Comprehensive Study of Giant Fictional Worms...because science?

 

Good afternoon and welcome back.  Wow it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here.  So while I dust off a few things let me tell you why I’ve opened this treasure trove of nonsense up again.  Yesterday my best friend posted this picture to his Facebook page.

 

Immediately I saw more than a few things wrong with it.  After all a size chart should have everything to scale, which any sci-fi fan will tell you this is not, and more importantly, it doesn’t tell you how big anything is.  Of course I could just let it go and move on with my life.

No I couldn’t and I know that’s what he was plotting, the devious little devil.

No, I had to step back and really get into what the hell we were looking at here.  I’ve got a lot to say about each of these creature so I’m going to start off with the most controversial…the Sarlacc.

Why, you may ask, is the Sarlacc so controversial?  Because technically it shouldn’t even be on this list.  The critter shown in the picture isn’t actually the Sarlacc, but the creature’s tongue.  Yes, in Return of the Jedi, they are fighting above a giant open mouth, and the weird hand-puppet thing is actually the creature’s tongue.  However, since the creature is here, lets determine how big this part of the creature should be.

 

Yep, that’s it.  That thing is probably no more than six to eight feet across, with a mouth about six to eight feet deep.  How do we know that?  Glad you asked.  For reference we use the tentecles that are extending from around the tongue, which don’t appear to get more than a foot in diameter the further down you get.  There isn’t much taper from the base to the end, and its small enough to wrap around Han Solo’s foot.  Or in this case, Bob.

This is Bob, he’s our character stand in, and he is about 6 feet tall.  Why six feet you ask? Hold that thought.

Next we come to my personal favorite monster movie, Tremors, where we have the Graboids!  I could gush about the brilliance of these movie monsters in a blog unto itself, and I probably will now, but for right now, Bob, please stand next to the Graboid.  Don’t worry, it won’t bite.  Hard.

 

Using the film as our point of comparison, we know that the creature’s head isn’t more than about five to six feet long with a maw of about four or five feet wide, because we actually see the monster eat a human being whole and half his body is left dangling out.

Now remember how I said we made Bob six feet tall?  That’s because that is how tall Geena Davis is, and Geena Davis actually rides the sandworm in Beetlejuice.  If that isn’t imperical evidence of size, I don’t know what is.  Using that basis, the picture below shows the head is probably about ten to twelve feet long, basically about the size of your average 4 door sedan.

 

Of course if you looked at the “size chart” above, you’d be led to believe that the monsters were all about the same size and slightly smaller than the sand worms from the Dune series.

 

Wow, that couldn’t be more off if they’d tried.  I was limited on the amount of paper I had on my sketch pad and still wanted Bob here to be visible but the sand worms from Dune are about 148 feet in diameter.  So the creature looming over Bob here is smaller by comparison to those in the official canon of the Dune saga.

What it boils down to is that a sand worm from Dune towers over these other creatures, and the Sarlacc shouldn’t even be here.

Also, please check out Lake Haven Blues by William Dilbeck, available on Amazon.com  William Dilbeck, as you may have guessed, is my best friend who started this whole insane thing in the first place.  Thanks WILL!!!

And that’s what I do with my lunch breaks.  Have a great week everyone!

 

Sarlacc is owned by Disney and Lucasfilms

Tremors is owned by Stampede Entertainment and produced by Universal Pictures

Beetlejuice and all associated creatures were created by Tim Burton and owned by Warner Bros.

Dune the film was produced by Dino De Laurentiis Corporation

Size chart was created by danmeth.com

Additional art was drawn by Michael Bauch really quickly to put into production and he apologizes.