from the book 'Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics'

[mojo]

i admit freely that this is not the kind of SW vs ST that would normally be posted. if this is in the wrong place, apologies. i'm always interested when someone clearly not too invested chips in his two cents, and i thought it was funny.


Quick Comparison: Star Wars versus Star Trek

The two franchises include many different media; for brevity, the following will address only movies. There are significant differences between the first series of Star Wars movies and the final series, but they are not evaluated separately.

That’s not to say that Star Trek was always consistent with its own visionary understanding of the future, at least not from a technical standpoint. For example, in Star Trek IV, Kirk and crew hijack a Klingon Bird-of-Prey, time-travel back to the twentieth century, land in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, capture a pair of humpback whales, and fly off with them (a serious break with the tradition of keeping large ships in space) all without being detected by local residents. Okay, the Bird-of-Prey was supposedly cloaked and, hence, invisible when sitting in the park, but does no one walk their dog? Wouldn’t Fido be offended by having a spaceship in the middle of his relief area? Wouldn’t he, at least, want to mark it? Still, the movie remembers its survival gear, things like scintillating dialog and interesting characters. The movie prospers because it finds that most valued of treasures: humor with heart. It features, among other things, an outer-space alien, Spock—the epitome of logic and reason— wandering around unnoticed in a city with a reputation for creative illogic and a Russian (Chekov) claiming he’s a starship officer when caught stealing nuclear energy aboard an aircraft carrier during the height of the cold war—all in a movie about saving whales.

Star Trek’s much used WWII submarine warfare model is conceivable but not overly imaginative. According to the model, large ships launch powerful weapons such as torpedoes against other similar ships. While these weapons frequently jostle the inhabitants—similar to a WWII depth-charge attack—the targets are rarely destroyed on the first shot. Such close-range battles would be little more than toe-to-toe slugfests, with few tactical possibilities, although the movies pretend to have them. About the only available battle tactics would be putting up shields and firing weapons. Once in a while, one of the combatants would be able to use trickery or hide in a plasma cloud, but that’s about it. More realistic space battles would likely be fought at great distances in a far more imaginative way (see Chapter 5). Still, although the lack of imaginative battles is a disappointment, it’s not enough to trigger a fall from grace.

. . . IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY . . .

On the other hand, the entire WWII aircraft-carrier battle model used by Star Wars is flawed, if not outright ridiculous. But in the original Star Wars trilogy, it worked. Why? Because the original was an inside joke designed to poke fun at Hollywood. The first movie came out in 1977, only three years after the Watergate scandal compelled President Richard Nixon to resign in shame, and only four years after United States involvement ended in the divisive Vietnam War. At the time America’s selfimage, as the land of eternal good guys, lay shattered, oozing self-doubt—an image reflected in movies. Characters, even heroes, had to be mixtures of good and bad. Seemingly, nothing could ever again be portrayed in simple terms. Star Wars landed on the era’s cynical pop culture like an artillery shell. The movie presented everything in the purest of black-or-white, good-orevil terms. Arguably, the greatest movie villain ever created— Darth Vader—for example, was totally black and totally evil (at least in the first movie). Although Han Solo may have seemed to be a mix, on closer examination he was merely a purehearted hero with attention deficit disorder. He might be distracted by personal interests, but given a chance to focus he’d risk everything for the cause.

The original Star Wars trilogy was deliberately modeled after obsolete 1930s movie theater serials and used a WWII battle model from the most heroic moment in U.S. history along with light-saber-wielding knights as high-tech updates from classics such as Seven Samurai (1954) [NR] and Errol Flynn swashbucklers. These elements were extensions of both the trilogy’s positive tone and tongue-in-cheek humor. On that basis alone, movies from the original Star Wars trilogy deserve ISMP forgiveness. While they might look like science fiction, in reality they are a mix of parody and fantasy—a humorous yet heroic and altogether ISMP-forgivable mythology.

