I like your point, but Hollywood would be making a lot less money if it took out guns and stuck to people punching each other.

They would probably just come up with fictional gun designs rather than using molds of or blank-firing versions of commercially produced guns. The average person probably doesn't know and doesn't care whether a prop gun is an imitation of a specific real gun that exists or not.

True. Lengthy sword fights, and western-style bar room brawls each had their day. For me, the final Hollywood punch was thrown here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-MVMbm6c0k

Never mind as the viewing generation moves further and further from the old west era, the effects of being shot becomes more and more outlandish.

Check the early westerns and such and the guy will seize up and tip over, and that's it. These days they will take flight, either over a bar, table or out a window, from a standstill.

Never mind that they love going over the top with sound effects.

A gun shot is not that much different from a firecracker, and a punch is near silent...

Foley artists have been exaggerating sounds since the '20s (soon I'll have to qualify that with 1920s...). Guns are not the sole source of exaggeration in Hollywood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(filmmaking)

I agree, but it is quite often the most outrageous. And they get away with it because so few of the current viewers have had to fire a gun, let along at another human being.

But people don't just tip over and die in real life. And only the bad guys ever died like that. Protagonists meanwhile were unkillable.

Also gunshots are loud enough to require hearing protection at a shooting range, and a punch is also audible, but just higher pitch.

What was your point in posting this?

The hearing protection is about exposure over time, just as with using power tools etc.

As for point, its that Hollywood have given a ever flashier and exaggerated presentation of the effects of guns.

> Never mind as the viewing generation moves further and further from the old west era, the effects of being shot becomes more and more outlandish.

Agreed but there are also many exceptions to this especially in the military genre (Hacksaw Ridge being the latest example).

>A gun shot is not that much different from a firecracker

What? No. Guns are loud.

https://youtu.be/7leSF_FE658?t=1m23s

What makes you say that?