abake
Rex Tremendae Majestatis
Yeah, I obviously failed at explaining what I had in mind!
Anyway, thanks for the lively discussion fellas.
Yes, the bombs would not stop at the bottom of the ship unless there’s a force pushing the other way to stop them. The bombs would “drop” as we see them do. Also, the bombs hang in lines in the ship pushing each other down creating momentum.
And therefor what we see on screen is pretty much how it would go if the bombs were ejected by the artificial gravity of the ship.
The asteroids in ESB having their own gravity strong enough to pull the bombs is a much “dumber” and less plausible possibility - but then again, it’s Star Wars. And asteroids and ships have gravity - so who cares!?
You have a problem with that and not the asteroids behaving with implausible chaotic movement?
The problem with the TLJ bombs is that Star Wars has established guided missile technology with proton torpedoes, there's no need to ever fly over a target and drop bombs. Luke was trying to pinpoint an exhaust port with a guided missile that had to be launched in a specific way in ANH, I never thought he was dropping that torpedo, and the TIE bombers in ESB looked to be launching those glowing orbs (similar to photon torpedoes in Star Trek, same filmic language), never thought they were being dropped but shot.
The Last Jedi bombing run comes across as incredibly stupid compared to everything else.
No, in fact I don’t have a problem with the bombers in ESB. I don’t have a problem with ANY of the bombers actually. That’s the point. Star Wars is fantasy and a lot of not very likely stuff happens. All of it is implausible if you wanna ruin it! I know enough about science to be aware that nothing in this universe makes any sense if we drag it through this kind of misplaced scrutiny.
Judging a Star Wars movie on plausibility and realism of the “science” and ranking the implausibility is kind of ridiculous. And we all know that if we think about it.
I find this kind of criticism petty and unimaginative querulous.
But lucky that those, who can’t have fun with space bombers anymore, can now have fun with bombing the movies that their 15year old selves most likely would have adored. ;-)
I don't know that I've ever seen anyone defend the Mary Poppins scene. Even the most diehard TLJ fans seem to acknowledge that it was terribly done. But the dropping bombs via the ship's internal artificial gravity does line up with SW "physics" from previous films.
It does break form with OT era "energy weapon" bombs (ESB TIE Bombers and RO Y-Wings) but the "falling" aspect of the mechanical bombs really shouldn't be a sticking point for anyone who has accepted the physics of the OT and PT.
I don't know that I've ever seen anyone defend the Mary Poppins scene. Even the most diehard TLJ fans seem to acknowledge that it was terribly done. But the dropping bombs via the ship's internal artificial gravity does line up with SW "physics" from previous films.
It does break form with OT era "energy weapon" bombs (ESB TIE Bombers and RO Y-Wings) but the "falling" aspect of the mechanical bombs really shouldn't be a sticking point for anyone who has accepted the physics of the OT and PT.
I hear where you're coming from though I'm not sure that being sucked out into space and freezing is particularly "hard science" anymore, at least not to blockbuster film audiences. I mean most kids watching TLJ probably remembered the exact same thing happening to Yondu earlier that same year and therefore wouldn't need to run to their physics books afterward in order to understand what happened to Leia.
I certainly wouldn't say that it's "harder" science than say a wrist stump cauterizing instead of bleeding when the hand is sliced off by a burning lightsaber blade. Which interestingly enough was an example of George himself breaking his own rules when compared to Walrusman's arm.
Walrusmen tissue doesn't cauterize like human tissue does due to their water planet origins. Different rules.
But I'm talking about genre convention. Whether those aspects are in other blockbusters or not, it wasn't in the OT. A bridge breach in ROTJ is just an explosion, while in TLJ it introduces imagery that is very different and very much fully sci fi movie - especially stuff like zero-g drifting debris as Leia re-enters the bridge and air-lock doors. That's out of an Alien movie, not SW, at least anything seen in the OT.
Or Guardians of the Galaxy, which is just as high fantasy as Star Wars. Ergo not an exclusive element of "hard sci-fi" and thus not genre breaking.
That's true that Piett wasn't sucked out into space when the A-Wing hit his bridge which is different than what happened to Leia. But again, like the cauterizing limb inconsistencies Lucas broke his own "bridge breach" rules when General Grievous broke the glass in ROTS. So yeah, the whole Leia thing was jarring in it's own way but ultimately not any more inconsistent with what came before or outside the bounds of the genre than when George was in charge of the Saga.
