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Multimedia => The Original Trilogy => Topic started by: R5Don4 on March 19, 2011, 06:02 PM

Title: Things I never noticed before
Post by: R5Don4 on March 19, 2011, 06:02 PM
So I recently read the novelazations again and a couple of things struck me as odd.

From Star Wars (I will not call it that other name, it is and always be Star Wars)

Minor:  Very lucky no one was seriously injured when they jumped down into the garbage compactor.  Good thing all that wet broken metal and debris cushioned the fall from 20' up.

The Rebel Wing men for the trench run, what did they really expect to accomplish flying in that formation in the trench?  Wouldn't it have been much more effective to fly above the trench giving the leader some space ahead to protect him, like what Han does in the end?
 


From ESB


Atmosphere inside the Space Slug


So the Space Slug's gullet provided enough of an atmosphere to protect  against the hard vacumn of space?  I guess it did.



From RotJ

How long did the get away ships sit around in the Tatooine desert without being ravaged by Jawas and Tuskens?  From the whole deleted sandstorm scene.  Very lucky for our heroes they weren't stumbled upon by greedy scavengers.  I guess because Luke grew up on Tatooine he knew a good place to hide space ships in the desert.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: Jesse James on March 20, 2011, 02:07 AM
Quote
The Rebel Wing men for the trench run, what did they really expect to accomplish flying in that formation in the trench?  Wouldn't it have been much more effective to fly above the trench giving the leader some space ahead to protect him, like what Han does in the end?

This actually has a partial in-film and EU explanation...

The Death Star's designed mostly to defend against large-scale assault, and EU writers ran with the concept that their surface guns are much more effective against fleets of capital ships over starfighters, and that the higher above the surface, the more likely of hitting and creating a net of laser fire to do damage to Rebel fighters comes into play then. 

This is sort of confirmed with how the Rebel Fighters are evading the surface guns then and then fighters are ordered out.  This pits everyone into a bit of a fair fight...

EU's sorta hinted at other fighters then running interference at a higher altitude...  This draws some cannon fire and Imp fighters up to meet them, giving the attack run pilots a little more of a fighting chance...  You could come in straight at the exhaust port, but would it be the most heavily defended portion of the trench ultimately?  So coming from that higher altitude, you could possibly get tore to pieces...

So how does Han do it?  I've always then assumed Han kind of "slips in unnoticed" somewhat.  Everyone's tied up with fighters above, fighters nearer the surface, and the gunners have all these blips and nobody notices the Falcon...  Hell, it may even not show up on sensors making it all the more stealthy or something.

Han buzzes in, clear's Luke by throwing his own interference into the pursuers, and peels off immediately (again lending some credibility to the concept that from his angle he's a sitting duck...  otherwise why not stay and make sure Luke's ok?), Luke does his thing, they head off and the end...

One of the things about the "higher" rebel ships has hinted at early model A-Wings being at the battle too, and ultimately doing some of that higher buzzing around taking out Imperial fighters and drawing some of them away from the core group.

Of course a lot of this helps if you buy into the notion that there's more fighters at Yavin than the battle in the film ultimately implies.  A fan edit of ANH really added a lot of ships, and again some EU have added some more ships.  The film's hangar and all the scrambling pilots certainly implies a lot more were there who never make a peep (another couple squads with their own task?) anyway.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: CorranHorn on March 20, 2011, 07:44 AM
Also I believe the purpose of the wing men are to provide additional aft shielding for the pilot making the run. They need to be in a close relative position to the lead pilot to ensure they take the laser shots from the pursuing TIEs. Essentially they're sacrificial lamb to give the lead time to take the shot.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: Jesse James on March 20, 2011, 03:32 PM
Yeah the "extras" in the trench could ultimately serve two purposes...  The lead ship is obviously the guy expected to take the first shot (providing you survive the head-on fire in the trench).  The 2 in the rear are providing some extra cushion against fighters, which would've been expected I'd guess.