THE MOTHER OF ALL ISMP LAND BATTLES

Unfortunately, the second trilogy did not follow in the first’s footsteps. Episode I kicked off the downward decline with a clear case of amnesia. The movie forgot the source of its forgiveness: its roots with the original trilogy. For openers, it offered an unnecessary biological explanation for how the Jedi tap into the Force: “midichlorians,” a type of interstellar microbe. The little guys grant access to the Force after planting themselves in one’s cells—the more the better. Does this mean swilling a microbe-laced cocktail could make a person stronger in the Force? What about injections? Is the microbe airborne or sexually transmitted, and if so, why are Jedi required to be celibate? Apparently midichlorians fathered Anakin Skywalker. Did they also father the Force, or did the Force father the midichlorians? Was it all some happy cosmic coincidence? By explaining how the Force works, Episode I raised more questions than a child does in the fourth year of life. It moved the Force into the glare of scientific and logical analysis and, in the process, evicted the film from the forgiving genre of mythical fantasy.

Having badly weakened its case for forgiveness, Episode I proceeded to take one of the goofiest characters ever created, a flop-eared Gungan called Jar Jar Binks, give him a major role, and then build the ISMP classic of all land battles around him and his species. The battle pits the bumbling Gungans against heavily armed, high-tech droids. The Gungans have a sophisticated forcefield technology capable of shielding their army on the battlefield, yet they ride around on beasts of burden. They have explosive devices that look like giant blue marbles but have to launch them with ancient-looking catapults. Do they put their knowledge of explosives to work and modify them into propellants for rockets and firearms? No, they use spears. Do they rely on stealth, harassment, or guerrilla warfare—tactics that, at times, have actually worked against technologically superior forces? No, they face off head-to-head with the droids on open ground—a tactic that’s usually disastrous when used against technologically superior forces.

When droid tanks fire, their shots bounce off the Gungan force field. Yet droids can walk through the shield effortlessly. Apologists explain that the shields are somehow tuned to block high-energy blasts but allow everything else to pass. Okay, then why didn’t a few kamikaze droids loaded with explosives walk through and blow up the Gungans? Why didn’t the tanks drive up, poke their barrels through the shields, and blast the Gungans? There are dozens of ways the droids could have improved their battle tactics but didn’t.

Yet, even with droid bungling, their superior technology eventually proves invincible: the Gungans face annihilation—then they win. And how does this miracle occur? When the droids’ mother ship is destroyed, the droids shut down. Keep in mind that the droids use audible language over their radios to relay information and acknowledge commands. Aside from the illogic of quitting when winning, there was no one in the mother ship capable of giving the command to shut down, so why did they? Apologists answer that given the capability for independent action, droids might have rebelled against their leaders. Yet this doesn’t seem to have been a problem for Hitler, Napoleon, Genghis Khan, or most other leaders of major-sized military forces.

Episode I clearly slipped from the state of grace established by the Star Wars franchise. On the other hand, with Gungan battles and characters like the flop-eared Jar Jar Binks, the movie looks too much like a Bugs Bunny cartoon to ever be taken seriously.

THE MOTHER-OF-ALL ISMP SPACE BATTLES

Episode II featured the usual assemblage of impossible gizmos, including small-sized craft capable of flying through the atmosphere, landing on their footprint, and making interstellar flights in less time than it takes to drive across Texas. When Senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman) needed to go into hiding to avoid being assassinated, who does she entrust with her senatorial duty of defending the known universe from chaos? Jar Jar Binks (who, unfortunately, was not a candidate for assassination). Fortunately, we are otherwise spared from having to endure him. When Obi Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) wishes to travel to a mysterious distant planet and can’t find a record of it in the archives, he consults not the venerable Yoda, but a class of younglings (future Jedi). They give him their profound insight: “someone deleted it from the archives.” Gosh, do you think so? And then there is the movie’s theme: love is blind. Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) gets the girl, while incessantly whining and throwing tantrums. (What does Padmé see in this guy?) Episode II offered nothing unique with respect to ISMP, but then it offered nothing that made it forgivable. The movie’s worst break with its traditions was the inclusion of an unappealing main character—Anakin Skywalker, a mixture of good and evil.

