Narnia and Newton

Last week I was in Europe and even flew out of Düsseldorf again. I am very proud to say there was no repeat of the incident from last October.

Before going to the Netherlands and Germany I stopped off in London. While I was there I did go to see the newest Narnia film (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian) with my two sons; it was kinda fun. The film had the usual religious allusions, which did not get in the way of the enjoying the story. One thing though, all the baddies in the film spoke English but had Spanish accents. These were the only human people in the film (apart from our four little heroes who were very very English). At some point we learned that the baddies had been in Narnia for three generations. But even so, surely they would just speak Spanish to each other? It couldn’t possibly have been a case of using an accent, other than British or American, to mark someone out as a baddie?

*** Pixar Need To Study Elementary Physics ***

Before the film started I did find something that clanged loudly against my ‘pedant box’*. There was a commercial for the upcoming WALL-E film. At the end of the trailer WALL-E is seen moving through space using a fire extinguisher for propulsion. Overall the concept is fine. If you believe Newton’s 3 laws of motion (and if you don't I would love to hear your reasoning), then the extinguisher would exert a force and therefore the robot and extinguisher would move forward (laws one and three see here). So far so good. However, the fire-treatment propelled robot slows down as he moves across the screen. If you understand Newton’s first law then that is complete b*****ks. A body in motion will remain in motion until acted upon by a force such as gravity or resistance. So our automated red tube rider would continue on. He would not slow down as he moved through space as WALL-E does in the trailer.

The only thing that annoys me more is the way space ships or their weapons make a noise in films. Star Wars IV (the first one for us old people) took place almost entirely in space and yet was noisy as all hell! Space is a Vacuum. There is no noise in a vacuum! There’s no carrier.


The trailer for WALL-E can be seen here – the extinguisher bit is at the very end.

*All men and most women have pedant boxes. These consist of details and facts that you cannot abide being misrepresented. My Pedant box is enormous.


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Bazza