There's no spoiler here, and I won't say if the myth was busted or not. I'll just explain the setup and why I think the way it was done did not actually recreate the event they were attempting to prove or disprove.
The test was this: Determine whether, as it's depicted in the movie, Hellboy would be able to pound his fist down on the hood of a fast moving car making it pivot forward around the front axle with the back end of the car elevating and then flip up and over him with the entire vehicle becoming airborne. It would have to clear Hellboy and land on the ground on the other side of him.
To try and confirm whether this would be possible a free falling weight was dropped from a crane on the very front of a moving car so that it would impact the car in front of the front axle. And this is where I became convinced that whether they could make the car elevate and flip or not it was not a true test. The reason I say that is that in the movie Hellboy was standing on the road with his feet planted. He was not falling from the sky like a free falling object. To my mind their test removed the stationary force (more like running into a wall while receiving a quick downward thrust).
So... thumbs down in my opinion on this segment. I like MythBusters and get engrossed in it mainly because (most of the time) they do a very good job of recreating the conditions of the thing they're attempting to prove /disprove. And it has educational value. In this case though I feel they fell way short of recreating the test. That left me disappointed thinking it was deceptively over-simplified so they could recreate it (due to budget constraints maybe). Due to the fact that it was neither educational nor entertaining I rated it 3 out of 10. - Dan
The test was this: Determine whether, as it's depicted in the movie, Hellboy would be able to pound his fist down on the hood of a fast moving car making it pivot forward around the front axle with the back end of the car elevating and then flip up and over him with the entire vehicle becoming airborne. It would have to clear Hellboy and land on the ground on the other side of him.
To try and confirm whether this would be possible a free falling weight was dropped from a crane on the very front of a moving car so that it would impact the car in front of the front axle. And this is where I became convinced that whether they could make the car elevate and flip or not it was not a true test. The reason I say that is that in the movie Hellboy was standing on the road with his feet planted. He was not falling from the sky like a free falling object. To my mind their test removed the stationary force (more like running into a wall while receiving a quick downward thrust).
So... thumbs down in my opinion on this segment. I like MythBusters and get engrossed in it mainly because (most of the time) they do a very good job of recreating the conditions of the thing they're attempting to prove /disprove. And it has educational value. In this case though I feel they fell way short of recreating the test. That left me disappointed thinking it was deceptively over-simplified so they could recreate it (due to budget constraints maybe). Due to the fact that it was neither educational nor entertaining I rated it 3 out of 10. - Dan
