Hollywood distances?

[NewJeffCT]

I've watched a couple of movies over the past few days that had me scratching my head on distances.

The first was "Season of the Witch" with Nicholas Cage. The movie was okay, but early on, they mentioned traveling 300 leagues to some remote monastery. However, the person showing them the map said the journey should take 6 days. The last I checked, one league is almost 3.5 miles and over 5.5km. So, you are talking about a journey in Medieval times of over 1,000 miles in six days... is there an ancient measurement of leagues that is different than 3.5 miles per league? Maybe the person making the movie thought it was 3.5 leagues per mile, which would make a 90 miles journey in 6 days more reasonable (considering they had a cart transporting a prisoner)

Then, I was watching "The Eagle" (haven't finished it yet), but they said how they took the injured guy (Marcus Aquila?) back from his fort for 200 leagues (700 miles), but were still in Britain. WTF? I searched online and the distance from Wick, Scotland (NE Scotland) to Plymouth, England (SW England) was 558 miles. How does one travel for 200 leagues and still stay in England? Especially since the fort where the guy got injured was somewhere south of Hadrian's Wall, I'm guessing, which is well south of Wick in Scotland.

Can anybody enlighten me?

 

[Mark Hope]

There is some equally crazy stuff in Prince of Thieves, which has Robin arriving at what looks like Dover and proclaiming that he will be in Nottingham by nightfall. By walking. Via Hadrian's Wall, apparently. A shame, as the rest of the film was a paragon of historical accuracy and period-detail.

 

[Umbran]

Can anybody enlighten me?

Sure: There's no big mystery here. Hollywood just doesn't check continuity very well. Just like they'll show a science paper with a title, "The Mitosis Phase of Cell Division". They just don't care about that level of detail.

 

[Kzach]

Sure: There's no big mystery here. Hollywood just doesn't check continuity very well. Just like they'll show a science paper with a title, "The Mitosis Phase of Cell Division". They just don't care about that level of detail.

I frequent a couple of movie-making/script-writing sites and can confirm that, at least from the people who post on such sites, Hollywood does not represent reality very well.

This perhaps explains why I don't understand human-beings.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Sure: There's no big mystery here. Hollywood just doesn't check continuity very well. Just like they'll show a science paper with a title, "The Mitosis Phase of Cell Division". They just don't care about that level of detail.

well, sometimes they do... seems like something that would be easy to clarify. Why say "300 leagues" when 90% of the audience would understand 300 miles better?

 

[Ed_Laprade]

well, sometimes they do... seems like something that would be easy to clarify. Why say "300 leagues" when 90% of the audience would understand 300 miles better?

Because leagues sounds medieval/ancient and miles don't. But lets ignore the fact that the Romans invented the mile. (A nice, simple 5,000 feet, not todays silly 5280 feet.) And, of course, they don't understand the difference either. Besides, distance in Hollyweird acts like time, it moves/is as the plot requires, accuracy be damned. (The Millenium Falcon made the Kessel Run in X parsecs.) Sure, these things are easy to check, they just can't be bothered. They figure that the general audience won't know or care. And all too often they are right. ~sigh~

 

[Deset Gled]

Why say "300 leagues" when 90% of the audience would understand 300 miles better?

Because you're not supposed to understand the distances with the same exactness that you do in real life. Using odd units makes the measurement more fluid in your mind, so you will accept the amount of time the travel takes when being told by a character.

Put more simply: 300 miles is the exact distance from City A to City B, but 300 leagues is the exact distance from Plot Point A to Plot Point B.

 

[Bullgrit]

In the Stargate movie, the gate circle had 7 symbols.
The conversation went: (paraphrasing)

Brilliant scientist: *draws a cube on the white board* "To identify a point in three-dimensional space, you need six coordinates." *puts a dot in each face of the cube, then connects them all to a dot in the center*

Other scientist: "But what's the seventh number for?"

Brilliant scientist: *draws another dot away from the cube, then connects it to the cube dot* "Point of origin."

So you need six coordinates for a point in 3D space? But only one if that point is an origin? WTF?

To make it even more ridiculous, they could have kept the 7 numbers concept, (if that was necessary), and still made the whole thing work.

3 coordinates for the first point, 3 coordinates for the destination.

"What's the seventh number for?"

*draws line between points* "Time!"

Sure, you rocket scientists might argue that, but at least it wouldn't sound moronic to anyone who passed middle school science. What gets me is that apparently no one, writers, director, actors, cameraman, bothered to speak up about the stupid line.

Edit: I just looked this scene up on YouTube:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-kf3QtVBFg&feature=related[/ame]

Starts about 1:30 into that vid.

Bullgrit

 

[NewJeffCT]

Because you're not supposed to understand the distances with the same exactness that you do in real life. Using odd units makes the measurement more fluid in your mind, so you will accept the amount of time the travel takes when being told by a character.

Put more simply: 300 miles is the exact distance from City A to City B, but 300 leagues is the exact distance from Plot Point A to Plot Point B.

I understand suspension of disbelief - heck, Season of the Witch was about witchcraft and demons - but, why not just say, "it's a 6 day journey"? Or, "we journeyed 2 weeks by cart to bring the injured Marcus Aquila here."?

I'm certainly know expert in geography, but when I heard about a 200 league journey in England, even I knew that was longer than England was north to south.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Because leagues sounds medieval/ancient and miles don't. But lets ignore the fact that the Romans invented the mile. (A nice, simple 5,000 feet, not todays silly 5280 feet.) And, of course, they don't understand the difference either. Besides, distance in Hollyweird acts like time, it moves/is as the plot requires, accuracy be damned. (The Millenium Falcon made the Kessel Run in X parsecs.) Sure, these things are easy to check, they just can't be bothered. They figure that the general audience won't know or care. And all too often they are right. ~sigh~

they actually explained the Kessel Run thing -

The thing to keep in mind about Solo's claim of doing the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs is that the Kessel Run is through the Maw. Event Horizons around black holes are dependent on the speed at which you are traveling. A standard ship has to do the run in 18 parsecs because to cut the route any closer, the ship would get sucked in. The Falcon, however, is fast enough to straighten the route and cut over 6 parsecs off the distance traveled. This makes sense, since the Falcon's hyperdrive is often rated as a x0.5 faster than a x1 standard (i.e. hyperspeed x1.5), potentially making it 50% faster than standard ships. While this argument may all be after-the-fact justification for an actual scriptwriting error, the logic does hold, although Solo could have just been boasting to his potential clients.

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