bloody, but not deadly. A bit deeper, and you would impact the paraspinal muscles
on either side of the spinal column and the posterior elements of the spine itself. Bloody,
painful, and unable to pick your head up from off your chest, but still not deadly. Any
deeper than that though, and Houston we have a problem. Deeper penetration would result
in an injury to the spinal cord itself, and at this level, it would cause paralysis and
quite possibly rapid death as well as result of disruption of control of the diaphragm.
Neo is forced to resort to more dramatic means to incapacitate his attackers. Neo runs Ponytail
man through with a blade in the gut and then kicks him through a marble banister and off
a balcony of 10 to 15 feet. After landing on his back, Ponytail could expect a significant
road to recovery.
Were he even to survive, he would have to deal first with the penetrating injury to
his abdomen. Based on the location of the blade, he would be most likely to have injured
the small bowel, or intestines that are looped centrally within the abdominal cavity. The
average length of the small bowel that is coiled together in that space is about 22
feet or 7 metres, so it is easy to see how it could be punctured. Additional structures
that could be injured would include the large bowel, the bladder depending on whether or
not the henchman had taken a bathroom break before the fight, the stomach, the gall bladder,
the pancreas, or the major vessels of the lower trunk. Several of these organs are filled
with food in various stages of dissection. In the body, food belongs inside the GI tract,
but does really, really poorly outside of it, while still inside of the body. Laceration
of any of these organs with a blade will offer a pathway for food contents to spill out of
the GI tract, into the periotoneum. This is a potential source of peritoneal contamination,
either with food contents and digestive enzymes, poop in various stages of formation, or simply
just bacteria. None of these is good for you and all require immediate medical attention
and surgery. Of course, this is not the only concern for this henchman as he would have
to contend with the consequences of the fall as well. Fortunately, he lands on the ground
with his feet first before rolling backward to his back. This would focus most of the
brunt of impact to his feet and lower extremities potentially sparing him from more devastating
injuries. More specifically, his calcanei or heel bones. With a sword protruding from
his belly, this henchman would be more focused on that than he would be on appropriate landing
techniques so his impact with the ground is a great opportunity to fracture one or both
of the heel bones. Here the calcanei would likely be crushed from the impact with damage
to the body of the calcaneus itself and possibly also the sub-talar joint above. With falls
from height, the floor and the body above behave like a nutcracker, squeezing the calcaneus
between them. Next up would be his left wrist which strikes the marble floor heavily as
he rolls backward. The manner in which his wrist strikes the ground is known as a FOOSH,
or a fall on an outstretched hand. It is associated with a dorsally displaced distal radius fracture
and is characterized by a dinner fork deformity at the level of the wrist. The next point
of impact would be his left elbow which connects shortly after his left wrist. Just as the
floor and the tibia crushed the calcaneus on impact, so too would the floor and the
humerus act like a nutcracker on the olecranon sandwiched between. The olecranon is commonly
fractured by this mechanism. So assuming that he survives being skewered in the belly, he
will also have bilateral calcaneus fractures, a wrist fracture, and an olecranon fracture
to deal with as well. May I have your attention please. Trauma Code in Bay 4. Trauma Code
in Bay 4.
And yet the rest of the crew can’t wait to get some.
BROLL they jump down
Neo does the brunt of the work in finishing off 2 of the last three of the Merovingian’s
cronies. Here they are getting clapped several times in the neck and head by Neo’s long
blunt weapons. They can look forward to: contusions in the neck and back of the head at the very
least. But with any luck on Neo’s part, they would also suffer fractures of the posterior
elements of the cervical spine. Painful and likely to limit the mobility of their necks
afterward, but unlikely to kill you and unlikely to compromise the stability of the cervical
spine unless the facets of the vertebrae were also injured.
And then: more friendly fire.
Slick hair glasses guy is incapacitated by a giant spikey maul to the chest. Blunt force
trauma to the chest with an iron spiked pineapple is generally not good for your health. This
type of impact would result in potential injury to the chest wall superficially, the ribs,
or the mediastinum. At the level of the skin we would expect to see lacerations associated
with spikes of the maul penetrating the skin. Deep to the skin we expect to see fractures
of the ribs and the sternum. If undisplaced we would anticipate contusions of the lung
tissue only underneath. However, if displaced, we might see lacerations of the lung parenchyma,
with associated pneumothoraces, hemothoraces, or hemopneumothoraces as well. Regardless,
any one of these injuries, would make breathing tremendously difficult and would make further
participation in the fight nearly impossible. With the integrity of the chest wall compromised,
then henchman’s ability to expand the chest cavity and generate negative pressure within
the cavity would be limited. Translation? Inspiration is SOL. Likewise, the ability
to compress the chest cavity to create positive pressure to expel air out of the lungs would
also be limited. Read? Expiration is SOL also. And, generally speaking, if you can’t move
air into, or out of, your lungs effectively….you’re in trouble. Add a leaky faucet that is constantly
dripping blood into the lungs or chest cavity to tis mix, and well…you better hope they
bring your character back for the sequel, if you know what I’m saying.
Moments later, the white suited friendly fire perpetrator gets a taste of their own medicine.
Of course we don’t see where Neo’s strike lands, but we can assume it isn’t pretty.
From the Merovingian’s reaction it looks like Neo has finished the job in a cringe-worthy
way. Perhaps he: crushed the henchman’s coconut with his spiked pineapple. Almost
sounds a bit like Fruit Ninja. But with the force of the blow that Neo generated I would
expect that there would be no surviving the impact of the blow delivered by the maul.
The henchman’s watermelon would be fully crushed with brain contents exposed to the
outside environment. The henchman would suffer irreversible brain damage and would likely
die instantaneously as this type of injury is not compatible with life. Damage to the
brain would be too extensive for even simple, autonomic functions such as breathing and
circulatory rhythm. And certainly a spectacular way to put an exclamation point on the finish
of this melee. Game. Set. Match.
I hope you enjoyed my analysis of this epic fight scene from the Matrix Reloaded, and
that this video adds to the hype for Matrix Resurrections. Once you’ve had a chance
to see it, let me know if there are any scenes you think I should react to.
Once again that’s been a word from Dr. Chris, not your everyday ortho.