adywan said:
Now the big thing they are complaining about it fire in space and the fact that there is a campfire cracking sound for the fire. Well, for one, fire in space is nothing new with Star Wars. This isn’t sci-fi and its never really followed real world physics. It’s fantasy.
The “fire burning in space” scene kind of bothered me too, and I mostly like this show so far.
Obviously, Star Wars is fantasy, and issues like this go back to Empire Strikes Back, with Han walking around inside a giant space worm that lives in an asteroid in the vacuum of space, wearing nothing but a small oxygen mask on his face. And also for some reason there’s gravity inside the worm. Irvin Kershner once commented on this scene, saying Star Wars is fantasy and real world physics don’t apply.
I mean, I get it… it’s fantasy. But I’ve always found the argument that “it’s not supposed to be sci-fi it’s a fantasy!!” to often be self-serving and problematic. I mean, how far do we take this? Let’s take the Acolyte example with the “fire burning in space” scene. What if there was a similar scene that showed orange flames burning, crackling and flickering continuously under water? Should we just shrug and say “it’s not science fiction!!!” in that case? I doubt your intuition would lead you to think so, because the average person in the 21st century intuitively understands that fire doesn’t burn underwater (at least not without some exotic combustion source), but very few people have such an intuitive understanding of conditions in outer space. But that might change some day, perhaps sooner than we realize.
A better way to put it might be: why is “fire doesn’t burn in space” considered a rule that should only apply in science fiction? What about “fire doesn’t normally burn underwater” or “humans can’t breath under water”? Why do these apply beyond the genre of science fiction - even in pure fantasy?
The boundary between sci-fi and reality continues to blur with each passing day. There are things in Star Wars that now seem bizarrely counter-intuitive, like the fact that R2-D2 can’t communicate in English using a voice synthesizer, but my smartphone from 2019 can. I don’t blame the original 1977 Star Wars for that one - in 1977 they couldn’t possibly have correctly intuited things like that. But by 2024 I feel like “fire doesn’t burn in space” should not be a rule confined exclusively to science fiction. Even pure fantasy implicitly operates with baseline assumptions about real-world physics or chemistry. When we watch Lord of the Rings for example, we expect that people can’t breathe underwater and a flaming wooden torch won’t continue to burn underwater (at least not without some magic). So why is outer space so different? Again, the only reason is implicit assumptions by the writers about the intuition/experience of the average viewer - something that changes (often rapidly) with the times.
Of course, I don’t expect everyone to agree with me because I can’t possibly hope to be 100% consistent about this. For example, I wouldn’t want Star Wars to suddenly remove all sound effects from space combat scenes, because that would detract from the viewing experience way too much. But I would argue writers should at least try - when possible - to maintain baseline real-world physics, as long as it doesn’t detract from the story too much. We have to accept some fantasy things like hyperspace travel, sound in space, the Force, etc., because forgoing such things for the sake of scientific accuracy would be too destructive to the story-telling experience overall. But fire burning in space is just pointless.