Star Wars : Episode IX (No Spoilers)

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by djsFlames

The new trilogy has made x-wings and tie fighters look awful. Don't know what it is but the movements and sharp turns make them look unrealistic even by SW standards. The OT ships just flew in more natural looking ways making wide, sweeping "runs" kind of like ww2 planes with limited evasive ability as displayed in the trench run. Whereas Poe can now turn on a dime in his fighter and take everyone out in seconds. It's strange to watch.

One of the scenes that I hated the most was in TFA awakens when the Resistance fighters show up, and Poe takes out 50 tie fighters and kills 50 troopers on the ground, and Fin is screaming "What a pilot"


I thought it was such a ham fisted way to make Poe the awesome hero of the trilogy, instead it just enforced that the First Order kind of sucked at combat.


Just like the scene in the TLJ where Poe on his own stripped the dreadnought of all of its guns.


At this point frankly, there's no menace to the first order because they tend to lose every battle. You can point to the final ground battle as an overwhelming loss, but the resistance didn't lose anyone, the battleplan was we're going to knock out the front door and not worry about there possibly being a back entrance so maybe we should look for that.


There is never a great good guy without a villain to make him great. In this case, Snoke and the First Order are so incompetent that they almost appear like the Empire in the Lego Star Wars series, there's no menace to it because they're just incompetent.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

One of the scenes that I hated the most was in TFA awakens when the Resistance fighters show up, and Poe takes out 50 tie fighters and kills 50 troopers on the ground, and Fin is screaming "What a pilot"


I thought it was such a ham fisted way to make Poe the awesome hero of the trilogy, instead it just enforced that the First Order kind of sucked at combat.


Just like the scene in the TLJ where Poe on his own stripped the dreadnought of all of its guns.


At this point frankly, there's no menace to the first order because they tend to lose every battle. You can point to the final ground battle as an overwhelming loss, but the resistance didn't lose anyone, the battleplan was we're going to knock out the front door and not worry about there possibly being a back entrance so maybe we should look for that.


There is never a great good guy without a villain to make him great. In this case, Snoke and the First Order are so incompetent that they almost appear like the Empire in the Lego Star Wars series, there's no menace to it because they're just incompetent.

I tried to give it another chance last night, but didn't make it through the first battle scene. It felt more like they were making a parody of a Star Wars movie than an actual SW movie, except it wasn't funny.

[djsFlames]

Originally Posted by blankall

I tried to give it another chance last night, but didn't make it through the first battle scene. It felt more like they were making a parody of a Star Wars movie than an actual SW movie, except it wasn't funny.

Such as this sudden existence of gravity in space to have bomb dropping ships?

[CaptainCrunch]

I think they tried to explain it off as the bombs being magnetic or something like that. But they had the same problem in rebels with Proton Bombs falling in an arc


They intentionally went with the lumbering slow heavy multi turreted bombers because of the WW2 movies, and part of me thought, cool idea, but another part of me, the realistic side, said, they're not going to make it because of the whole fighter thing. I mean you look at WW2 raids those bombers got savaged by the Luftwaffe.



They could have done something with modified Y wings or B wings launching walls of missiles but I guess they needed to establish that Poe was an idiot.

[blankall]

The first scene with Poe talking to the First Over over the intercom was just something straight out of SpaceBalls....except it wasn't funny.

And yeah, Y wings or B wings would have made a lot of sense...apparently things have gotten very low tech over the last 30 years in the SW universe.

Anyways...may fast forwards through that scene and give it one more chance. I'd like to re-watch the Rey stuff to make sure I'm not missing anything.

[CaptainCrunch]

Yeah, the problem with that Poe Hux scene was that it happened at the start of the movie and it really cooled off the crowd in the theater that I was at. I don't remember anyone laughing in theater. At that point, when an opening scene bombs that bad it really tempers people towards the rest of the movie. I think as a write, you really have to make sure it sets the pace.

[djsFlames]

It was the most awkward/out of place scene to open with. That exchange wouldn't have mattered so much if it were in the middle of the film but directly following the space crawl when excitement is peaking, you want to follow that up with a scene that reinforces "this is going to be awesome".
I was somewhat in disbelief that that's how they opened a main saga film. I get that Disney's iteration of star wars wants to get away from taking itself so seriously, as the PT did, but your mom jokes are on the same level as jar jar antics.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by djsFlames

Such as this sudden existence of gravity in space to have bomb dropping ships?

