Thoughts on Pits

Star Wars Bottomless Pit Final Score Tuesday Morning Quarterback tracks the bottomless pits that often turn up in sci-fi. There was no bottomless pit in Revenge of the Sith, making the Star Wars final score: bottomless pits in four of the six flicks. Previously, Official Brother of TMQ, Frank, noted that none of the Star Wars bottomless pits are surrounded by safety rails, indicating there was no OSHA long ago in that galaxy far away. Yours truly countered that the scenes prove enlightened self-interest does not exist in the Skywalker galaxy, since you should not need a burdensome government agency to tell you to erect a guard rail around your bottomless pit!

Never resolved was why there were so many bottomless pits in the first place. My speculation is technological: advanced future economies will somehow depend on the construction and maintenance of bottomless pits, possibly as conduits for dark energy (see below). Frank's guess is more straightforward. In the 1970s and 1980s, he speculates, it was a lot of work to fill in complex scenes, so matte artists simply had the bottoms of long chambers blur to oblivion. Now computer animation allows dozens or hundreds of moving objects in a scene. Thus, instead of people fighting at the edges of pits, the final Star Wars flick offered scenes of people standing or fighting at the edges of incredibly tall structures where complicated cities, chambers or landscapes were visible beneath. Indeed, there were many such scenes in Revenge of the Sith. But still no guard rails! In one scene, Anakin stopped his flying car at Padme's spectacular penthouse apartment, atop a building miles high with a panoramic view of the planet. (The ad must have read, 10 RMS PLNT VU.) The soon-to-be-Darth Vader parked at a pad next to the aerial terrace; Padme, R2 and 3PO came out to greet him. All stood right at the edge of the balcony, which had no rails or protection between them and a very, very long fall. But then if Padme could afford such a magnificent penthouse, perhaps she could afford force fields for her balcony.