Yes. Can't think of a reason not to.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
While true, I believe in the rule of cool. If people reacted in film to being shot the way they would in real life, gun fights would not be exciting to watch.
"Additionally, in a hand-held firearm the shooter or weapon must deal with a backward force equal to the force of the projectile being fired; in a non-recoiless operation like a movie small arm, this would mean the gun would hit the shooter with enough force to also throw him fifteen feet into the air on firing, with the addition of all the energy the bullet lost due to friction on the way to the target."
Are we sure this is right? A bullet's velocity (and therefore, momentum) is largely affected by the design of the gun it's fired from, so the push you feel while firing a gun isn't necessarily equal to the total force propelling the bullet. The same cartridge fired out of 3 different guns can have 3 vastly different ballistics profiles as well as differences in felt recoil despite the same explosion taking place. Interestingly enough, the gun that produces the most momentum in the bullet is likely to be the one that affects the shooter the least.
As an experiment, let's take one of the most famous handgun cartridges in the world, the .357 Magnum. Fire it out of a full-sized revolver, and you'll deliver a bullet with a large amount of power with a fairly manageable push from the gun on your end. Fire it out a snub-nose and you get less power (particularly at range) and a pretty nasty kick from the gun. Hold the bullet in between your fingers and strike the primer and you'll wish you hadn't, but the bullet itself (from what I hear) probably wouldn't even pierce the shirt of someone standing 10 feet in front of you.
Whether or not a bullet is capable of blowing someone backwards (or sending them spinning), I don't think the fact that the shooter doesn't have the same reaction upon firing the gun is proof of anything.
I just tried to make this addition and had it rolled back. In response to the comment about Iron Man blasting people backward with his thrusters:
"Not sure this is a valid example of the trope. Firstly the badguys are getting hit by a blast of what seems like plasma, not a bullet. They are getting thrust focused at them rather than a small fast-moving object going through them. And secondly, Stark is wearing a powered armor suit which presumably weighs hundreds of kilos and amplifies his strength enormously... which explains why he himself is not flung in the opposite direction. Consider this is a miniature example of the Mythbusters classic episode where they briefly launched a car (and a bus..) using the backwash from a jet, which wasn't budging an inch."
The editor claimed it was a "justifying edit" which is apparently over-eager fandom of the material in question, but I honestly don't see how it fits the trope. The trope is about the gratuitous misapplication of gun physics to create visuals that simply aren't possible. The Iron Man example has the throwing part, but it doesn't involve a gun at all and the physics are at least somewhat plausible. If we're going to allow every instance of people being tossed around by at least vaguely plausible physics as an example of "Blown across the room", then where are the car collisions and hurricanes in this trope?
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The objective of wiki editing is to maintain a narrative voice that implies all the examples was written by the same person. If the example in question doesn't fit the trope, just delete it and give a brief explanation as to why in the edit description box. Repair Dont Respond.
See you in the discussion pages.
Why does Stark's suit "presumably" weigh hundreds of kilos, exactly? Marvel says it weighs 108. That's more than light enough to be blown backwards by the resultant force of a 'repulsor blast' that flings people across the room like ragdolls; physics doesn't care what your blast is made of, for you to transmit energy in one direction you have to have an equal and opposite reaction going in the other direction; doesn't matter if it's plasma or a bullet, getting enough energy to someone to throw them across a room requires you have enough energy in the other direction to throw yourself across a room. I reverted it because you are making things up out of thin air to try to justify it. We see him fire a big blast that throws people across the room but doesn't do the same to him. The physics of the situation are never gone into, so there's no reason to believe it's for any reason other than Rule of Cool. Thus, this trope.
Go read Justifying Edit. Then Tropes Are Tools. We're not saying the movie is bad for including it, we're saying there's a scene where a guy fires a weapon that sends people flying, without any real in-universe explanation being offered for how it doesn't do the same thing to him. You can hardly argue that's not the case; your grounds for saying it's not an example are straight-up guesswork based on how you think the scene makes sense given certain assumptions (at least one of which ignores Marvel's own word on the matter). Including every fan's ad-hoc rationalisations of how "this scene makes sense, honest!" is exactly what we're not about.
Edited by Evilest_Tim It is shameful for a demon to be working, but one needs gold even in Hell these days.
Actually it's not pure guesswork, the film itself demonstrates the thing's weight. Most telling, he manages to drop like a rock through several floors of his house by landing on the roof. He also manages to bury himself chest-deep into sand in an unpowered fall using the "mark 1" suit, leave a massive crater when shot out of the sky, and completely crush several cars when thrown during the end fight. All of which is the film telling us the suit is very heavy. But I guess if Marvel has said the suit is only 108 kilos I can't argue anything except that the film-makers screwed up because the visuals don't match the canon weight.
I read the "Justifying Edit" page when you reverted my original edit and I don't see how it applies. Still don't. I never said the movie was bad, nor suggested that you or anybody else thought so. I'm not defending the film as as a fan nor getting upset about its use of tropes. I only said that it wasn't a good example of this *particular* trope because there were specific reasons why it didn't fit. And I still don't think it's a good example but apparently nobody agrees, so I'll let it go at that.
If something isn't an example, though, you really should cut it, not add an explanation of why it's not an example. That, I think, is the important part, here.
Edited by Duckay
I think you've mistaken what the trope is actually about, too. You say it's about "gratuitous misapplication of gun physics to create visuals that simply aren't possible," but really, it's more about using the ability to move objects as a shorthand for a weapon's power, especially as a way to do so without needing things to get gory. Certainly it's usually unrealistic given that's not what guns actually do, but the repulsor blasts threw people through the air for the same reason a shotgun blast would; because it both looks cool and provides a visual demonstration of power without the need for blood and guts.
It is shameful for a demon to be working, but one needs gold even in Hell these days.
Does it count as this trope if in a videogame it only happens the cutscenes ? I think it should, but I just want to be sure. Thanks for the help, people.
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