On Thursday, I took my daughter to the movies and we watched “Mission Impossible 8: Final Reckoning” which as my dear readers will be aware of involves an extensive under water chapter.
This leaves the theoretical diver with a number of questions regarding in particular the physics and diving shown. WARNING: Spoilers ahead!
Tom Cruise on the unter water set.
- Why did they give him a dry suit and a prototype rebreather but forgot to give him fins? This makes him almost helpless in free water. He was lucky he basically fell on the submarine and did not miss it by a few meters which would have ended the mission immediately.
- What is the depth at which he finds the submarine? I would think the Arctic Ocean is a few kilometres deep which makes it totally unsuitable for diving. On the other hand, in the final total it looks like not more than 20-30m which would make this whole decompression thing (and the prototype special rebreather) pretty much pointless.
- Why did they put lights inside the full face mask to make sure he is constantly blinded? Why is the visibility so good and where does all the ambient light come from? (OK, a movie taking place for 15 minutes in complete darkness does not seem to be too promising)
- The submarine supposedly exploded in 2012. Why is there still air inside? And once Agent Hawk opens the latch, why is the water only slowly tickling in? At any reasonable depth, I would expect the thing to be filled with water in the blink of an eye and crushing any human on the way.
- To enter the torpedo tube, why does he have to take off his dry suit? And why does he use his knife rather than the zipper? Why can’t he take the rebreather with him? I am sure, the marine built it to fit into a torpedo tube.
- The inflatable decompression chamber does not look like it could hold any significant pressure. And why is it built so big it can accommodate a romantic tete a tete? Why is he only one jump cut away from flying again on a plane?