How Star Wars Trumped Star Trek For Scientific Accuracy 495
An anonymous reader writes "When George Lucas added the 'ring around the Death Star' effect to his 1997 re-release of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the revision was almost as hated as Greedo shooting first, and to boot was seen as a knock-off of the seminal 'Praxis effect' in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). But a debunking astronomer claims that the Federation got it wrong and the fan-boys should thank Lucas for adding some scientific accuracy to his fictional universe."
Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)
Historical Accuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Which portion of this 8 year old book about a 20 year old movie is news?
Re:Historical Accuracy (Score:1, Insightful)
Which portion of this 8 year old book about a 20 year old movie is news?
The portion that helps sales of Star Wars on BD with extra publicity?
I don't care about science in this case (Score:5, Insightful)
I care about the integrity of a work of art, cheesy pyro effects and all.
Digital remasterings that go beyond color correction and noise reduction suck. JMHO.
Acceptable? Getting rid of the matte outlines that were visible in VHS Star Wars IV. Not acceptable? Adding a CGI tauntaun.
star wars is fantasy (Score:1, Insightful)
Praxis effect entrenched in our memories. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless, of course, Praxis had a trench round its circumference too (visible or not). Strip-mining is a viable extraction method.
Re:Greedo shooting first is far more hated ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hadn't Noticed (Score:3, Insightful)
Not all of us have the beautiful anamorphic laserdiscs.
Laserdiscs? What's wrong with the OT DVD release?
Han shoots first on my DVD copy. Same on my VHS copy.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
How Star Wars Trumped Star Trek For Scientific Accuracy
Isn't that the greatest headline ever to create a nerd flame war!?
Re:Star Wars v. Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
Both are entertainment. If you know anything about the relevant science they spout off, I hope you're not taking notes for future reference. I assume both put just enough real science in there to make it sound not _entirely_ bullshit but didn't bother going to ridiculous realistic detail to turn it into a class.
Again, these shows/movies were for entertainment. Picking apart the "science" that was written by.. writers.. might be funny in some blatant cases, but generally it's just a futile effort since not even they cared and they were the ones writing it into canon.
Frankly, my opinion is that those who "take offense" to the lack of credible science in these two series/movies are the ones who sincerely hope/hoped it will/would/(was?) become reality in the not so distant future (or long ago past for the Star Wars fans). OMG! The science isn't real! Does that mean I won't get to tool around the galaxy on the Enterprise-A/B/C/D/E?
Re:Greedo shooting first is far more hated ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. Dicking with SFX is mostly just irritating. But a major personality rewrite is a betrayal -- not of us fans, but of the character himself.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Lukas had every right to change his creation but to assume fans of the original would be pleased was a little foolish.
Of course he does. It's just amusing that a person who once went in front of Congress to protest against the colorization of The Three Stooges is one of the biggest film revisionists of all time at this point. Hell, he's supposedly supposed to be making even more revisions for the BD release.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Science fiction ? Star Wars is more like future fantasy, and Star Trek is more future fiction.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe 'Science Fiction' is a major misnomer for all works currently filed under it.
Re:Star Wars v. Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's not like conjuring up some mystical phenomena that allows the characters to defy the laws of physics.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Star Wars is more like future fantasy
That certainly explains the opening scroll for every movie, which all start "A Long Time Ago, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away" :)
Interesting Definition of Trumped (Score:4, Insightful)
So, if I'm reading the summary correctly, Star Wars was edited to include an effect that had already been included in Star Trek. So for copying Star Trek, Star Wars wins?
Re:Title failure (Score:1, Insightful)
> For christ sakes.. in star wars you could alter someones mind by waving at them.
Spock mind-melded a guard through a wall in "A Taste of Armageddon" and influenced him to open the locked door.
> You could move objects by REALLY wanting them.
Gary Mitchell in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" levitated a bunch of stuff.
> Death? Thats for losers.
Nomad killed Scotty and resurrected him.
You guys who think Star Trek is more "scientific" than Star Wars are just not paying attention.
> Need I go on?
I won't if you won't!
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that both sides takes their movies/shows way to serious. A lot of people put into a deep meaning in Star Wars that isn't really there. Star Trek had a meaning sometimes but they are both for just kinda watching and say wow it would be so cool to be in Space.
Ep. 4,5 and 6 had a lot of Gaps that we filled in our own imagination that when ep. 1,2,3 came out we would all be disappointed as our imagination was replaced with someone else's.
