This one in particular is kind of hilarious given how little movie characters 'function like humans' and no one but the most cinema-experience-ruining people care.
Because people get used to it and now it is a Trope. Like I said in one of the posts: You can train people in general to accept more outlandish things.
Also it is not about realism per se. It just needs to feel realistic enough. Especially things that are outside of the normal experience of most players/viewers can be unrealistic, as long as they feel real enough.
Like ... most Law-Shows - all the courtroom scenes are actually quite unrealistic, but the average movie-goer doesn't know that, because he never was in a courtroom.
The same with fights or falling from great hights and catching yourself.
Most people never fell down an elevator shaft like John McClain in Die Hard, so you don't know that him catching himself with his fingers after that fall length would at best break all his fingers. But if feels real enough, because all the rest of John McClain in Die Hard 1 feels so real. His divorce stuff, his suffering. That is also the reason that Die Hard 4, 5 (and 6? is there a sixth one or ended it at 5?) bombed so hard - because the action there was too over the top and the humanising elements to the story were minimised.
And yes, Action in Action Movies of today is mostly over the top - but that works, because for the good action movies the rest makes sense. The motivation of the good guys and bad guys is clear and relatable (Die Hard 1 again - John McClain wants to stop the bad guys, the bad guys want the money - the Police outside wants to safe lives, the FBI wants to stop the bad guys at all costs and are seen as naughty words by the police ...).
Like Die Hard stretched what bodily punishment a human can endure and exaggerated some human abilities for the sake of tension, but it didn't outright break them in a sense, that the average moviegoer would say, that that doesn't make any sense.
But coming back to TTRPGs - yeah, I would quit any game where the DM would create 1000 Orcs out of thin air to punish us for resting or where a red ancient dragon would attack us 1st Level Characters out of nowhere.
I agree, that D&D is a game and it needs to deliver a good game experience. So we can't have a 100% fantasy world simulation, with a real breathing and living world, because that would kill our adventure party pretty quickly.
The DM has to curate the game experience, so that the players have a fair chance of survival/playing the game.
But at the same time, TTRPGs live from the game experience. They live from the world building. The live from the immersion in to the Game World.
So the most difficult task for a Game Master is to curate the Game Experience in a way that the Game World feels real, living, changing and breathing, while at the same time tailoring it, so the characters don't just die instantly.
That the Game World is a living, breathing thing is an Illusion a Game Master needs to create in order for the players to be able to immerse themselves into the game.
So, D&D is a game and it needs to be balanced and curated like one, but it shouldn't feel like one at the table when you are playing it.
