Modern mass culture is full of conventions, that's a fact. We put up with some things, but from time to time we frown with disgust and mentally send sharp words to the creators of the game, film or series. Sometimes conventions really spoil the impression on the viewer or player, and sometimes you can't do without them. These are the important and recognizable features we'll talk about today.
Let's make a reservation right away: let's skip the completely hackneyed topics and look for something more interesting. Yes, in the world of Star Wars, space is filled with the roar of explosions and the roar of engines, although sound does not travel in a vacuum. Yes, in Call of Duty and a hundred other action games, health automatically recovers even after a dozen bullet wounds. But only the lazy did not speak out on this topic. We will look for more interesting examples of logical and physical inconsistencies, which, nevertheless, are justified and simply necessary.
Superheroes from the world of comics have long made their home in movies and video games. And if you can manage without a cloak and mask, it's more difficult without fantastic abilities.
The incredible talents of graphic novel characters are mostly explained more or less convincingly. Adjusted for science fiction, like Superman from the planet Krypton, or fantasy, like Doctor Strange from the Marvel universe. But among the heroes there are comrades whose abilities cause bewilderment even among 100% geeks.
Peter Parker was famously bitten by a radioactive spider. Since then, the young man discovered incredible abilities, and with jokes and jokes he began to play dirty tricks on the local mafia. Flying over New York on a web looked especially cool — this is how Spider-Man usually moved around the city, ignoring public transport.
According to one version, recognized as canon and enshrined in the films of Sam Raimi, Peter's web is an organic product that the hero produces like all normal real spiders. And then the question arises: how can skinny Peter shoot kilometers of web at the speed of an extrusion machine? If the story of Spider-Man claimed even an ounce of realism, then Parker, after a dozen or two released threads, would have to stop with hoarse breathing to recuperate and have a snack. And flies are no good here, the young man needs a huge amount of calories. But then we would lose fantastically beautiful movie scenes! And the Insomniac studio, having tried to simulate the process of actually releasing a web for Parker, would never have become a hit Marvel's Spider-Man. After all, Peter's flights over the metropolis were included in the list of the most spectacular scenes from the PlayStation 4 library.
And a very inconvenient question for figures of popular culture: why does Peter Parker shoot webs from his wrists, and not from, excuse me, his butt, as is customary with spiders? And here the rules of arachnology justifiably went under the knife, because shooting webs from your hands, and even with the signature «goat» from your fingers, is incredibly cool. But weaving a web according to the laws of spider nature is an absolutely dull task.
And if the Marvel stories about Peter Parker are, first of all, stories about the development of a teenager, then the DC universe is darker by definition. If you don't take into account spin-off series like Marvel Noir, Spider-Man treats criminals with care and precision: he never even broke anyone's nose. And the villains in the world of Spider are not particularly bloodthirsty. Gotham is another matter. Here psychopaths are laying out packs of ordinary people in coffins. And here the basic rule of Batman looks rather ridiculous — he does not kill. By strangling some Penguin, Wayne would have saved hundreds of lives. But no, a rule is a rule. And a huge army of Batman fans accepts this rule. After all, the Dark Knight is, first and foremost, a knight, and without maximalism, a superhero comic is generally unthinkable. In most of his adventures, the Bat never killed anyone, even through negligence. Therefore, Batman takes the captured villains to prison, from where they escape with the swiftness of Sonic the Hedgehog.
By the way, artist Frank Miller and director Tim Burton willingly deviated from this rule; their Batman was a rather tough guy. Well, in the Batman: Arkham series of games, Bruce Wayne never killed anyone, at least on camera. Although if you hang a gangster upside down somewhere in a dark sewer or throw him off a roof with a deft blow, it will probably end badly. But who cares about such little things?
Fictional creatures in pop culture, despite all their fictionality, must adhere to certain rules. After all, it is easier to believe in such an orderly, endowed with internal logic and generally realistic fiction. Here, special attention needs to be paid to public favorites, like zombies.
One of the characteristic threats inherent in zombies is the ability to infect their victims by biting or even scratching their nails. This is how the dead join their ranks as carriers of the Apocalypse. But the world of video games stubbornly ignores this biological factor. Moreover, it selectively ignores: zombies infect all non-player characters, and the main characters develop an unreasonable immunity to infection. Moreover, usually the scriptwriters are too lazy to even explain such an opportunity: the central characters of the games simply lose health from bites and blows of zombies, while forgetting to turn into ghouls. This is the case in Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, State of Decay and dozens of other hit games.
At the same time, some developers adhere to the strict rule about zombie infection. Characters from The Walking Dead from Telltale Games and units in the strategy They Are Billions turn into the walking dead. But this exception only confirms a rather strange rule: video game heroes are not afraid of the zombie virus. And this is quite justified: otherwise, all games on the theme of the zombie apocalypse would turn into a hymn to hardcore, harsh and uncompromising. But not everyone will like this arrangement.
Questions also arise — of an intimate nature! — to the favorites of fantasy geeks, the underground gnomes. In almost all products of mass culture, brave gnomes do without women! There is no need to think of any vulgarities, and most often no exoticism is voiced in the scheme for prolonging the gnome family, but you will not easily find a female gnome either in films or in video games.
Even Professor Tolkien, with all his meticulous approach to creating his Middle-earth, did not talk about the female half of the gnomish population. And his colleague Terry Pratchett was quite ironic on this topic. And in games, even in the first parts of Warcraft (but in WoW), even in the recent indie hit Deep Rock: Galactic, gnomes are often presented entirely as stern men.