Episode III resumed the downward spiral in its opening scene with what is, arguably, movie history’s most ridiculous space battle. The evil General Grievous (voiced by Matthew Wood), along with a major armada of space craft, has somehow slipped into town and kidnapped the head of the Senate, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid). As the evil general, along with his armada, is escaping into the blackness of outer space high above the capital, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, along with their own armada, race to the rescue.

There’s, of course, the trademark WWII aircraft carrier battle stuff, but it’s embellished. Obi-Wan, Anakin, and company must fly through exploding flak that leaves little black clouds of smoke. Anywhere near the edge of outer space, these smoke particles would have an outward velocity and essentially no air resistance to slow them down since there’s virtually no air. Under such conditions the smoke would almost instantly dissipate. Enemy forces counter attack with everything from vulture-like droids, to droids that fasten onto Obi-Wan’s spacecraft and attempt to drill holes in it. Here’s a thought: since bullets are cheap and droids are expensive, why not shoot a whole mess of bullets and have them drill the spacecraft? Large spacecraft using eighteenth century sailing ship tactics, deliver close range broadsides with twentieth-century-like cannons, ejecting empty shells out the back as they recoil. Who knows what they shoot, but whatever it is certainly explodes when it hits. Whether or not these were conventional cannons, blowing up an enemy ship at close range would likely be suicidal. The damaged ship’s entire fuel supply— an amount designed to provide the humongous energy needs of interstellar travel—could detonate.

During the battle Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) board a huge enemy spacecraft in order to rescue Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. First, the two Jedi fly their fighters through an open entryway and crashland in a hanger room—without depressurizing the larger spacecraft! After much lightsaber slashing and yada-yada, they rescue the politician just in time for the seriously damaged ship to upend and fall straight toward the planet it had previously been moving away from in an outward, spiraling orbit. (What happened to its orbital velocity?) This dive sends everyone aboard, including the two Jedi, their trusty droid, and the slimy politician they’ve just rescued, sliding toward the falling end of the ship. Okay, maybe “a long time ago in a galaxy far away” they understood gravity well enough to pump it like central heating fluid through the floors of spacecraft. But if they did, why would the artificial gravity change direction with respect to the floor when the ship fell toward a planet? It seems like the artificial gravity’s direction would remain perpendicular to the floor regardless of the ship’s position.

Keep in mind that the planet’s gravity force never changed direction and cannot be “felt” by an observer on the ship, regardless of whether the ship is falling straight down or orbiting. Both are a form of free fall, which feels like zero gravity. To make things more complex, the spacecraft was attempting to escape into the vastness of outer space. To do this, it would have needed to accelerate until it exceeded escape velocity. The movie depicted the spacecraft as moving in a horizontal direction relative to the ground. As the spacecraft accelerated, its orbit would have tended to spiral outward. People onboard would have felt as though a force was pushing them toward the back of the ship in the opposite direction of the acceleration. An artificial gravity system would not only have needed to compensate for the feeling of zero gravity, but also for the effects of forward acceleration. That’s some system! If the ship were damaged so that it started spiraling downward toward the planet, and the artificial gravity was disrupted, the occupants would have floated as though in zero gravity conditions.

Luckily, General Grievous gets the ship back under control, but following another round of yada-yada and light saber slashing, along with taking additional hits on his ship, he decides to abandon it. In the process he jettisons all the escape pods, leaving Palpatine, R2D2, and the two Jedi stranded as the ship once again takes a nose dive.

On descent and reentry the ship—now piloted by Anakin Skywalker—glows red amid a superheated cloud of plasma, breaks in half, and catches fire—yet lands at the nearest spaceport where the plucky rescue team and freed hostage depart uninjured. (If only NASA guys watched movies, just think what they could do.) Can the miraculous descent be explained away by the ship’s shields? Not likely; they were at least partly disabled when the Jedi boarded. Can such a wonder ever be explained? Why, yes, it must be the midichlorians!

