Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: MillCreek on December 16, 2017, 11:17:06 PM
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The Last Jedi is the best movie in the series since 'The Empire Strikes Back' in 1980. Mark Hamill does a fantastic job and Daisy Ridley takes up the Jedi lightsaber with style and grace. Adam Driver is a very emo Sith. I got chills watching Mark Hamill enter the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon and watching his reunion with R2-D2. Amazing choreography on the lightsaber fights.
Edit by Ben to add spoiler alert as requested below.
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I wasn't that impressed. Lots of eye candy, but not much of a plot. The Leia superman scene was dumb, my first thought was "That's not how the force works". Snoke went down too easy for being the current equivalent of the emperor, and Luke's end was disappointing. The rich are evil and need to be destroyed attitude didn't belong in the movie. There were several other things that just didn't fit either.
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I went to be entertained and I was. I didn't like the Mary Poppins scene, and rolled my eyes when they dropped bombs on the dreadnought (gravity works in space?) but otherwise I liked it. [popcorn]
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Same complaints as Bedlamite and DM here. I enjoyed the movie, but there were a few groaners.
I wrote off the bombing issue as the Dreadnaught having it's own gravity due to its size. Yeah, that's weak, but otherwise, I got nothing. :|
The Leia scene irked me as well. Had she remained in space, it would have nicely handled Fisher's death.
Snoke's death wasn't too disappointing considering how the Emperor eventually went out. Ren did a good job hiding his true intent from his master, but I would have preferred to see a bit more conflict first. I'd also like to have more backstory for Snoke, so that isn't happening.
I think Ren is going to make a good "bad guy". Yeah, the emo thing is a bit silly when compared to previous Star Wars bad guys, but it also makes him unpredictable and a touch scarier.
It wasn't perfect, but I was entertained, which is all I should expect from a movie.
Chris
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Might want to put a spoiler alert in the title of this thread.
Snoke: I was meh on him at first, I think the motion capture performance in this is one of Andy Serkis's weakest. IDK, it just seemed obviously CG. So I liked that kinda just as he was building to be an overarching bad guy of the trilogy, it was "Nope!, F That guy.)
Bombing in space. Sigh, that really pulled me out of the first couple minutes of the movie. Sure maybe they are magnetic, or the gravity well is just right, but geez. I like how they set Poe up to grow past being a cocky, brash rush in and blow something up, but it was just really bad.
I enjoyed that after 2 years of youtube videos and fan theories on Rey's parents they were like: "*expletive deleted*ck those guys, they were no one." There's a lot of people in the galaxy, we can meet new ones.
I loved Yoda's scene. Loved that they used a puppet.
Overall I really liked the movie. It made me care about what Rey and Ren are going to do to each other in the next one, and how they'll grow. Depending on how JJ Abrams handles 9 I could see the the 7-8-9 trilogy being better than the 4-5-6 set.
Some fans are going to be disappointing because they wanted a life changing experience, and they got a pretty good movie.
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Dogmush, I can't seem to edit the title due to the Green Bar of Death. :(
I too liked how Rey's parents turned out to be nobodies. I agree on the final sentence. Fanbois are going to hate, but normal folks will have an enjoyable experience.
Chris
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An I the only one that thought Snoke looked a lot like a partially melted Anthony Hopkins?
As for the bombs, presumably whatever artificial gravity was in the bomber got them started, then they continued in that direction by themselves. Or maybe something else contributed a push, like spring loaded or magnetic racks.
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I agree that was the best Star Wars movie I have seen in a while. I really like Luke in this movie. I hope he has more than just a passing role later despite the last scene.
The bomber thing bugged me also. How would any ship so slow and fragile ever survive even one battle and why would anyone ever get in one. Why would any military buy one? Even Y-wings were better. And without any defensive guns, why would they need fly right up on top of the ship to launch bombs? I guess it is part of the consistency of Star Wars tech along with the apparent fragility of star ships.
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Had a great mountain bike ride, a good cigar and some Jim Beam Bonded, now The Empire Strikes Back is on, followed by Return of the Jedi. Pretty good day and I'm reminded again of how good the first three Star Wars episodes were.
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How would any ship so slow and fragile ever survive even one battle and why would anyone ever get in one. Why would any military buy one? .
Because the various components were manufactured on a bunch of different senators home worlds ?? And the Senate insisted the Republic buy them because Pork and Jobs.
And who was the Republic going up against ?? Unless there are some "central planets/systems" that are all pro-republic, it would appear that most of the outer/lesser worlds get pretty much left alone, as in not even a police or bureaucracy presence...
