Film Theory: Dear Sonic, You SUCK at Running!

Before we get into the meat of this episode, here's a quick little

theory

: You know how back in February Paramount announced a merchandising deal for official Sonic shoes with Puma. How the movie makes you feel very emotional when Sonic replaces his old, worn-out shoes with his own. The iconic red pair that Puma brought you doesn't so subtly nudge you to buy a new pair of shoes, man, wouldn't it be cool if advertisers and movies turned to I don't know to reveal that kind of product placement and content aimed at the youngest? Viewers, as well as online content creators, have to, uh, anyway, inequality and government regulations aside, sure this scene may seem like blatant product placement, but the reality is that Sonic I've actually been in need of a new pair of Pumped Up Kicks that most

running

shoe manufacturers recommend for a long time. replacing them every 300 to 500 miles or 300 to 500 miles, and according to competitive runners and trainers, it's rare to go more than 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) in a solid pair of shoes before they start to fall apart.

Now I mention that because in our last episode we calculated that the blue blur ran 1100 miles and that sprint to the Pacific Ocean and back, plus the extra miles he travels when fighting Robotnik means he's long overdue for a replacement pair. by the time they get to San Francisco, that's assuming I was starting the trip with a new pair of shoes to boot, so hey, maybe it wasn't just a blatant shoe stopper, maybe it was just the movie trying to be factually accurate and a cheeky shoe stopper. Hello, welcome to the Internet. To

film

theory

, the show that, ironically, has made more

sonic

videos in the last year than our sister channel, Game Theory, seriously, between making

sonic

videos here on

film

theory and Marvel Strikeforce videos on game theory, it seems that the lines separating these channels are just getting blurrier every day, so to say that the Sonic movie was better than expected was an understatement, it probably won't win any awards, hell, who knows at this point, maybe it will. do considering the number of movies with delays or canceled release dates at At this point, heck, it could win some awards by default, Best Picture Oscar winner for 2020.

Sonic the Hedgehog wasn't going to come out for a movie anyway. anticipated digital release this week. I wanted to talk about it one last time because maybe it was just me, but didn't you think it was weird the way Sonic's shoes had holes and they didn't have holes? Obviously, that's perfectly normal. I know what I thought was strange was where the holes were in the shoes. And you? Every time I have used them. through a pair of shoes he has always been in the heel and yet a big plot point in the Sonic movie is that he has holes in the toes of his shoes.

I mean, that's what allows Doctor Robotnik to scan Sonic's fingerprint and find out what he's dealing with. with some alien creature, Sonic is malfunctioning. I mean, far be it from me to lecture the blue blur about how he should run. He's out there

running

at over a thousand times the speed of sound while I'm here huffing and puffing after more. than a light jog, he clearly doesn't need to follow any running advice for me, but seriously, Sonic is doing this all wrong. What's going on here and what information does this give us about Sonic's overall running technique? living thing would actually be faster if it chose to run in a more efficient manner for any other character, we could probably start by looking at their running animation and not have to resort to this type of observation to get an idea of ​​how they run, except for the sonic movements . so fast that at 24 frames per second the film won't be enough for us to capture the full race cycle of it.

I mean, depending on the frame you're looking at here, it looks like Sonic hits the heel or the forefoot, let me explain what. By this I mean that in the running world there are several schools of thought about the correct way to run. When you run, you can land with your forefoot touching the ground with the ball of your foot first or you can land with your heel touching the ground. First of all, the fact that the Sonic shoes are completely worn out at the toe is highly indicative of the forefoot striking or toe running approach and you'll see that's interesting because that's not actually the preferred method for elite competitive runners;

Runners who compete to win in marathons mostly prefer the Heel Strike Method, one of the main reasons for this is that running shoes have a heel designed specifically for that type of approach, for example, take a look at the Nike Vapor Fly shoes and you will immediately see that the heel part is much thicker and when you rest. flat, the toe hasn't even touched the ground, you'd be running with a pretty uncomfortable gay if they tried to land you toe first in these types of shoes. Can't the clip again notice how the runner's heel actually extends at first as if he is about to hit the ground before the runner steps back and hits the eel first.

Just put the elite runners he'll hit because that's what the best running shoes today are designed for. These types of running shoes improve runners' speed by filling the heel with foam that gives the heel a little bounce, allowing the runner to bounce off the ground better. The same idea behind the Air Jordan, which literally has an air pocket in the heel, much like an inflated basketball, will bounce better than a flat one. A running shoe heel. Made with the right materials will give the runner a better bounce than if they were running in a flat shoe.

Lately the idea of ​​having air bags or foam padding and the heels of shoes has reached extreme levels, those Nike Vapor fly shoes that I showed them are built with special extra-thick Zoom X foam cushioning that, according to Nike calculations, makes runners 4% more efficient. Now, that percentage may not seem that important, but if you're an elite competitor trying to set a world record, that kind of extra efficiency could be enough to shave seconds or even minutes off a marathon record time and you know, that's exactly what he managed to do, in fact, 4% has caused the vapor fly that was dominating the world of competitive athletics in May 2017 Olympic runner Elliot Kip shogi ran a marathon wearing the Vapor Fly shoes and set a record of 2 hours, 1 minute and 39 seconds, beating the previous world record by a whopping 1 minute and 18 seconds, which may not seem like much, but when you do it.

