Can we please stop using this film cliche?


During the filming of a new action film, lead actors Jonathan Majors and JC Kilcoyne tumbled backwards through a glass window after one of them was ‘shot’.

The incident was captured on video obtained by Deadline, which is embedded below. Multiple sources confirm to Deadline that the accident occurred after the window was replaced with an unsecured sheet of tempered glass to be purposefully shattered in a later stunt that did not involve any actors.

Since the tempered glass was only sitting loosely in the window, both the actors and the sheet of glass fell about six feet to the ground. Kilcoyne required stitches “all over his hands” after the incident, sources with knowledge of the incident say.

This trope of someone getting shot and falling backwards and breaking through a glass window is a cliche beloved of action film directors. As I have written before, a bullet does not have enough momentum to do more that cause a human to move back more than an inch or so, let alone be flung back and break through a window. In this case, a single bullet did that to two people.

I know that there are even more egregious errors in the fantasy world of films but for some reason this particular one annoys the hell out of me, perhaps because I know the physics and also because it seems so unnecessary.

Another issue with this film is that in general it seems to be a chaotic production and the crew has gone on strike over concerns about safety and other issues. But the producers are taking a hard line.

While that seems to have been the inciting event for the strike, crew members who walked off the job tell Deadline that it was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of their concerns. Multiple workers corroborated incidents involving props falling onto crew, including a rigged tree branch that hit the set medic.

Deadline also understands that the production required a location change after crew pushed back on the use of a space that was infested with black mold. Producers had wanted to move forward with the location even after a contractor warned that the building was likely constructed with asbestos and should be properly tested. Instead, crew discovered the mold on their own as they prepped the location.

“They didn’t really care about the long-term effects on the crew,” one of the former set laborers told Deadline. “I don’t think it even crossed their minds, because they’re so inept.”

By the time that the crew went on strike late last week, more than 60% had signed union cards affirming that they wanted a collective bargaining agreement via IATSE [International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees]. However, the films’ producers have made it quite clear they have no intention of doing so.

In a new response to Deadline on Friday, Sonnier said: “The entire industry is in freefall due to strikes, and now that their members are out of work, they’re trying to sabotage the few people who are still producing. We don’t negotiate with communists.”

It has always been the leftists and socialists and communists who have fought for improved worker conditions, so calling this group of workers communists makes them part of an illustrious history.

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