Everything has gravity, and gravity is everywhere, its just very week and diffuse as you move away from any large body. You will never stop falling towards the earth at ~9m/s2. It's just that your rate of acceleration away or your distance from the earth could become so great that the earths pull does not have the focused force needed to pull you back in before you are captured by the gravity of something else, at which point part of the cumulative acting on you and that object will still be the Earth, just likely not strong enough to have any real impact.

Assuming a 8KM long ship weights what 1 or 2 Dozen billion KGs? the bombs would probably fall towards it accelerating at a couple mm/second squared. If everything was aligned correcting in that system you could probably have the planet and star exert much more force on the bombs. Assuming this was your attack plan was to very slowly drop bombs in space you would probably pick an angle where the planet and star are pulling properly, since your in a completely 3 dimensional theater.

The better question is how much force are those ships exerting to seemingly float above a single point on that planet and would it not be more efficient for them to enter an orbit using angular momentum to stay above that planet.

That said, lets not go to deep on the physics of a story that builds a loss set of mechanical laws around finite high powered lasers, non existence of time dilation, a hazy a best view of cosmic distances, telekinetics, ESP....

[CaptainCrunch]

So this is in fact either an indication of Hux's incompetence, or First Order arrogance.


At the start of TLJ we see three of the Resurgance Class Star Destroyers jumping into the system


Each Star Destroyer according to the Star Wars Source books has 2 complete wings of fighters, each wing has 72 ships. One wing is of the Standard Tie Class, the other the two seat SF class. So each ship carries 144 and there are three ships. That's a total of 432 fighters. The Resurgence class is suppossed to have 1500 turbo lasers, point defense turrets and Ion Cannons, though that goes against the first movie when Poe and Finn blasted very few.


The Dreadnought that we saw is a Mandator IV, it has a wing of 72 tie fighters, so that takes you up to slightly more then 500. It has 26 point defense turrets, and 6 overlapping deflector shields.


The Resistance was caught with their pants down, they had one cruiser that carried a squadron of A wings and a squadron of X wings, that's a total compliment of 24 fighters, it also only had 18 turbo lasers and a dozen point defense turrets. They also had a medical frigate and a couple of other support ships.



The Resistance Star Fortress bomber which I think they had 9 of each carries 1048 proton bombs, only one bomber made it through.



So here's the funny. Hux had a 25 to 1 fighter advantage. One fighter managed to take out probably a dozen point defense weapons on the Dreadnaught and the Resistance still managed to blow up a heavily armored and shielded and armed dreadnought with basically one fighter and one bomber.


It doesn't get more incompetent then that.


Then to compound it, Hux calls Ren back after he's blown up the Raddus' hanger destroying any fighter cover because he's worried that he can't cover fighters, when he has 500 tie fighters against a ship with less point defense turrets then the dreadnought.


So either Hux is incompetent, he's a coward, the first order is staffed by boobs, or secretly Hux was in love with Princess Leia and wanted her to get away while he pretends to look like he's doing something.


This battle should have ended within 10 minutes of the First Order jumping in.



Of course I understand that this is a movie and they need to have the plucky resistance escaping overwhelming odds, its in the lets write a movie guide book.


But it just goes back to the problem that every step of the way the First Orders look like they're commanded by Laurel and Hardy and staffed by soldiers who's brains have been replaced with cabbage.


At least have the resistance getting away and Leia looking at Holdo and saying, if these guys weren't such boobs we'd be dead now.


oh and having a remote control that's not tied to anything used to drop the bomb just seems like its a problem waiting to happen


"Bombs away!!"


"Sorry Sir Johnson dropped it down the well and out of the ship"

[djsFlames]

Originally Posted by #-3

Everything has gravity, and gravity is everywhere, its just very week and diffuse as you move away from any large body. You will never stop falling towards the earth at ~9m/s2. It's just that your rate of acceleration away or your distance from the earth could become so great that the earths pull does not have the focused force needed to pull you back in before you are captured by the gravity of something else, at which point part of the cumulative acting on you and that object will still be the Earth, just likely not strong enough to have any real impact.

