Ahira's Hangar

John Scalzi always makes me smile.

The comments from the readers of the column are pretty fun, too.

edited to try to turn the unfortunate quote into a link

Those kinds of articles/rants are always good for a chuckle.

Yeah, Scalzi makes a good point about Morpheus's "fusion" explanation in the Matrix. The Wachowski brothers constructed an elaborate edifice in the Matrix in order to tell their story, but you can dismantle that edifice easily enough if you just want to prove how shaky the film's physics are. I admit that Morpheus's speech was gobbledygook to me too. "...combined with a form of fusion, the machines had found all the energy they would ever need." Groovy, man...whatever you say.

As for Phantom Menace, I know that many fans feel the whole midichlorian thing is an unnecessary, dumb reductionist explanation of the Force. But it honestly never bothered me much. Midichlorians are the least of Phantom Menace's problems, in my opinion.

I agree with the user comment about The Empire Strikes Back: how the Falcon is parked in a hole in an asteroid, and when everyone goes out to investigate, all they're wearing are little breath masks.

Let me add another: in the duel on the carbonite platform, Vader slashes at Luke, who falls into the chamber. Then Vader turns his back on Luke to engage the freezing process. But behind Vader, Luke leaps straight out of the chamber at what looks to be, um, incredible velocity. And yet, we don't hear the CLANG of Luke hitting the ceiling until a noticeably long moment later. We should've heard the sound almost a split second after we saw Luke jump out, because when we see him hanging from the pipes, he's really not that far from the floor. At the speed he was going, he should've leapt a few stories by the time that we (and Vader) finally heard the CLANG. So what the heck happened? Did Luke suddenly go into slo-mo for the second half of his leap?

That's my little contribution to nerdgassing.

I can (and have) nerdgassed for hours on the failures of Phantom Menace and the catastrophic failures of Attack of the Clones. I don't think that midichlorians would even make the top ten of my reasons for nerdgassing.

let's see:
Jar Jar Binks
Padme falling in love with Anakin
bad wooden acting
why was Anakin's mother not bought and freed by Naboo
endless pod racing sequences
not a single Jedi even sensing a Sith so nearby
the too stupid to exist battle droids
Jedis not breeding to replace their numbers
the entire trade federation
stupidity of the Senate

nope- midichlorians do not make the short list!

It's sad that what I remember most about Attack of the Clones was the wooden acting. That and the atrocious dialogue, especially between Padme and Anakin. I still squirm just thinking about it. Not saying there weren't bad things in Phantom Menace, but Clones really was the nadir for me. Even the film's last half hour of exciting battle couldn't wash the bad taste from my mouth. To this day I haven't bought Phantom or Clones, and that's a sad statement by itself, that I would not buy a Star Wars movie.

(I did get Revenge of the Sith because I genuinely liked it. RotS was easily the best of the prequels, though I concede that it had its share of clumsy moments too. Just fewer of them than in the previous films, heh.)

I ran into this little gem, about trying to fit A New Hope into what came from the three prequel movies.


It all makes a disturbing amount of sense.