Welcome back to another Friday Night Lights. I have been meaning to write about these films for a while now so late is better than never. In this fifth installment of Hollywood Night Vision Myths, we take a close look at some old movies like True Lies and Sicario. We also take a look at a relatively new foreign film called Troll on Netflix. So let’s take a look at these Hollywood Night Vision Myths.

Hollywood Night Vision Myths @ TFB:

• Friday Night Lights: Hollywood Night Vision Myths – Amazon’s Terminal List
• Friday Night Lights: Hollywood Night Vision Myths – Without Remorse
• Friday Night Lights: Hollywood Night Vision Myths – Part 2
• Friday Night Lights: Hollywood Night Vision Myths – Part 1

True Lies Has Night Vision?

That was what I said when I rewatched True Lies a few months ago. I clearly don’t remember this movie at all. But yes there is night vision in the beginning sequence of the movie. At the beginning of True Lies, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character Harry clandestinely infiltrates a party. Meanwhile, his partner Gib, portrayed by Tom Arnold, is helping to provide overwatch in a surveillance van. Inside the van, he is looking through a massive night vision device.

It even has the iconic green eye glow.

I discovered that this night vision device is real. It was used on Navy boats and is a long-range night observation device. The Navy called it the MK37 Mod 3.

It has a giant catadioptric (mirror) lens.

The MK37 Mod3 uses a Gen 1 cascade tube. According to Jason Crum of Ident Marking, it is very effective since the lens is so large and lets in a bunch of light.

The images above are not great but it can allegedly see 1,000-1,500 yards away. Here are screenshots from True Lies that are supposed to represent the image from the MK37 Mod3.

The lines across the image seem odd. Analog night vision does not create those lines.

I actually bought one in an auction but sadly it did not have the image intensifier inside. It weighs 75 lbs with the metal case which is the size of a large suitcase. It is called a MK37 Mod3.

Here is a picture with an airsoft MP5 for scale.

In this scene, Harry inserts himself by swimming under frozen water. From this scene, there is a healthy amount of ambient light so I am not entirely sure why he needs night vision.

In this scene, he has to cut through these bars. But I did not see him turn off his night vision so that could potentially burn a blem in his tube.

Here he breaks through the ice still wearing night vision. But look at all the ambient light in this scene. It is not dark enough to need night vision. Upon closer inspection of this image and the one above it, I think they used a PVS-18. In the image above you can see what looks like a secondary dovetail opposite of the objective lens. In the image below you can see the side of the housing and those markings look like the ones found on a PVS-18 which are for the mode selection. Add to the fact that the shoe for mounting the PVS-18 is very short. If it was bayonet, it would be a lot thicker and lower.

While I could not find the exact gear that Arnold wore in that scene, I did find this image from Nivisys. The DVS-100 is a U.S. Diver scuba mask with a custom bayonet mount sort of like a scull crusher to mount night vision in front of the mask. One minor issue with this is the eye relief. I am not sure you would get a full 40º FOV from this mask. It would cause the MUM-14 to be positioned further from your eye than normal and the eyepiece would start to cut off some of the image.

The guards in that scene had a very unusual weapon light. It looks like those huge handheld searchlights mounted to the pistol grip of an SP89/MP5K.

You can see the same type of gun and light in the screenshot below.

Edit: Ah Ha! I found it! It is a Maxa Beam from Peak Beam. They even mention it was used in True Lies on their website! Someone clearly made a custom mount to attach it to the SP89/MP5K. I am not sure if that was the film production company in charge of the props or if Peak Beam did that for the movie.

At the end of this scene, Harry shoots a bad guy through the windows of the surveillance van. If I was Gib, I would be upset at Harry for shooting a Glock that close to my face in front of the muzzle.

The next time they use night vision in True Lies is when they have a helicopter following Jaime Lee Curtis and Bill Paxton. This night vision image has the same horizontal lines and some made-up numbers and reticle on the screen. I am not sure if this is what helicopters use for night vision.

Netflix Troll Has Night Vision

For those who have not seen this film, it is a Norwegian film on Netflix. It is an entertaining science fiction that dives a bit into Norwegian folklore about Trolls. Not the cute fuzzy ones that sing. In the movie, they have their own version of special forces to try and stop the giant Troll. They are equipped with helmet-mounted night vision.

The PVS-31 does not look like real night vision goggles. I did not see any scenes with green eye glow. And the objective lenses have a green tint to them. Real PVS-31A has blue anti-reflective coatings. Sure it could be a form of LIF (Light Interference Filter) but I do not think that is the case. There are dummy PVS-31s that have that same green tint to the objectives.

I was surprised by this image/scene. It looks like analog night vision with the right amount of scintillation. However, it is clearly faked. For one, the troll is fake. And the white overlaid reticle, inclinometer, as well as pseudo compass at the bottom, is not something PVS-31A can project. That would require a rear projection digital display like an ENVG-B. But other than that this image looks like it was shot through a night vision device. You have the iconic circular 40º FOV and a bit of scope shadow at the edges which is the inside of the monocular housing/eyepiece.

Sicario Night Vision And Thermal

It has been a long time since I have seen Sicario that I completely forgot these scenes. But now they stand out in my mind. When the team enters the tunnel to place Alejandro across the border, they get equipped just outside. Alejandro puts on an Ops-Core Skull Mount. It is a helmet alternative to mounting night vision on your head. It is semi-rigid but offers no bump or ballistic protection. More important is the device he mounted over his eye. It looks like a FLIR Recon M24.

