A NEW HOPE  (the movie formerly known as STAR WARS) has been (back) out
again for a couple of weeks.  I haven't seen the rerelease yet, but it's
on my social calendar if it holds for another week.  
 
I'll start the item by discussing some of my creebs about the plotting
and storytelling of the TRILOGY.
 
1) It always annoys me that STAR WARS and EMPIRE are inconsistent in 
   their handling of the little fighter ships.  In STAR WARS, a significant
   point is made that the little Empire fighter could not have gotten out 
   into deep space by itself.  In the next movie, though, Luke takes his
   X-wing off to visit Yoda's planet.  Long haul travel in a little fighter:
   clearly one of the great strengths of The Force is control over the 
   Jedi Knight's bladder.
 
2) There's a big scene in STAR WARS at the Death Star Management Meeting.
   One of the Empire officers is making fun of Vader's faith in the Force.
   "Your sad devotion to this ancient religion..." etc. etc. etc.
   Vader is the last (known) follower of The Force, and there was a great
   story to be told about why he sold out his co-religionists to serve 
   a secular Empire.
 
   Second movie:  Ooops!  We forgot to mention the Emperor is a devotee of
   The Force too.  Amazing that we overlooked that in the previous movie, 
   and that nobody else but Vader knows.

Having put in two creebs, I will have to balance the scales by mentioning
that the Imperial attack on the ice planet is one of my favorite sequences
of movie making.

69 responses total.

Nit about your first point:  One of the main differences between emperial and
rebellion fighters is that the empire went overboard on the "small" and
"manuverable" of the "small manuverable fighter" class of ships.  They have
little tiny engins, lightweight bodies, and few small guns.  That's it.  No
hyperdrive, among other things.  The rebellion, on the other hand, went in
for larger, heavier, slower fighters, with such amenities as hyperdrives,
because they had to use hit and fade tactics.  Hense, Luke can, if he want
to endour the problems of hygene, fly his ship to Dagobah, while the Emperial
fighter could not have gotten into deep space on it's own.

Nit with that same scene, where the emperial ship got into "deep space" on
it's own:  A planet just got blown up, for heaven's sake.  There must have
been any number of ships that were in space around it when it went.  The
fighter could have been one of them.

All in all, I really liked the new movie, with the exception of the Jaba
scene, and Greedo shooting.  The dogfights were improved dramatically.

    I have not seen the new version. However, the old version, for all its
glory, had numerous outright blunders that I would lay long odds were not
fixed in the new version. The characters spend a significant part of the
movie riding around in vehicles that proport to be spaceships, in a setting
that proports to be interplanetary space. However, their maneuvers and
other behavior are not that of space vehicles, but instead resemble craft
which never experience vacuum for so much as a minute. The fighter craft
seem to behave like airplanes, while the larger ships more resemble a cross
between a large passenger aircraft and a surface ship. All of the above
behave as if they were always operating in atmosphere.

    This is a problem with almost all space fiction that is published in
the form of video or film. More detailed explanation of this problem can be
found in Item 62 in the Science Fiction conference, "Space ships, and how
they work".

    I would like to know if any of this was fixed; and I am especially
interested in whether they got rid of that line where Harrison Ford says
that the _Millenium Falcon_ "can make the Kessel run in less that 12
parsecs". It sounded so damned *moronic*!

   no, solo still claims that his ship can "make the kessel run in less than
twelve parsecs." i've been told that solo made that claim in an attempt to
find out if obi-wan and luke knew anything about space travel, but that's not
made terribly clear in the movie.

   one thing that bothers me about space fiction in general is that you always
*hear* ships and planets exploding. i'm pretty sure "dark star" is the only
movie i've seen in which explosions in space were inaudible.

   and i doubt i'll go see the other two movies in the "star wars" trilogy
when they come out. the changes in the first one just weren't worth $7 to me.

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I really liked the adaptions they made...  (if you read the Star Wars
novels you would know that there is the M<aw Cluster- a group of
many many black holes that make people take longer routes to
get to the glitterstim mines on Kessel).

Although, maybe it was just in the theater where I saw it, but
sometimes the mouths didn't move at the right times for the
voices...

./

Quote from the _Star_Wars_Technical_Journal_ under the section Millenium
Falcon:
        "the Falcon's greatest claim to fame was that she was the ship that
        held the completion record for the Kessel Run, something of a smugglers
        speed and endourance contest.  Those ships hired to make the run must
        deliver specified loads of certain substances (usually spice from the
        mines of Kessel) to a number of moving trade ships before they all pass
        beyond the limits of the free trade lanes near the planet.  Speed is
        of the essence, for the smuggler's ship must cover the distence between
        the divergently-moving vessels and make all of it's deliveries before
        the trade vessels cross into Imperial space."

I'm not sure it this is what Lucus had in mind, but it's a good explaination
of why distance is a measurement of speed.  The back hole deal would be a
measure of manouverability, but not of speed.