Okay, the Star Wars apologists say that the enemy’s armada was not really in orbit but in the extreme upper atmosphere— accounting for the contrast of a black sky with daylight conditions directly below—traveling at suborbital speed. However, the actual kidnapping would have been done by a small group of covert operators. They would have killed Palpatine’s body guards, and most likely have been immediately detected. With luck and split-second timing, they could have made their way to a nearby space craft (no doubt a Cosmic Toyota) and blasted off, but not before attracting a swarm of police pursuers. Fearing they’d hit Palpatine, the police would have held their fire, giving the abductors time to travel some distance from the surface. At that moment the previously undetected hostile armada would have dropped out of hyper space (assuming there was such an option) into orbit, and promptly zapped all the pursuers, enabling the abduction to succeed. Needless to say, the armada would be in serious jeopardy and not want to slow down or linger any longer than absolutely necessary before making its way back into space. The idea that an entire armada would land on the surface to kidnap a single politician is preposterous.

Even if the armada temporarily dropped below orbital velocity in the extreme upper atmosphere, staying in a horizontal position without falling toward the surface would require aerodynamic lift or downward thrusters. The thrusters don’t seem to be there, leaving aerodynamic lift as the only possibility, but at the edge of the atmosphere there’s almost no air. A large spacecraft would have to be going extremely fast and be highly aerodynamic to have any lift at all. If the craft intended to escape into outer space, as mentioned earlier, it would have to accelerate to a speed higher than that required for a circular orbit in order to spiral outward in an ever increasing orbit.

Keep in mind that the apparent lack of gravity for orbiting objects is not caused by being outside the atmosphere, but by having the object moving at the correct speed, in the correct direction, for the given distance above the surface. In theory a spacecraft could be in orbit a centimeter away from the surface, if the planet were perfectly spherical and had no surface imperfections such as mountains. Even if the planet had an atmosphere, a spacecraft with powerful thrusters could overcome air resistance and give its inhabitants the feeling of zero gs just by traveling at the correct orbital velocity in a horizontal direction.

People in an outward spiraling spacecraft would feel as though the weight force were directed backwards, in the opposite direction of the craft’s horizontal velocity. With a very slow outward spiral, the apparent weight force would be mild or even imperceptible. The sensation of weight would otherwise not be present.

In the extreme upper atmosphere, opening an entryway large enough to admit fighter craft would not only partly depressurize the larger spacecraft, but likely destabilize it. Air rushing out would act like a thruster which could roll the craft upside down or turn it sideways. If the craft were moving at high velocity in the upper atmosphere, the opening itself would cause a horrendous change in aerodynamic properties, possibly enough to send the craft out of control.

When the craft fell it would still not have fallen straight down, thanks to its high horizontal velocity. Assuming that the craft was free falling, and not wildly spinning or tumbling, its occupants would still have felt weightless during the fall. However, the ships thrusters were firing during the fall, which could have caused the equivalent of a power dive, accelerating the ship downward at a faster rate than the acceleration of gravity. Under such circumstances, people and objects in the ship would have appeared to “fall” upwards toward the tail of the ship. When General Grievous pulled out of the dive, the craft’s occupants would have been subjected to accelerations greater than one g. Anything not tied down would have likely slammed into walls.

THE EVIL DATA AND BAD DUNE BUGGY

It would be nice to say that Star Trek has retained its originality and remembered that it belonged not just in an action genre, but the last movie installment, Nemesis [RP] (2003), gives pause. The movie forgot what an original—let alone, good—script was, and offered a rehash of older Star Trek plots—in particular, The Wrath of Khan (1982).This time Khan was replaced by a megalomaniac Captain Picard clone called Shinzon (Tom Hardy), who, aside from his shaved head, bore no resemblance to Picard. At best, Shinzon resembled a younger Picard’s evil twin. Shinzon takes over Romulus and decides—what else—to annihilate humanity. (If he sounds strangely like a machine, it’s because he has the charm of a wood chipper.)

