While human reaction time (and ability to actually see a bullet) is the most important factor, force and acceleration are also problematic.
Let’s assume a bullet is fired from 100 meters away at a person with perfect reaction time. Call the muzzle velocity 1000 meters per second. To move (say) 30 centimeters out of the way in 1/10th of second, a person would have to accelerate at 60 meters per second per second, assuming (unrealistically, but what the hey) instant acceleration.
Usain Bolt’s peak acceleration is around one G, and that is from starting blocks, not standing up straight. From a vertical posture, if you want to accelerate sideways at 6G, you have a big problem: when standing, your legs are optimized for keeping you vertical, not for sideways acceleration. If you don’t trust the coefficient of friction (or the structural integrity) of your sneakers, you’re better jumping over the bullet, not trying to move sideways. (Ducking, your maximum acceleration would be one G, unless you grabbed something on the ground and pulled.)
Copland with Stallone did a scene where a gun goes off right by his ear and the rest of the scene you hear ringing with muffled sound.
I think it was Under Siege where at one point a character (I think Tommy Lee Jones) is on the deck of a navy ship when one of the big guns go off. For a few minutes he acted like it hurt his ears - but then he was fine. Of course my dad (who has problem suspending belief) was like, “They put you below deck when the big guns go off. A burst ear drum is the least of your problems if the concussion of the blast kills you.”
If you study the principles of Sinanju, and are born a member of the Superior Race (i.e. Korean) you can develop total bodily awareness and hear the tendons flexing in the trigger finger and know when to move out of the line of the gun’s barrel. Inferior races can’t do that sort of thing, except Remo Williams of course.
I always thought “the one” was a reference to his UID. I figured the 1990s era computers in the Matrix still used 32 bit values and rolled over on every 4 billionth person. The person who snagged UID 1 (ok, technically it should be 0, but whatever) got superuser privileges in the Matrix.
The later movies kind of crapped on this theory, but they didn’t replace it with anything that made sense, so I kept it alive in my head. This also goes with my theory that the Matrix was designed by humans to keep the population alive until the nuclear winter passed after the war that nobody talks about anymore. The whole human battery thing was just a total misunderstanding by the rebels (or maybe propaganda?) that didn’t make sense anyway.
I thought The Matrix would age so well. I watched it again not too long ago. Did you realize that pretty much the whole plot revolves around the landline phone system? So, yeah, it feels dated somehow. Still love the bullet effects.
I know one active Secret Service agent and was neighbor to another. Let’s just say they don’t fit the “normal” psychological profile. Nice people, straight up and reliable, but from both of them I got the vibe that their childhoods had some kind of mean messed up dad figure and they escaped by sheer bootstrap determination to be a very, very good boy. Pretty repressed feeling guys, a sense of barely controlled anger simmering under the surface. But should you need anything, ever, any favor, they are just so true blue. Glad these dudes exist in the world; glad I was not destined to be one of them.
So the Matrix reality doesn’t include cell phones. Given that it’s synthetic anyway, that isn’t wholly unreasonable. Though with 20:20 hindsight it might have been worth throwing in something to indicate “yes, there are technological constraints in place.”
