Flying or Falling? You decide.

[GaidinDre]

I don't understand the skydiving references. If I were to go along with the argument that he fell faster than Lana because he went vertical, that would only explain half of the scene. After he caught up to her he flipped around to a standing position to cradle her. After that they continued to descend at the same rate although Clark was in a vertical position and Lana was not. Not to mention that Clark has never sky dived before so how would he know how to do that. He was no doubt using his flight ability.

[All about Clark]

Originally posted by HalJordan4184
Yes, he did make a crater when he landed, however, he doesn't always make a crater when he lands, and this was used to show that he was angry, and landing with quite a bit of force, on purpose. The damage Clark inflicted on the car, is consistent with a fall from that height, not from a controlled, slowed, landing. If I jump off a building, and land on a car, it will look like the car clark landed on when i hit. Does this mean I can fly?

I agree with this completely. Galatians sees what he/she wants to see. Once they were together, the fall remained consistent and there was no slowing prior to crushing the car. They also show Lana slightly lower in the landing like Clark used his arms to cushin the landing for Lana. He may have stopped suddenly but she did not.

[HalJordan4184]

She stopped just as suddenly. Even if Clark cradled her fall with his arms, he has to slow over a vastly greater distance than his arms can move. He may have taken an extra .08 seconds to decelerate her, which would still result in a deadly force being exerted over lana's body.

[Merfish]

Originally posted by All about Clark
He was in superspeed mode, so that should create an accelerated fall. As far as I'm concerned, it isn't flight til he does a direction change.

Are you referring to the speed force? if u are, you are wrong, only flash can enter the speed force, clark can just move his legs really fast.

I think he flew, How in Krypton could he have caught Lana whilst falling? I mean really, think about that

during the scene the audio tells all the did the weird slowly higher pitch creepy sound when he was flying down then when he caught her they did the "OMFG" music, HE WAS FREAKING FLYING!!!HE MADE WHOOOOSHING NOISES!!!!!!!!!!

[olliejk]

The first ohhh... let's say oh...a dozen times he did something he shouldn't be able to do without some kind of flying power, I wrote it off as the writers not having any understanding of the laws of physics. I mean seriously, a 200-250lb guy cannot hold down stuff like a helicopter or Supergirl no matter how strong you are. The Supergirl thing is especially funny. If she has Supergirl level thrust...well I digress


In this case it was the level of control he exercised over that fall. No matter how hard he landed, there were SO many things wrong with that if it was just a fall I don't know where to start. No he had to be exercising some kind of control DURING the "fall" even if he smashed the car when he came dow.

Time after time we've seen his, and now I think they are doing it on purpose. There is no way in heck they are just that dumb. I think the deal is that Clark is utilizing flying powers (even if he isn't flying) without acknowledging it. It's not that HE'S stupid. It's that he's refusing to accept his flying powers in the same way he is refusing to accept his destiny (and the same way other fans say "nope..they said no flights no tights 7 years ago and they can never ever ever change it...EVER).

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Clark doesn't need to be older, he doesn't need to absorb more solar energy, and he doesn't need lessons to fly. He just needs five mintues with a good shrink!

P.S. In the early EARLY days of the comics, Superman only had the super-jump thing going on. It was very early on that he began to do strange things like change course mid jump, and hover. It just kind of evolved into flying in the early golden-age. I hope they don't do it on the show, I hope they make a BIG deal of it, and him taking to the air is a water shed event. It could be REALLY good if done right. If TPTB put it off too much longer, however, it will just be stupid (no mater what "rule" they set seven years ago).

[RKryp]

Originally posted by olliejk
The first ohhh... let's say oh...a dozen times he did something he shouldn't be able to do without some kind of flying power, I wrote it off as the writers not having any understanding of the laws of physics. I mean seriously, a 200-250lb guy cannot hold down stuff like a helicopter or Supergirl no matter how strong you are. The Supergirl thing is especially funny. If she has Supergirl level thrust...well I digress


I liked this entire post, but am just quoting one part that I'd like to comment on. It reminded me that Clark has always exercised the ability to change his body's inertia in ways that don't correspond to the laws of physics, unless he is using powers not available to ordinary human beings. To mention just one example, I'm thinking of the show where Alicia was in a car and tricked Clark into catching it as it flew through the air.

It doesn't matter how strong you are, at 200lbs a car flying into you will knock you over, because you don't have enough mass to counter its inertia. So Clark has always had the ability to cause his body to have inertia in ways that ordinary humans can't. If he can cause his body to suddenly have enough forward intertia to counter a car flying through the air, he can cause it to have upward intertia and fly also.

