Bad Astronomy review of RotS is up

XaLEv · Post by **XaLEv** » 2005-05-22 10:07pm

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/ ... _sith.html

Thread about it: http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=21805

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2005-05-22 10:14pm

Yeah, he still has his little obsession with the "sonic mines" (nevermind the fact that they were named something completely different), but other than that his review is okay.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-05-22 10:16pm

People need to shut the hell up about sound in space already. Do the same people bitch about soundtracks? It's the same thing and they're being hypocritical.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2005-05-22 10:19pm

I don't get this guy's comments on Infantry in the future and the typical "Sotrmtrooper Armor Iz Teh Suxxors!!!11!!" comment.

Did somebody in ROTS really demonstrate you can penetrate Clone/Stormtrooper Armor with very little force, or is he being stupid?

And I like his Infantry-less solution for gaining a planet- destroy it utterly and render it useless. Magnificent plan.

Other than that, it seems about right. Sci-Fi has never been big on the "Space has no air and no gravity" part, anyhow.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2005-05-22 10:19pm

And why does everyone wear capes anyway? They get in the way when you're fighting. Cripes, I don't even like wearing a jacket when I get into death battles with enemy drones. It slows me down.

Best part.

Grandmaster Jogurt · Post by **Grandmaster Jogurt** » 2005-05-22 10:19pm

BB guns would penetrate stormtrooper armour? Where the hell does that come from?

Post by **Gandalf** » 2005-05-22 10:23pm

Why didn't Obi Wan sense Anakin coming back in the elevator when they were trying to get to the Chancellor in the beginning of the movie? Instead, he was surprised, and actually drew his light saber! They make it clear through all six movies that people who are strong with the force can sense each other, and Anakin was still too untrained to be able to hide his presence.

This bugged me too.

Hardy · Post by **Hardy** » 2005-05-22 10:28pm

Although I love Bad Astronomy, I'm not too fond of Plait's reviews of the past two films

I posted this in another thread, but I find it fits better in this one:

Well, finally somebody brings up the blatantly obvious physics problems. I'm very familiar with this particular site, and I do harbor a lot of respect for Phil Plait, by the way.

Some of the buzz droid issues with sound in space can be explained by dubbing over the documentary film for enchancement of viewer expereince. Some of it is unavoidable unless you go to great lengths to explain it.

The only way for them to fall behind would be for Obi Wan to accelerate, so he would be moving faster than the dead droids, and they would appear to fall behind him. But there's no indication he's doing so (and in fact is wasting time talking to Anakin when he should be concentrating on getting to his destination, but the ways of the Jedi are mysterious).

This is a good example of when when circular reasoning is perfectly valid. I noticed this problem too and had just assumed that he had accelerated.

The ship was in orbit, so there is no up or down! I have to assume they have some sort of artificial gravity, and they lose it. But then everyone should float! Instead, it's depicted like a room that's tilting. Even R2 (who has thrusters in his feet, as I recall) starts to slide along the floor.

This particular bit had confused me greatly, and I'm quite glad that people like Saxton fixed it. There are several solutions.

The ship wasn't entirely freefalling and/or may have been providing a weak counterthrust. That would still allow people in the interior to fall.
Canon literature says that artificial gravity was on the fritz, and a "lateral" gravity might have been causing the downward falls.

Oh, another thing: when General Grievous jumps outside the ship, we definitely see his cape waving in the wind. What wind? He's in space! He was already outside the ship, and had moved well away from where he broke the glass to escape outside.

It could be pendulum motion or due to other factors, like the cape being pulled taught by some acceleration. The ship was venting in multiple places too. It's a weak refuation on my part.

As the ship falls toward the planet, it enters the atmosphere. It heats up, with flames trailing behind it. Parts start to fly off. After at least a half minute of this, we cut to the control room, and Obi Wan says "We're in the atmosphere."

I can't disagree here. That was silly.

Also, a point I like to make, even though it's not mentioned in the movie: re-entering ships don't heat up due to friction.

W00t! New knowledge!