Assuming a 8KM long ship weights what 1 or 2 Dozen billion KGs? the bombs would probably fall towards it accelerating at a couple mm/second squared. If everything was aligned correcting in that system you could probably have the planet and star exert much more force on the bombs. Assuming this was your attack plan was to very slowly drop bombs in space you would probably pick an angle where the planet and star are pulling properly, since your in a completely 3 dimensional theater.

The better question is how much force are those ships exerting to seemingly float above a single point on that planet and would it not be more efficient for them to enter an orbit using angular momentum to stay above that planet.

That said, lets not go to deep on the physics of a story that builds a loss set of mechanical laws around finite high powered lasers, non existence of time dilation, a hazy a best view of cosmic distances, telekinetics, ESP....

Yes, true. Not no gravity, but enough to move those bombs at a rate that would make them even lethal.

Even with an 8 km long ship, the gravitational pull would be so minimal that the bombs would move at turtle speed at best before reaching said ship and render them pretty well useless. Unless there's a planet on the other side of that ship. Or some other attracting force coming from the core of the ship that we don't know about.

Shouldn't think too much into this, but it's hard not to notice that bombs are falling as if they were pulled at the acceleration of earth's gravity in one scene, then half an hour later Leia and debris are floating in space like you would expect in a zero gravity environment.

But as you said, sci-fi fantasy. We're not supposed to be thinking about these things. Yet part of me wishes Kennedy, Johnson and co. would've taken some second and third opinions into account when it came to writing the mom jokes and ships made for space bomb dropping in. People today are generally more educated about space than they were in 1977. We have to actively ignore this stuff, it doesn't go over our heads automatically.

Then again if they were going for realistic all the space battle scenes would be entirely silent. So I'm definitely thankful for that inaccuracy.

[Ashartus]

I figured the bombs were given some initial momentum by the launch mechanism, possibly combined with magnets to pull them towards the target. No need for noticeable gravity.

[CaptainCrunch]

So here's the problem with inventing new wonder tech like the Star Fortress bombers where one of them can take out a dreadnought.


In the first movie they need to go bomb a oscillator on Star Killer base. They send a squadron of X wings, who go up against what looks like hundreds of Ties and beat them up because by now we know that First Order Pilots are terrible. The X-Wings have no bombing capability, they fire Proton Torpedoes. and they fire probably a dozen shots at the techno thinging. Since we know that those Bombers had to have been at the resistance base, why would you have send that squadron of Bombers to help Bomb the crap out of that thing. I mean a dozen proton torpedo's might not get the job done, but 5 to 10000 would probably have cracked that thing open and Finn could have tossed a grenade in the smoking crater while puffing on a cigar and muttering something cool like "Its just been revoked".


So now not only is Hux and the First Order incompetent, but by not applying enough fire power Leia inadvertently send her ex husband to his death.


Or maybe . . . intentionally as this was a plot between Hux and Leia to get together.


Dum dum dah

[Fuzz]

The bomb thing is kinda dumb, but if you stop and think about it, it's really impossible to explain/not explain, and in the SW Universe it doesn't make any less sense than every space ship having earth gravity on it, form the largest to smallest, and even the asteroid Han lands the Falcon on.

I mean, you could say well, the B Wing appears to have full gravity, so they would drop within the hold with full acceleration, and once they break whatever gravity field the B wing has they are going to stay in motion. There, I just explained it even though it makes little sense becuase SW has never explained how gravity is generated on ships. What is up or down?

So ya, nitpicking on this specific detail may seem like you are scoring a win, but none of it makes any sense if you try to logically understand it.

[Inglewood Jack]

the gravity/no gravity function of the bombs isn't even the important thing. all the Star Wars materials in film, TV, books, comics, games, etc. have shown us that both the empire and rebellion employ small, maneuverable bombers that launch self-propelled torpedoes and rockets. even then one time in ESB they bombed asteroids, at least they were using bombers that could actually move at a decent clip. RJ went way too far in his WWII homage by inventing bombers that are stupidly impractical in their own universe.

go ahead and create new things for the SW canon, after all it's 30 years after the original trilogy battles. the Resurgent class destroyers and dual seat TIE fighters with basic shields are fine. giant, nearly stationary paper mache bombers that need to float their way to within 50 meters of a target that must also be stationary is immersion-breaking silliness. almost as silly as having a FO dreadnaught target an abandoned base on a planet instead of the capital ship that all the Resistance is escaping to.

