Against The Three Point Landing

May 7, 2012

This video is just brilliant.

Hollywood’s ridiculous land-on-one-knee-for-maximum-coolness has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time. When I went to watch The Avengers the other day, Thor’s three-point landing irritated me so much.

From the Avengers

I AM THOR! MY PATELLA IS MADE OF ASGARDIAN IRON!

Iron Man can get away with it because… Well, because he’s in a metal suit. His knees are gonna be fine.

Iron Man

I AM IRON MAN! MY PATELLA IS COVERED BY A GOLD TITANIUM ALLOY!

The thing that really gets me is that Levi Meeuwenberg was Captain America’s parkour stunt double – you’d think that maybe they would have consulted someone who actually does landings like that. But nope, they just went for the maximum cool factor.

Although in all seriousness, Levi probably wasn’t involved at all in that scene. Or this scene.

From the Avengers

I AM BLACK WIDOW! MY PATELLA IS COVERED BY...well, skin-tight leather.

One last clip that annoys me more than usual:

From Tron Legacy

lol I'm just a computer program, don't need no stinking patella

Anis Cheurfa played Rinzler. Anis Cheurfa is a tricker. Specifically, he’s a really really good tricker. He knows how to land. Did the director, who specifically sought him out to play Rinzler, consult him on the practicality of this landing? No.

If you will allow me to briefly go on about what happened the one time I used a three point landing…

I was playing laser tag. It was dark in the room. I was getting shot from three different directions. So I ran towards the nearest railing and speed vaulted it, thinking to land a foot or two lower.

It was about 4.5 feet lower.

The miscalculation of the height, plus the weight of my gun and backpack forced me to one knee and – gasp – I did a three point landing.

Click for source

And you know what: that really hurt. I hobbled to the nearest cover and sat there massaging my knee before getting back up and hobbling back to the game.

Let’s wrap up with a good landing, courtesy of Alexander “BAIT” Bayturin.

And that’s how it’s done.

–Alan

Related posts:

A Brief Tutorial on Practical Flexibility L-sit.JPGThe Utility of a Stump Parkour Generations InternationalParkour Generations Wallpapers

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  • http://mcity.livejournal.com/ Jonn

    In a good deal of examples in the video, it was being done by the characters specifically because it looked cool. Scott Pilgrim? Looked cool. Sucker Punch? Fantasy sequence. In other cases, it’s justified. The Ghost in the Shell example shows a super-strong cyborg who jumps off of buildings on a regular basis, and uses something like a minigun as a close-quarters weapon. Thor? Wonder Woman? Super-durable demigods. Ezio? He’s an old man whose ankles should’ve snapped like a twig. There is literally no excuse for that one other than “it looked cool”.

  • Anon

    I thought Anis did the three point landing on purpose. A lot of people do them on purpose in tricking. It’s called Power Ranger Stance. But when done from falling, that’s just ridiculous.

  • Rafe

    BAIT is awesome no doubt but thats not a particular great landing. he has tremendous amount of spinal flexion which is not good under load, he is not in position to to compress with his knees or hips so his ankles clearly take alot of the impacte as wall as the spinal curvature.