Oh, another thing: as they are about to land (well, it was more like a controlled crash landing), ships fly along spraying water on them to put out the fires. Besides being pretty silly, the streams of water are shown dropping straight down onto the warship. Um, they are about to crash land at several hundred kilometers per hour, so I would think the wind would be pretty fierce and blow the water streams backwards.

I think Anakin may have slowed the ship down enough, but I'll give him this one.

Another thing like that is not getting motion correct when showing characters jumping. When a real person jumps, they go up, slow down, stop, accelerate down, and land. In movies, when superhuman characters jump, they never slow down on the way up or speed up on the way back down! It looks fake, and that happened several times in this movie with Yoda, Anakin, Obi Wan, and other Jedi and Sith leaping around.

I'm surprised. ROTS seemed to actually have corrected this problem a little when compared to other films. On the bright side, a new Force power has been discovered: Force thrust.

His little ground combat scenario was stupid...obvious reasons.

I'll give him the lava bit, too. Though I didn't catch it, he's very right. The best one could do is just rationalize it as having to do with Force powers. As for the immolation, he's guilty of a bifurcation fallacy. Anakin's concentration must've been reduced, but not altogether shut down.

Once Grievous "kidnaps" Palpatine, why didn't he just break orbit and get away? Of course, it was all a plot to get the Jedi there, but then Obi Wan should have been wondering why the ship wasn't trying to get away. He said he sensed a trap, but still.

Plenty of reasons. The Republic fleet was probably quite literally in the IH's way; they were under Coruscant's planetary shield; the ship was likely disabled.

Old Plympto · Post by **Old Plympto** » 2005-05-22 10:58pm

The movie opens with space battle (duh, they all do).

Wha?!?! Only this and ANH starts off with things shooting at each other.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-05-23 12:08am

As for them not vapourizing near the lava, there's some precedence in this. Qui-Gon never had his arm melt off when he was melting that hole in that TradeFed blast door.

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2005-05-23 12:28am

My response originally placed on Kurgan's review thread.

I may not have a degree in physics, but many of the complaints here are blantantly falacious.

Sound in Space: A common, understandable Scifi brainbug, acceptable (and even possibly explainable if you consider the concept of auditory simulators built into the ships.)

Buzz Droids: Understandable nitpick.

Ship Gravity: The gravity system is malfunctioning fool. No wonder it's all warped (and in the novelization, the gravity does behave in a more natural manner.)

Grevious' Cape: Obviously, the cape is being effected by the atmosphere being blown out of the bridge. Simple.

Fireship: This nitpick makes little sense, but is unobjectionable (same with the jumping bit, although I dont even know where that's coming from.)

Ground Combat: Honestly, has this guy seen ESB? Planetary shields, ooooooooo. And baring that, has it ever occured to him that the point of taking planets is often to use them in some way or capture something from them? Apparently not.

Mustafar duel: Reasonable nitpick.

Obi-wan's suprise: Obviously the jedi are omnipotent. Riiight....

Getaway: I laughed when I saw this one. Why do you think the cap ships are so close? There blocking the CIS's escape. Geez.

Stormtroopers (Why is he talking about stormtroopers?): Typical "Stormtroopers SUX!" arguement. I thought this guy was supposed to understand these things.

The rest are odd and typical complaints.

At least this guy admits he's no Star Wars buff, but honestly, if he's going to make a site like this, he should think about it more.

tumbletom · Post by **tumbletom** » 2005-05-23 12:43am

The supporting evidence of that is that Anakin didn't burst into flame until Obi Wan injured him very badly, cutting off his legs (and I think an arm, it was hard to tell). Anakin was screaming, and clearly couldn't concentrate (the wuss).

Well thats what most people do when they have limbs chopped off

Burak Gazan · Post by **Burak Gazan** » 2005-05-23 01:14am

tumbletom wrote:
The supporting evidence of that is that Anakin didn't burst into flame until Obi Wan injured him very badly, cutting off his legs (and I think an arm, it was hard to tell). Anakin was screaming, and clearly couldn't concentrate (the wuss).
Well thats what most people do when they have limbs chopped off

I submit we lightsabre Phil into 4 pieces and dump his body next to a blast furnace, and see how stoic he remains

*Phil is good for real-world astronomy, so I think we can forgive his wee bit of whining here

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2005-05-23 01:20am

Gandalf wrote:
Why didn't Obi Wan sense Anakin coming back in the elevator when they were trying to get to the Chancellor in the beginning of the movie? Instead, he was surprised, and actually drew his light saber! They make it clear through all six movies that people who are strong with the force can sense each other, and Anakin was still too untrained to be able to hide his presence.
This bugged me too.