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Star Wars was better before Disney bought it. The last two movie directed by Disney, where meh or disappointment.
j. j. Abrams is not George Lucas!
#1 first time any spaceship, in Star Wars to ran out fuel.
#2 leia floating in space
#3 The bombing in space
#4 No back story or any info on Snoke
#5 Now going to light speed can destroy other spaceship?
#6 Super Jedi with no training.
#7 SJW seen at casino.
#8 They made Kylo Ren A EMO bitch
#9 holograms
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#5 Know going to light speed can destroy other spaceship?
I'll give them this one, it's at least plausable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcX8mDRIhYE
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Star Wars was better before Disney bought it. The last two movie directed by Disney, where meh or disappointment.
j. j. Abrams is not George Lucas!
#8 They made Kylo Ren A EMO bitch
Darth Autism?
:P
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Like all of the Star Wars movies, there are things I liked and things I didn't like. Overall, I was entertained, and it wasn't a complete retread of some other movie. Actually had a bit of creativity and originality. Some good effects and choreography. I'd go see it again.
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I went tonight, wavered between leaving early and loving it. Too many social justice add ons, the old Leia woulda figured out now to force choke that purple haired idiot long before it made admiral. The breaching cannon thing annoyed, really, we can't sacrifice nobody's anymore to save the world? But, I really liked the scenes that reached back to the older films and I will note that the small group of survivors shows us that most of the more annoying characters died. I expect to see Luke again, kinda like Luke and Obi never seem to go away. I guess the big reveal for next episode is where girl hero figures out that Master Emo is her brother. I want one of those little retarded birds now!
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#5 Now going to light speed can destroy other spaceship?
Yeah; since being the decoy was a 100% guaranteed suicide mission anyway, why didn't she do that the second the transports were out? It's been established since ANH that lightspeed travel isn't independent of normal space, so presumably ramming at lightspeed would have been recognized as a valid kamikaze tactic all along. Does seem like something that would have been mentioned before now, as there have certainly been desperate battles all through the franchise.
As for running out of fuel, maybe the first in the main series of movies, but it's happened in the novels and IIRC in SW Rebels.
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Since we don't know if light speed travel can be done, can only seem plausible that it would occupy the same space. But if it were you think that some shadetree like Han Solo would have rigged some transports or escape pods to do light speed, just to be weapons. I guess that would have shortened the franchise, or at least kept the local pipefitters union busy on thirty replacement death stars.
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Since we don't know if light speed travel can be done, can only seem plausible that it would occupy the same space. But if it were you think that some shadetree like Han Solo would have rigged some transports or escape pods to do light speed, just to be weapons. I guess that would have shortened the franchise, or at least kept the local pipefitters union busy on thirty replacement death stars.
One theory that's been kicked around is that shields might be particularly effective against some property of a ship at lightspeed. (Possibly a helpful side effect of shields having to be good enough to keep the ship from being shredded by every stray asteroid while travelling at lightspeed.) i.e. a ship of less than a certain percentage of the size of the target ship would just splat against the target's shields. Meaning that it would take a heck of a big ship to wipe out a star destroyer, and you'd have to hijack a star destroyer to have a big enough mass to get through a death star. Makes sense, as that cruiser was fairly large and more or less just cut a tunnel its own size, in spite of the massive energy that would have to come off of a FTL impact.
EDIT: looked up specs.
MC85 Star Cruiser
3,438m length
707m width
462m height
Mega-Class Siege Dreadnought
13,240m length
60,543m width
3,975m height
So yeah, it's basically a relatively small bullet at insane velocity. OTOH, much larger than any random bit of space junk you'd normally worry about not detecting in time.
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Don't forget, per earlier books, ships can't go to lightspeed too close to a gravity well, which is why the Empire had ships designed to simulate gravity wells. I forget their name, but I do recall plots requiring those ships to be shut down or destroyed so the good guys could escape. This phenomenon also probably prevents using other ships as kinetic weapons.
Chris
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And I guess I read too much Terminal Lance. Fin, who is the Booty McBootface of Stormtroopers takes on what must be like the Sergeant Major of the entire galaxy. And wins?
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I think he's very lucky over and over again. I was unhappy that Phasma died. She was an interesting bad guy.
Chris
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1) it was a movie
2) I watched it from a giant comfy reclined movie theatre seat
3) I enjoyed it for what it was, sci fi star wars movie.
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I think he's very lucky over and over again. I was unhappy that Phasma died. She was an interesting bad guy.
Chris
Probably died just as much as when she was in a trash compactor when starkiller base blew up, and will be back in the next movie to go down after another two minutes of screen time.
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Too much emo, not just from Kylo. And really Luke was pretty emo and whiny in the original series. So was Anikin; maybe it’s a Skywalker thing on the supposedly male side. Also I just don’t like that actor that plays Kylo, he seems like a child throwing a temper tantrum vs. an actual scary bad guy.
They could have at least given us something on who Snoke really was. Maybe in another movie; but they could have cut 20 minutes of characters spent staring into space in this one and spent 5 minutes on more backstory.
The Rey parents thing I don’t buy. Not because she needs to be related to someone necessarily; but because it creates an inconsistency with the Maz and lightsaber scene in The Force Awakens at least what I took from that scene.
When I first left the theater I was thinking like 8 out of 10. After thinking about it for a few days I’m actually down to a 6.5 or 7 out of 10. I don’t hate it, but it could have been a lot better.
And to add a little thread drift, I think I have hearing damage from the volume in the theater especially during the previews, my ears were ringing for two days. I complained to someone during the previews and I couldn’t have been the only one since the lady said she already radioed someone; then tried to tell me the volume was normal. You could clearly hear the audio of the previews around 4 corners and about two bundled feet away in the lobby.
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I just don’t like that actor that plays Kylo, he seems like a child throwing a temper tantrum vs. an actual scary bad guy.
I didn't like that aspect at first, but then it dawned on me that impulsiveness and anger makes him a bit scarier because he's less likely to be logical and consistent like Vader. The lack of "maturity" makes him more dangerous IMO.
Chris
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Well, if you really want to nitpick something, how about hitting the whole series on manually dropping out of lightspeed within a fraction of a light-second of the destination? They get ready, flip the big lever and they're just a couple minutes out of orbit. 186,000 miles/second and they can pretty much bullseye any point they want, every time.
One theory I've heard is that the lever is actually the sublight engines, and the whole hyperdrive is handled automatically; shut off the sublight as you engage hyperdrive so you're not hurtling along at whatever max normal speed is if you get dropped out of lightspeed unexpectedly, then reengage them when you're in the pilot seat, awake and ready to drop out.
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I think he's very lucky over and over again. I was unhappy that Phasma died. She was an interesting bad guy.
Chris
Also, Phasma had the only suit of stormtrooper armor that actually stopped/deflected a blaster bolt.
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Hitler watches The Last Jedi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01VyZ6XWwY8
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Anyone else notice the Jedi books in the final scene in the millennial falcon?
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Anyone else notice the Jedi books in the final scene in the millennial falcon?
Sure did. That's why Yoda didn't let Luke in the tree. He'd have seen the books were gone (my opinion)
"MMMM. Page turners, They were not."
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Anyone else notice the Jedi books in the final scene in the millennial falcon?
Missed that. LOL Millennial Falcon. Han in skinny jeans and chewy with a neat beard, glasses he doesn't need and a pipe from a store you never heard of?.
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Missed that. LOL Millennial Falcon. Han in skinny jeans and chewy with a neat beard, glasses he doesn't need and a pipe from a store you never heard of?.
Stupid autocorrect
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Saw it with a young lady on Saturday. It was alright, no complaints. Not anything special, but certainly better than the second set of trilogies.
It's an open secret that the first trilogy would have been a JarJar level trainwreck if it wasn't for Marcia Lucas, who actually made the films good. Without her, well, you've seen how the rest of the films went. Aside from Rogue One, the rest have been at best meh.
Rogue One is kinda an odd duck. It's the best Star Wars movie by a landslide in my opinion.
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Saw it with a young lady on Saturday. It was alright, no complaints. Not anything special, but certainly better than the second set of trilogies.
It's an open secret that the first trilogy would have been a JarJar level trainwreck if it wasn't for Marcia Lucas, who actually made the films good. Without her, well, you've seen how the rest of the films went. Aside from Rogue One, the rest have been at best meh.
Rogue One is kinda an odd duck. It's the best Star Wars movie by a landslide in my opinion.
This, in droves.
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Rogue One is kinda an odd duck.
For such an attractive woman, Felicity Jones has a slightly goofy looking smile. (I'm sure if I knew her in person I'd have a different opinion, but as it is, IMO, a smile usually seems a bit forced and/or just plain out of place on her face.) Two hours of her not smiling is a true work of art, IMO.
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Took the 3 older kids to see Last Jedi tonight. Some hokeyness aside, we were well entertained.
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Felicity Jones has a slightly goofy looking smile.
While much improved, the British Dental profession still has quite a long way to go...
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While much improved, the British Dental profession still has quite a long way to go...
It's not even that; just somehow she looks like something's not right and she's forcing it.
Again, it's probably different in person, but with the lack of context in photos and even out-of-character video, she just looks a bit off when she smiles. Like her face wasn't built quite right for it.
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Did anyone get excited when Robbie rebooted Hal when Hal tried to take over the Axion, then there was a Tribble outbreak on Endor and the Enterprise rescued Luke Skywalker from the Lost Planet? How about when Spock finally used the Force?
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Might want to put a spoiler alert in the title of this thread.
Snoke: I was meh on him at first, I think the motion capture performance in this is one of Andy Serkis's weakest. IDK, it just seemed obviously CG. So I liked that kinda just as he was building to be an overarching bad guy of the trilogy, it was "Nope!, F That guy.)
Bombing in space. Sigh, that really pulled me out of the first couple minutes of the movie. Sure maybe they are magnetic, or the gravity well is just right, but geez. I like how they set Poe up to grow past being a cocky, brash rush in and blow something up, but it was just really bad.
I enjoyed that after 2 years of youtube videos and fan theories on Rey's parents they were like: "*expletive deleted*ck those guys, they were no one." There's a lot of people in the galaxy, we can meet new ones.
I loved Yoda's scene. Loved that they used a puppet.
Overall I really liked the movie. It made me care about what Rey and Ren are going to do to each other in the next one, and how they'll grow. Depending on how JJ Abrams handles 9 I could see the the 7-8-9 trilogy being better than the 4-5-6 set.
Some fans are going to be disappointing because they wanted a life changing experience, and they got a pretty good movie.
Not to pick on anyone, yours was just a convenient list to build from. To start with - my opinion is that this is tied for second, with Rogue One and behind Empire. Not FAR behind Empire, and not far at all ahead of ANH.
Re: Snoke not having a backstory - people today are spoiled by the prequel trilogy. Yes, the PREQUEL trilogy. Think about the Emperor's role in ESB and ROTJ. He was on screen for, what, 20 minutes total? No backstory at all, we didn't know where he came from or how he got his Force powers, or even how he became Emperor. We knew he controlled Vader pretty thoroughly, and that was enough - he kept the scourge of the Jedi, the Dark Lord of the Sith, on a leash. Sent him around the galaxy as his enforcer. When we saw him in ROTJ, he didn't even need a lightsaber, he beat Luke in a heartbeat with Force Lightning, and ended up killing Vader with it. That's how powerful the Emperor was in the Force, and we STILL don't know anything about his actual training or background prior to appearing as the Senator from Naboo in Ep1.
Similarly, Snoke being misdirected by his reading of Kylo's intent was, IMO, beautifully done. Snoke's overconfidence led to him believing that he was in control, and knew what his apprentice meant to do, and he DID it - just not aimed at the target Snoke thought. That betrayal to take over as the primary power in the First Order seemed very fitting, despite neither Snoke nor Kylo being actual Sith. And so the Apprentice becomes the Master.
The bombers - yeah, lots wrong there. Allegedly they have magnetic launching racks to slowly toss the bombs downward, but I strongly disliked that scene. It made little sense - "We're going to put 3+ people, people we REALLY NEED, in these fragile, unmaneuverable, REALLY slow little ships that *HAVE TO* overfly their targets at very close range to "drop" large quantities of high-explosive onto their surfaces". With one exception I can think of, all "bombing" seen in the films up through Episode 7 (and even a good bit of it in Rogue One) was done by missile or unguided rocket. X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings, and B-Wings all had forward-facing launchers - Ys and Bs just had a larger missile load. That one exception was the TIE Bombers in ESB, which dropped charges onto the asteroid surface while trying to flush the Falcon out of hiding - but they had a visible mechanism to DO that, where all the other ships showed that they fired forward. But you could fire from far enough away that you weren't taking fire from every gun on the target. In R1 (with Y-Wings when bombing the gate, which REALLY bothered me due to breaking with previous canon and their attack on the Star Destroyers elsewhere in the movie) and now here in Ep8, we see vertically-dispersed bombs. Ehhh, not buying it.
The bombers were, as noted, FAR too fragile and slow and unmaneuverable to hold them in such a tight formation. They WANTED to call to mind WWII bombers, but those things were TOUGH. These fell apart if someone sneezed in their general direction. That's a fail on multiple fronts.
Rey's parents, on the other hand, being nobodies? That is a pure, unalloyed WIN. That and Broom Boy both nicely reinforce Luke's statement that the Force doesn't "belong" to the Jedi, that it doesn't have to be passed only through certain "favored" bloodlines. it's a part of everyone and everything. Her parents didn't NEED to be anyone special for her to be special, and I think her Act-3 calm and resolve and success came from her accepting that and moving on with HER life, not the one she imagined she'd have when she found out who her parents were.
But was Kylo actually telling the truth? Whether or not her parents NEEDED to be anyone special, lying to Rey would have served his purposes by helping him to draw her closer to his position. Which would have made him stronger, if she'd joined him, because a powerful Force user was dependent on him the same way he'd been dependent on Snoke. It didn't work, but I could see him trying that.
Kylo was, I think, a better character in this film than in Ep7. His instability is a plus, as noted, BECAUSE it makes him unpredictable.
Luke... I was one of those people posting the "I better not see with my own two eyes you killing off Luke Skywalker" meme on FB. I have wanted to be Luke Skywalker for 40 years, since first seeing Star Wars (no episode number or anything then) for about 50 times in 1977. Man, of everything that happened in that movie, Luke was what ALMOST pulled me out of it. First what I saw as a change to his character in hiding away from the galaxy, and then his end scene. BUT. Look at his character prior to ROTJ, where he actually did grow up a lot. Look at ROTJ, where his impulsive anger almost had him fall to the Dark Side in the fight against his father. Look at BOTH of his teachers, who ran and hid from the galaxy when Order 66 went out - sure, they couldn't win right then, so a retreat was necessary, but they NEVER CAME BACK OUT. And Yoda didn't even want to train Luke, when he finally arrived, Ben had to convince him to do it. Coupled with the magnitude of his own failures, both in service to the galaxy and to his sister by failing to stop Ben from falling to the Dark Side, and personally in even for a moment contemplating taking "the easy way out" and murdering his nephew in his sleep, Luke's retreat from the galaxy makes more sense. He failed so very badly, with all his own power, how could he do any good? Better just to go into reclusion, into hiding, and let the galaxy deal with its problems without the complications of the Jedi. He almost didn't learn his own most important lesson, Yoda had to remind him of it. Everyone fails. Everyone has moments of weakness - and in the most powerful, they can have a greatly-heightened impact. That's what we learn from - where and how did we fail? Okay, we need to do that differently. And he did. It took Rey coming to find him, pointing out his errors, and leaving again. But his humanity made him more relatable, at least to me.
And his final scene against Kylo? Perfect. Every piece of it, right down to the final reveal where he allowed Kylo to learn that he never had a chance to get the final showdown he so desperately wanted. That he was never going to beat Luke Skywalker.
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Good point about Snoke compared to the Emperor in the original trilogy. I hadn't really thought about that. And the identity of Rey's parents was what was tempting her to the dark side at the island so setting that issue aside would help her out.
The bombers still tick me off. I figure it might have been a bad job at trying to set up the the circumstance for that one character's death which led to introducing her sister a few minutes later.
Also, it occured to me that the rebels started with hundreds if not thousands of people on several ships and ends up with only a few dozen people and a couple of transports.
One other thing I thought about was in most cases, ships that got severely damaged in star wars generally explode. In this last movie at the end, they are torn up and just drifting. That was required to allow the heroes to escape the ship, but it seemed to be a departure from past scenarios.
Another new thing (new to me?) was the apparent technology set up that the shields of the big ships only stop incoming fire from a distance. If a small ship gets in close within the shield barrier, they can blow up stuff on the surface. Which brings up other issues about why they don't have hundreds of smaller defense cannons all over the place and why they don't have dozens of Tie Fighters patrolling at all times and why they don't have guided missiles from multiple launchers going after incoming fighters?
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I enjoy star wars movies.
But the nerds quibbling over plot holes in a movie series about magic space ninjas...I can do without.
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You have to have a plot before you can have holes in it. This one can be summed up with two words from Monty Python: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FPELc1wEvk
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I enjoy star wars movies.
But the nerds quibbling over plot holes in a movie series about magic space ninjas...I can do without.
Read the walking dead thread....
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One other thing I thought about was in most cases, ships that got severely damaged in star wars generally explode. In this last movie at the end, they are torn up and just drifting. That was required to allow the heroes to escape the ship, but it seemed to be a departure from past scenarios.
Disregarding "vaporized in a brief fireball" as a result of the SFX at the time, (note that even in ANH, TIEs and other ships that were the current camera focus often left some relatively large debris - primarily more or less independent chunks farthest from the impact point - while doing that for every fighter destroyed in the big space battles would have been a near impossible task) you'd also have to consider how they were damaged and where. Look at Porkins' X-Wing for an example of one that exploded with large debris; I see the nose section and a few assorted metal panels, and while there's obviously not enough of an X-Wing to leave habitable debris, a capital ship similarly destroyed could still have some survivors aboard the wreck. Y-Wings destroyed in the trench showed similarly large debris, while the one shot above the trench was presumably hit in a vital area (maybe the bomb rack) and became a sparkly cloud.
Auger in an A380 like the Executor hitting Death Star II, and you're going to have confetti-sized debris with no survivors. Hit it with a nasty enough missile and you can do the same. Shoot it apart with cannons and (assuming you don't light off the fuel) you might be able to do as little as break off a wing, the tail or tear the fuselage into two completely unflyable parts, with most of the occupants relatively unscathed. (until they hit the ground, obviously) Bear in mind that the "best" point of aim is generally the middle of smaller ships, and that's where engines, fuel and other splodey things tend to be, so if the weapons are fairly accurate, (and/or plentiful) "vaporized by their own reactor/fuel/whatever" is going to be a common outcome. OTOH, TIEs hit on the wings or connecting pylons sometimes just broke there and went out of control. For bigger ships, targeting things like that boosted the effective yield of your weapon. At any rate, there were certainly other "hard kill" modes besides Trek-style anything-serious-breaches-the-warp-core-containment disintegration.
Rogue One had the two star destroyers collide in a pretty massively destructive manner, but they stayed otherwise almost completely intact long enough to fall onto and trash the planetary shield.
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There were supposedly 400 Resistance members on the three ships in the stern-chase, all of whom collected onto the big cruiser as the smaller ships ran out of fuel and were destroyed by the Supremacy. Snoke's ship, that is. Firing those ridiculous curving turbolasers. The Falcon ended up with a max of about two dozen, including Our Heroes.
Tactics were an issue here, and in ways that we've seen before. Fighters SHOULD be attacking both each other and larger vessels - as we saw, they can keep up with any of the big cruisers, and apparently can do real damage to them. Both surface-attack and anti-ship cannon apparently stick out beyond the shields, where they can be zapped, we've seen shield generators be destroyed by fighter attack, and in Rogue One, the Imperial fighters were apparently doing real damage to the Rebel capital ships. Even WITHOUT missiles. In Ep8, when the Resistance ships pulled away from the First Order fleet, the fighter wings of all those Star Destroyers should have scrambled and been harassing and trying to slow the Resistance ships. HUNDREDS of TIES, many of them Special-Ops fighters capable of carrying missiles which could (apparently) penetrate the cruiser's shields to hit vital targets. Wouldn't take long at all for the Resistance ships to lose enough engines to be slowed to the point where the First Order's Destroyers could catch them, and pound them to pieces. The idea that the First Order (who see their military servicemembers as essentially replaceable cogs in their vast war machine) would consider it necessary to only operate the fighters under cover of the Destroyers' turbolasers is pretty ludicrous.
That leaves aside the possibility of one or several Destroyers micro-jumping ahead of the Resistance ships, which they SHOULD have been able to do. They had, what, a couple DOZEN "smaller" Destroyers accompanying the Supremacy? Split off a half-dozen, a dozen, have them jump ahead (or, as fast as hyperdrives apparently are, have them jump away and double back on a just-barely-longer jump ending up ahead), and END the Resistance.
Fighter debris - yeah, most of the ships (small AND large) came apart in big chunks, generally. Note that the bombers were mostly wiped out by flaming debris from other bombers in that chain reaction that left the single (mostly-)intact one for the final run on the dreadnought. When the dreadnought went up, there were explosions throughout its structure, but it took a (relatively) long time to explode. Again, lots of potential there to throw large chunks of mostly-intact debris that could contain closed compartments protecting people. Plus, one would assume based on evidence from Ep8 and ANH, capital ships are generally fitted with escape pods. The cloud-of-sparkly-bits looks cool as an effect for the movies, but realistically, it seems more likely that unless the payload or engines went up as a result of the hit, the ship would come apart in chunks.
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The lack of debris seemed to be a common thing in the Star Wars movies. I agree that in reality there should be a great deal. Even if a ship was vaporized, there would be a huge expanding dust cloud. That was one of the things I got to dislike about the death star destruction. Cool explosion, but in reality, there would be huge chunks of debris raining down on the nearby planet for years.
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The idea that the First Order (who see their military servicemembers as essentially replaceable cogs in their vast war machine) would consider it necessary to only operate the fighters under cover of the Destroyers' turbolasers is pretty ludicrous.
Possibly a simple logistics problem; they still need capital ships to transport the TIEs, so maybe they were trying to conserve what they had a bit more than usual to avoid re-tasking one of the destroyers to go ferry more TIEs. (Plus, remember their military stockpiles had to be hidden for decades, so it may be partly an issue of having to go to the galactic equivalent of Gwinner ND and literally dig the next batch out of the glacier they were buried in.)
That leaves aside the possibility of one or several Destroyers micro-jumping ahead of the Resistance ships, which they SHOULD have been able to do. They had, what, a couple DOZEN "smaller" Destroyers accompanying the Supremacy? Split off a half-dozen, a dozen, have them jump ahead (or, as fast as hyperdrives apparently are, have them jump away and double back on a just-barely-longer jump ending up ahead), and END the Resistance.
Probably not that simple; even if you can track them beyond lightspeed, you wouldn't necessarily know where they're going to come out. Try to jump past them, find out too late that they weren't stopping there, and...well, we saw what hyper-ramming does.
I'd guess "tracking through lightspeed" is really more of a matter of having developed some way to determine the initial vector with sufficient accuracy, (bearing in mind that hundredths of a degree matter a lot at interstellar distances) follow at the same speed or just a bit under (to avoid accidentally hyper-ramming them) and then detect the target's exit in time to stop your own ships.
The cloud-of-sparkly-bits looks cool as an effect for the movies, but realistically, it seems more likely that unless the payload or engines went up as a result of the hit, the ship would come apart in chunks.
I don't know that I've ever seen the sort of technical details of energy distribution for SW that ST has, but what if power conduits were particularly prone to actually going boom? Imagine if every wire in an aircraft carrier was replaced with detcord, (even the data wires; after all, even ST had to develop highly volatile fiber optic systems to make sure bridge panels still have an excuse to explode) and then hit with something that touches the whole mess off at once; there would likely be some big chunks, but maybe not a lot. And we don't know how much actual physical structural integrity any given ship has; it may be just enough to keep it from literally bursting at the seams the moment the shields fail.
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The lack of debris seemed to be a common thing in the Star Wars movies. I agree that in reality there should be a great deal. Even if a ship was vaporized, there would be a huge expanding dust cloud. That was one of the things I got to dislike about the death star destruction. Cool explosion, but in reality, there would be huge chunks of debris raining down on the nearby planet for years.
For DS1, the Rebels abandoned the base on Yavin 4 immediately after blowing up the Death Star, so (to them) it really didn't matter. DS2, well... Some of the books, especially Zahn's Thrawn trilogy (STILL the best Star Wars books ever written!), referenced the "Death Star tech" that could be found on Endor's surface. Meaning that numerous large chunks of Death Star 2 impacted the surface and contained recoverable elements of the technologies contained therein.
I suspect the Ewoks... did not have a good week, month, year, once that celebration was over. And the debris started deorbiting onto their heads.
The Destroyers chasing the Resistance ships each contained two wings of fighters. A TIE wing, from earlier source materials detailing the Imperial Star Destroyers of the original trilogy, is 72 ships. So each of the thirty Resurgent-class ships chasing the Resistance vessels had 144 TIE fighters. Four THOUSAND TIEs. Outside of what might have been carried on the Supremacy - which could itself dock EIGHT Resurgent-class ships (two in internal bays, six externally), so it likely had several wings of fighters on its own. They should have been able to launch THOUSANDS of TIEs against those three Resistance ships, bringing them down in short order.
And for micro-jumping, I'm not even really saying to bring in ships right on top of the fleeing vessels - but jump, say, a dozen destroyers into an hemispherical pattern ahead of the fleeing ships. Where are they going to go? Especially if those englobement ships launch their TIE wings and put 1500 fighters into space, surrounding all avenues of escape ahead while the rest of the (still overwhelming) force continues to pursue from behind. When you have overwhelming force, USE IT. Yeah, needs of the story, stipulated. In which case, the First Order shouldn't have HAD that overwhelming force available to it. That was a major weakness in the story.
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Let the past die... Kill it if you have to.
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Don't forget, per earlier books, ships can't go to lightspeed too close to a gravity well, which is why the Empire had ships designed to simulate gravity wells.
Wasn't it explained elsewhere that it wasn't really an inability of the hyperdrive to jump, but rather that it played such hell with the navigation systems that you'd have to disable multiple safeties, bypass computer nav and manually pilot the ship in a situation where manual piloting was so ludicrously beyond the capabilities of even a perfectly tuned in Jedi that the only possible use was a short, line of sight jump? (i.e. point, engage, disengage before you ram something bigger than the navigational shields can handle. Thinking about it in terms of an Earth launch, the moon is 1.3 light seconds away, so assuming you only go light speed, can miss every object over, say, a cubic meter in orbits between here and there, don't actually aim close enough to the moon to be redirected by its gravity, and don't burn up from atmospheric friction before the actual transition, you're already way past the point where you couldn't see items a thousand times bigger than you can risk hitting when you were pointing the ship.)
In other words, they're basically saying their computers can't handle the calculations fast enough, but you could try seat-of-your-pants flying, with a huge chance of catastrophic collision that increases by the nanosecond. Assuming any meaningful sort of steering is even possible, since they mention dropping back to realspace to maneuver between hyperspace routes.
Of course, for ramming, most of the above, other than bypassing safeties, is irrelevant; center it in the windshield and mash the gas hard.
Interesting yet vague mention of an accidental hyper-ramming: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Destruction_of_Pammant
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I watched the Force Awakens the other evening on TV.
I came in a bit late, but what I saw was something of a hot mess and a pretty weak effort. It had its amusing moments, but overall? Meh. Better than Anakin Ben Hur and Jar Jar Binks, but still not great.
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I think that is what I remember. Not as good as the original, but better than the prequels. Also, I am not entirely sure where they are going with the storyline. I get the impression they didn't know either so they came up with The Order and are trying to rehash the storyline of the original trilogy. I guess the next movie will have them defeating The Order with another planet killing weapon since the recent one was their Strikes Back remake.
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"I get the impression they didn't know either so they came up with The Order and are trying to rehash the storyline of the original trilogy."
Bingo.
And just how in the *expletive deleted*ck did the Order get so powerful so quickly after the defeat of The Empire and re-establishment of the Republic?
Did the Republic just leave all of the Empire's toys (droids, Ti fighters, star destroyers and the like) just laying around for the taking, like one great big U-Pull-A-Part in space?
The more I think about it, the more I realize that the whole story line was an incredible mess that just didn't make any freaking sense.
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And where are they building all these ships? It seems they can building them from scratch pretty quickly.
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And where are they building all these ships? It seems they can building them from scratch pretty quickly.
Space Ikea.
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Space Ikea.
BlorgenStarDotstroier, now with only 500 missing parts!
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And where are they building all these ships? It seems they can building them from scratch pretty quickly.
They rediscovered the Star Forge...
Oh, wait. That's not canon anymore.
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TLJ can only be explained in one way....Rian Johnson is a lazy storyteller. Instead of trying to create a plot that fit with the trilogies and stories preceding it, he just crammed a bunch of SFX, SJW, WWII cliches, and "damaged hero" crap together. He squandered characters and story opportunities. And he didn't even bother to research SW or military history to stay consistent with how SW combat works. He made a hot mess, and he's spent months on the media circuit trying to clean it up. If you have to explain a movie after people watch it, then you've done a poor job of making it.
The only bright spot is that JJA may have to make TWO movies to fix the damage of this one.....
And, for the record, I thought Luke Skywalker was a bad teacher when the EU started having him train Jedi. I'd rather see other Jedi (Asokha, Vos, etc.) come out of the shadows to train the next generation. Luke is an action hero....he needs to stay in the fight.
I'm so looking forward to SOLO.....
Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk
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I finally saw it, because the wife brought it home from the lie-berry. I couldn't remember how the last stupid movie ended, so I didn't get why the black guy was in a plastic suit. I wasn't expecting to like the movie, but I did. Enjoying Star Wars is so much easier, if you can avoid taking it seriously, and just remember that it's silly escapism. It's not a great epic, or high art. It's just amusement.
I liked Poe's tete-a-tete with Hugs. :laugh: I was also thinking, during the entire Snoke/Rey interview, about that light saber sitting there, just waiting to be switched on. So glad Darth Emo took my suggestion. So satisfying.
Am I the only one that noticed Fin and his girlfriend's nod of approval to Antifa and Black Lives Matter, after their little game of property destruction at the casino town? ;/
And why did they switch from Rebel Alliance to "resistance"? Did they choose that, because of current politics?
Pretty cool that Luke was milking space-cows, and spearing space-fish. I think this is the first time, as an adult, that I've actually liked Luke Skywalker. He was no good in the other movies.