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The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe

Lilo and Stitch is a cute animated film that that takes place on the Hawaiin Islands. A little girl named Lilo takes on the friendship of an alien that was exiled from its home planet, and happened to land on earth. She thinks this alien is a dog because she found him at a pound, but she later finds out that he is more than just a pet. The majority of this film takes place on planet earth, but there are a lot of laws of physics that are unrealistic, but for the sake of entertainment and beauty, they are accepted, and well done. The law of gravity, the weight and strength of the aliens, and the law of motion in relation to nature, are all different from what we would see in real life.

There are many of examples throughout the film that show that the laws of gravity do not always apply to the aliens. One scene that really amazes me, is when Stitch and the good aliens try to save Lilo from the bad alien. They are flying high in the sky in their alien jet planes and Stitch falls out of one plane, and lands on the other alien plane, without getting one scratch on him. There are no splattered guts, no injury, no broken bones, and not even a crack in the plane’s windshield. Stitch appears to be perfectly fine even though he fell what would be many stories down. Now the other odd thing is that just a few seconds later, he falls off of that plane and lands, or I should say bounces, off of one mountain in the background, on to another in the middle-ground, and the then bounces on to the street in the foreground, and skids along the ground. Once again, Stitch has no visible injuries. He does appear to be unconscious for a few seconds, then he is in a quick little dazed and confused moment, but he quickly snaps out of it thanks to a frog character that helps brings him to. In real life, he would have most likely died after the first fall, and he surely would not have bounced from one mountain to another mountain. Especially if they were miles away from each other. Gravity would have pulled him down so quickly, that he would be dead. Another scene that defies the law of gravity is the part when Stitch is underwater and punctures the air-tank of two of the other aliens. The aliens get thrown out of the water into the air, but they land by bouncing off into the distance on the surface of the water. There goes that bouncing affect again, but it makes for a good laugh. One of the aliens that gets thrown in the air is really fat, and there is no way that the pressure of the air could lift him. There would have to be a much more greater force of air pressure in order for it to lift the big alien and the other alien together.

The aliens in this movie have much more strength than humans do, and they appear to be very heavy. Stitch is very small, he is about the same size as Lilo, but he is very strong. He drags the employee at the adoption store as she tries to pull him back, and then he climbs up on Nani and causes her to fall down. Stitch can pick up extremely heavy objects like cars, big rig trucks, and over-sized aliens. He is just a powerful little guy. He is basically unbreakable. The bad alien in this movie is Captain Gantu, and he is about the height of a full grown palm tree, and he seems very solid. The strange thing is that when he walks, he does some damage, but something of his size would cause a lot more damage. Jumba is another one of the alien characters, and he is really big too, but we never really see any damage caused by his size. There is one part where he is straddling a palm tree as he spies on Stitch, but the tree only bends and does not break. When he gets off the tree, it springs back into place.

The law of motion in relation to nature is almost nonexistent in this movie. If you really look at the scenery and the background art, you’ll notice how beautiful it is. The artists used water color to paint these landscapes. The only thing they didn’t do is make the the trees and flowers in the background move. The only time they really move is when they are being interrupted by someone or something, like the shooting rays of a ray gun. Since they are in Hawaii, the atmosphere by the ocean is usually really breezy, but there is no sign of a breeze. The clouds in the sky barely move, except in a couple of scenes. One of those scenes is when Lilo and her sister Nani are sitting on a hammock. You can see that there is wind blowing, because the clouds are moving and the flames on a nearby torch are blowing. Now when the camera pans down to Stitch, who is sitting on some steps beneath the hammock, the flowers next to him are just still, with no sign of movement. It makes for a pretty still picture, but for a movie it looks a bit odd.

Lilo and Stitch is a good entertaining movie. Even if though it is not true to life, it is still an excellent film. When you think about it, cartoons and animations are not a depiction of real life. They have a lot of exaggeration in them, and that is what makes them funny and fun. Seeing a character bounce off of a mountain like a ball, is much more funny than seeing them splat their guts all over the place. The cartoon world is different from the real world, and the world in Lilo and Stitch is definitely different from our real life human world.