We are talking about marathon race times which is a big difference from the previous record in 2019, although this time he broke the record again by running the marathon in under 2 hours, his time 1:59 40 in very fast, can we Really take a moment to recognize it? how impressive is a real human being running a 26.2 2 mile marathon in 2 hours. I mean, that's the equivalent of running a mile in 4 minutes and 34 seconds and then maintaining that pace for two whole hours, most of us can't. even run a mile or heck, even a single lap at that kind of pace. I mean, I know there's an old saying that it's a marathon, not a sprint, but it almost feels like these people are running non-stop for two hours, so the kind of performance that would make our friend Sonic proud, but again He did it wearing those vapor fly shoes that have led the entire sports world to ask if they are Jewish, it sounds like it was a joke or a line from an old Nike commercial and well, is it the shoes, it has to be the shoes , there's a line from an old Nike commercial, but it's also a very real question that's happening in the sports world right now, which has caused Elliot's line of steam flies and Elliot's world record marathon time. kept drowning a set while wearing them. will become the center of controversy, according to Sports Science journalist Alex Hutchinson on the podcast boxes recode, which, if you haven't heard it, is really fascinating.

The five fastest men's marathons in history have been run in the last 13 months, all by runners wearing paper flies, don't act soon, it will be too late because world records will continue to fall and then you will be in a situation where, if they try to restrict it, it'll be like, well, then all the times in the last five years or whatever illegal shoes have been used in quotes, maybe Nike's fears of this kind of controversy are exactly why when They started testing the steam fly prototype in real competitions in 2016, actually dressing them up to look like others. types of running shoes no joke, they were disguised shoes for the first year of their existence again from Alex Hutchinson during that same podcast once Nike had these prototypes and they were pretty sure they were, they started handing out these disguised prototypes that They were dressed up to see each other. like other shoes and then at the Rio Olympics in 2016, the top three finishers in the men's marathon all wore these prototypes disguised as a shoe that no one had ever heard of and the winner of the women's marathon was also wearing a disguised shoe. prototype of these shoes, seriously, how wild is it that people are setting world records with some kind of futuristic zoomx super foam running shoes, that people are talking about banning the shoe for being too good, and that the shoe company I actually have to disguise the shoe prototypes.

To secretly sneak them into competitions, the point of all this is that yes, shoes do matter and what they are made for is heel strike, to give you a little extra bounce with each step, if Sonic forefoot strikes or runs with the fingers. We see, he seems to be giving up a big lead, does that mean Sonic is actually running incorrectly? Well, you don't necessarily see that all of this comes from the world of competitive racing, where people try to shave a few seconds off their world record. time and that 4% extra efficiency is important, but there are some runners who take a completely different point of view: the idea that forefoot striking is actually a healthier, more natural way to run;

It's a big part of what's driving the momentum toward barefoot running. There is so much momentum in recent years that people are choosing to run completely barefoot or wear running shoes with flat soles and unpadded heels specifically designed to simulate a barefoot running course. A study in the Journal of Applied Physiology examined the force exerted by people running barefoot. on a treadmill and discovered that when landing on the toe, a graph of the force experienced by the runner's body was a smooth curve, but when the heel struck there was a large peak in the force curve, that peak was not It's just an unexpected jolt to your body.

Every time you land, it is a potential cause of injury, but it also disrupts the runner's natural softness, the bounce of the heel as it hits the ground and the force of the runner pushing into the ground occur at slightly different times, altering the actual career movement. of a human runner's body, they most likely won't notice the difference, but given Sonic's incredible levels of acceleration, he is exerting much more force than a normal human runner would. Just some quick napkin calculations here, but reusing some of our Numbers from the previous episode during Sonic's race towards the Pacific Ocean, he accelerates to a speed of 490 1.7 meters per second squared and if we go with his canonical weight of 35 kilograms or 77 pounds, that means you're exerting 17,000 209 Newtons of force, that's three. one thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine pounds of force, which is 53.2 times his own body weight, compared to the fact that human runners push themselves off the ground with a force that peaks at about two point five times their body weight.

Sonic's legs push with over 20 times more force than a typical runner and considering that fact, it's obvious why Sonic prefers to run on his toes and rely on the power of his own legs rather than kicking his heels and feeling that jolt. extra every time your foot. lands, then Sonic is running incorrectly, as strange as the toe holes seem to me, no, it looks like Sonic is running in the easiest and most natural organic way a two-legged humanoid can run. Nike, you may not like the fact that I am broadcasting this message to the world, but this is the ideal way to run, at least if you are a mobian who is capable of pushing the ground with over 3800 pounds of force every time.

You take a step as far as we humans, although you keep bouncingon your foam pads my friends or not since you know you're supposed to be inside right now so just watch the Sonic movie again with the hashtag with me because what else is there to do right now ? Play Doom Eternal. I guess that's just a theory anyway. Oh, fear of the game, no it's not, it's a film theory, thanks for watching. I can also say how strange it is that the toes of his shoes are worn out but they show the heel of his sock and it turns out that one is worn out.

I just think it means the socks need to be stronger all around.