Mission: Impossible Masks: Oh, I love this one! What a great myth to test. It's such an archetype in so much fiction, not just M:I, and it's cool to see an exploration of how well it would (or wouldn't) actually work.
Of course, they busted some elements of it right off the bat, since the mask-makers had days to work on it and a whole shop full of professionals, rather than one guy putting a mask together in hours, or sometimes even minutes, on M:I.
Also, sometimes M:I did it better than others. Often the masks were shown to be made of multiple pieces, which would be more realistic than a full-face mask, with more movement possible. Though sometimes it was inconsistent -- you'd see a mask assembled in pieces and then pulled off as a single unit. And at least in the pilot, they established that Rollin Hand was brought in because he already bore a facial and vocal resemblance to the guy being impersonated -- which didn't work once they made him a regular. Later in the pilot, when Rollin impersonated team leader Dan Briggs, he hid his eyes behind dark glasses and barely spoke, because the mask wasn't as convincing and the voice was wrong. As the show went on, they paid less and less attention to realism. Toward the end of the first season, there was an episode wherein a villain managed to pull off a mask impersonation for days, eat through the mask, sweat through the mask, and even receive electroconvulsive therapy through the mask, without the slightest compromise to its integrity! Try testing that myth!
And how cool is it that they had Launchpad from DuckTales as their acting coach? That was a nice surprise.
Interesting test at the end there. Worth noting that Kari began to suspect something was off much sooner than Grant did. I wonder if that was a gender thing -- women tending to be more attuned to people and their appearance -- or if it's just that Grant as an individual is more oriented toward objects. Or maybe it's that he was focused more narrowly on the task he was given and wasn't noticing other factors.
I think it's a given that the full-face mask is of limited usefulness. What I would've liked to see them test is a more plausible impersonation scenario -- find actors who resemble Adam and Jamie in bone structure, build, and voice, put them in multi-piece prosthetics so they can have facial expression, and see if they can fool people who know the genuine articles.
Firearms force: The merry-go-round thing from the movie was ridiculous right up front. Busting it was a foregone conclusion. I mean, even aside from the unlikelihood of putting the merry-go-round in a spin by shooting its railings, the shrapnel from the bullet hits could've perforated the baby and done the sniper's job for him. The whole thing was busted on the first shot, and all their subsequent efforts were pretty much just filling up airtime. The mask myth was great, but this one was lame.
But the result for shooting a gun across the ground was surprising. I didn't actually expect that to work. Kind of impressive.
EDIT: And the hosts were surprised too. The Discovery site has "Aftershow" videos with the Mythbusters answering viewer questions (I guess from Australian viewers where it's already aired???), and they said they had a whole bunch of shop tests set up for the gun-shooting myth, all of which were scrapped when the myth worked so perfectly first time out. I guess that's why they wasted so much time on the merry-go-round.
Ooh, and in the M:I Mask Aftershow segment, Adam and Jamie say they do want to revisit the myth with more modern, precise prosthetic techniques! I look forward to it.
Of course, they busted some elements of it right off the bat, since the mask-makers had days to work on it and a whole shop full of professionals, rather than one guy putting a mask together in hours, or sometimes even minutes, on M:I.
Also, sometimes M:I did it better than others. Often the masks were shown to be made of multiple pieces, which would be more realistic than a full-face mask, with more movement possible. Though sometimes it was inconsistent -- you'd see a mask assembled in pieces and then pulled off as a single unit. And at least in the pilot, they established that Rollin Hand was brought in because he already bore a facial and vocal resemblance to the guy being impersonated -- which didn't work once they made him a regular. Later in the pilot, when Rollin impersonated team leader Dan Briggs, he hid his eyes behind dark glasses and barely spoke, because the mask wasn't as convincing and the voice was wrong. As the show went on, they paid less and less attention to realism. Toward the end of the first season, there was an episode wherein a villain managed to pull off a mask impersonation for days, eat through the mask, sweat through the mask, and even receive electroconvulsive therapy through the mask, without the slightest compromise to its integrity! Try testing that myth!
And how cool is it that they had Launchpad from DuckTales as their acting coach? That was a nice surprise.
Interesting test at the end there. Worth noting that Kari began to suspect something was off much sooner than Grant did. I wonder if that was a gender thing -- women tending to be more attuned to people and their appearance -- or if it's just that Grant as an individual is more oriented toward objects. Or maybe it's that he was focused more narrowly on the task he was given and wasn't noticing other factors.
I think it's a given that the full-face mask is of limited usefulness. What I would've liked to see them test is a more plausible impersonation scenario -- find actors who resemble Adam and Jamie in bone structure, build, and voice, put them in multi-piece prosthetics so they can have facial expression, and see if they can fool people who know the genuine articles.
Firearms force: The merry-go-round thing from the movie was ridiculous right up front. Busting it was a foregone conclusion. I mean, even aside from the unlikelihood of putting the merry-go-round in a spin by shooting its railings, the shrapnel from the bullet hits could've perforated the baby and done the sniper's job for him. The whole thing was busted on the first shot, and all their subsequent efforts were pretty much just filling up airtime. The mask myth was great, but this one was lame.
But the result for shooting a gun across the ground was surprising. I didn't actually expect that to work. Kind of impressive.
EDIT: And the hosts were surprised too. The Discovery site has "Aftershow" videos with the Mythbusters answering viewer questions (I guess from Australian viewers where it's already aired???), and they said they had a whole bunch of shop tests set up for the gun-shooting myth, all of which were scrapped when the myth worked so perfectly first time out. I guess that's why they wasted so much time on the merry-go-round.
Ooh, and in the M:I Mask Aftershow segment, Adam and Jamie say they do want to revisit the myth with more modern, precise prosthetic techniques! I look forward to it.
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There's some "those masks were crap" type posts on the MB's forum and I disagree for what they were they were very good masks but they were generic one-size-fits-all masks.