On the way to Romulus, Data finds a missing older brother called B4 (he was made before Data), and completely forgets what happened previously when he found his last missing brother Lore—his evil twin. So what does Data do? Why, of course, he downloads all his memory banks into B4, including exhaustive details of how the Enterprise operates—no risk there. Surprise, surprise, B4 turns out to be a quisling.

Nemesis doesn’t feel like a Star Trek installment—superstoic Klingon-tough-guy Warf, at a wedding celebration, whining about the side effects of Romulan ale? Give us a break. The movie clearly forgot that the franchise is not about hangover clichés, fight scenes, and other mindless crowd pleasers, but about the human condition and the future impact of technology on the mental and material aspects of our lives. Nemesis serves up mostly nonstop action, with everything from hand-to-hand combat, to a lengthy spacecraft battle. The movie even includes a highly contrived “car chase scene.” When the Enterprise detects B4’s signals emanating from a distant planet, Picard thumbs his nose at regulations and drives around the planet’s surface in a newly created dune buggy, searching for the signal’s source. And why does he insist on personally driving a dune buggy instead of sending others in a shuttle? Is he breaking rules to save his crew or to successfully complete his critical mission? Is he breaking them in service to a higher cause or morality? No, no, and no; he’s breaking them because it’s more fun. Naturally, bad guys in similar dune buggies give chase, along with copious quantities of poorly aimed blaster fire and wrecks (bad guys only). The away team survives by driving off a cliff, flying through the air, and miraculously landing in the back of their shuttle craft, which has been maneuvered into just the right position by Data using a handheld remote.

THE MOST FORGIVABLE

Both Star Trek and Star Wars have descended into the depths of ISMP and, at times, forgotten their breathing gear. The Star Trek franchise with ten movies and five TV series, compared to six Star Wars movies, is the more vulnerable of the two franchise based on size alone. Indeed, Star Trek has had more problems with inconsistent script quality than Star Wars, but this is not necessarily a compliment. Following the consistently good quality of the first three Star Wars movies, the last three have been consistently disappointing.

Overall, the Star Trek universe and story lines have been more diverse, and its exploration of future scientific innovations more thought provoking and detailed than those of the Star Wars franchise. In their own way, both franchises are gemstones, but Star Trek has the edge on deserving forgiveness for ISMP slipups, although its edge is razor thin.

[Mike DiCenso]

When Obi Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) wishes to travel to a mysterious distant planet and can’t find a record of it in the archives, he consults not the venerable Yoda, but a class of younglings (future Jedi). They give him their profound insight: “someone deleted it from the archives.” Gosh, do you think so?

Obi-Wan did not go to consult with the Younglings, he went to consult with Yoda, who in turn then asked the Younglings what they thought. Either way, it's an annoying "Spielberg Moment" that should not have been written the way it was, especially as it makes Obi-Wan look horribly stupid. It should have been Obi-Wan going there to let Yoda know that someone had erased information from the Jedi Archives, and to get his permission to go investigate.

In fact, why have Obi-Wan go alone, or better still, why not have a probe sent out to confirm that the star system really is there, and is not some kind of tampering intended to make the Jedi go off on a wild goose chase, and waste precious time as well as tie up scarce Jedi Knights.
-Mike

[mojo]

i should have been more clear about the level of knowledge this guy has. it's very low. many of his points would be laughed at here. i thought there was enough of interest to post it though.

[Mike DiCenso]

Here's another one. How come the Kaminoans are so damn stupid as to be working on such a massive ten-year long project without ever once thinking of sending an ambassador or a holonet message to the Jedi Council or whomever to verify the legitimacy of the project? What if they didn't get paid for their work? What were they going to do if Obi-Wan hadn't gone there? Did Palpatine have an alternative plan?
-Mike

[User1636]

i should have been more clear about the level of knowledge this guy has. it's very low. many of his points would be laughed at here. i thought there was enough of interest to post it though.

