In any animated film, believable physics is essential. What isn’t essential, however, is completely realistic physics. The use of physics can be a storytelling tool just like dialogue, lighting, or staging. Animators can push physics just like they can push character poses in order to communicate the right feeling they want to the audience. Bending or breaking the laws of physics in an animation can bring humor to scenes and lighten the tone.
Universal Picture’s and Illumination Entertainment’s 2010 film Despicable Me is about supervillain named Gru who struggles to out-do a younger, more successful supervillain named Vector by stealing the moon. When Vector takes the shrink ray that Gru needs to get the moon, Gru adopts three orphans named Margo, Edith, and Agnes in order to use them to get it back. Despite being a comedy, parts of the film deal with some sad and difficult themes. It shows young Gru always seeking and never achieving the approval of his mother. It shows the orphan girls living in a depressing, oppressive orphanage with little hope of adoption. It also shows some scenes that could be too violent if not for the cartoon physics. Having the the ability to bend the laws of physics is an important tool to lighten the tone of the film and remove it from reality. Despicable Me purposely changes and breaks the natural laws of physics throughout the film for storytelling purposes and comedic effect.
In the Despicable Me universe, gravity does not always behave the same it does in reality; paths of action for falling objects can be exaggerated and objects that would normally be too dense can defy gravity and float in the air. At the beginning of the film, a child falls off a platform onto a large inflated pyramid in Egypt. When he bounces back up, his path of action arc takes him far above the height of the platform he fell from which isn’t possible in reality. The child reaches a more than lethal height but then lands safely on an overweight man. Pushing the arc to an unrealistically large height and having the child not die in the process is entertaining and relieves the tension created by the dangerous situation. Near the end of the film, the effects of the shrink ray on the moon wear off and it returns to its normal size. This happens while the moon is still within the atmosphere of the earth so it’s very close. Instead of falling to planet, the moon safely shoots up back into orbit around Earth. If the creators of Despicable Me went with the physics of the real world, the story would have ended very differently. Once fully grown again and with its full mass, the moon would have crashed down onto the earth and caused devastating damage and death. That situation would be much darker than the tone that they’re going for, so changing the laws of physics was a good decision.
Forces resulting from actions in the Despicable Me universe don’t always have equal and opposite reactions and characters can have superhuman strength. In one scene, Gru’s elderly mother manages to throw a man across the room when she kicks a punching bag into him. She doesn’t experience an equal and opposite force in the other direction which makes the scene funny. A similar situation happens later in Vector’s lair when Gru punches a oncoming shark right in the face and sends it flying back without Gru experiencing any recoil in the opposite direction. Even though the shark has a much greater mass than him, Gru deflects it as if the shark weighs nothing. This shows how serious and determined Gru is while making the scene humorous. Another superhuman power than Gru has is the ability to survive things like shark bites and explosions. When he’s trying to infiltrate Vector’s lair through a manhole, Gru ends up almost entirely inside a sharks mouth and is then pulled down into the water by the shark. When Vector launches a group of large missiles straight at Gru from close range, he doesn’t die. He emerges from a hole in the pavement looking sooty but unharmed. The cartoony nature of the physics in the scenes makes them funny rather than disturbing to the audience.
In the Despicable Me universe, the law of conservation of mass is not followed; objects can be pulled out of nowhere or from spaces that their mass and volume should not allow. Both Gru’s minions and Gru’s nemesis often pull weapons out of thin air. During Gru’s motivational speech about stealing the moon, his minions pull out large weapons that couldn’t possibly fit in their pockets. Vector does the same with his marine-themed weapons like his fish gun and squid gun in other scenes. Another example is from the scene where Gru is pursuing Vector in his flying vehicle trying to get the shrink ray back. He pushes a button and a large number of missiles that shouldn’t be able to fit in such a small space come out of the side of the flying vehicle and shoot at Vector. The surprise of seeing these weapons appear out of nowhere or from improbable spaces helps to make the scenes funny rather than violent. Another way that the law of conservation of mass is broken in Despicable Me is with the shrink ray. The shrink ray not only decreases the volume of objects, but also decreases the mass, making them lighter in weight. The moon is shrunk in size by the shrink ray, but instead of simply being compressed, it does not retain its mass. It becomes so light in weight that people can hold it. This would not be possible if much of the matter in the moon had not been destroyed in the shrinking process. Making the moon so light that it can be held and transported helps move the story forward and allows Gru to finally hold his goal in his hands.
Despicable Me breaks the rules of physics throughout the movie to make it more entertaining and lighthearted. When the scenes are serious or sad, the laws of physics as we know them in reality are followed; no floating objects or exaggerated paths of action. Then the film brings the spirit of the audience back up using a comedic scene that does something exaggerated or unexpected to make the audience laugh by pushing the rules of physics. If the physics feel right, the audience can suspend their disbelief and accept the unrealistic physics. This tool is an advantage that animated films have over live action ones that don’t use any special effects or computer animation effects.