In a cluster of black holes greater speed would allow you to come closer to
a black hole and still remain faster than the escape velocity from that
distance, so you could choose a straighter line through the cluster.  Funny
that they would have a unit of distance measure that is derived from our solar
system.

especially given the initial prologue.. " a long, long time ago in a galaxy
far, far away..."

btw, what is the origin of "parse?"
uh, make that "parsec"

A star is at a distance of one parsec if its semi-annual parallax is one
second of arc. So parsec comes from (par)allax and (sec)ond.

Why can't people just accept that Lucas made a small but highly 
embarrassing mistake in the script?

That could be.  Movie types are always saying really stupid things in movies
because it sounds technical enough to swap the processors of the average
viewing public.  (That's what the movie types think, anyway)

It shouldn't be that big a part of the budget to hire some writers and
technical advisors who know something about space travel before even writing
the script.

What, admit you don't know everything?  Never!

Okay.  I like your defenition of parsec.  So, since there are no stars within
one parsec of earth, where the hell did they get the defenition?

They wanted a large unit of distance that was based on mathmatics (That are
applicable anywhere, not just earth) so they got the parsec.

More than that. These distance measures are contrived. The "light year" 
was chosen so the numbers to describe distances would be simple: the
nearest star is ca. 4 light years away. However it is a cumbersome term. 
Could shorten it to a "lear"...or maybe a "ligear...."lytear"?..ugghh. 
Also, it is not a geometric measure. However all this time a lot was being
done using the parallax of nearby stars with respect to background stars,
using the earth's orbital diameter around the sun as the baseline, to
measure the distances to the nearby stars. They begin at just a few
arc-seconds of parallax. It would be natural to talk about their distances
in terms of arc-seconds of parallax. So, someone called it a "parsec", and
it caught on.  It is about 1.36 light years. 

From an article I remember hearing w/Lucas (Sorry, I can't quote where it was,
I don't remember where, just that I heard it) Luacs said the line about the
parsec was a blunder. They made a mistake and jnd didn't find out until later
when it was too late to change the scene. As for hiring technical advisors,
when Star Wars was made they didn't have tbudget they got for the later
movies, they may not have been able to aford much more than what they had.
As for the desire so many people have for absolute scientific accuracy clook
at this as a fantasy, with a futuristic theme instead of a medieval theme.

Me thinks you think too much and have too much time on your hands.

judgemental, aren't we?   ;)

I don't sound to be judgemental, but I think if we are going to spend our time
complaining, we might as well complain about things we can change.

But change is scary. It's much more comfortable to bask in the
status quo and complain about stuff you can't do anything about.
Anyway, the Force be with you.

We finally went to see the rerelease of STAR WARS on Wednesday.
Twenty years ago, I did not realize what a little boy's fantasy 
movie it was.  In kinship, it is much closer to FLASH GORDON than 
to 2001.

        I just spent an hour and a half in 20 degree weather waiting for
tickets for The Empire Strikes Back. I was 14th in line. The local news
station came and filmed all of us crazy people standing in the cold. I can't
wait to see it tonight. 

Re #22: Twenty years ago, I *did* realize what a little boy's
fantasy it was. The parallels with Flash Gordon are quite
striking. Nonetheless, I'll probably go to see "Star Wars" and
sequels in their new release, although you'll notice that I'm
not exactly rushing it.

BTW, what version of _Flash Gordon_ are you talking about, the original, or
the cheesy 1980 version with the Freddie Mercury & Queen soundtrack?

The original Flash Gordon serials from the 1930's, starring
Buster Crabbe as FG.

RE #26 Thanks, remmers.

Empire is out already? Boy aren't I behind.  Is Starwars still around?  Anyone
want to go with me?  Sure, it's a boy's fantasy.  With elements of little-
girl romance. It's still fun.

  If I were running things, and thank god that I am not, I'd debut all three
at once, charge $150 to get in and sell T-shirts in a limited edition at $100
per.
  I think that seeing all 3 in one shot would be a good marketing tool.

Why?  I wouldn't go see them at that price.

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   i wouldn't pay $150 to see *any* three movies, no matter what they were.
come to think of it, there's not much i would pay $150 to see, unless it was
going to go on for a week or so.

There is supposed to be a theater in Grand Rapids with an
extra special screen and sound system and last night, despite
the nasty weather, my nephew and 20 of his frat brothers
made the journey.

I wish I could work up that kind of enthusiasm about a film. ;-)

So, who went to the opening night of EMPIRE?  Report!

ref #34: That would be the Studio 28, Mary. They claim to have the largest
indoor screen in the state. And I just happen to have been awarded a pair of
tickets last night at our company's annual gimme-a-plaque dinner. We'll see
"Empire" here, though, and use the tickets for the scooters-thru-the-trees
scenes in "Jedi". Kenn says we can sit in the third row if I promise not to
utter a single "yub yub" for at least a week. 8^}

I remember watching Empire from the first row.  The "snow speeder" part almost
gave me motion sickness.  Awesome!

I was there for opening night of Empire. Once again the crowd was great,
cheering for all the major players. The only large new scene that I noticed
was the monster in the cave that traps Luke. Before you only saw it when it
was attacking Luke, but now you get to see it eating something in the corner.
All in all it was a good show. 

What was it eating in the corner?

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