Star Trek was based on the Campy 1960's TV show. And always trying to make itself seem more modern, as it will often use new technology as an excuse to complete the plot. However it was designed for a weekly viewing where at the end of the day everything was back to where it was before. Being that Star Trek and its following Spinnoffs were TV shows we really got to know and learn about the characters and got to know them. So when the movies came out there wasn't any time explaining that Spock was a Half Human, Half Vulcan, or that he was rather smart and strong etc...
So Unlike StarWars when a Star Trek Movie sucks it is usally because it was just bad, not that told us what happened where our version was much better. Hey I wanted the Clones to be the Bad Guys.
Re:Praxis? The Klingon moon? (Score:3, Insightful)
Its a movie... (Score:1, Insightful)
WTF? Star Wars is totally nonsensical (Score:4, Insightful)
- Star Wars uses laser weapons. Any advanced space-race would never use laser weapons as they are readily re-mediated by the use of reflective materials. Star Trek uses Phasers (phased energy weapons), which at least sort of makes sense.
- An entire planet existing as a city? This makes no sense from a material logistics point of view, at all. There is nothing like this in Star Trek.
- Need I mention the force? Microscopic life forms (midichlorians) giving magical powers to people? It is an interesting plot device, but rooted in any kind of science? No.
Re:Star Wars v. Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
That could be because Star Wars is about the story, whereas Star Trek is about the characters.
Inventing Particle A which is fixed by Particle B may not be a good story in itself, but how Kirk, Spock, Bones et al deal with the situation is why I like ST over SW.
Darth Vader was a great baddie, but so was Khan.
SF: only one impossibility per story (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely wrong, at least for connoisseurs. "Hard" science fiction, or SF for short, is very different from fantasy.
SF is a genre written with a "what if" question. Suppose *one* and only one thing that's impossible today were possible, what then? Examples of authors in this genre are Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Arthur Clarke. There's very little true SF in movies and TV, it's too cerebral for visual consumption. A magazine that specializes in SF is Analog [analogsf.com], published since 1930, when it was named "Astounding".
Fantasy is a genre where anything goes. You could say that SF and, as a matter of fact, all fiction is a sub-genre of fantasy. Star Trek and Star Wars are fantasy but not true SF, they have too many impossible things to qualify as true Science Fiction.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the problem was that Episodes 1-3 didn't fill in the interesting gaps.
4: Here's this Luke kid. Light Side wins.
5: The Empire blows up the base, hacks off Luke's hand, and Han's fully-clothed and petrified. Dark Side wins.
6: Luke beats Palpatine. Dad's OK. Light Side wins.
Following the parallel, we should have had:
1: Here's the Anakin kid. Light Side wins.
2: Anakin hacks up a bunch of Sandpeople, kids, and finally flips out Natalie Portman, formerly naked, ends up petrified. Dark Side wins.
3: Here's this Darth Vader dude. He gets more and more evil with every passing month, slaughtering millions, razing planets, building Star Destroyers and Death Stars, and he's so freaking oppressive that the Rebellion starts. Some Bothans rip off the plans for the Death Star and haul ass outa there! Light Side wins.
Instead we got this incoherent jumble:
1: Here's the Anakin kid. Light Side wins.
2: Here's the Anakin dude. Whiny little bugger, ain't he?
3: Here's the Anakin dude. Still a whiny little bugger, ain't he? DO NOT WANT.
All the interesting gaps in the Star Wars storyline took place between Episode III and Episode IV. We all know Anakin's going to fall to the Dark Side, and there was no need to spend two movies doing it. The unexplored part of the movie timeline is what life is like immediately after he becomes Vader, but before the events of Episode IV.
6 movies + one cartoon vs 5 weekly shows (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I see it as an apples and oranges thing. You'd be more accurate comparing Star Trek with Dr. Who and Star Wars with Star Ship Troopers (but I wouldn't even want those flame wars!)
Re:Greedo shooting first is far more hated ... (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree that it's stupid that they made Greedo fire first, it was pretty obvious that if Han hadn't shot him, Greedo would have pulled his trigger, so even without Greedo shooting first, Han was still acting in self-defense.
My point being that the idea of making Greedo shoot first to make Han look somehow less "evil" was even at its very best, a completely unnecesssary change, because it was obvious to me that Han shot Greedo in self defense when I first saw the movie in 1977. The real problem with that change was that it made Han look like he was somebody who simply reacted to situations around him rather than proactively dealt with them in an efficient and appropriate manner.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:2, Insightful)
Leave now and never come back!