Thanks for pointing that out, since he makes so many mistakes and off-the-wall analyses that I was about to have a meltdown!
Like when he talks about Jar-Jar, he doesn't realize that Palpatine had selected and manipulated Jar-Jar from the beginning for that very reason, i.e. that he symbolized Lenin's "useful idiot" that would "sell you the rope that you'd use to hang him with."
Likewise he makes simple mistakes, like noting that the Jedi fly into the Invisible Hand's hanger without depressuring the ship: hasn't he ever heard of a semi-permeable shield that keeps air in, like the one on the Death Star hangar, the Enterprise's shuttle-bay etc?

And the Hollywood/political analyses were just pulled out of thin air. You'd think he'd ask more obvious questions, like why they didn't just hit the Death Star with a lot of nuclear weapons, or why the emergency exhaust-port didn't just have a cover on it, or a particle-shield that was thermocoupled to the reactor?
(Of course that would be like asking Achilles' goddess-mother why she made his armor vulnerable at the heel, but there ya go.)

[Mike DiCenso]

i should have been more clear about the level of knowledge this guy has. it's very low. many of his points would be laughed at here. i thought there was enough of interest to post it though.

Are you saying this isn't your own review? Who's is it, then?
-Mike

[mojo]

i should have been more clear about the level of knowledge this guy has. it's very low. many of his points would be laughed at here. i thought there was enough of interest to post it though.

Are you saying this isn't your own review? Who's is it, then?
-Mike

mike, are you kidding? i can't tell if you're messing with me. were you really working under the assumption that I wrote a long passage that i posted in a thread i titled "from the book 'Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics"'? i mean, the second sentence in the post is 'i'm always interested when someone clearly not too invested chips in his two cents, and i thought it was funny.' would it be humanly possible for me to be more clear that i didn't write this?
please explain how i'm being an idiot and missing something obvious here.

[mojo]

When Obi Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) wishes to travel to a mysterious distant planet and can’t find a record of it in the archives, he consults not the venerable Yoda, but a class of younglings (future Jedi). They give him their profound insight: “someone deleted it from the archives.” Gosh, do you think so?

Obi-Wan did not go to consult with the Younglings, he went to consult with Yoda, who in turn then asked the Younglings what they thought. Either way, it's an annoying "Spielberg Moment" that should not have been written the way it was, especially as it makes Obi-Wan look horribly stupid. It should have been Obi-Wan going there to let Yoda know that someone had erased information from the Jedi Archives, and to get his permission to go investigate.

-Mike

regardless, the yoda/younglings scene contains yoda's only funny joke ever.
'lost a planet obi-wan has. how embarrassing.'

[mojo]

i should have been more clear about the level of knowledge this guy has. it's very low. many of his points would be laughed at here. i thought there was enough of interest to post it though.

Thanks for pointing that out, since he makes so many mistakes and off-the-wall analyses that I was about to have a meltdown!
Like when he talks about Jar-Jar, he doesn't realize that Palpatine had selected and manipulated Jar-Jar from the beginning for that very reason, i.e. that he symbolized Lenin's "useful idiot" that would "sell you the rope that you'd use to hang him with."
Likewise he makes simple mistakes, like noting that the Jedi fly into the Invisible Hand's hanger without depressuring the ship: hasn't he ever heard of a semi-permeable shield that keeps air in, like the one on the Death Star hangar, the Enterprise's shuttle-bay etc?

