Grappling with the Superhero Grapnel
How much of a comics nerd am I? I grumble about heroes’ grappling guns being unrealistic… at least for the superheroes that are claiming to be possible.
Meaning Batman. And Daredevil, and the idea that “skill over power, rooftop-dwelling heroes” don’t default to flying, they traditionally get around the city by swinging between the buildings.
Grapnels – the Same Old Line?
For one thing, Mythbusters busted even fast-grappling up to a roof. Yes, a gun can shoot a grappling hook (they used tripod-launched ones back on D-Day), and they do make “ascenders” to zip you up the line. But the simple spike Batman‘s used since Tim Burton’s movies to stick into any wall and hold his weight… what’s that supposed to be? And Daredevil’s got the worst design of all, a simple weight that always wraps around a target tight enough to hold him, and then comes loose a moment later.
It might not bug me so much… except that these “gritty, realistic” heroes are stealing moves from the guy who actually had a reason to pull it off, Spider-Man. When they’re supposed to be human.
Stop a moment: if you think about swinging from rooftops, what’s the first thing that ought to come into your head? One hint, that first Spidey movie scene where he tried to web-sling:
SLAM!
It’s all on YouTube. (Though they left out that moment where Peter’s limping home thinking “I really must be stronger than human, I’m still alive.” Or maybe with the George of the Jungle theme stuck in his aching head.)
That’s the basic problem of using a grapnel line to do more than climb: you’re throwing yourself at a wall. So there’s just no way a hero can swing far with one grapnel—he’d need two, to start toward one wall and zigzag off to another and onward, like that movie actually showed for Spidey’s second time up in the air. Plus, those lines would need just-not-human science to instantly attach to anything and to spit out line after line (without hauling much weight) so he wouldn’t be stuck in midair. Not something one billy club’s good for, Mr. Murdock.
Hooked on Grapnels
To be fair, the “heroic swing” probably started with movies about pirates (with ropes dangling from a mast) and swashbucklers (chandeliers), followed by Tarzan and his vines. Because if the setting justifies a—lucky!—hero finding a line already attached and dangling over open space… well, turning gravity itself into your propulsion looks cooler than just about anything.
And then comics, and then animation, built on how easy it is to draw a hero swinging along a hundred feet up. Plus, any kind of mobility is the fastest way to bring a hero into the action, with a one-panel nod to how visually awesome he is before the fireworks fly: “while on patrol, our hero spots—”
Yes, it’s comic book characters. Is there really a point to arguing about whether a human can cheat basic ballistics when he’s already likely to wade through five thugs with guns, and when the other heroes do actually fly? But… fists can hit faces, swinglines can’t not hit the wall they hang from, if it’s one line. If we lose track of the boundary between human and superhuman feats, it’s sloppy storytelling.
In fact, live-action superhero stories tend to show more respect. Of course that’s making a virtue of necessity; when every backflip from a flagpole costs effects money (and possibly blood) instead of ink, heroes like Daredevil and Arrow tend not to be so casual about it. Come to think of it, I don’t remember too many of those live heroes on a random patrol blundering into a major villain either; there’s more respect for good guy and bad both planning their moves and trying to catch up to each other on their terms.
Build a Better Grapnel (or Don’t Bother)
Could a grapnel work, at least for a single swing? I wonder if you could make one with a clamp, with teeth made of say industrial diamond, so you could fire it at a building’s corner or any kind of ridge and it dug into it on both sides? (The harder part might be building something into the clamp to work the teeth loose when you were done.) A hero could zip off the street, but not swing and keep swinging—instead of sweeping the city for crime he’d have to know where to look, like Batman’s skills and Daredevil’s senses already have covered. Still, the classic swing from one close-by building down through a window or warehouse loading bay could still panic a roomful of mobsters.
But, there’s a part of us that wants to blur the lines; even the Dark Knight Trilogy had a weakness for it. Christopher Nolan’s the best thing to happen to Batman in decades, but he does tend to be… generous with Bats’s mobilty. The Tumbler solves the Batmobile problem (what does the best car on the planet do in traffic? same as every other car, not a thing!) by letting Batman ram through everything on the road like one of his villains drives. And that gliding cape… it laid all the groundwork (so to speak) to making sense in the most awesome way, except that a cape just isn’t going to catch enough air to carry a man, and anyone who’s seen a hang-glider knows that. They were so close, couldn’t they have just said locking the cape into glider shape also unfolds an extra ten feet of cape, and we get an instantly-iconic image of “the Big Bat” in flight?
–And now we’ve got Attack On Titan giving soldiers rapid-fire grapnels they control with their sword hilts as they dive at maneating giants… okay, points for reaching a new level of sheer coolness. And no story with thirty-foot giants is staying that close to physics anyway; we’re just amazed the humans last five minutes in what’s normally a job for a giant robot. (Hint: they usually don’t last that long.)
Honestly, I’m starting to appreciate the simple Arrow approach to getting around. Oliver uses the occasional grapnel arrow (never mind how it sticks well enough to hold his weight), but his team mostly race around the city on something that can get where they need: motorcycles. Backed by a van, a simple unmarked van, as their mobile base.
Some things are cool. But it means something that I can believe this one.
