Awakening the Forces

Just finished watching it a couple hours ago. To keep it short: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens was epic. The CG was simply astounding, the story complex enough. Very nearly tear-jerking moments and some lighthearted moments. 

Not that I dislike the prequels--contrary to most, I like them better than the old ones, for those were the first SW movies I ever watched, 8 or 9 years ago, and the lack of good CG and lightsaber action on the older movies (the young me didn't care about story) made them less intriguing. But Episode VII was what we would expect: a true Star Wars movie. That's all I'll say to keep spoilers out. Hopefully. 

And as what we would expect from a science fiction movie, there are some very fictional moments.

The first one, in the world of fiction, what I learned was that a writer should show, not just tell. That crawl at the front dropped some mighty good amount of things that happened over the thirty years. But what can I say, that text is tradition. And I will look forward at waiting to read the books, and even better, a series if there will be one, to fill in the gap.

Now let's get into physics. 

There was a scene where several starships flew past a planet's ring. That planet's ring was orbiting the planet. So why did the ships go past it perpendicularly? Either it is travelling extremely fast, which they weren't, or extremely slow, which they weren't. They would fall under the planet's gravity well, and dragged into an at least hyperbolic orbit. You'll understand if you've played too much Kerbal Space Program.

Speaking about orbits, how the superweapon worked was funny. Extremely funny.

If it needs to completely drain the star it is orbiting to charge up, then at the moment it fires, it will no longer have a parent to orbit. And it will retain its velocity thus it will be slingshoted. The Order will have a seriously hard time on targeting.

And how did it fire for the first time without draining the star it was orbiting? It would be extremely improbable to get captured into another star's orbit. Impossible, for the time taken, considering the nearest star from the Sun is 4.5 million light years away.

And one more fault: digging that deep into the surface of a planet, gouging a huge gorge, would certainly make said gorge collapse under the planet's gravity. A planet is round because a large object's gravity will always try to make it round(-ish). That is one prerequisite for a body to be called a planet, not a dwarf one.

Just... throw those superweapon plans to the trash compactor, First Order.

So far, that were the only faults that stuck. I just can't remember anything else. The story and the visuals just took me by awe. And that lightsaber duel was certainly different. My friend was right: in science fiction, put more emphasis on the fiction. Certainly, it was good fiction.

Oh yeah. Thought the stormtroopers have now been trained to shoot at the start of the show. But still certainly not. Or maybe the heroes are just too awesome.

Rant done. Now to wait until January until Star Wars Rebels resumes.


Oh, by the way, thanks for reading through my blog! December is officially the busiest month ever here.

Made a better version of this rant, as an essay in my new blog article.