I think the shrink is a good idea.

[TampaVille]

Originally posted by olliejk
The first ohhh... let's say oh...a dozen times he did something he shouldn't be able to do without some kind of flying power, I wrote it off as the writers not having any understanding of the laws of physics. I mean seriously, a 200-250lb guy cannot hold down stuff like a helicopter or Supergirl no matter how strong you are. The Supergirl thing is especially funny. If she has Supergirl level thrust...well I digress


I think we're working toward an issue of semantics here. If what you mean is that INSIDE the show, assuming the show is an accurate depiction of what happens in this fictional universe, that Clark is subconsciously using his flight capabilities... I won't argue against that. If what you mean is that in the real world, the producers are sitting down and having conversations along the following lines:

Al: Wait a second though Miles... that type of rapid deceleration would kill Lana. We can't let that happen! She's our pretty pink princess!!!
Miles: Whoa, you're right. Well... why don't we have Clark tap into his subconscious flight abilities? That way we get around the "no flights, no tights" rule, but we can still use his ability at controlled flight to slow him and her pinkness down.
Al: That would work. What effects will we use to imply that Clark is using flight capabilities?
Miles: None. Let's make it look just like an uncontrolled fall, and still show them decelerating so quickly that it would have to kill Lana.
Al: Genius Miles. Genius.

I find that hard to believe. It's all the more difficult for the reason you pointed out. In Exposed, there was a helicopter taking off, and Clark managed to pull it back down. That doesn't work, for the same reason that Clark could easily do a pull up on a bar attached to a building without pulling the whole building down on top of himself. That wasn't the first time such ignorance of basic physics was displayed though. I forget what season it was, but it was the episode with Byron, the guy that gets all super strong when he's exposed to direct sunlight. I think it was actually Byron in that episode, not CK, who did basically the same thing with a helicopter. It was taking off, and Byron pulled it back down. Unless the implication was that Byron also had subconscious flight capabilities , I think this shows that the producers have a chronic disregard of science on SV. :):)

I won't bother listing other examples of bad science on SV. I don't think anybody would argue they aren't there. And I'm okay with that! I'm not complaining about it for its own sake. It's a TV show about an alien with superpowers... I'm clearly not tuning in because I think it's directed by Mr. Wizard. But it becomes a problem when the production is so unclear that these mistakes can be misinterpretted as implications of something which isn't going on.


Originally posted by RKryp
I liked this entire post, but am just quoting one part that I'd like to comment on. It reminded me that Clark has always exercised the ability to change his body's inertia in ways that don't correspond to the laws of physics, unless he is using powers not available to ordinary human beings. To mention just one example, I'm thinking of the show where Alicia was in a car and tricked Clark into catching it as it flew through the air.

It doesn't matter how strong you are, at 200lbs a car flying into you will knock you over, because you don't have enough mass to counter its inertia. So Clark has always had the ability to cause his body to have inertia in ways that ordinary humans can't. If he can cause his body to suddenly have enough forward intertia to counter a car flying through the air, he can cause it to have upward intertia and fly also.

There will always be issues like that in a superhero show that just don't quite make sense. Here's a Superman/superhero one in general. Even if the superhero is invulnerable, his costume usually isn't. Yet we very rarely see a superhero walk through an explosion/fire and emerge naked on the other side.

I know, this isn't the best example, and it has been dealt with in various ways over time. Early Superman's costume was made of Krytponian material, and was itself also invulnerable. Incidentally, early CK's glasses were made from the glass-like coverings of the dials on his spaceship, so he could heat vision through them without harming them. On Lois & Clark, they made up the "aura effect," saying that his body emanated an aura of invulnerability around him for a couple milimeters. That was also their explanation for why he needed to wear a skin tight body suit, lol, which has frankly always gone unanswered.

At any rate, despite some attempts here and there to explain away that issue, it is for the most part ignored. It's ignored basically because if we REALLY wanted to, we could have some sort of explanation (like the aura effect), but realistically, who cares? There are no superheros in the real world for a simple reason: it is realisitically impossible. We're watching a show about something which is inherently unrealistic. So I'm willing to cut them some slack when they do something which is even less realistic than it would otherwise be.

That's not to say that it's justified. The thing with the car you pointed out, that was an error. It shouldn't have been shown in that way. It would have been a much better scene if Clark had, say, braced himself for the impact, and then skidded backward when it hit him. Stopping the car so quickly would have been no different than ramming the car into a solid concrete wall, and would have killed Alicia from the deceleration just as much as the landing from the building would have killed Lana. I'd have preferred if the writers/producers/etc had been clever enough to write a better scene. They didn't though. So, I'm minorly unhappy that they don't put in more effort, but only minorly so, because the show is already about something which is unrealistic.

