by Tom Rogers
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 gra
vity. 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.
CHAPTER 20
ALL-TIME STUPID MOVIE PHYSICS CLASSICS:
“They Said the Physics Were Impossible . . .”
THE PINNACLE OF BADNESS
It’s easy to make a movie with bad physics, but to reach the pinnacle—beyond the merely insultingly stupid—of classically stupid requires artistry. Though many aspire, few achieve. Clearly discernible technical blunders, such as disobeying the first law of thermodynamics, are critical to this category, as is the generous use of bad physics’ clichés. Creative physics badness is even better, but the movie must also possess illogical problem solving, inconsistency, and out-of-character or stereotyped scientists, engineers, and other sorts of techies. A few pithy but ridiculous lines of dialogue help immensely, but in the end nothing makes physics flaws shine brighter than a movie which takes itself seriously and is monotonous, clichéd, or lifeless from an artistic standpoint. Mere illogic or exaggeration is insufficient; a true classic must be scientifically unfixable and artistically bland (with the exception of spectacular special effects—these help).
TERRESTRIAL WANNABES
The Matrix flirted with becoming an insultingly stupid movie physics (ISMP) classic, but failed. Its explanation of why the machines keep humans as a power source (see Chapter 3) shredded the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and ranks as the ISMP classic for first and second law blunders! The movie followed with mindless nonstop action scenes, but alas, it failed to reach overall ISMP classic status. The first half of the movie was an artistic and science fiction masterpiece, which subsequently spoiled all hope for ISMP classic status.
Matrix sequels fared better, especially the third which served up the ISMP classic of indoor battle scenes: the loading dock battle described in Chapter 5. The unprotected warriors strapped to gigantic robotic devices (called APUs) would have slaughtered themselves with ricochets and falling debris by blasting an impossibly high number of automatic cannon shells toward the concrete roof over their heads. Survivors would have succumbed due to inhaling the smoke from cannon blasts and collateral fires set by exploding shells. Alas, even this nonsense was not enough to grant the movies ISMP classic status.
The pithy line, “they said the physics were impossible . . .” (certainly an ISMP classic), which was followed by defying the conservation of momentum, not to mention the first and second laws of thermodynamics, immediately identified Eraser [RP] as a contender. But honestly, even given its physics flaws, the movie has Arnold Schwarzenegger, and who can dislike the big guy. There’s a reason he was elected governor and it probably wasn’t just his super-duper plan for saving California. The movie was a viable action adventure and its flaws, though grievous, could have been fixed with little (if any) negative impact on the story. The movie failed to achieve the elevated ISMP classic status because its main premise was just not absurd enough.
The Day After Tomorrow’s trailer alone created significant Internet buzz. Could this be the one, the ISMP colossus? Certainly, early buzz is a good sign. The special effects budget— a major component of any ISMP contender—was huge. The giant wave crashing against the Statue of Liberty, the LA tornados, and the feeble attempts at dialogue all contributed to its candidacy. It had the enchanted tent. When the movie’s hero and a group of friends trudge through a once-in-the-history-of-Earth blizzard to rescue the hero’s son, they find solace in the enchanted tent.The wind may howl and the snow may drift, but all is well in the enchanted tent. One can’t even see one’s breath. This movie looked like a contender. But once again, it was mostly mere exaggeration—nothing especially creative.
DOWN-TO-EARTH OUTER SPACE TRAVEL WANNABES
One might think that near-Earth space travel would offer few opportunities for ISMP classic status. After all, humanity has traveled to the Moon, built space stations, and flown the Space Shuttle. Such ventures have become almost routine. Still, it seems that ISMP opportunities abound even in this almost down-to-Earth environment.
Armageddon certainly rose to the ISMP challenge. It contained one physics flaw after another, mixed with improbability and illogic. It only took a small piece of loose insulation to fatally damage the Challenger, and subsequently over two years to get ready for the next shuttle launch. So how could we possibly train an inexperienced team, have a duel space shuttle launch, land a shuttle on an asteroid, save humanity, and safely return all in eighteen days? The whole idea that hu
manity can sit and do nothing to prepare for an asteroid strike disaster, then go out and save itself with a puny nuclear bomb blast against a Texas-sized asteroid—all in a matter of weeks—is worse than farcical, it’s dangerous. The movie positively overflows with ISMP and improbability.Yet, many of the flaws were simply gross exaggeration. A good number were fixable, and besides, the characters were (unfortunately) likable.
Red Planet (RP) and Mission to Mars (MM) ventured a little further into space and contained numerous examples of ISMP. Both have spacecraft with poorly conceived artificial gravity (AG) scenes. MM’s AG is merely bad, whereas RP’s AG is downright ugly (see Chapter 15). MM offers up an excellent ISMP scene in which a group of astronauts floating in orbit around Mars attempt to rescue Woody Blake (Tim Robbins), who has drifted off, and is at the edge of a rapidly decaying orbit and certain death. To reach him, his would-be rescuers have to continually use their thrusters and are flashed many low fuel warnings by their wrist-mounted computers. But wait, isn’t this outer space? What happened to Newton’s first law? Once in motion they would have no further need to use thrusters until it was time to stop. RP offered its impossibly flammable alien life forms and homicidal robot, but neither movie had truly groundbreaking levels of ISMP.