QUOTE (darthsmash @ Jul 27 2005, 12:07 AM)
Only if sound did not carry in space, "laser bolts" traveled at the speed of light (and not slow enough to see travel from gun to target) and a blade can be constructed from light and made to extend only a few feet from the hilt.
You miss the point and show a lack of understanding of what's acceptable in fantasy and what isn't.
In general, fantasy can get away with breaking the rules so long as it does so to show us something completely outside of our experience. Most of us, I'm guessing, have not participated in a space battle nor fired a blaster. Therefore showing us a battle with sound or a blaster bolt whose motion we can see is acceptable because
we simply don't see these things happen in real life. It's something new, unfamiliar. A few hard-core science fiction fans may froth at the mouth over the implausibility but then...hey, they're the sort of guys who moisten their pants at space elevators but don't give a damn about plot, style, or characters.
Also these things have decades of tradition behind them, just as it is convention for ships and wireless messages to travel faster than the speed of light in science fiction. These devices of fantasy and SF are part of the background, something conventional and accepted so that we can get on with the real story.
But perspiring in extreme heat is something familiar to all of us,
ne c'est pas? So to have characters labouring mere feet above a lack of red-hot rock and not even break a sweat goes clean against human experience or for a galactic Republic to accept without a murmur a clone army without even knowing who ordered its creation. It's not acceptable any more than it would be acceptable for Han Solo to run through a wall arbitrarily. It draws attention to the fact that Lucas's fights are just unhappy actors dancing around in front of a blue screen and the CGI equivalent of a painted background put in behind them.
Merely saying, "It's fantasy," does not excuse all. Suspension of belief doesn't mean hanging it by the neck until dead.
I'm on the record, by the way, as loathing the idea that little Annie gets hurt by falling into a molten pit. The Force can do a lot but that it can suddenly and magically keep water from boiling is beyond credibility.
This post has been edited by ernesttomlinson: 27 July 2005 - 01:21 PM