Dwayne Johnson's upcoming blockbuster Skyscraper debuted its first trailer during the Super Bowl, and it looks like the quintessential action film, ideally meaning it will be a blast. But beyond the trailer, there is also a poster out for the film showing Dwayne Johnson's character, Will Sawyer, jumping from a crane to a giant skyscraper. It's a cool enough poster, but the content, shall we say, stretches the bounds of believability and defies all understanding of how physics work. Thus, the internet, as the internet is wont to do, is having quite a bit of fun with the poster. Take a look:
Wow, parabolas and everything. How scientific! As these trajectories show, no matter what jumping tactic Will Sawyer employs, he will at best crash into a floor currently ablaze. That's assuming he doesn't bounce off an unbroken window and fall to his doom. Either way, it's going to be a rough landing. What is not currently clear is whether or not the fact that Will Sawyer is actually the Rock was factored in. After all, Johnson is no mere mortal and likely has the jumping power of at least one and a half normal men.
Yeah, that's pretty much how this would really go; a valiant jump, then a short upward and outward trajectory before a long and precipitous fall. The Super Bowl trailer for Skyscraper revealed that Dwayne Johnson's character is actually a military veteran and he is missing the bottom portion of his left leg. That will certainly not help him make this jump...or will it? After all, this is a movie with a 3500 foot building, so perhaps the Rock's prosthetic leg is more than a stock model. Maybe the prosthetic has a piston function that launches him into the warm embrace of the burning building.
Excellent. The PyeongChang Winter Olympics are starting soon, so what better way to celebrate than to ski jump off a crane and thread the needle into an broken window of a flaming skyscraper? If that doesn't get you style points, I don't know what will.
This may explain the problem. It wasn't a physics miscalculation on the part of Universal's marketing department, it was simply a Photoshop error. The building was supposed to be sideways this whole time and The Rock's character is actually boasting some Doctor Strange or Inception-type building bending abilities.
It will be fun to see if the film in any way addresses the absurdity of this jump or if some factor we haven't seen yet helps Will Sawyer get to the building. I'm guessing Tom Cruise won't be jumping out to catch the Rock even if that's the most wonderfully action-y idea. Ultimately, this is an action movie and it looks to be a fun one at that, blending the Rock's on screen magnetism with a Die Hard-esque story. But let's just admit, Neil deGrasse Tyson is going to have a few things to say about this one. Skyscraper jumps into theaters on July 13. Check out our guide to see all of Dwayne Johnson's upcoming films.
