The movie Sully deals with the complications of becoming a hero. To the public, the situation was obvious: Chesley Sullenberger landed a jet plane with no functioning engines on the Hudson river and saved 155 people’s lives—give the man a medal, and let’s be grateful for some good news.
According to the movie, however, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. As is customary in plane incidents, the National Transportation Safety Board conducted an investigation. What were the actual facts of the situation? Why were the choices made that were made? And how could the outcome have been improved?
During the climax of the movie, the NTSB investigators show simulations of real pilots navigating the same conditions. The birds strike, the engines fail, they turn back to the nearest airport, and voilà, perfect landing! Why didn’t Sully just do that instead of risking crashing his plane into ice-cold water?
The answer is that life—real life—is not a simulation. “You have allowed no time for analysis and decision-making,” Sully tells the board. “With these sims, you have taken all the humanity out of the cockpit.” How many practice runs have those pilots gone through before recording these simulations, Sully wants to know. The number almost gets stuck in the investigator’s throat: “17.” They agree to another live run, and with as little as 35 seconds of delay, all simulation pilots crash their planes despite having the perfect plan in their pocket.
No matter how authentic it feels, in the end, no video game will be the same as life itself. Reality needs evidence, and real effort with real sacrifice is a kind of proof you just can’t fake.
That’s a point made not only in the movie but also by the movie itself: After its release, the NTSB criticized the depiction of its investigators. No one was “out to embarrass anybody at all,” they said. And in the actual hearing featuring Sully and his copilot, all simulations pointed to the same truth to begin with: “A successful return to LaGuardia or a diversion to Teterboro Airport was not assured”—and therefore, Sully was exactly the hero everyone saw in the news all along.
Don’t worry if you don’t stack up in imaginary competitions. Live, and play, and do your best right here in the realm of physics, and you’ll always score your points in the only game that really counts.