Well, I have been negligent!
darth_ender said:
Return of the Jedi
A number of criticisms have already been leveled against what may be my favorite Star Wars film numerous times on this site. I will probably use some of them, but I will try to generally avoid too much rehash.
1. It was very wise of the Empire not to include any small shafts that led directly to the reactor so the Rebels couldn't repeat the same attack as they had on the first Death Star. Instead they made a larger shaft directly to the reactor so entire ships could fit.
It was under construction! That would have been closed up before the DSII was finished.
2. Luke's brilliant plan the rescue Han was to get more and more of his friends captured so...what? It just made his job harder. It's not like anyone was in a more valuable position because they were captured, except perhaps R2. And the only successful and undetected infiltration (Lando) proved rather useless, as he struggled with one guard, got knocked off the skiff, and had to be rescued.
Lando's skills in combat were apparently exaggerated during the pre-planning interviews. Otherwise, the plan was simple: Give Jabba several chances to return Captain Solo to his friends as before giving up and killing him. Leia, whose initial purpose seemed to have failed, was instrumental in finishing the Hutt off, entirely thanks to her apparent failure. Chewie was a good way to get Leia and himself in the door, plus he's good in a fight. In fact, the entire part of the plan with him and Leia only made Jabba over confident, which serves Luke well. Threepio's placement is, of course, inexplicable, as discussed elsewhere.
3. How was the smaller Rebel armada with smaller ships able to defeat the much larger Imperial fleet with larger ships, including the Executor, especially with the threat of the Death Star at the rear? In fact, what happened to the Imperial fleet once the Death Star was ready to explode? It's like they all just vanished!
If everything had proceeded according to plan, I suspect the fleet would have been significantly crippled by B-Wings. As it stands, though, I am not sure. Perhaps they, recognizing the problems of a totalitarian government with no one in charge, retreated to regroup.
4. How big is a legion? Apparently not as large as its terrestrial counterpart, where a Roman legion was about 5,000 soldiers. It's hard to believe that the Ewoks could defeat such a force unless they outnumbered them by at least 3:1, even with the element of surprise, given their small size and inferior technology. In fact, why don't we see very many Ewoks die in comparison to the armored stormtroopers?
It's well known that stormtroopers are not, despite what Ben seemed to think, very accurate. Perhaps the legion was dispatched throughout the forest to quell the mostly off-screen simultaneous native uprising against multiple outposts.
5. How big is an Imperial squad? It must be pretty small as well, since three squads were sent to help in the pursuit of the "routed" Rebels, yet only twelve men emerged from the bunker.
Well there you go. An Imperial squad is 12 men.
6. Considering the bunker was the prize of the surface battle, and considering two very valuable Rebels were trying to break into that bunker, you'd think that the Imperials would have devoted more effort to trying to kill or capture Leia and Han rather than pursuing the fuzzy little bears till they fell into their traps. The Ewoks could wait. The bunker could not!
No one noticed! Too much chaos. And do you know how hard it is to see out of those helmets?
7. How did Han and Leia stay safe during that battle anyway? There was only cover from one side. From the other side they were fish in a barrel, as they were stuck against a wall.
The Force will be with you. Always.
8. What happened to all the B-wing fighters sent into the battle? They jump to hyperspace, evade the Death Star's shield, and disappear!
From a technical/behind-the-scenes perspective, you know exactly what happened. In-universe, however, the B-wing turned out to be an incredible failure in combat and were quickly all destroyed.
9. I understand that CGI was not up for the job of creature creation in 1983, so puppetry was required instead, and some of the puppetry in ROTJ is incredible IMHO (i.e. Jabba). However, puppets like Max Rebo and Droopy McCool, who look more like plush toys disrupt the illusion, and even did so for me when I was only five. Not that the CGI that later fleshed out the scene looked much better in the end anyway.
Your point? Have you ever really looked at Greedo?
10. Why would a plan like "split up and head back to the surface" successfully distract those stupid TIE pilots? If the Rebels could tell which way was to the core and which led to the surface, surely the Imperials could too. And considering the fact that the core is where the all-important reactor is, you think they'd be more determined to protect that instead of pursuing those other fighters.
The path to the core was not exactly direct, and point of divergence was ambiguous enough that both groups could have still gone to the core. Only after more turns and forks would it become evident which group was really going in.
11. While I don't have a problem with its story function, I can't help but wonder if it would be economically wise to build a second Death Star at all, when the first proved to be extremely costly and ultimately wasteful.
