Opus 2026-013: Activate Star Wars Effects

I recently finished watching a movie that came up free on YouTube called Robin Hood the Prince of Thieves.  It was OK.  It was a happy, fun movie.  The problem I experienced is that the older I get the more I keep running into things that are anachronistic.  I know enough about the time period in which Robin Hood is set to have serious issues with some of the events that took place.  For instance, one of the main conflicts in Robin Hood was between the Norman French who had conquered the Saxon population.  Robin Hood was a Saxon.  Maid Marion was a Norman. There was a tension there that did not come out in the movie.  There were a lot of little things like that.

Then you have my problem with my knowledge of history and physics.  They have some convoluted way in which Robin brought a Muslim warrior home with him and he owed Robin his life and so he was submitting to Robin’s authority and following him.  OK, not very likely but OK.  Then they had a key point in the story where they’re getting desperate and the Muslim starts producing bombs.  Yes, bombs.  He makes black powder, put it in kegs with fuses around it and has it all ready to be set off by fire arrows later on in the story.  At the time of the Crusades, when Richard the Lion Hearted was involved, I really find it hard to believe that there was a Muslim warrior in Jerusalem who knew how to make black powder and construct bombs.  The Chinese, who first developed gunpowder, to our knowledge only used the gunpowder for fireworks at this point.  They were not developing bombs.

Anyhow, the story was fun and what it did is it forced me to call on what we call in my family the “Star Wars Effect”.  If you remember the original Star Wars stories with the X fighters traveling through space and doing barrel rolls in a vacuum, you might know what I’m talking about.  There is a certain suspension of belief that is necessary in much of modern movies and literature.  If the story is well written, if it’s fun, if you can identify with the characters, then it still works.  Most of the modern literature is so woke and so politically correct that it sacrifices character and plot and becomes totally unsatisfactory.  So, long live the Star Wars Effect.  I wait for my next movie that implements it.

homo unius libri