And this approach should be recognized as justified. Dwarves are not only miners, but also brutal warriors. Yes, of a peculiar physical build and short stature. Such a bright image could quickly crack as soon as writers and screenwriters began to speak out on the topic of the fairer sex.
But the Canadian masters from BioWare spoke in detail about the topic of women of the gnome tribe back in Dragon Age: Origins. No beards or helmets: female gnomes are pretty, stocky, strong creatures. A kind of blood with sour cream. Another rare exception is Dwarf Fortress, but this is a topic for another discussion.
The silent killer, for whom number 47 replaces his passport data, will return to Hitman 3 very soon. The Danish team IO Interactive taught the basic tricks and tricks of their anti-hero back in 2000, in Hitman: Codename 47. The agent deftly fooled his enemies by changing into someone else's clothes, taken from yet another unconscious (or lifeless) body. It was a cool and fresh game mechanic that instantly won the hearts of connoisseurs of extraordinary action.
But you don't need to be particularly observant to stumble over obvious nonsense. Almost always, a tattoo in the form of a barcode is visible on 47's shiny bald head, as it was customary to mark finished products in the Romanian laboratory where Hitman was born. And no matter how 47 dresses up, his tattoo always gives him away. Even wearing hats, like a limousine driver's cap, does not hide the tell-tale barcode. And the killer's main tactic is to hide in plain sight, blend in with the crowd, and pretend to be someone else. And the unusual «tattoo» looks at least suspicious and attracts attention. Sometimes you just want to scream at the screen: «Just bring her down already!»
But the central character of the Hitman brand has developed a coherent and memorable image. The 47 became a style standard for serious action games. A strict black suit, a red tie, that same tattoo on the back of his head. You cannot remove any of the details — the image will fall apart.
If the series about Agent 47 claims to be realistic, then the killers from the Assassin's Creed franchise boldly walk into the territory of fantasy. Assassins use special senses, see through the eyes of an eagle, control arrows with willpower, and have fun in other unusual ways. Their calling card was the Leap of Faith, for which by default no fantastic methods are used, and only courage is required from a member of the Brotherhood.
The Assassin can jump from a great height if he sees a safe landing area below. It could become, for example, a haystack, and in this case there is no particular bewilderment. But often the assassins jump from 15 meters into some tiny cart, where there is literally a handful of hay, not enough for the foal to have an afternoon snack. And if you remember, for example, Assassin's Creed: Unity, then Arno's fall into such a cart is accompanied by a distinct sound of hitting the wooden flooring. But the assassins don't care — they perform such a ridiculous trick from episode to episode. Guided arrows look more convincing, honestly.
But this mechanic has earned its place in the franchise. Anyone who played the very first game of the brand in 2007 probably remembers how unusual, beautiful and impressive Jump looked: the first ten times it was literally breathtaking.
In every second (or even first) action game, be it a movie or a video game, exploding barrels await us. In games, they are usually painted red so that we are sure to notice them. One shot at such a container from a pistol — and a colorful explosion sweeps away another group of scoundrels from the face of the Earth. Usually mafiosi, terrorists, Nazis and other moral corrupters are on duty right next to such barrels, waiting for the hero and his shot. But that's not what's confusing.
A bullet cannot explode a barrel of gasoline or diesel fuel in real life. Such a liquid will not ignite so easily, although its vapors certainly do. Therefore, in reality, a brave fighter against evil must unscrew the lid of such a barrel and stick a heroic hand with a burning match into it. This, however, would be his last feat.
It's not so easy to blow up the gas cylinders that level designers generously scatter under the feet of all sorts of gangsters. A pistol bullet may simply not penetrate a large Soviet-style cylinder, and penetration does not at all guarantee an explosion. The gas will come out of the shot hole with an ominous hiss, and again you will need the aforementioned match and the desire to see your great-grandfathers.
And cars don't explode at all, although they burn out surprisingly quickly. But in action movies and video games, every car is essentially a time bomb.
But let's be honest. Would Call of Duty be any better if the lion's share of the pyrotechnics disappeared? What will happen to legendary series like Wolfenstein if red barrels stop exploding? A considerable part of the fun and excitement will disappear. And there is enough realism on this side of the monitor. Sometimes you just want to live for an hour or two according to the rules of shooters, sitting in a chair with a gamepad in your hands.
When it comes to hand grenades, games and movies sometimes get weird too. They show us the high-explosive effect, that is, the impact of the explosion as such, completely forgetting about the fragments. But in reality, any military instructor will tell you that the main damaging property of a grenade is precisely in the latter. It is for this purpose that the body of the dangerous weapon is made ribbed. But in films, grenades explode beautifully right behind the hero's back, sending him into a painless flight, and in many games, in order to trigger the Game Over sign, they must explode right under his feet.
And this is exactly how grenades are supposed to work in movies and games. In action films this gives spectacle, in interactive action films it gives dynamics. Well, for fans of realism, many games have the opportunity to set a high difficulty level in the settings. Here you have real grenades, hardcore, and «just like in life.»
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Yes, villains shoot at James Bond nonstop, but they always miss. Yes, in John Woo's films, the pistol clip holds a hundred rounds. Yes, in the harsh and adult Cyberpunk 2077 you can double jump, pushing off the air with your feet. But without these conventions our life would become a little more boring. So we'll just say: «These are the rules!»
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