Size It Up: Pop Culture
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Fiction, to scale
Movies and games rarely show their giants next to anything familiar. This category does: characters, creatures, robots and spaceships, each compared to a reference you can picture.
Sizes follow the official or most widely accepted figures for each work. When a character changes size between versions, the label tells you which one is used.
Fictional sizes are less obvious than they look
Screens have no scale. A monster fills the frame whether it is 20 m or 200 m tall, so most of us carry a vague impression and nothing more. Godzilla is a good example: 50 m tall in the 1954 original, about 120 m in the recent American films. Both are Godzilla, and they differ by more than a factor of two.
Spaceships are worse. An Imperial Star Destroyer is about 1,600 m long, and the original starship Enterprise about 289 m. Few viewers would guess that one is more than five times the other.
How to reason about a size you were never told
- Look for a human in your memory of the scene. A character standing next to a robot or on a ship deck is the best ruler you have.
- Use doors, cockpits and windows. They are built for people, so they give away the scale of a vehicle.
- When a character changes size between versions, read the label: it names the version used in the round.
FAQ
Are the fictional sizes official?
Whenever a studio, publisher or official guide gives a figure, that figure is used. Otherwise the most widely cited estimate is used and the version is named in the label.
Can I play if I do not know the movie or the game?
Yes. You see the silhouette and a reference with its real size, which is enough to make an estimate. You will also learn the figure when the round ends.