Star Wars is past fantasy, (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Greedo shooting first is far more hated ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientific Accuracy in space movies (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a pretty insignificant point. I don't know anyone that would seriously side with Star Wars being science fiction. It has more in common with the Lord of the Rings than it does any sci-fi I've seen. Have some good films come out of the Star Wars universe? Sure, but that doesn't mean it's anymore than a fairy tale set in space. Couple that with the kiddy image of marketing and merchandise and it's hard to take Star Wars seriously as science fiction.
Re:SF: only one impossibility per story (Score:4, Insightful)
The way I've always liked to see it put is that hard SF is an attempt to write plausible fiction that uses scientific knowledge that is as accurate as it can be at the time of writing to extrapolate into the future of what could be.
Fantasy doesn't let plausibility get in the way of telling a good story, and doesn't worry about explaining how stuff works, or worry about whether it even could.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:SF: only one impossibility per story (Score:3, Insightful)
The 'visual' is why skiffy (TV/Movie SciFi) fails as SF: if it's a cool special effect, it's probably bad science. The skiffy genre is all about special effects, and has only a distant relation to SF - skiffy is an excuse to put eye candy on the screen, not an exploration of how a particular technlogical advancement would affect society.
Even when the source material is a Phillip K Dick book, the resulting movie always seems to push aside whatever cleverness made the source interesting in favor of eye candy. Of course, just about any such file makes more money than Dick did for all his books in his lifetime, so it makes good business sense. It's just a mistake to confuse skiffy with science fiction.
This is like asking (Score:5, Insightful)
What is more scientifically accurate? Superman or Spider-man? They are both so wide of the mark it is not even worth noting the difference.
Re:Star Wars v. Star Trek (Score:2, Insightful)
in later ST, especially TNG, Particle A and Particle B became the stories within themselves.
DS9 didn't do hardly any "particle of the week" stories. TNG had it's share, but there was usually a compelling story behind TNG's plot devices. TNG and DS9 generally used technobabble as a means to an end. It wasn't until Voyager that the particle of the week became the whole storyline.
I'd criticize Star Trek for it's character flaws before I'd criticize it for technobabble. How many times did Worf miss attackers that were boarding the Enterprise? Exactly how do you become the Chief of Security for the flagship of the Federation if you can't hit a man sized target from 20 feet away with a small arm? How many times did Riker get the Enterprise whipped in battle? How did Kirk not get drummed out of Starfleet after being caught by Khan with his shields down? How many of his crew paid the ultimate price for that command failure? What would happen to a US Military Officer who made a similar mistake?
Re:SF: only one impossibility per story (Score:3, Insightful)
Star Wars is a Fantasy work because it has:
An interesting theory of magic.
An interesting theory of good and evil.
An interesting theory of super-human proficcency with weapons.
A young farm boy with a destiny.
Star Trek is Science Fiction because it posits some new basic science and extrapolates their technological, social, political and military consequences.
Re:Greedo shooting first is far more hated ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm actually familiar with those, and if you dig a tiny bit deeper, you'd see that they're STILL the same thing.
Re:Star Wars is WAY better than Star Trek (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, if you look at the way the Millennium Falcon moves, especially the way it goes into hyperdrive, it is WAY more realistic.
You lost me when you used FTL drive as an example of something that's "more" realistic.....
The whole idea in Star Wars of a struggle between good and evil is far more realistic
Except it's not a struggle between good and evil. It's a struggle between two sets of elitists that basically espouse the same philosophy. You think the Jedi represent good? Yoda was perfectly content to allow Anakin's Mother to die and even encouraged the boy to let it happen. Windu tried to appoint himself Judge, Jury and Executioner. Qui-Gon wasn't permitted by the Jedi code to rescue two people from slavery and broke the rules in saving one of them.
More accurate maybe but not better! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Star Wars v. Star Trek (Score:2, Insightful)
Picard should have been drummed out multiple times over for his incompetent leadership in battle. It became almost a cliche; the Enterprise is attacked. Ensigns-of-the-week are thrown about the bridge. Shields are down to 50%. Picard sits there, looking worried. He's informed they're opening fire again. Picard just sits there. They get hit, and an ensign-of-the-week is blown up by his or her apparently dynamite-filled console. Shields are down to 20%. Picard finally orders the crew to return fire, but at that point weapon systems are offline, which I always suspect was what Picard was hoping for.
Re:Star Wars v. Star Trek (Score:2, Insightful)
And the winner is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)
The turning to the darkside was set in motion from the second one. Sure it was accelerated somewhat during the latter portions of the third one, but thats what you get from showing it in a film. Lets not forget what Yoda said "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate". It was his fear which led him down the wrong path. The fear of being taken for granted, the fear of being an outcast, the fear of losing his one true love. Fear is a powerful emotion, which has corrupted bigger men in history than some fictional character in a Sci Fi fantasy film.