[Inglewood Jack]

and it's all stupid Poe's fault they lost most of their pilots on that bombing run anyways. while he was hot dogging around the dreadnaught destroying all its turbolasers with ease, he didn't bother taking an extra 5 seconds to blow up its very exposed bridge and decapitating its command centre. not like the thing had its shields up anyways, and a couple of TIE fighers do it to the Raddus about 20 minutes later to great effect. I assume the same thing would happen as the Executor being pulled into the Death Star when its bridge got blown.

maybe he didn't do it cause then he'd have nobody to prank call with momma jokes.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Inglewood Jack

the gravity/no gravity function of the bombs isn't even the important thing. all the Star Wars materials in film, TV, books, comics, games, etc. have shown us that both the empire and rebellion employ small, maneuverable bombers that launch self-propelled torpedoes and rockets. even then one time in ESB they bombed asteroids, at least they were using bombers that could actually move at a decent clip. RJ went way too far in his WWII homage by inventing bombers that are stupidly impractical in their own universe.

go ahead and create new things for the SW canon, after all it's 30 years after the original trilogy battles. the Resurgent class destroyers and dual seat TIE fighters with basic shields are fine. giant, nearly stationary paper mache bombers that need to float their way to within 50 meters of a target that must also be stationary is immersion-breaking silliness. almost as silly as having a FO dreadnaught target an abandoned base on a planet instead of the capital ship that all the Resistance is escaping to.

The whole scene was style over substance, and meant to set up Rose and Poe's storylines for later in the movie. Poe needed to reveal himself as a hotshot who doesn't respect authority. Rose's sister needed an epic death.

But yes, we already had bombers, capable of releasing self-propelled bombs, easily capable of taking ships without any shields.

The other thing that doesn't make sense about the scene is that Poe succeeded when he wasn't meant to and deviating from the plan. The bombers rely on the star destroyer's defenses being down. Why would you have those bombers ready if it wasn't part of the plan for Poe to succeed. If the plan was for the Poe to succeed, while sticking to the plan, then that's a horrible plan, as it's a total suicide mission. Or maybe the real plan was just to get rid of Poe. The rebellion had enough of his ways and just sent him on a suicide mission.

The bombers dropping bombs could make sense without the magnets though. There is artificial gravity in all of the ships. If the bombs fell in the artificial gravity, they would continue to fall in space. However, the ship design themselves would be totally ineffective. The First Order uses tie fighters, which are extremely maneuverable. Using floating paper mache bomb dispensers would be just about the worst design you could come up with to go up against tie fighters.

I probably shouldn't nitpick this much, but it's hard not to when the whole scene is built around how these bombers function.

[CaptainCrunch]

I get it, Poe is supposed to be on this hero's journey and evolution, where he goes from being that gung ho pilot who can only see the objective in front of his face while ignoring the big picture.


So he's stuck on taking out a Dreadnought and he ignores orders to take it out at the risk of the big picture.


Then throughout the movie he's supposed to evolve, to the point in the end as he's getting people to flee through the back door that you can stand up and say, the torch has been passed. At the same time Holdo is supposed to and Leia to a lesser extent are the mentors who bring him along this journey.


So realistically that journey really reaches the peak when he calls the retreat from attacking the super weapon death star tech door knocker, and then confirms when he rushes out the back door.


But realistically while Poe supposedly gets better at doing battle calculations, can you say that the change is actually sincere?



There's no question in my mind that at the start of the next movie that Poe will be the military head of the resistance, but here's the problem, because of the ham fisted way that his whole hero's journey has been handled, do we really believe that the audience is going to invest in him.


At the same time, JJ and everyone involved in this movie got too caught up in everyone has to have a major journey or aha moment in this movie.


I mean if we look at the OT and the main characters.


OT


Leia doesn't have a hero's journey, she's already there, she's too an extent the companion character, facilitating the journey.


