Feeling Old

The morning anchor (a twenty-something, by the looks and behavior) on Fox 29 in Palm Beach was reporting on a Star Wars story, and pronounced C3PO “See Three Poh.” She was ribbed by her co-anchor, and defended herself by saying, “I’ve never seen the movie.”

I was too old to be influenced by Star Wars (in my early twenties when it came out) — 2001, a real SF movie, was my cultural touchstone, but this is the first time I’ve run into an adult that is too young.

14 thoughts on “Feeling Old”

  1. At fifty, I see examples of this all the time but I wonder. Was I ever that clueless at twenty?

    …and no smart remarks about how I’m still clueless at fifty 🙂

  2. It only gets worse from here, Rand. 🙂

    When my husband and I tell people we’ve been married 30 years, we get the gamut of responses, from disbelieving (“That’s longer than I’ve been alive!”), some congratulations, to mocking (“How can anybody stay together THAT long? Are you crazy?”). As a matter of fact, we are still crazy in love with each other. . .

    You’re right, 2001 was a much better movie than Star Wars. I saw it in the theater when it was first released, and I still remember the impression it made on me. Star Wars was an action movie, 2001 was a thinking movie. It made me go read the book.

  3. “2001” is the only movie I have seen that got the sound effects of space travel correct. Mr. Kubrick’s use of “honest” sound is such a contrast to the conventions of motion picture sound, that it is its own character.

    Has anyone seen any other movies that get space travel sound correct?

  4. Of course, after enough time passes, some people will claim that it never really happened, it was all done on a movie set with special effects and-

    Oh, wait…

  5. “2001″ is the only movie I have seen that got the sound effects of space travel correct. Mr. Kubrick’s use of “honest” sound is such a contrast to the conventions of motion picture sound, that it is its own character.

    Arthur C. Clarke disagreed. He said, “George Lucas’s spaceships sounded like jet fighters. Ours sounded like symphony orchestras” and considered both to be part of standard motion-picture conventions.

  6. MG-

    Firefly and Serenity both used more accurate space sound effects. Firefly in particular opens with a space scavenging scene that is, as it should be, silent except for radio communications.

  7. While Firefly did silent space, Serenity did the whooshing thing. I blame the director. And I haven’t seen a sci-fi series or flick yet whose ships and shiplets didn’t maneuver like they were in atmosphere or on rails.

  8. I would have to go back and rewatch but I seem to recall that Babylon 5 generally made a pretty decent effort on the ship physics, at least for the earthforce vessels, though less so for the various more advanced alien races. Oh and surely they have to get points for the use of rotation instead of magic (or techno-babble if we are in the Star Trek universe) to provide gravity. OTOH sounds in space wise they were as big an offender as any.
    And as an aside, ALL of the military elements of Star Wars bug the heck out of me.

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