The Bourne Ultimatum made me sick, and not because it was a bad movie. Matt Damon was fabulous, and given the reactions of people around me, I gather the actions scenes were spectacular. Unfortunately, I was hiding my eyes behind my hands, and not because I was scared. Due to the jittery hand camera work on the film, I was in serious danger of losing my lunch. I wondered how I could be suffering from motion sickness, when I was sitting perfectly still. Moreover, I seldom get ill from actual motion sickness, so I wondered how a movie could possibly make me long for a dose of Dramamine. But according to critics of the film, I’m not the only one.
Experts will tell you that it’s impossible for movies to give you motion sickness, because motion sickness is caused by physical movements that cause the eye and the fluid of your inner ear into a disharmonious relationship. However, movies can make you sick if you’re susceptible to a close relative of motion sickness: simulation sickness.
According to theory, simulation sickness occurs due to the incongruity of illusory motion being sensed by the eye, but not by the inner ear. When your brain senses the incongruity, it concludes that you are hallucinating and may have been poisoned; thus, the desire to vomit up whatever poison you may have ingested. Simulation sickness generally occurs as a result of playing video intensive games such as Halo or Doom. But jerky camera motions in a movie like the Bourne Identity can also cause simulation sickness, resulting in headaches, nausea, dizziness and sweating.
So how exactly does this come to pass?
Two vestibular organs in the bony labyrinth of the inner ear sense movements of the head. This is what helps you keep your balance and perform even the most basic activities, like standing and walking. When a movie as all-engrossing as the Bourne Ultimatum draws you into the action, you may know that you’re not actually jumping from rooftop to rooftop, but your ears and nervous system are not convinced. After all, the primitive brain is receiving all the normal cues that you may, in fact, be involved in a high speed chase with the CIA.
Remember when I said that I don’t normally suffer from ordinary motion sickness, but found myself wanting to retch all because of the film’s use of a hand cam? As it turns out, preliminary studies indicate that people are more susceptible to simulation sickness than they are to motion sickness.
The military reports that up to 40% of their pilots suffered simulation sickness when tested. This is an alarming considering that pilots are less susceptible to motion sickness than the average person.
Given the box office success of movies like the Bourne Ultimatum, Hollywood isn’t likely to change the way it makes films any time soon. But filmmakers might want to slap a simulation sickness warning on the previews to bring along the Pepto, because the motion sickness-like symptoms are real, not imagined, and the illness can last for hours.