Here is what the FLIR Recon M24 looks like.

Sample images produced by a FLIR Recon M24.

The photo below really looks like the same device worn by Benicio Del Toro. Wilcox made an adapter for their dovetail bino bridge that attaches to the FLIR Recon M24. But if you notice, it inverts the monocular. Which is how the monocular appears in the screenshot earlier. The FLIR logo was upside down.

In order to mount the M24 to the Wilcox bridge, you need this dovetail. It bolts to the screw hole at the bottom of the M24 housing.

In this screenshot, you can see Alejandro on the left. His silhouette profile is very distinct. The FLIR Recon M24 does not look like the PVS-14s worn by everyone else in the scene.

Later in this scene, they have what looks like analog night vision images. Plenty of scintillation. The image below seems odd but if there was enough background ambient lighting, it could cause the people in the foreground to be just black silhouettes.

In another scene, we see Kate Macer in the tunnel. Look at her plate carrier. There are no plates in it, at least not in the rear, but look at the various shades of color. There are light-colored sections and dark sections. This is definitely infrared imaging. Active IR light is being used to light her up. And the fabrics have different ways of absorbing or reflecting that IR light. So some of the Cordura shows up as brightly as her shirt. When we saw her get kitted up outside with a normal film camera, her carrier appeared black and she was wearing a dark colored shirt. But fabrics dont always behave the same under active IR illumination.

In the scene below, we see this thermal image. I have my doubts this was shot with the FLIR Recon M24. The detail and thermal differential between the bushes and dirt seem too good for a now obsolete and discontinued LWIR thermal sensor. I think FLIR and the production company might have used a better thermal device to capture this image. Possibly an MWIR thermal system. The fact that the guy in front of the camera and the people down range are all in focus is definitely not something a lot of thermal devices can do.

Next we see what appears to be aerial thermal. In the image below look at the details on the rocks and the dirt driven on versus the dirt that has not been disturbed. I think this was captured by an MWIR system mounted on some airborne vehicle.

Here is where we get into “Hollywood magic” in Sicario. In this scene, we see POV of what I assume is Alejandro following someone else, and they show hot boot prints.

Boots do not produce hot prints. Now it is possible if you are in a warmer environment like your house and you trek outside into snow or ground that is a lot colder than your boots could leave prints behind. But I do not think that is the case here. The group arrived in SUVs which were probably air conditioned and arrived at night. They stood around for a while getting kitted up. Then walked into the cave. While caves are typically cooler than outside, I do not think there is enough of a temperature differential for the boots to leave prints behind. Something else to think about is if the cave is truly a cave or a set in a sound studio? If it was a real cave it could be cool inside. But if it was a set, then it would be warm from set lighting.

Allegedly the production heated up the boots to make the boot prints show up under thermal. What is truly telling is the moment immediately after the boot prints. The camera tilts up from looking at the dead people and boot prints. We see the person that made the boot prints. He is standing and shifts his right foot and yet we do not see that his boot left any heat print on the ground. I guess his boots cooled down by then? This further confirms that the boots were heated up beyond ambient temperature in the cave.

Screenshot from Sicario. His right foot moves a half step backward as he turns to look at the camera. But no hot boot print.

Just before that moment, the thermal camera had looked down at two dead bodies that were recently dispatched by the guy who shifted his boot. Notice something odd? You can see what looks like blood. But it is black and the camera is set to white hot. Which means the fake blood was cold. From an artistic view, I could see why the director wanted this. Contrast. The blood stands out from the dead body. If the blood was hot it would be white hot like the body and boot prints so it would just be a white mess that blends in with the body. The director is probably thinking the audience won’t know or understand that the fake blood is cold and if this was real it would be white hot.

Edit: I read online that IMDB trivia for Sicario mentions the FLIR camera they used on set.

So according to FLIR, the SC8300 is a MWIR cooled thermal camera. Yes, the image below is of the SC8200 but the SC8300 is similar.

FLIR SC8000 series offers true megapixel resolution of up to 1,344 × 784pixels. The highly sensitive cooled FLIR InSb detector produces ultra sharp thermal images from which the smallest details can be seen and measured.Four active preset operating modes provide adjustable integration times, embedded non-uniformity correction, bad pixel replacement, and window size adjustments. The FLIR readout provides digital data at 200 megapixels per second for extreme imaging flexibility

So that is why the thermal images are so good in Sicario. They are using cooled thermal and an industrial one.

Final Thoughts On True Lies, Troll, and Sicario

I hope you enjoyed this Hollywood Night Vision Myths Part 5. It is fun to see night vision used in movies and other forms of entertainment. For these three movies, they mostly got it right. True Lies was directed by James Cameron so I have a feeling he used actual night vision. I am unsure about the MK37 MOD3 POV images and the horizontal lines. But other than that, it seemed realistic.

Troll did an ok job and I can understand budgetary constraints to not have real night vision but they should watch out for glaring issues like bright green reflective objectives. That is just not how real night vision goggles look. Unless you have LIF filters on your objectives. The POV night vision image of the troll looked like it was actually shot through analog night vision. They did a great job fabricating that shot.

Sicario had some realistic scenes with night vision and the thermal was truly cool to see but it wasn’t really utilized well in the story. They did not take advantage of thermal and what it can do over image intensification. But other than that, it was used well enough, especially the aerial ISR footage for providing overwatch for Alejandro as he walks into Fausto Alarcon’s compound seen below.