Han had his entire hero journey in the first movie, after that he was the hero and reacted accordingly in the final movie, we didn't have a great moment of evolution.


Vader - not a hero's journey, but a redemption journey which takes place somewhat grandually, but he resists it to the end, so while there is evolution, its not really anything but the shock turn at the enbd


Luke - Realistically is the only real hero's journey through all the movies, he goes from the farm boy to the warrior to the wise man through the journey, but make no mistake the whole PT is really about Luke Skywalker.


So why does the ST feel confusing? Because they're trying to cram a bunch of major character journey's and revelations into 7 hours of movies.


Rey - The hero's journey of the Trilogy, she has to go from abandoned and broken and incomplete to being a full fledged wise jedi


Leia - She doesn't have a journey, she's the conduit for all of the hero's journey which is tough


Kylo - Major Antagonists hero's journey, goes from what is basically a one dimensional thug with anger issues to the evolution of of Thanos where he wants to basically end everything.


Poe - A major hero's journey from hot shot pilot to the next general of the republic who cares about his people.


Finn - Major hero's journey with too much screen time, goes from a number to a full fledge person, he's the Pinocchio of the story. They need to give him the love interest/sympathetic friend/moral compass/faithful companion, and its literally too much for a non main character.


Luke Skywalker - a rebooted hero's journey, where he goes from sullen and angry and withdrawn to the martyr.


The problem when you do too much character is that as a viewer you can't give all of the characters the attention that they deserve and the movie becomes too dense.


In a simpler time the formula was simpler and really made the hero/ the hero.


Usually you had


The hero-on the road of his journey, the usual formula is he or she goes from being a nobody, to being the incidental hero, to self doubt, top hero


The mentor - Guides the hero along his path


The bufoon/heart - the character that reminds the hero that along the journey its important not to lose your humanity/empathy/or joy of the journey



The antagonist - Creates the foil for the hero and the motivation for continuing down the road.


The faithful companion - The one who helps and sacrifices along the road


The love interest/damsel in distress/unrequited love/mother/father figure - could be any of these, but they provide the motivation of depth beyond the antoagonist


The obstacle/betrayer/voice of sober throught - The person or thing that gives the character pause.


Under those rules you follow one hero's journey that can become epic. In the ST there are so many things and journey's happening that you can lose track, or instead of a series of achievements, you get a series of forgettable mehs.

[OutOfTheCube]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Yeah, the problem with that Poe Hux scene was that it happened at the start of the movie and it really cooled off the crowd in the theater that I was at. I don't remember anyone laughing in theater. At that point, when an opening scene bombs that bad it really tempers people towards the rest of the movie. I think as a write, you really have to make sure it sets the pace.

Remember this movie takes place maybe hours after the end of Force Awakens. Hux has just killed billions of innocent people, he's one of the architects of the most horrific event in the history of the galaxy... but hey "Lol, your mama! Time to have some fun and jokes!"

[CaptainCrunch]

It was funny to me, because they were initially on the right road with Hux, he came across as a weasel in the first movie, but a semi competent one, who wasn't afraid to talk back to Ren, or even go around him.


He built the Star Killer base, made an impassioned leadership type of speech and blew away the Republic.


He basically tells Ren to get stuffed a couple of times during the chase for the map.


He sells the Supreme leader on using the Star Killer to wipe out the resistance and gives Ren a F U I'm the man here.


Maybe the destruction of Star Killer base gave him a stroke, because then he becomes a bumbling idiot minutes later at the start of the second movie and a punch line for a lot of the jokes.



Even in the novelization of the TLJ there was a swing in narrative as the internal dialogue of the officers around him were "Yeah, he's going to fall flat on his face and die and I'm going to take his place, because he is like the worst Don Knots type of idiot in the fleet". The only thing missing was him tripping over Snoke's body to Benny Hill movie in TLJ.


God that first battle scene was terrible, from the Hugs crap, to the logic of it, to the whole BB-8 trying to fix the ship because somehow electricity in a GFFA works like a leaking damn

[Cecil Terwilliger]

I've mentioned on numerous occasions that I'm mostly ok with both of the first two movies. But if there's one thing that is beyond awful, it is Hux. He's Jar Jar Brinks bad.