Skyscraper looks like it has everything you could possibly want from a movie: gunfights, a very tall building, an ornery Noah Taylor (the poor man’s ornery Ben Mendehlson), and a Dwayne Johnson with nearly all of his limbs.
Appearing very much like a near-future Die Hard, the movie stars Johnson as Will Sawyer, a former crack FBI agent turned security consultant who pursued the career change after losing his leg in an explosion. It looks absolutely ridiculous, in the best way possible.
But there’s one giant flaw with it: the composite image used for the promotional poster doesn’t appear to conform 100% to the laws of physics. As writer James Smythe pointed out on Twitter, it appears there’s no parabola that could be described via the three points of his jump off, his current position, and his destination.
https://twitter.com/jpsmythe/status/959561969618620416
As others pointed out, it’s not just his trajectory that’s the problem:
So I did some science.
Assuming that there is no “jump-off” (which seems to be optimal here)
We can determine that the Rock would need to leave the platform at 12.7 meters per second (appr. 28.4 mph)
For comparison, Usain Bolt’s fastest recorded speed is 27.4 mph. pic.twitter.com/GruWcbtEAN
— ✨New New Year New Christian✨ (@ChristianBedwel) February 3, 2018
A fool might look at this and say “you dumbass, they’ve just rearranged the elements of the picture to account for the portrait orientation of the poster“, but other, wiser people have come up with much better explanations for how the Rock used his one good leg to hurl his meaty body into the opening.
https://twitter.com/sachwarah/status/959581818600284160
How easily you forgot about the Olympics. pic.twitter.com/PVR70YmwwJ
— McMike (@ItsMcMikeTime) February 3, 2018
Sweet Jumps Johnson #DwayneJumpsStuff #Skyscraper pic.twitter.com/xHDNSC5aJa
— McMike (@ItsMcMikeTime) February 4, 2018
Warning: SPOILERS
A bird will fly by just in time so the Rock can land on him and then bounce into the building. 🦅 pic.twitter.com/B6RgjRIpoX
— Coram Deo (@Coram_Deo__) February 4, 2018
Guess you’re gonna have to check out the movie to see if the Rock spectacularly hurtles to the ground, instantly dying, mid-way through the third act of the film.