And the Hollywood/political analyses were just pulled out of thin air. You'd think he'd ask more obvious questions, like why they didn't just hit the Death Star with a lot of nuclear weapons, or why the emergency exhaust-port didn't just have a cover on it, or a particle-shield that was thermocoupled to the reactor?
(Of course that would be like asking Achilles' goddess-mother why she made his armor vulnerable at the heel, but there ya go.)

but that's so simple. because she held him by the heel when she dunked him.

i hear what you're saying about the depressurization thing, but i think it's a fair question, mainly because i complained about that loudly when i first came here, only i used the death star example because ep3 wasn't out yet. it was something stupid like 'how am i supposed to take the sw universe seriously when people are walking around in giant rooms which are OPEN TO THE VACUUM OF SPACE'. this went to some comment about magnetic shields, which i STILL say would make a lot more sense if air were MADE OF METAL. but oh well. what still bugs me about the depressurization scene is that the shield hardware was on the outside of the ship. that, to me, is a billion times stupider than having a tiny hole leading to the core of the death star. you can at least SORT OF see how someone might have thought something like 'what are the chances anyone is going to shoot a torpedo down this tiny hole', but i absolutely can make no sense of 'let's put the apparently fairly fragile hardware that creates the force field on the outside of the ship instead of on the inside, where the force field would protect it.' that's like wearing a crotchless suit of armor.
now that i think of it, could someone here explain this to me please? is there any official reason for this? it sure would make it easier to watch the opening scene of ep3 without having to pause the dvd and go scream into a pillow for five minutes.

i did think his thoughts on the artificial gravity in star wars were interesting.
Okay, maybe “a long time ago in a galaxy far away” they understood gravity well enough to pump it like central heating fluid through the floors of spacecraft. But if they did, why would the artificial gravity change direction with respect to the floor when the ship fell toward a planet? It seems like the artificial gravity’s direction would remain perpendicular to the floor regardless of the ship’s position.
my immediate thought was, 'well, maybe someone blew up the artificial gravity generator. it's probably ten feet wide with a flashing neon bullseye on it, on an unshielded section of the outside of the ship.' but then..
If the ship were damaged so that it started spiraling downward toward the planet, and the artificial gravity was disrupted, the occupants would have floated as though in zero gravity conditions.
whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

and i know everyone is sick and tired of talking about midichlorians, but..
..it offered an unnecessary biological explanation for how the Jedi tap into the Force: “midichlorians,” a type of interstellar microbe. The little guys grant access to the Force after planting themselves in one’s cells—the more the better. Does this mean swilling a microbe-laced cocktail could make a person stronger in the Force? What about injections? Is the microbe airborne or sexually transmitted, and if so, why are Jedi required to be celibate?
erm.. has this been discussed? ever? what WOULD happen if you raised someone's midichlorian count? and if you did it to someone who is not force-sensitive, would that person BECOME force-sensitive?

and then to the gungan/droid battle..
Episode I proceeded to take one of the goofiest characters ever created, a flop-eared Gungan called Jar Jar Binks, and then build the ISMP classic of all land battles around him and his species.
The battle pits the bumbling Gungans against heavily armed, high-tech droids.
The Gungans have a sophisticated forcefield technology capable of shielding their army on the battlefield, yet they ride around on beasts of burden. They have explosive devices that look like giant blue marbles but have to launch them with ancient-looking catapults. Do they put their knowledge of explosives to work and modify them into propellants for rockets and firearms? No, they use spears. Do they rely on stealth, harassment, or guerrilla warfare—tactics that, at times, have actually worked against technologically superior forces? No, they face off head-to-head with the droids on open ground—a tactic that’s usually disastrous when used against technologically superior forces.
When droid tanks fire, their shots bounce off the Gungan force field. Yet droids can walk through the shield effortlessly. Apologists explain that the shields are somehow tuned to block high-energy blasts but allow everything else to pass. Okay, then why didn’t a few kamikaze droids loaded with explosives walk through and blow up the Gungans? Why didn’t the tanks drive up, poke their barrels through the shields, and blast the Gungans? There are dozens of ways the droids could have improved their battle tactics but didn’t.
anything? guys?

[Mike DiCenso]

i should have been more clear about the level of knowledge this guy has. it's very low. many of his points would be laughed at here. i thought there was enough of interest to post it though.

