Star Wars - The ORIGINAL

Well, where to get started on this one... The premise is actually great! Bad Space Guys kidnap Princess having a bad hair day. Her robot friends enlist the aid of an old Jedi, Obi Wan, and a young sissyboy, Luke. Through too much sole-searching, young sissyboy saves the universe and blows up a fake world. (The real hero is a very young Han Solo & Chewy, played by an equally young Harrison Ford and some really tall guy...)

Well, a few errors and/or problems were noticed along the way;

• It shouldn't even be mentioned, but...Sound in space. Sheeze! However, I suppose it's here to sray. The only movie I know of that got it right was 2001, A Space Odyssey. Unfortunately, during the lengthy space flight scenes, the only thing you heard was a symphony orchestra. It kinda got boring. I had to watch it 6 or 7 times.

• The Stormtroopers use 'laser' guns to attack our friends. They show up as they travel thru the air toward their intended target.
  • 1^st, you can't "see" light. You can only see reflected light after it hits, is absorbed, and re-emitted by a hunk of matter. A high-powered flashlight and/or a laser beam can ONLY be seen if there is lots of dust and dirt in the air where it travels. This allows the photons to scatter around and go to your eyeball. Think carefully, if you COULD actually see light itself, what would you see? Light. That's all! The light from an overhead flourescent, going in every direction, would fill the room and all you'd see is a huge block of "white". No objects. No peoples. No cool beverage sitting in front of me... AAHHHHHHRRRRRGGGGHHHHHH! Where's my beer????
  • Light travels kinda fast. Like faster than our senses can pick up on. This is why you can't open a fridge door without seeing light - unless, of course, the lightbulb is broken... A regular bullet, shot from afar, hits its target before the target even hears the sound. Why? The bullet travels faster than sound and gets there first. Same thing with a laser gun bullet. It would arrive at its target before the target even suspects anything was shot!
    Just ask Galileo! He tried to measure the speed of light by raising a sheet in front of a lantern and measuring the time, as measured by a water clock, it took the light to go from him to his trusty assistance, Bruno, who raised his own sheet and let light travel back to the Big 'G'. All he figured out was that it was fast! Instantaneous was his conclusion, but, hey!
  • Why do the laser bursts make sounds when they hit objects? Sparks are ok due to a possible high-energy runaway photoelectric effect, but zinging noises?
  
  
• Han Solo, even tho a good guy and role model to me, doesn't know his units. While negotiating with Obi and Luke about taking them to Tattooine, they ask him if his ship, the Millenium Falcon, is fast. He answers, "We did the Andromeda run in under 5 parsecs!" Little problem. Parsec is a unit of astronomical distance, not time as is inferred. A parsec is, according to my Handy-Dandy MS Bookshelf 2000,

  par·sec (pärsk´) noun
  A unit of astronomical length based on the distance from Earth at which stellar parallax is one second of arc and equal to 3.258 light-years, 3.086×10¹³ kilometers, or 1.918 × 10¹³ miles.
  [par(allax) + sec(ond).]

  Now, will ya look at this? I just learned sumpin' new! The word, parsec, is derived from a co-joining of the two words parallax and second! Cool! I can stop now...

• The FX used during "Hyperspace Jumping" of the Millenium Falcon is, at best, cute. It is extremely inaccurate scientifically. Stars are so far away from each other that the "passing" of them by your window is nonsense! It is used extensively in Star Trek also.

• Why does the Deathstar, the Empire's supreme weapon, have to be in "line of sight" of the rebel base on Tattooine in order to destroy it? Previously, it simply, as a test, totally obliterated a small planet. Why didn't they just shoot the other side of the planet and be done with it? Suspense, I suppose.

• Aside - Several great one-liners are contained in this science-based movie.