We were watching the movie John Carter of Mars about a week ago and there are two scenes – two! – where the princess of Helium, Dejah Thoris, falls from an airship, or some dizzingly high precipice, and John Carter prevents her from from going splat on the ground by jumping to an amazing height and catching her in mid-air.

He’s from Earth, you see, and there’s less gravity on Mars, so he can jump hundreds of feet into the air. Yeah. I guess everybody’s already forgotten that moonwalking astronauts could only jump about three feet into the air, and that Mars has a lot more gravity than the moon, but whatever.

If it were somehow possible for him to jump hundreds of feet and land without breaking every bone in his body, here’s my question: He can’t fly. He’s only jumping: Traveling in an arc from point A to point B. If he were to jump a little too high, or a little too low, or he jumped just a tenth of a degree too far to the left or right, he would go sailing past the princess and really all he could do is wave and say, Sorry! Catch you next time! He’d have to have the brain of a ballistics computer to make that catch.

But let’s say for the sake of argument that he got lucky (not once but twice!) and managed to scoop her up into his arms. How is it that Dejah Thoris isn’t killed by the blunt-force trauma of a 165-pound man crashing into her like a cannonball as she falls? If she hit a stationary object on the way down the impact would almost certainly kill her. Come to that, the impact would probably kill them both.

I’m probably overthinking this, aren’t I?