Or it could be a symptom of Palpatine's dampening ability. Obi Wan does not sense Anakin and at another point when they are trapped by the ray shield Obi Wan exclaims "What are we doing?! We're smarter than this!" I took these instances to mean that Obi Wan wasn't at 100% due to Palpy in order to help Anakin truly shine.

Post by **Gandalf** » 2005-05-23 01:26am

Stravo wrote:Or it could be a symptom of Palpatine's dampening ability. Obi Wan does not sense Anakin and at another point when they are trapped by the ray shield Obi Wan exclaims "What are we doing?! We're smarter than this!" I took these instances to mean that Obi Wan wasn't at 100% due to Palpy in order to help Anakin truly shine.

That's a good explanation. It also explains why Palpatine was able to beat down those Jedi who came to arrest him.

Post by **Vympel** » 2005-05-23 01:26am

"I think an arm, it was hard to tell?"

Eh ... what? It's made quite obvious he lost his remaining arm.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2005-05-23 01:37am

Phil's criticism of the artificial gravity actually fails to account for something. He is assuming that these ships are in a proper orbit, ie- the kind of orbit we would use where the ship's velocity is such that the centrifugal forces and gravitational forces basically cancel out and you are left with so-called "zero gravity" conditions.

However, Star Wars ships have the ability to hover with their anti-gravity drives, so they can maintain a most unnatural orbit, ie- one where their angular velocity around the planet is nowhere near enough to counteract gravity.

Drooling Iguana · Post by **Drooling Iguana** » 2005-05-23 01:40am

Gandalf wrote:
Why didn't Obi Wan sense Anakin coming back in the elevator when they were trying to get to the Chancellor in the beginning of the movie? Instead, he was surprised, and actually drew his light saber! They make it clear through all six movies that people who are strong with the force can sense each other, and Anakin was still too untrained to be able to hide his presence.
This bugged me too.

Anakin could have been masking himself so that Dooku wouldn't detect him.

PainRack · Post by **PainRack** » 2005-05-23 04:03am

Stravo wrote: Or it could be a symptom of Palpatine's dampening ability. Obi Wan does not sense Anakin and at another point when they are trapped by the ray shield Obi Wan exclaims "What are we doing?! We're smarter than this!" I took these instances to mean that Obi Wan wasn't at 100% due to Palpy in order to help Anakin truly shine.

Or the general shroud of the Dark side, and the Jedi losing their ability to use the Force as stated in AOTC. But that's a retcon..........

And we use the standard Daley retcon for sound in space. The computer simulates them, so as to enhance Situational Awareness. I mean, we're hearing R2D2 speaking in space. That's gotta be through an intercom or something

And the powers bit should have been obvious already. TPM, melting door. AOTC, directly through two transformers, which has electricity arcing through the air. Can anyone say the words high voltage?

Frankly, its gotten to the stage that a Jedi should be effectively invulnerable to blasters if he can get his Force Shield up.

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2005-05-23 04:08am

Oh, another thing: as they are about to land (well, it was more like a controlled crash landing), ships fly along spraying water on them to put out the fires. Besides being pretty silly, the streams of water are shown dropping straight down onto the warship. Um, they are about to crash land at several hundred kilometers per hour, so I would think the wind would be pretty fierce and blow the water streams backwards.

Actually, doesn't the ICS say that they're using some other kinds of fire-retardants? In my opinion, this is such a nitpick so it's hardly worth mentioning. Oh, and it isn't "sonic mines", it's "seismic charges".
The icing on the cake was that he complained about the acting. I thought that there were some very strong performances by Christensen, McGregor and McDiarmid. Portman (which was pretty good at times) and Jackson wasn't that strong.

