MovieChat Forums > Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) Discussion > Really Big Unmentioned Goof. (spoiler)

Really Big Unmentioned Goof. (spoiler)

posted 17 years ago by SjoerdWennekes
13 replies | jump to latest

*Spoiler alert*
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*This is still the alert*

Okay, here we go!

- A big bit of the plot is about a solar eclipse. This eclipse should occur because all the planets in the solar system would align.
But, there is no way that an alignment could cause an eclipse!!!

Quick lesson:
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth so that the Sun is wholly or partially obscured. This can only happen during a new moon, when the Sun and Moon are in conjunction as seen from the Earth.

So, there must be a object between the sun and the earth. But most of the planets are NOT between the sun and the earth! Only Mercury and Venus, and they are both not big enough and/or to remote from earth to cause an eclipse!

And this is not really 'fancy high-tech' physics, just some commune sense.
So please tell me, why isn't this goof mentioned before???
Because I think it's a big one.
No wait, it's a BIG one!!!

[–] raymondoedwards 17 years ago

A while since I watched this but;

The planetary thing was about a planetary alignment, not a planetary eclipse.

Science-wise, I guess a planetary alignment could be a significant event due to the gravity of all the planets interacting.

Anyway, why am I writing this?
It is a fantasy film. Do you query the science of a superman film?

[–] purple_ducks 17 years ago

you're right, the moon i necessary for an eclipse so i think its safe to say that during the planetary alignment the moon was also involved and happened to align itself as well. in front of the sun, causing the eclipse. i dont think they say anywhere that it's not the moon causing the eclipse.

[–] pawposytek 17 years ago

Another goof would be that you can't actually control time.

This is a movie, however it would be even more wrong to say it takes 5000 Years for the moon to pass between Earth and the Sun so obviously the planets needs to be right aswell. For all this to happend it is more belivable that 5000 Years could pass. However in the movie this was very precise, so it was clear atleast for me that the moon was the last rock to align. the planets could align very close to this every 20 years or so but for this exact alignment that ended with the moon between Earth and the Sun could easyly take 5000 years. If we didn't take the moon in the calculation this wouldn't need to bee this precise because the planets would have been aligned a few days atleast instead of seconds. The moon is aligned a few minutes atmost during them it fully eclips the Sun only a few seconds. So this was quite belivable.

At first I thought you would say that you can only travel forward in time and not backwards, and that was their goof. And then you take something totaly belivable and explains it like if you didn't see the movie.

I believe it was your goof and not theirs. The Earth had also to be aligned and with the Earth ofcours the moon.

If the moon wouldn't be aligned the Earth wouldn't either.

And I believe you could travel back in time if you could travel faster then light. Al the laws of physics are out the window when you travel faster then light, so there is a loop hole. It is another thing to survive the journey so Lara should be dead and maybe it is a goof that she survived, however it was a movie so maybe the whole thing was magic and had nothing to do with laws of physics whatsoever.

If you said that one moment she had a skirt and jeans the next second, that would be a goof, you couldn't really use physics to explain a goof in a SCI-FI movie because it's what it's named, "fiction"..

[–] anammm 16 years ago

another goof, she was walking in a sort of cave upside down, but her hair wasn't hanging, wasn't there any gravity or what??????????

[–] xardra 16 years ago

well if you think about it there were pockets of time and space floating around, so maybe she was in a pocket that applied only to her and where she was. kind of a relativity thing. like to where she is, gravity appled to her and her alone as it applied to the bad guy alone, besides what iF HE WAS THE ONE UPSIDE DOWN!!!!!

[–] miserycounty 13 years ago

I think everyone in this damn thread is upside down!!

[–] nednut 14 years ago

You guys are goofing about so much now that you're even getting the two films mixed up.

Lara walking around upside down in a cave was in 'the cradle of life' not the original tomb raider film.

As for the planetary alignment thing. Like people say it's a work of fiction, anything can happen, anyhow!

[–] actionmanrandell 12 years ago

nope traveling faster then light would not allow you to travel through time. time is not dependent on light and as time goes on the speed of light decreases. did you know that a 1000 years ago light was faster then it is now and a thousand years before that it was faster then it was then etc etc 10,000 years from now light will be alot slower then it is now.

[–] spookyrat1 11 years ago

Just saying I don't really watch either Lara Croft film for the valuable science lessons depicted therein.

Truth be told IMO the plots are nonsense, but they're fun.

"A-ha!"

[–] xardra 16 years ago

actually since the planets are so FAR away the shadows they create are bigger the farther they go out. to the shadow of the moon only eclipses a small part of the earth, full eclipses NEVER happen because the moon is TOO CLOSE for its shadow to cover the WHOLE planet, or at least the half that is showing.

IF all the planets were aligned, and IF you were lucky to be in the hemisphere that was acing the sun at that moment. then YES you would see a full eclipse by the other smaller planets that are so far away. obviously the bigger planets have no effect on the eclipse, but would look really cool when viewed by telescope!!!

think of it like when you have your hand close to the wall while doing shadow puppets, they are small, right? well when you move your hand closer to the light source, the shadows your hand makes is bigger on the wall... it;s just like that. :D

and this isnt fancy high tech physics either, just, COMMON sense...

[–] amon_101 16 years ago

Venus won't cause a total eclipse of the sun. Neither will Mercury. When Venus eclipses the sun, it only appears as a small disc. Same deal with Mercury. They're known as transits, not eclipses, because the shadow cast does not block the sun, but instead travels across the sun.
We're not dealing with an object in front of a flashflight. We're dealing with the sun. The amount of energy and light emitted is more than powerful enough to destroy any long shadows like you'd see in the flashlight analogy. Even in a lunar eclipse, with the moon so close to the earth, the sun STILL causes the moon's shadow to not be fuzzy, but is a very distinct outlined circle.
So if it causes the moon to have a distinct outline, it'll do the same thing to the inner planets.

...Dan

Movies, Captions, Hotties and more: http://www.captiongallery.com

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] virgiltx 8 years ago

For a solar eclipse, the movie sets it up OK with a thin crescent moon close to the sun at 1:14:29. That indicates it's very close to a new moon, just a matter of hours away, possibly.

If the Moon aligns between the Earth and the Sun, there would be an eclipse. That could happen at the same time as a planetary alignment. So What's the problem?

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