Thursday, December 18, 2008

Scale In Star Wars

One thing about the Star Wars movies that people notice is the meticulous attention to detail that is paid throughout. While reportedly there is a shoe somewhere in the battle over Endor (I've never seen it), generally there is an internal consistency in the visuals which surpasses the story in the films itself.

Case in point: "The five mile fallacy."

To summarize what encompasses this "fallacy" in super succinct form:
  1. Within the films, comparison between the Executor (the superlarge flagship used by Darth Vader in ESB and ROTJ [see size comparisons between it and other SF behemoths at Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions-it's much bigger than a Borg cube]) and other vessels clearly and consistently indicate the vessel is approximately 19 kilometers (between 11-12 miles) in length (taking into account the stated size of the standard Star Destroyers, which are about a mile or 1.6 km).
  2. An official sourcebook stated that the Executor was approximately five miles in length.
  3. The official material that came after the sourcebook very consistently used the incorrect figure.
  4. Lots of people got mad.
  5. Eventually, there was a correction.
  6. Now the "correct" figure is the "official" one.

Apparently, scale is consistent throughout the films. If I recall correctly, there are actually discussions of the size of numerous objects throughout the films, such as a comparison of Endor's size to the second Death Star. Even other subjects have had a ridiculous amount of investigation into them-see this incredible discussion of Darth Vader's injuries, for instance. (Some folks just have too much time on their hands.)

Say what you like about the films, old or new, but they've had a lot of craft put into them.

-Signing off.

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