JediMaster415 · Post by **JediMaster415** » 2005-05-23 05:24am

On the Mustafar battle, I could've sworn that I saw what looked like shields on all the machinery. Maybe heat shields? That shield shimmer was still on the droid that Anakin hitched a ride with.

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2005-05-23 05:54am

One charmer there seems to be intimating that the ICS numbers are bullshit because they're so large...

Morilore · Post by **Morilore** » 2005-05-23 05:55am

I have a better plan. Take all those honking huge ships, go behind a mile-wide asteroid, and push it so it drops onto the planet. Massing over a billion tons and impacting at 10 kilometers per second or so, I guarantee it'll end the battle quickly. In fact, the explosive yield of such an impact is about 65,000 megatons. That's way, way more than every nuclear weapon on Earth. Bang! End of battle.

Right, because as everyone knows, the United States Army was disbanded over forty years ago once we built enough nukes. After all, there are always more cities. Also, a spacefaring civilization that can build something capable of shattering an entire planet would be utterly helpless against a falling rock.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2005-05-23 06:45am

Darth Wong wrote:Phil's criticism of the artificial gravity actually fails to account for something. He is assuming that these ships are in a proper orbit, ie- the kind of orbit we would use where the ship's velocity is such that the centrifugal forces and gravitational forces basically cancel out and you are left with so-called "zero gravity" conditions.

However, Star Wars ships have the ability to hover with their anti-gravity drives, so they can maintain a most unnatural orbit, ie- one where their angular velocity around the planet is nowhere near enough to counteract gravity.

That was a point I made when I first reviewed the film. The battle is taking place far lower than anything we've seen before with the city below (even if the city IS the planet) being quite detailed. It's like the ships zoomed in to counter the Separatists pulling out of the atmosphere with the Chancellor and were stuck. The fact that the Invisible Hand starts falling and Gen. Grievous' cape flutters as well as the ship heating so quickly demonstrates they were likely in the exosphere at least.#

The AG repulsor systems also account for Obi-Wan landing that wreck rather than having it simply plummet and how it slowed somewhat. It is pretty bad reasoning to assume the ship is simply powered by only reaction drives like our vessels today. The other heat re-entry criticism I don't get. Obviously the Invisible Hand's shields were out and it was falling fast, hence the hull heating unlike other ships do.

Morilore wrote: Right, because as everyone knows, the United States Army was disbanded over forty years ago once we built enough nukes. After all, there are always more cities. Also, a spacefaring civilization that can build something capable of shattering an entire planet would be utterly helpless against a falling rock.

Which is just silly. How he expected such a tactic to be a surprise if they ever did it in the past I don't know. The droids could have had a tractor beam or interceptor ships or TMD system to knock out the 'roid. Plus, last I recall, nuking your own planets (Kashyyyk was far from unpopulated wasteland country) is counterproductive.

"The Separatists have taken the Republic Council Rotunda!"

"Pull back your men, general. We'll sort this out by dropping a high mass, high velocity rock on them! See how they like THAT!"

Gee, wouldn't it be funny if the US was that bad today.

The ICS comment seems stupid too. Just because their weapons belch gigatons of energy per second doesn't make them insane. It's sci-fi last I checked with a several tens of thousands of year old civilisation.

DoctorObvious · Post by **DoctorObvious** » 2005-05-23 06:49am

Darth Wong wrote:Phil's criticism of the artificial gravity actually fails to account for something. He is assuming that these ships are in a proper orbit, ie- the kind of orbit we would use where the ship's velocity is such that the centrifugal forces and gravitational forces basically cancel out and you are left with so-called "zero gravity" conditions.

However, Star Wars ships have the ability to hover with their anti-gravity drives, so they can maintain a most unnatural orbit, ie- one where their angular velocity around the planet is nowhere near enough to counteract gravity.

It shouldn't matter what their orbital velocity was. Since they're in the same frame of reference (ie Coruscant's gravity is effecting them all equally and the ships gravity generators have failed), once the ship started falling, they're in exactly the same situation whether the orbit was from velocity or repulsorlifts.