Are you saying this isn't your own review? Who's is it, then?
-Mike

mike, are you kidding? i can't tell if you're messing with me. were you really working under the assumption that I wrote a long passage that i posted in a thread i titled "from the book 'Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics"'? i mean, the second sentence in the post is 'i'm always interested when someone clearly not too invested chips in his two cents, and i thought it was funny.' would it be humanly possible for me to be more clear that i didn't write this?
please explain how i'm being an idiot and missing something obvious here.

Just dropping a hint, really. You never offered any link or anything in your introduction, just a title. I'm moving this to the Reviews and critiques section as that is really where it belongs.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

When Obi Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) wishes to travel to a mysterious distant planet and can’t find a record of it in the archives, he consults not the venerable Yoda, but a class of younglings (future Jedi). They give him their profound insight: “someone deleted it from the archives.” Gosh, do you think so?

Obi-Wan did not go to consult with the Younglings, he went to consult with Yoda, who in turn then asked the Younglings what they thought. Either way, it's an annoying "Spielberg Moment" that should not have been written the way it was, especially as it makes Obi-Wan look horribly stupid. It should have been Obi-Wan going there to let Yoda know that someone had erased information from the Jedi Archives, and to get his permission to go investigate.

-Mike

regardless, the yoda/younglings scene contains yoda's only funny joke ever.
'lost a planet obi-wan has. how embarrassing.'

Maybe in a different context it would be funny. But the humor is forced, like a lot of things in that scene. Now that's embarrassing.
-Mike

[mojo]

Just dropping a hint, really. You never offered any link or anything in your introduction, just a title. I'm moving this to the Reviews and critiques section as that is really where it belongs.
-Mike

uh, but mike, it's in no way a review. i believe that there are valid points here that could be discussed. i named three or four a couple of posts up. this actually does not belong in reviews and critiques. even if you were implying that the article itself is a review, well, it isn't. it's a discussion on physics in both star wars and star trek. all due respect, but please put it back where it was, or, you know, review it.

[Mike DiCenso]

Technically speaking, it's discussing this is still critiquing someone else's work. That beng said, after looking up the book title and finding the website, I was more than a bit disappointed in their review of the Al Gore schlockumentary, "An Inconvenient Truth", where they brushed off any scientific errors in the movie, of which are quite numerous.
-Mike

[mojo]

the hell? who cares? even bringing up that piece of crap seems like a bad idea to me. 'an inconvenient truth' is like religion - the people on both sides are too sure they're right to make debate worthwhile. personally i think there must be SOMETHING to climate change, but i hate al gore and his piece of shit movie. he's worse than that fat lard moore.

before i jump the gun and look like an idiot, would it be ok to pull the post with my questions and repost it to the sw/st forum?

[Praeothmin]

now that i think of it, could someone here explain this to me please? is there any official reason for this? it sure would make it easier to watch the opening scene of ep3 without having to pause the dvd and go scream into a pillow for five minutes.

The official reason is the shield generators were built by the same force that built combat droids that fall in pieces when deactivated (TPM, fight against the Gungans)... :)

'well, maybe someone blew up the artificial gravity generator. it's probably ten feet wide with a flashing neon bullseye on it, on an unshielded section of the outside of the ship.

Or there's a big red button on the bridge written "Do not push this button"... :)

erm.. has this been discussed? ever? what WOULD happen if you raised someone's midichlorian count? and if you did it to someone who is not force-sensitive, would that person BECOME force-sensitive?

Some people have asked this, such as "What would happen if a Borg assimilated a Jedi?"...
Logically, if the Midichlorians create the Force (just like some virus or bacteria gave people powers in TOS), then pumping someone full of them should indeed create one powerful Jedi, unless these organisms automatically die when you extract them from a host...

And all his points about the Droid/Gungan battle are valid, IMO...
The Droids should have wiped the floor with the Gungans, if they had been built half-efficiently...