From the Earth to Tatooine,the show teaches as it dazzles

October 26, 2005|Globe Staff

The ''Star Wars" movies are finally in the past. Let the roadshow begin.

With ''Star Wars -- Where Science Meets Imagination," Boston's Museum of Science has an exhibit that's the institutional equivalent of a US Treasury printing press in the basement. How are you going to coax people to come see Han Solo's costume, Luke Skywalker's landspeeder, Yoda in all his latex Muppet splendor? Better you should ask how you're going to keep them away.

Yet the show, which opens tomorrow in the Current Science & Technology Center on the second floor of the Museum's Red Wing and runs through April 30, is hardly the stretch last year's ''Lord of the Rings" exhibit was. That one, with its Hobbit costumes and eldritch swords, was fun for movie fans but awfully skimpy on the science, and it smelled of opportunism, if not prostitution of the museum's mission. With an estimated quarter of a million visitors trooping through to see a bunch of movie props, though, can you blame anyone for trying?

Named with happy exactitude, ''Where Science Meets Imagination" is a different galaxy entirely: A hugely enjoyable movie-memorabilia flea market that doubles as an eye-popping, hands-on tour along the leading edge of scientific breakthroughs. It's fun. You learn something. Best of all, the fun is in the learning.

For complete coverage of the ''Star Wars" exhibit at the Museum of Science, including Ty Burr's interview with George Lucas, visit www.boston.com/starwars

There are several elements to the exhibit, each better than the last, so making it all the way through is a little like successfully penetrating the Death Star. The first thing a visitor needs to tackle is the mock-up cockpit of Han Solo's famed Millennium Falcon that sits on the first floor landing. Expect long lines -- the spacecraft holds only five or six earthlings at a pop -- and expect the sensory equivalent of a carnival kiddie ride, with a little bit of rumbling and rocking during takeoff and a zip through hyperspace that's not as awe-inspiring as the one in the movie.

Once the Falcon ''takes off," though, the clipped voice of Anthony Daniels -- better known by his nom de Lucas, C-3PO -- comes over the intercom to lead us from our solar system all the way to the outer edge of the universe, where we pick up the hazy light left over from the Big Bang. It's a neat scene-setter for the astronomical and metaphysical vastnesses the exhibit covers.