Re:star wars is fantasy (Score:3, Insightful)
They even got the Ipad right more than 20 years before it became real.
They also got cell phones right, 30+ years before they became popular. Ever notice how the original flip phone was inspired by the communicator?
They had shuttlecraft years before the early designs for Space Shuttles were created.
The list goes on and on.
LK
Re:Finally! (Score:2, Insightful)
There's also the fact that Episodes I and II were completely, utterly useless. Nothing that occurs in Episode II relies on knowing events of Episode I. Nothing that occurs in Episode 3 replies on knowing anything from I or II. The villain in Episode I died at the end. The villain of Episode II dies in the first 5 minutes of Episode III.
I'd go as far as saying that Episode II is a *better* movie if you hadn't seen Episode I. And Episode III is a *far better* movie if you hadn't seen the previous two.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)
A few stormtroopers? We're not talking about a handful here, we're talking about being outnumbered by huge amounts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09n0qd_n4c0 [youtube.com]
First one to go down was taken by a squad at most. Apparently he can lead the charge on the droid army for days on end without taking a scratch... but a couple dozen storm troopers ... get him within a few seconds. (and he was ready) Why didn't the droids army ever bother to send
Second one gets taken down by the first shot fired. Less than a dozen troopers. Not 'ready'... but saw something was up in time to react.
Third one is in a fighter... goes down without a fight within seconds. Darth Vader himself (gifted pilot and force user) had trouble locking onto Luke in episode iv.
Fourth one on a bike... goes down without a fight within seconds. No leaping to safety, nothing.
And yoda... they figured they'd take yoda down with TWO guys. He at least saw it coming.
We all other 'lesser jedi' deal with much larger threats without breaking a sweat. Apparently the force was not strong with the 'jedi masters'; no quick reflexes, no seeing possible futures before it happens. Who knew.
That they died... sure... but my sense prior to the prequels was that they were *hunted down* by the Sith over a period of time with overwhelming forces. Not that they were largely slaughtered like lambs by lousy stormtroopers.
The trade federation ship in the first prequel had the right attitude: A couple jedi knights on board? A whole army of droids to defend us... we're boned.
The turning to the darkside was set in motion from the second one. Sure it was accelerated somewhat during the latter portions of the third one, but thats what you get from showing it in a film. Lets not forget what Yoda said "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate". It was his fear which led him down the wrong path. The fear of being taken for granted, the fear of being an outcast, the fear of losing his one true love. Fear is a powerful emotion, which has corrupted bigger men in history than some fictional character in a Sci Fi fantasy film.
That he was vulnerable to fear, sure. That he was turned to the darkside, sure. That he defended palpatine from execution sure -- but he was arguing even then that palpatine should stand trial, that killing him was not the jedi way... etc. He's pretty conflicted - he's trying to do good, but of course he wanted palpatine to live because he thought palpatine could save the girl - so he didn't want to let him die. So sure that's beleiveable, that he intervened to save him, there's some real conflict going on.
That he VERY shortly thereafter kills a classroom full of kids .. give me a break. There was no threat from them yet, no real conflict with them at all, and he wasn't anywhere near the level of cartoon evil yet, that he'd kill a bunch of kids, nevermind kids he actually knew.
Re:I'm personally letting both movies off the hook (Score:3, Insightful)
The movie Blade Runner, for instance, as much as I wished it had been, was not Science Fiction. Even though it was set in the future (2014), there was a long list of astounding scientific advances the viewer had to accept in addition to the main premise that an android could become self-aware and, in some cases, not even know that it is an android (I mean c'mom, imagine the science needed to produce utterly accurate bodily functions. Or did androids just think they had amazingly efficient digestive tracts?
I always thought the implication was that the replicants were engineered biological organisms. Otherwise why would they bother with the Voight-Kampf test? Once you've accepted that they're biological, pooping comes for free. Really the only big leap is that such a level of bioengineering
that they could make something that is indistinguishable from a human, but so much stronger, resistant to heat, etc.
That doesn't sound like significantly more of a stretch than presuming you could somehow accelerate human growth to super-speeds. Mr. Clone inexplicably knowing things he couldn't possibly have known is the bigger leap imo.
And what makes Blade Runner (and to a lesser extent The Island) true Sci-Fi is not that they restrict the degree to which they extrapolate from existing technology. It's that they posit a type of technology and a type of future in which that technology exists, and explore how that affects the human condition as we see it today. True sci-fi is always about the present, not the future.