Quicksilver's true ability discussion

[YoungPhysicist]

I just finished watching Xmen:Apocalypse and have several ideas about Peter Maximoff i.e,quicksliver.
Minor spoilers ahead:(I will try my best at saying the minimum amount of plot itself, only when nessasary)

First to declaim:The Xmen series are basically around a group of people that can somehow ignore some of the most basic principles in physics(i.e, generating magnetic field out of nowhere), so this entire article may seem ridiculous to you.

I think quicksilver's true ability is to alter time flowing speed at a clsoe region around him(i.e, slowing everyone/everything else down),instead of superhuman speed, here is why:

• How his poweres are shown: In the X mansion scene in Xmen:Apocalypse, the movies shows his speed by slowing down a bee right above a flower, and right after that he ditching two cards which has the "school of gifted" thing printed on it in midair. In my opinion, this is like showing you how a object is moving by pulling the backdrop backwards, but not moving the object itself. Besides that, if those two cards do have the speed that quicksliver gave them, they will not be stopped right after he ditched them, it would have keep moving. It seems like there were "slow down" due to the fact that they aren't close to quicksliver anymore.And one of his counterparts,which is Flash in DC, never use these sort of methods.
• Superspeed is a very tricky superpower because it has to come up a few dozen of other superpoweres(super brain processing speed,superdurable skin and clothing, super endurance etc),and even if he do possesses all of that, whoever he carries/takes with him surely don't(which is exactly what he did in those scenes,including a dog with pizza)especially that dog isn't a mutant of anykind,right?
• He often fling stuff away with his fingers in a number of Xmen movies, including this one, most commonly bullets.But this time he flinged away one of the shrapnels from the exploding jet, I am quite sure that is way faster than a bullet,and way bigger too. Does that mean besides the three other abilities shoen above, he also got fingers of steel?I don't think so. This will still not make sense even if I assumption of his ability is right, which it's inertia will make almost impossible to move, but it will still be more posiible than fingers of steel, since he can clearly see them coming.

What do you think about quicksliver?(by the way, what I just said has no copyright issues, right?)

 

[jedishrfu]

As far as copyrights go, I think you’re safe. Discussing a character is okay, even excerpting small dialogue from a movie or book is fine aka the fair use doctrine. Wholesale use of chapters or extensive clips and images are not. There’s also a higher bar if your derivative work uses material from the X-men and you are planning to publish it that’s when you should get some serious legal advice.

With respect to Quicksilver, it’s hard to say what his abilities are because they don’t necessary follow what science allows. As an example, moving at really high speed means you’d be subject to air resistance and consequently could get burned but that never seems to be an outcome in these stories.

Wikipedia has a discussion on the character

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksilver_(comics)

 

[Grinkle]

I think quicksilver's true ability is to alter time flowing speed

This is the image I also took away from the movie.

slowing everyone/everything else down

I pictured him speeding up his own clock; so he ages a minute or so while the rest of the world ages a ms or so.

 

[Matterwave]

I don't know the utility of trying to analyze a superhero's abilities too much. I think the authors and creators of Quicksilver definitely were looking at super-speed as his power. I don't recall any characterization of him where his power is actually to slow down time.