Batman vs Real Life: Throwing knives

One of the great things about Christopher Nolan's Batman is a sense that he exists in a real world. Gotham City is a tangible cesspool, almost a real place, and its vigilante inhabitant could almost conceivably exist. After all, he's just a man with money and time.

But how conceivable is his skillset? Looking at that clip above, as well as the finer points of various functional martial arts, chemistry, parkour, and advanced driving, one of Batman's most consistent skills is the ability to throw a well-placed Batarang. The design of Batman's signature weapon varies from boomerang to throwing star, but the Caped Crusader's unerring accuracy remains a consistent factor. And this is not a skill that is limited to the Dark Knight; discounting the ludicrous task of assigning some sort of reality to House of Flying Daggers, everyone from Jason Statham's knife-happy Expendable Lee Christmas, to the cast of The Hunger Games has the same keen eye for a thrown blade. So just how hard can it be?

That's what we tried to find out. Along with Filmclubbers and fellow martial artists Emily, Rogan, Nick, Stef, Carrie, Emma, Lucy, Maddie and James, I spent my Sunday afternoon being taught the finer points of throwing blades. None of us had prior experience. Any thrown weapon with three or more points is banned in the UK, so we settled for a more common, perfectly legal (lethal) alternative: throwing knives.

James being taught the correct grip.

Teaching us to throw is Toby. Toby holds two black belts in Kaiso Kickboxing and Taekwondo, and is self-taught in a variety of both concussive and bladed weaponry. He also owns two sets of throwing knives, including this three-piece Nakura set, along with balanced throwing spikes. Unfortunately, due to the lack of budget that this blog has in comparison to, say, Empire, we cannot afford to fork out for a target. A block of wood will have to do.

It turns out that this is difficult. The knife needs to be held tightly between thumb and forefinger, and thrown in a smooth motion while keeping the wrist rigid. Because the knife spins in the air, in order to have the knife stick in the block of wood the throw needs to be not just accurate, but timed in terms of the spin of the knife so that the point ends up facing the wood. This means that the good thrower needs to have two factors in mind when he or she throws: the distance from the thrower to the target (x), and how many rotations the knife must make in order to get there (y). This means the distance, and the thrower's judgement, has to be right on the money, which resulted in much shuffling about trying to find the right marker, while the knives bounced harmlessly off the block of wood we were using as a target. To shorten y, half-rotations are possible, which is achieved by the super-cool 'holding the knife by the blade' grip.

For more info, visit the physics of knife throwing.

Having said all that, there is a very satisfying 'thunk' when the knife hits its mark.

Here's Toby showing us all how it's done by mercilessly slaughtering an innocent Strongbow bottle, while Rogan quotes Predator in the background.

Emily's throws.

In movie terms, this all means that turning around and chucking the knife in one smooth motion is about as likely to stick a thug as it is to miss, fly around the world and hit you in the back of the head. If y doesn't match with x, the knife will bounce off the target's nose. Accurate as the Stath may be, the knife must make at least one full rotation by the time it reaches the target in order to be effective, and that requires judgement almost impossible in the heat of a firefight. With moving targets, the distance is constantly changing, so one must first estimate x from where the target is going to be, then estimate y accordingly. That's a lot of thinking to do while being shot at.

Batman makes things significantly easier for himself in the clip above by making Batarangs with two points. For those who have been following along, that means that judging y becomes much easier due to the fact that the weapon is twice as likely to stick. The more points that the weapon has, the more likely it is to stick, which is why ninja used stars instead of knives. So it's much more plausible that Batman would be able to disarm a thug than Jason Statham would stick a goon, but in final analysis, both require superhuman judgement and perfect aim. The likelihood that Batman would be able to pop one in the barrel of a gun really sort of speaks for itself; if the barrel of an M-16 is designed to fire 5.56mm bullets, to put a thrown weapon in there requires a level of accuracy obtainable only by robots.

To finish, here's a compilation of some of the most famous tossed knives in film. Happy throwing!