However, they'd also serve the purpose of secondary shooters, should the first one miss...  It'd make sense that anyone who makes it to the end launches a Torp if they can...  Hope someone makes the shot.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: Paul on March 20, 2011, 06:53 PM


EU's sorta hinted at other fighters then running interference at a higher altitude...  This draws some cannon fire

I think you mean EU draws "Canon" fire...
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: Jesse James on March 21, 2011, 12:11 AM
I agree...  It's one of those things that, depending how you interpret, may not have happened at all...  I've always liked the idea of A-Wings in their infancy prior to Yavin though, and having a couple at Yavin base.  It even got snuck into the ICS of Yavin Base, though I forget what they're called.  Like Spearhead Fighters or something like that.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: JediJman on March 22, 2011, 12:03 AM
I also recall reading somewhere in the EU novels that ships can overlap shields when in close proximity.  It certainly doesn't show in the film the way the wingmen get blown away, but that formation could drive increased shield protection for all three ships if they are able to build off each other.

I think if it could be redone, it would make more sense to make the "trench" more of a tunnel.  It sure seemed like they dropped into the trench well before they really needed to.  And if there are that many fighters, why not drop a dozen in the trench all at once to provide more aft defense?  Or stagger the formations, so that a rear group could fight off any TIE fighters that close in on the frontal assault.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: Phrubruh on March 22, 2011, 02:48 PM
That's because it's hard enough to film three models moving down a trench then twenty models.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: JediJman on March 23, 2011, 12:01 AM
That's because it's hard enough to film three models moving down a trench then twenty models.

I think we all get that the end product was based more on what could be done rather than a divine plan for every frame of action.  Its just more fun to try to come up with plausable explanations.   ;)
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: Jesse James on March 23, 2011, 01:13 AM
Actually filming that many models wouldn't have been that hard...  It's simply overlaying one shot of a few models over the next.  For ILM at the time, that's how a lot of stuff was done, so it is possible.

The whole trench run is based on the Dam Busters raid though, which is an interesting reference point for plausible reasons fighters and things didn't do this or that in the film then perhaps.

What would've made a lot more sense ultimately would've been the exhaust port facing down the trench, rather than outward towards space.  Never really considered that.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: Dan on February 13, 2012, 06:14 PM
So watching A New Hope the other day...

The Death Star is making its orbit around Yavin, there are 20 ships attacking a base the size of a small moon, what then heck are all the stormtroopers running around with blasters for? Are they going to fire in to space through a window? Were there laser archery slits somewhere I hadn't noticed before? I found myself laughing, thinking those actors must have felt like dweebs, and no wonder they all thought it would flop. Imagine running down a hallway with wacky armor on (which is clearly completely useless) and a toy gun, slipping on the floors, and some guy yelling "fall over like your ship has been hit with a torpedo". Falling in that armor had to be painful.

Oh, and that stormtrooper hitting his head on the door makes me laugh out loud now too.

I'm afraid by the time they get to the OT, Bespin will be full of pit droids, and Hoth will have an igloo dwelling race of Gungans.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: Jesse James on February 13, 2012, 07:44 PM
I always thought about the troopers running about too...  One thought I had though, was they maybe weren't entirely sure what they were dealing with, and so they (like on Star Trek) were just going to their designated battle stations, as it were, and were basically on alert.  For all they knew, the Rebels were maybe going to try a full-on boarding operation or something, take the whole thing over and just abandon the planet or whatever.

At least that explains it well enough to suit me anyway. :)
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: Phrubruh on February 15, 2012, 09:47 AM
Why would the rebels start their trench run so far away from the target? I guess to get ready to make the shot but why so long to adjust to make the shot?
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: Jesse James on February 15, 2012, 03:26 PM
This one actually made sense to me...

The DS surface is littered with guns of course, and early in the battle Porkins seemingly is getting caught up int he crossfire of them because he's too close...  Luke too is going in pretty close to the surface and gets "a little cooked" in the process.  The guns are, in my view, a much more deadly threat to fighters the closer to the surface the fighter gets.  The further away, the better.

Some games have even put this into the game as a way to keep you in the trench and from drifting out and just flying up away from everything till you get to the port.

