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One of the most iconic moments of Jackie Chan's career is a particular stunt he did in the 1985 movie, Police Story. At the end of the film, Chan's character leaps from a 6-story balcony in a shopping mall and slides down a pole, fireman style, to the ground level. While the act of sliding down 6 stories on a pole would have been an impressive feat straight out of a Harold Lloyd film, what elevated this daring stunt was that the pole was attached to string lights, which exploded around Chan's body as he slid down. And, he crashes through a pane of breakaway glass once he reaches the bottom of the pole. It's a sequence that's still impressive all these years later. 

But Marvel Studios isn't inviting that same response from audiences today, even when its projects pull off in-camera stuntwork. In the studio's most recent release, The Punisher: One Last Kill, there's a shot where Jon Bernthal's character jumps off a rooftop, landing on an HVAC unit below. It's a shot that looks strange because of how smooth the textures of the Punisher's costume are, as well as how his body jerks upon impact. When I watched the special presentation shortly after it released on Disney+, my immediate thought was "wow, that looks like it's straight out of a PlayStation 3 cutscene," and I wasn't alone. Discourse has erupted online about the shot, with fans assuming that it's poorly rendered CGI. As it turns out, that's not totally the case. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the shot is "a real in-camera shot," meaning that the cameras did capture someone jumping off a rooftop and landing on impact. As THR explains, "Bernthal performed the beginning of the fall, and his stuntman took over for the impact shot. There is some VFX, however, which might explain some of the wonkiness — the stuntman’s face was swapped for Bernthal’s." 

There are a number of reasons why the shot looks so strange. The shot could have been cropped and zoomed in in post-production (thereby making it lower resolution compared to the rest of the special). That could explain the odd, flat texture of the footage. The shot is also in slow motion, meaning that it was filmed at a higher frame rate than your average scene, which is shot at 24 frames per second in American productions. Because you're recording more "information," more frames, when you're shooting slow-motion, the motion captured in a shot can run the risk of looking unnatural to the viewer, who is used to seeing video shot at 24 frames per second. 

In my opinion, it looks weird partly because of the composition of the shot. Seeing Bernthal's body land in slow motion on one half of the frame is jarring because it clashes with how a dead goon lies motionless, slumped over the rooftop edge on the other side of the frame. The background of the shot doesn't do it any favors either, because the straight lines of the lower rooftop's spotless tiles don't offer any sense of visual depth. In other words, the whole shot calls attention to the fact that it's an unnatural, slow-motion moment, and feels completely out of sorts with the frenetic visual language of the rest of the special. 

You can see for yourself, as The Punisher: One Last Kill is streaming now on Disney+. 

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst
• Our weekly Marvel insider's column, Marvel Matters