I saw Star Wars yesterday. Summary verdict: solid but unexciting. Oh, there’s loads of superficial excitement, sword fights and crazy flying, but it is all rather traditional and predictable.

The entire movie is a kid’s dream of adventure. Leave your dull planet, meet awesome people, fly to strange places, be a hero, fight the bad guys, save the galaxy!

Dreams are by their nature unrealistic, and so is the movie. It’s kind of interesting to pick out the particular kinds of unrealism in that movie, because they all serve to reinforce that dream.

Unrealism #1: Skill is already in you. You don’t need to practise, train, or learn anything. All you need is will. You may be a great pilot – you just don’t know it yet because you’ve never gotten a chance to try. And if the Force is strong in you, you also don’t need to practise sword fighting, or anything else.

Unrealism #2: It’s a small universe. The relevant parts of the galaxy are few and small, and all the right people hang out at the same few places. Fly to one small bar in one small corner of one small planet of one small star system – out of the billions of star systems in the entire galaxy, and you’re bound to run into a bunch of friends and acquaintances. What are the odds of that happening in even one normal-sized city, let alone an entire galaxy?

Or possibly the entire galaxy is really, really sparsely populated. The entire rebellion fighting force is a few hundred men, after all, and the First Order’s forces on Starkiller are no more than a few thousand.

Unrealism #3: Systems are fragile. There are no fail-safes, no safety valves, no redundancy. Yank out a single piece and the entire system will collapse. Threaten the right person and you can shut down the entire planet’s defences. Shoot the right chunk of unprotected machinery and everything will explode.

All of these unrealisms help support the idea that a brave youngster who is fighting for the right cause can find a few friends and, together with them, bring down the forces of evil and change the world.