My favorite depiction of super-speed in a movie is Quicksilver's scene from X-Men: Days of Future Past:



What is your favorite depiction of super-speed in a movie?

Before I opened the thread, that was my answer.

Yeah, that's the only acceptable answer : "Time in a Bottle" or "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)".

That said, credit Superman : The Motion Picture for being a true pioneer.

Agreed on the quicksilver scene, I can't even think of something that would rival it.

But that Superman the Motion PIcture Smallville sequence is just so great.

Thread inspired by Black Adam I suppose? But not sure why we need a thread when the answer is given in the OP.

“Bullet time” from The Matrix should at least get a mention.

Superman reversing the Earth's rotation in the first movie was pretty cool even if not sound scientifically.

Sub-Zero nailed my pick right off the bat.

While I enjoy the visuals/execution of the Quicksilver scenes, it’s always bugged me that they’ve essentially got it backwards. Moving that fast would cause what Quicksilver experiences as a second to be experienced as a longer time by those around him. The movies flip it and he experiences as several minutes what they experience as a second or less.

Call me dumb but I don't get the distinction, isn't everything in slow-mo from his point of view? I always thought it was cool when Mark Waid did it in his Flash run.

^ Still looks better than this:

Makkari in Eternals gets my vote. I love that they show her pushing off rocks and sliding through the sand - feels natural and not just "real fast on level ground".

No. Think about it this way. Let’s say he’d have to move across a room in .1 seconds to be moving too fast for people to see him. He would experience that as .1 seconds moving incredibly fast, not a couple minutes of moving at normal speed while everyone else is moving incredibly slow. Again, I recognize that it’s just magic super powers for a movie and enjoy the visuals they come up with, but it’s the opposite of how it would actually be. A-Train accidentally blasting through someone without knowing it in The Boys is a more ‘realistic’ approach to how one would experience it.

And I'm still not sure why the more conventional depiction is more or less valid than the "slow down time" depiction. Yes you'd have to have like super reflexes and super brain processing power so you don't smash into walls and stuff, but having everything around you slow down as you enter the speed force or whatever seems like a valid enough interpretation of super speed to me. Is there some principal of time I'm missing here?

Honestly not trying to troll here, just never heard this as a complaint before.

I understand what you are saying. If I run down the street versus walk down the street, I do not perceive things to be moving slower around me, I perceive myself to be moving faster. But that's because my brain is only set up to perceive the passage of time in one way.

If someone possesses the ability to move at super-speed, perhaps their brain is able to perceive time in a different manner. For example, in the Quicksilver scene, he is not just moving his body at super-speed, he is manipulating objects.
If I want to get a glass out of the cupboard, set it on the counter, and pour lemonade into it from a pitcher, my brain has to be able to process and perceive the actions I am performing in real time, otherwise I would drop the glass on the floor or pour lemonade on the counter.
So, for Quicksilver to precisely manipulate objects, his brain has to be able to process what is happening as fast as his body is making it happen.
And so, it is possible this depiction of super-speed is correct as it depicts how Quicksilver perceives the world when he is moving super-fast. Because his brain is mutated, he perceives himself moving at regular speed and the world around him as slowing down. The exact opposite how of my unmutated brain perceives the world when I run down the street.

I have a certain fondness for The Wizard of Speed and Time...

Wow, blast from the past! Loved this short film. I'm trying to remember where I might have seen it as a youngster. Must've been broadcast somewhere...

I appreciate Tim Roth running across campus in The Incredible Hulk, before he goes full-abomination. It's simple but believable.

Again, I think it's fine to just wave the comic book magic wand for the movies. But I believe (and certainly welcome correction if I'm misunderstanding or misapplying the laws of physics) that when an object moves that fast relative to the objects around it, the objects around it experience a longer amount of time than it does.

For the time effect you are talking about to be noticeable, the speed of the moving object has to be very, very, very much faster than Quicksilver is moving.

The time difference on Earth versus an object orbiting the Earth at 100,000 mph for a year would still amount to less than a second. Since Quicksilver is moving faster than the speed of a fired bullet, he is going more than 1000 mph, and I saw one youtube analysis that says he is moving at 4 million mph. But usually when the effects of time dilation are discussed as making a practicable difference between observer and mover, the mover is going at the speed of light, which is almost 700 million mph, and the amount of time is much more than a few minutes.

And if you want to think about the real science of a person moving at the speeds Quicksilver moves, you have to question how his muscles are able to generate the force necessary to achieve that speed against air resistance, and why his clothing and hair are not pulled off.

The song is messing it up. Without the song, what are they are depicting makes sense as what he would experience compared to everything else in super slo-mo. But you are correct, he can't be listening to a couple minutes of that song.