Now, one could reason that the guns are even worse at the exhaust port, and that a straight down dive to the exhaust port is a more difficult shot than the already difficult one from following the trench itself.  So I think it's a reasonable explanation to that question.  Luke zips out and starts maneuvering however he can to get away, something that if he's trying to take a difficult shot on the way in, he of course wouldn't have the ability to do. 

The trench maybe just offers up the safest road and easiest shot at the port.

I've always also maintained though, that other fighters at the battle were meant to do a "higher altitude" battle, hoping to draw Imperial fighters away from the trench and the teams making a run on the exhaust port.  Vader doesn't fall for this of course, but it actually can be seen sort of happening in the background at times, and it's another thing slipped into games too (and why more than 3 fighters probably returned from Yavin, we just don't see them).
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: warinthefloor on April 5, 2012, 03:36 PM
remember the death star has gravity both from its immense mass and artificially generated, so due to the energies and velocities involved with that straffing run, you are going to want to have an approach vector that maximises the tangent vice normal component of your velocity vector WRT the center of the death stars mass.
Manned space craft have to re-enter earths atmosphere at a VERY VERY shallow angle, I cant remember it off hand but its like between 2.7 and 3.1 degrees angle from straight tangent component.
Then once down in the trench, it appears you only have a few wingspans clearence and you have to assume that the repulsers, sheilding and propulsion systems of these craft have an area of effect that extends at least slightly past their spaceframes. So in Earth terms imagine three AH-64s howling down a canyon thats barely wide enough for them, and their down draft or even hover in ground effects would interfere with one anothers control surfaces.
So you can only run a fe fighters down the Death star trench at a time and you have to do it at a shallow approach vector.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: warinthefloor on April 5, 2012, 03:40 PM
space slugs internal atmoshpere is easy
HE HAD GAS!

But that has to be one hell of a dense asteroid if ( as it appears) it has near Earth gravity!
s slick trick would have been to use some slowed down footage or something on the external shots during that sequence to give it that apollo moon walk feel.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: P-Siddy on October 6, 2012, 09:15 PM
While watching the opening scene from Jedi, I caught for the first time (never crossed my mind) that the Vader's shuttle comes from a regular Star Destroyer and not Executor.  I wonder why that is?
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: Jesse James on October 6, 2012, 11:50 PM
I always figured Vader's busy with the Fleet doing stuff and decides to hitch a ride on a Destroyer destined for the DS2 while the Executor keeps doing whatever it was doing.  He was just there to whip everyone into shape, but not take the flagship to do it, ya know?  Maybe just hitch a ride on a Destroyer bringing personnel to the station or whatnot.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: Mister Skeezler on October 9, 2012, 10:28 AM
Mon Mothma mentions that the fleet is spread across the galaxy in a vain attempt to engage the rebels, so I would assume the Executor is busy.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: Nicklab on October 12, 2012, 08:52 PM
While watching the opening scene from Jedi, I caught for the first time (never crossed my mind) that the Vader's shuttle comes from a regular Star Destroyer and not Executor.  I wonder why that is?

I would think about it more from a cinematic standpoint:  what's the opening shot of A New Hope?  The Star Destroyer!  That opening shot of ANH that follows the crawl is the Tantive IV and that massive form of the Star Destroyer's hull as it flies over the camera.  That shot blew the minds of many a movie-goer.

George Lucas is very much about these recurring themes in his films.  And I suspect that the opening to Return of the Jedi with the tilt down to the Death Star II and Endor, followed by the Star Destroyer passing overhead is that recurring theme returning, effectively bookending ANH and ROTJ.

I suspect that the Imperial Star Destroyer was used specifically for that cinematic device, and not for any particular plot point.  And to that end, it may have also been an instance where the Star Destroyer model was much more appropriate for that shot than the model for the Executor.
Title: Re: Things I never noticed before
Post by: P-Siddy on October 12, 2012, 09:02 PM
Yeah, I suppose if they went with the Executor, it would take about 5 minutes before they got to the docking bay.  ;)