Oh I definitely think that space in SW has zero gravity. Han does make the comment about Luke "floating home" after all.
To your question about Zero-G occurring in the PT I think we can assume that had Grievous not grappled his own ship after being sucked out the window that he would have experienced it, but...it's not a given since we didn't see it happen. In fact the one time that characters *should* have experienced Zero-G was when Grievous ship took a dive and yet...Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Palpatine fell *down* the elevator shaft. Obviously you and I know that if Lucas had them obey our laws of physics then they should have floated to the ceiling like when Cap was fighting the Red Skull at the end of TFA. So I've just provided you another difference between SW and the MCU.
Even if you take the vacuum/no vacuum inconsistency with regard to Grievous' and Piett's respective bridges I hear you about the OT setting the rules and trumping all inconsistencies that follow. Despite my posts on the subject I really am not invested in making Leia's ordeal "fit" with the rest of the Saga. It just didn't strike me as too "un-Star Warsey." Reading your take on it though I am leaning toward your perspective. I never got the impression in the OT that people were ever in danger of being sucked out into space if they were ever too close to a hull explosion. They always seemed to have "magnetic fields" and whatnot that would prevent that. Hell didn't Leia's own ship have an open air hangar that Kylo shot his torpedoes into where people were just walking around without spacesuits?
Even *with* the vacuum caused by the shattered glass on Grievous' ship you could easily just assume that magnetic fields hadn't been perfected back during the time of the PT which would explain the difference between Grievous' bridge and Piett's. So yeah, Leia and Ackbar probably should have stayed put based on what we saw in the OT.
TLJ breaking into hard science and therefor should be judged by it? ...that’s very very far fetched to be honest. That seems like an excuse for criticism.
30 years later an audience expects something different than they did 40 years ago because so many space movies have been made since and there are some things that have come to be expected, like zero gravity in space, as it would otherwise seem very weird to the audience that does not only consist of old fans like us. That doesn’t make it hard science or even science fiction. We are still very far from that. It just makes it less weird for a younger audience. New movies will have to balance this, just as the OT and PT had to back in the day.
We have had a lot of time to come up with explanations/excuses for how stuff work in the OT and PT, though the makers never intended them. Let’s see, in a few years, when the anger has settled and the younger fans take over, we’ll get all sorts of explanations/excuses for the ST too. Just like Star Wars has always worked.
Personally I wasn’t a fan of the Leia space scene. The “science” aspect didn’t bother me at all though. My problem was the forced aspect of it (pun not intended), but I think it was there to give Leia a more important character arc. Showing she could now use the force in some ways. It was even more important since, when they edited the movie, Carrie Fisher was already dead and they knew they had to end her story here.
It was also a way to underline a general plot line - that the Force does not just belong to the Jedi.
I know, we just never saw it.
Yeah, the sense you get about OT SW is that it's set with space and planets as a "backdrop" but it really isn't interested (at all) in the scientific reality of those things in terms of rules we know, and only kinda hints at them when absolutely necessary. To OT SW space is no different to a desert or a jungle or ice field, just another backdrop to be traversed and might have an ancient beast or two and some other dangers that are easily understood in a pulpy sense.
SW is very, very selective - it's the world of no buttons.
You mean young people 40 years ago didn't understand or expect zero-g in space... the generation that followed Apollo, the moon landing, and the birth of the space shuttle... but young people today, with little in the way of a space program, do? And this is because of so many space movies?
And a younger audience feels no difference between space-based sci-fi like "Gravity" and space-based fantasy like SW? Or that some fantasy movies are anchored to earth realities like the MCU - the kind that have space, aliens but also billionaire industrialist playboys and WWII - and others are not?
Maybe mass audiences are indeed as dumb as people have made out for so long.
In THREE two hour movies produced over six years.
Oh I definitely think that space in SW has zero gravity. Han does make the comment about Luke "floating home" after all.
I really don't know the PT very well at all - does zero gravity occur in the PT? because to me the zero-g is the most "un-OT" (and therefore un-SW) element of the Leia-Poppins scene. Obviously if you broke a window between space and a room in the OT SW universe SOMETHING had to happen and a rush of wind likely would have been top of that list, kind of like the Bespin window break.
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