I’m watching Mission: Impossible II (2000). Tom Cruise just broke a guy’s neck but again there’s no “guy’s neck breaking” sound at all for the hero’s efforts. The first time the action was more “modest” so it was not that weird to me that the sound was missing.

But in the second one - see the screengrab - is brutal. He’s hidden about ~10 feet above his hapless victim. He lands with his knees on the guy’s shoulders and he twists his body to brutally break the guy’s neck but there’s no sound effect. There’s only notable sound effect is the lifeless body falling to the ground.

  1. When did the sound normalized in movies and tv? I thought it started ~30 years ago. Is Mission: Impossible II an outlier?

  2. Was it influenced by gaming? I’m not a gamer so I have no idea.

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Edit 1

I stand corrected. The guy was still alive after what I thought was a fatal attack. Oh, well. My questions are still good.

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Edit 2

I realized it surely pre-dates video games. Did it become normalized in the 1980s? A possible example is Command (1985). Schwarzenegger violently broke arms, legs, necks. I don’t remember - but I assume the sound effect was there.