[olliejk]

Originally posted by TampaVille
I think we're working toward an issue of semantics here. If what you mean is that INSIDE the show, assuming the show is an accurate depiction of what happens in this fictional universe, that Clark is subconsciously using his flight capabilities... I won't argue against that. If what you mean is that in the real world, the producers are sitting down and having conversations along the following lines:

Al: Wait a second though Miles... that type of rapid deceleration would kill Lana. We can't let that happen! She's our pretty pink princess!!!
Miles: Whoa, you're right. Well... why don't we have Clark tap into his subconscious flight abilities? That way we get around the "no flights, no tights" rule, but we can still use his ability at controlled flight to slow him and her pinkness down.
Al: That would work. What effects will we use to imply that Clark is using flight capabilities?
Miles: None. Let's make it look just like an uncontrolled fall, and still show them decelerating so quickly that it would have to kill Lana.
Al: Genius Miles. Genius.




Actually I do think they are having conversations similar to that. It's not so much "how are we going to do that" as "dude they are going to go nuts over this again". I think they ARE teasing us with almost-flight. Seriously every other episode has some-kind of flight-tease in it. I think, at this point, they are doing it on purpose.

[HalJordan4184]

Dude, they are going to go nuts over this again, can however, mean so many things. The producers, as has been posted, have been so ambiguous, as well as lazy in terms of hints and mistakes with effects, that no one can tell what is a legitimate tease, and what's just unintentional. I highly doubt these guys wanted that to be an example of flight. I truly doubt they had that much forthought about acceleration while falling, impacts, and all of that. They probably just though, let's toss lana off the building, clark will jump over the side after her, he'll catch her, and then we can have them land on a car and crush, but with lana emerging okay, because Clark caught her in time.

[TampaVille]

Originally posted by HalJordan4184
Dude, they are going to go nuts over this again, can however, mean so many things. The producers, as has been posted, have been so ambiguous, as well as lazy in terms of hints and mistakes with effects, that no one can tell what is a legitimate tease, and what's just unintentional. I highly doubt these guys wanted that to be an example of flight. I truly doubt they had that much forthought about acceleration while falling, impacts, and all of that. They probably just though, let's toss lana off the building, clark will jump over the side after her, he'll catch her, and then we can have them land on a car and crush, but with lana emerging okay, because Clark caught her in time.

I'd go so far as to say that they probably said, "And while they're falling it will look like he's flying, even though he's really just falling." I doubt even they would miss that, at least after seeing the final version with special fx and all. But I agree, I very much do not think they were saying, "He'll be using partial flight. It will sort of be flight." I think they intended it for him to be falling, period. Falling which might look like flying in the sense that he was moving through the air in a single direction. Falling which might look like flying in the sense that any object dropped off a building and shown on close up might look to be flying. But falling, nonetheless.

[Tyrade]

Anyone else think its ironic how they guarantee that Clark won't fly, but they'll spit all over the Superman story by making Martha Kent a senator and have Lex and Lana get married?
And I hate to say it, but Chloe has run out her story.
Her and Lionel are the only ones not talked about in the Superman story, and it seems this season that she's just sort of standing around most of the time.

[Zacho]

It was definitly a controled fall. It would have made a good twist if he didn't.

[Mr. T]

Clark was definitely falling. It was a cool scence with the two of them looking into each other's eye's, not even worried about the outcome of the fall.

[pizzaguy19]

Lana is the one STOPPING him from growing up and flying, she's not going to be involved in his first flight scene.

[jesslang]

Man! ..i thought he was going to fly ...and then once he caught lana he like just....landed on the car...and yea.......no flying.....darn...

[alejandrita439]

i think he was falling :/

to rescue lana .... arggh

[27CDruid]

If you believe Clark just displaying skydiving on a pro level then believe. I on the other hand think he unwittingly displaying some control over himself whilst midair. When he changed from facing down to the catching lana position he did it with to much accuracy and control.

No clark didnt fly. He did however use his powers to change his position, slow down before hitting the ground and maybe, just maybe increase his speed more than it should have been whilst going down.

[Raistlin]

So Clark basically jumped, did a dive down, caught Lana and 'stood upright' in the air and landed on the ground. Landed isn't even the word for it, lol. More like he controlled a crash landing. :D

:lol: :lol: :lol: