Star Wars: For All Your PT, OT, ST, & AT-AT/ST Needs

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

 

Apparently the bombers project a gravity beam to help the bombs fall because that's much more better.

I actually think their Star Wars tech book thing claimed it used a magnetic launcher to project them down. Which I've no problem with, probably how the TIE bombers worked in TESB, where their use was appropriate as they tried to flush out the Falcon or collapse whatever cave system it was in. But as they fall, they sort of start shifting around as if drag is causing variation in how they fall, much as you see in WW2 bomber footage.

Torpedo bomber. The missiles of the Y-Wings and A-Wings are too weak to work or they're out of them so they jury rig massive, slow-moving but powerful torpedoes. Whatever. I'd have been happy with that. Very Star Wars.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

Darth Vader being thrown into craziness as he gets shot by the Falcon. Luke being told to 'pull up' and getting confused about where he was on the Death Star run. The Falcon throwing everyone all over the place when they maneuver. 

In TROS, Poe delivers the line, "Nav can't tell which way is up out there" To explain why they have to take out a single beacon to strand the planet-killing star destroyers.  Of course, they couldn't place beacons on all of these ships or just have the ships continue their ascent after they broke out of the ice.  The couldn't have a bridge officer look out a window as they maneuvered their respective asses toward the surface of Exigol and stepped on the gas. And of course, "up" was apparently not a problem for the Resistance ships.

This has nothing to do with what you're talking about.

[teej6]

17 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

So I’ll grant that that might have been interesting, except Lucas is staggeringly bad at supplying information to an audience. He seemed to have this idea, but then completely forget to gradually educate the viewer as to its details. His entire relationship with Dooku and Dooku’s actions don’t make a lick of sense toward this plan.

This is the whole point of Lucas film making that many (myself included) liked. He didn’t care to give much exposition, he gave some backstory but did not elaborate. And this is the reason you have a generation after the OT who were obsessed with the SW EU for decades. In the prequels, I feel, he gave TMI.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

In TROS, Poe delivers the line, "Nav can't tell which way is up out there" To explain why they have to take out a single beacon to strand the planet-killing star destroyers.  Of course, they couldn't place beacons on all of these ships or just have the ships continue their ascent after they broke out of the ice.  The couldn't have a bridge officer look out a window as they maneuvered their respective asses toward the surface of Exigol and stepped on the gas. And of course, "up" was apparently not a problem for the Resistance ships.

This has nothing to do with what you're talking about.

Oh! Sorry, I have no arguments about TRoS. TRoS was just stupid. I don't consider anything about that arguably good.

[DaveSumm]

9 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

Anakin's descent to the Dark side could have been amazing. The Jedi losing not because of Palpatine but because of their incredible institutional weaknesses is an even bigger ambition.

As an example: Anakin is shown through his entire life, starting with his freedom, how incredibly bullshit the Jedi path is. From Qui-Gon rigging a dice game to free him to being told he can't be taught because he's too old, to then being told you can't care about anyone and can't do anything except defend, only to be lauded time and time again when he does the right thing? His mom dies largely because the Jedi won't get off their ass and free slaves, as an example, and wouldn't let him care for her for over 10 years. The Jedi at every single instance they can tell him the wrong thing to do, and he goes ahead and does things in spite of them, and succeeds.

And they're cool with it! Because it lets them succeed at some of their goals, and they're too feckless to do anything else. 

This all sounds cool, but I just don’t see any evidence that it’s what Lucas intended. Given how badly the rest is written, I would extrapolate that he simply didn’t write any motivation for the Jedi to act any differently. Palpatine needed to succeed, and so the Jedi needed to fail. Just because he didn’t think to explain that, I’m not sure we can fill in this gap with a grand plan of institutional weakness.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

This all sounds cool, but I just don’t see any evidence that it’s what Lucas intended. Given how badly the rest is written, I would extrapolate that he simply didn’t write any motivation for the Jedi to act any differently. Palpatine needed to succeed, and so the Jedi needed to fail. Just because he didn’t think to explain that, I’m not sure we can fill in this gap with a grand plan of institutional weakness.

That's possible! But I think it's there, I think TLJ makes that clearer as well, as does Clone Wars (with how the Jedi treated Ahsoka) and Rebels to a certain extent. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

I actually think their Star Wars tech book thing claimed it used a magnetic launcher to project them down. Which I've no problem with, probably how the TIE bombers worked in TESB, where their use was appropriate as they tried to flush out the Falcon or collapse whatever cave system it was in. But as they fall, they sort of start shifting around as if drag is causing variation in how they fall, much as you see in WW2 bomber footage.

Torpedo bomber. The missiles of the Y-Wings and A-Wings are too weak to work or they're out of them so they jury rig massive, slow-moving but powerful torpedoes. Whatever. I'd have been happy with that. Very Star Wars.

I thought it would have been an interesting twist to have the bombers be a response to the possibility of another Starkiller base. There would be some logic to that given the trouble they had destroying the first one. This eliminates the "bombers in space" issue and (my feeling) that a heavy bomber is just a very un-republic type weapon, given what it's real world inspiration was actually used for.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

18 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

Oh! Sorry, I have no arguments about TRoS. TRoS was just stupid. I don't consider anything about that arguably good.

[Vaughn]

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

People seem to have rewatch TPM here. The Gungans are the more technological advanced and more powerful species on Naboo. The Naboo were no match for the battle droids, the Gungans are. The Gungans also have a more naturalized technology, they fit in with nature, are self-sufficient, and really don't need the Naboo for anything until a common enemy threatens them both.

Jar Jar Binks is not representative of the Gungans ... as can be seen during the entire battle sequence.

Now I have not seen the movie in many blessed years but didn't the Gungans only win that battle due to a bunch of preposterous coincidences mostly surrounding a 8 year old killing hundreds and hundreds of people on an orbital base?

[Maltaran]

2 minutes ago, Vaughn said:

Now I have not seen the movie in many blessed years but didn't the Gungans only win that battle due to a bunch of preposterous coincidences mostly surrounding a 8 year old killing hundreds and hundreds of people on an orbital base?

The point of that battle was to lure the droid army out of the city so Padme and the Jedi could infiltrate, send the pilots off to attack the control ship, and capture the viceroy. I agree that they only won because of outside forces, but that was always the plan.

[Vaughn]

You can say the Gungans didn't need to the Naboo until the chips were down but from the plot recapped here it sounds like they would be slaughtered by the droid army / trade federation if the Naboo hadn't roped some Jedi into helping them out.

Also per wikipedia - Jar Jar earned a promotion to ... general (!) in the Gungan army so clearly, clearly they are pack of absolute dipshits. #facts

[Lord Varys]

5 minutes ago, Vaughn said:

Now I have not seen the movie in many blessed years but didn't the Gungans only win that battle due to a bunch of preposterous coincidences mostly surrounding a 8 year old killing hundreds and hundreds of people on an orbital base?

Sure, they do not win the ground battle - because the point of the plot there is this whole symbiosis thing - that Naboo and Gungans have to work together to defeat their common enemy. But the message still is that the Gungans are stronger than the Naboo, being able to marshal an army to fight the droids when the Naboo couldn't even do that. All they contribute to the fighting are a couple of star fighters and pilots.

But compared to ROTJ the situation in TPM is completely different. In the former movie the Emperor didn't send troops to the moon to conquer it and pacify/enslave the Ewoks. They were to lure the rebels into a trap and protect the shield generator the Ewoks had no issues with at all ... until they hooked up with the rebels and decided to fight with them.

Whereas the Gungans face and hold their own (for quite some time) against the full power of the gigantic Trade Federation army which was deployed on Naboo for the specific purpose to conquer and hold the entire planet, Naboo and Gungans included, whereas the Ewoks and the rebels outmaneuver and defeat only a rather small contingent of stormtroopers in a scenario where the Empire was neither prepared for nor expected to fight against the Ewoks at all.

If the Emperor had wanted to crush the Ewoks he could have done so easily enough - not just with orbital bombardment but, one assumes, but by actually sending troops in larger numbers who were actually prepared to fight insurgents in a jungle environment.

You have to keep in mind that the forest moon was original 'the sanctuary moon' in orbit of the capital planet of the Empire, a place where the Empire had little to no military presence. And this is also the case with Endor as we see it - there is just the shield generator on the moon, the landing dock, and perhaps some other isolated outposts. The Empire doesn't control the people on the ground on that world.

1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

In TROS, Poe delivers the line, "Nav can't tell which way is up out there" To explain why they have to take out a single beacon to strand the planet-killing star destroyers.  Of course, they couldn't place beacons on all of these ships or just have the ships continue their ascent after they broke out of the ice.  The couldn't have a bridge officer look out a window as they maneuvered their respective asses toward the surface of Exigol and stepped on the gas. And of course, "up" was apparently not a problem for the Resistance ships.

This has nothing to do with what you're talking about.

Just stop remembering me of that shit. As I said earlier, that movie actually gave the same stupid plot (lure the rebels into a trap by endangering yourself and giving them the theoretical means for your destruction) to the same guy who died the first time implementing this 'plan' in ROTJ. Even a narcissistic madman cannot be that stupid.

But the shitty fact that Palpatine had all the cards in his hands - nobody knew he was alive, so he could have raised his fucking armada out of the atmosphere before even broadcasting that he was alive!!! - makes the entire attack plan there break down. OT & PT 'desperate battle plans' do not rely on the bad guy being an utter moron but rather believable overconfidence on the side of the villains ... and in the end they win due to good look or, as we should put it, the will of the Force - like when Anakin can blow up the control ship, Luke blows up the Death Star, Luke gets through to Vader, and an unlikely alliance of Ewoks and rebel can blow up the shield generator, so Lando and Wedge can do their jobs.

1 hour ago, teej6 said:

This is the whole point of Lucas film making that many (myself included) liked. He didn’t care to give much exposition, he gave some backstory but did not elaborate. And this is the reason you have a generation after the OT who were obsessed with the SW EU for decades. In the prequels, I feel, he gave TMI.

I think I laid out in one of the earlier threads that I think AOTC is actually the best PT movie ... if it still told the same story as the novelization and the script do. But it was gutted in the editing room. You really don't get anything about the plot in that movie if you don't have the background, because not even the factions are properly introduced.

I a political movie you do need political exposition. I guess the way to go could have been to make the new Queen of Naboo a separatist and Padmé actually trying to keep her world in the Republic ... or also leaning towards secession until Anakin convinced her otherwise. Or them getting to the bottom of what Dooku might be and who he allies with (the mega-corporations) could have lead to her sobering up.

And just make the entire romance thing not part of a vacation but have it take place in the background of summit on a lush planet where Republic and Confederate dignitaries meet to prevent an armed conflict. That would have knit the plot tighter together and Padmé/Anakin could have eventually been forced to run away or fake her death to uncover who was behind the attempts on her life, while Obi-Wan could have followed the trail to discover the clone army.

The core mistake of the PT is that the first movie didn't set the stage for the Clone Wars - or at least the main factions of the Clone Wars. The Separatist movement should already have been a thing in TPM - or, as I'd have preferred it, there should have been another movie between TPM and AOTC to build up things some more.

[Lord Varys]

Bah, Lucas' bad taste was never more evident then in the fact he actually did reshoots to include that pointless droid factory scene in AOTC. There was the Coruscant chase, the asteroid field chase, and the big battle in the end - why not focus more on the plot and less on fake tension?

[Werthead]

Star Wars Squadrons uses the Last Jedi approach to bombing, which is really weird. Having to get "above" the target (basically flying next to it and then spinning) and "dropping" the bombs is really odd after all the previous games have you launching torpedoes and bombs out the front of the ship.

There is a nod though to the idea that your are repulsing the bombs out of the bay rather than "dropping" them in zero-gee though.

[Veltigar]

3 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

My new favourite take down of the prequels:

He points out at the beginning that the Mr Plinkett review is the most in-depth, but I remain utterly baffled how anyone can sit through hours of that fucking voice.

He's a bit too soft on the shitquels, but his take down of the prequels is pretty much gold. I particularly agree with his specific comments on Anakin later on in that trilogy. It has been said over and over again, but it's worth reiterating. His fall too the dark side is so rushed as to not be believable which turns the whole project of the PT pretty pointless.

[Vaughn]

Agree to disagree about Gungans, but I'm glad there's no push back on my other point that Anakin had a very high body count for 9 year old. Of course he went to the dark side - he clearly exhibited the behavior of a psychopath from day one.

[Heartofice]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

Star Wars Squadrons uses the Last Jedi approach to bombing, which is really weird. Having to get "above" the target (basically flying next to it and then spinning) and "dropping" the bombs is really odd after all the previous games have you launching torpedoes and bombs out the front of the ship.

There is a nod though to the idea that your are repulsing the bombs out of the bay rather than "dropping" them in zero-gee though.

Just going back to the old Xwing and Tie Fighter games on pc , you would often be in a Y Wing, and the whole point was that they were the bombers of the rebellion. They used torpedos and had to get a certain distance to fire. 
 

Seems pretty simple. It’s naval combat in the same way that Star Trek operates like naval combat.  I really can’t see what advantage any actual bombs would have over a torpedo in that scenario given how close you would need to get to the target to hit something 

[Derfel Cadarn]

33 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Just going back to the old Xwing and Tie Fighter games on pc , you would often be in a Y Wing, and the whole point was that they were the bombers of the rebellion. They used torpedos and had to get a certain distance to fire. 
 

Seems pretty simple. It’s naval combat in the same way that Star Trek operates like naval combat.  I really can’t see what advantage any actual bombs would have over a torpedo in that scenario given how close you would need to get to the target to hit something 

Those games ignored that the TIE Bomber (which you could flie) dropped bombs as seen in Empire

[Ran]

41 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Those games ignored that the TIE Bomber (which you could flie) dropped bombs as seen in Empire

Well, not exactly ignored. It's just that you had no missions where you needed to drop bombs on planetoids or planets, so they assumed (rightly, IMO) that for runs against capital ships the idea is that they would use torpedoes.

[Rippounet]

14 hours ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

I don't get this, at least about the bombers. Bombers have been shown to exist in the movies in several places. The bombers that are shown in TLJ are absurdly antiquated bullshit things, but they aren't much different than TIE bombers as far as plan or function. They are different than Y-Wings in that those are explicitly the kind of torpedo bomber used against capital ships (again, like in WW2) and not the kind of bombing areas like these are.

Perhaps it's me missing something, but I don't think bombers' purpose was to attack capital ships in space before TLJ.

It's perfectly ok to introduce a new tactic (if we can call it that) within a fictional universe, but doing it without any kind of prior explanation is either a lack of consistency or a plothole (your pick).
The scene is cool, but anyone who wondered why the fuck the bombs were moving away from the bomber and toward the cruiser could no longer suspend their disbelief. And it was bad enough that Poe used that old "win time by talking" trick that really shouldn't work against decent villains.

And that's the problem I have with the ST. Many scenes are objectively "cool," but I kept getting "out of it" because I couldn't find them "believable" within the framework of what had already been established in prior stuff.

Same for "force teleportation" when Rey somehow sends her lightsaber to Ren. Force projection was one thing, but teleportation is another.
So what should have been a cool scene turned into a chuckle for me.
Though, for all the PT haters out there, I'll admit that some clunky dialogues have the very same effect, and I can see why people had the very same gut reaction to the PT as I have to the ST.

I guess we could argue what's worse for the viewer: bad dialogue (nooooo) or stupid scenes (horses in space), but I don't think there's a point.

13 hours ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

That's possible! But I think it's there, I think TLJ makes that clearer as well, as does Clone Wars (with how the Jedi treated Ahsoka) and Rebels to a certain extent. 

I'm with you here, though ironically Lucas apparently never meant to do that and it was other writers who developed that theme (i.e. the Jedi basically screwing up).

It's just that I personally don't care that Lucas didn't mean to do it. It's the story he wrote, that interpretation makes it so much better, it's the one I got while first watching the movies, and since it was in fact later developed, it's 100% canon at this point.

I'm not sure what we can make of someone who writes a great story "by accident" because he doesn't realise its obvious interpretation.
Bradbury comes to mind as a -distant- equivalent.