Well there was a really good plan to trap the Rebels and finish them off once and for all. That made it worth it.
12. Why is Lando made a general? He was never a member of the Alliance till now? And don't generals plan land-based missions? You'd think he'd be the naval equivalent: an Admiral. Except admirals command entire fleets from a flagship, sort of an objective point where they can provide more broad strategies; they don't personally guide fighters into battle. So maybe he should be a wing commander.
13. But Han becomes a general. Okay, he's leading a land force, but...that's not really an army. General's tend to lead large armies, again usually from an objective POV. Maybe a lieutenant or a captain would lead a strike force, but a general??? And though Han has certainly helped out the Alliance more than his friend, he only just officially joined since his return from Jabba's palace as well. It sort of cheapens Rebel ranks a bit.
You assume you know how the Alliance's rank structure works. Perhaps in their military, General is below Admiral, but in the same tree.
14. Boba Fett must have been short on business to hang around with Jabba's cronies for 6 months - 1 year after he dropped off his prize. Maybe one of the SE girls and he were having a little romance that kept him around. Maybe we could get a spinoff movie centered around that exciting tale.
Jabba thought it might be a good idea to hire some extra protection, at least until efforts to recover such a well known hero of the Alliance had quieted down a bit.
15. Why is it that no matter from which direction we are viewing the Death Star, it is always the same face looking at us: superlaser to the upper left, incomplete half to the right, even on Endor's surface?
Inexplicable, inexcusable, and obviously ripe for Ady (or anyone, really) to fix.
16. Hey, there's an AT-AT on Endor! Why didn't they use that to fight the Ewoks?
Too many Imperial structures and personnel in place around the Bunker to use heavy artillery.
17. The shield bunker logically must have been pretty close to the shield generating dish, the we never see the two in relationship to each other. Lines like "There's a secret entrance on the other side of the ridge," and facts like the explosion inside the bunker detonated the whole massive dish, lead me to conclude they must be quite close. That said, Han hardly got any distance from himself and the bunker before it blew, yet we see the whole dish go up in a massive display of pyrotechnics that surely would have killed him, the other commandos, taken out the nearby landing pad, and destroyed any other party that hadn't gotten at least a mile's distance from the generator.
I've given this some thought, and I think people greatly underestimate the size of "The Ridge". It seems to me that the back door was the entrance to some kind of important power station, as part of the massive whatever-technobabble-goes-here that must be a part of generating such a bit energy shield. Most of the shield-generator installation is subterranean, built into a mountain ridge - and we even see that ridge right here. It's certainly big enough for their power generation facilities to be inside, although I have no explanation as to why you wouldn't put the dish on top. Perhaps the geology wasn't favorable. Anyway, the film provides us with plenty enough time for Han & Co to get waaay over to the back door on the other side of the ridge, as we have no idea how long it takes the Rebels to get there via Hyperspace, and Luke is just in Imperial custody, awaiting his audience with Palpatine.
Given that the backdoor led directly into power generation, as evidenced by that weird lightning filled horizontal shaft, it's not hard to explain the massive explosion. Blow it up in the right way, and the whole system overloads.
18. "It's a trap!" So while three dimensional space offers several routes of escape, let's fly right at the Imperial fleet that is only preventing escape in one direction. Even with Endor interfering, there still were several other directions they could have fled.
What, you just want to cut and run at first sign of Imperial resistance? Besides, once the entire Rebel fleet reveals itself like that, it's much easier to track them if they do escape, allowing for pursuit and destruction. They were safe in a secret location until now.
19. What is Endor anyway? Is it the name of the moon, per "forest moon of Endor"? Or is it the planet, and the Death Star orbits the moon of the planet? Not very specific, but either way, I'm confused, because all moons have planets, and yet we never see anything resembling a planet!
Actually, I'll play devil's advocate for a moment. There is something that appears like a planet in a couple of shots from the film. Could this be the Endor planet? This is actually a realistic celestial distance. But why don't we ever see it again, particularly when the Rebel fleet exits hyperspace? You'd think that from at least that distance it would enter our view. In the Ewok films we see a much larger object that would also serve well as the planet. It can't be the same object because it's closer and looks very different from the other candidate. But it seems even less believable that we wouldn't have seen this when the fleet approached the moon.
Maybe we could use the ROTJ novel's explanation, where we are told that the planet was destroyed eons before. But a moon without a planet that still orbits the star on its own is a planet in its own right. My head hurts.
Let's just say it's that distant rock, which is perhaps inhospitable in some way (thus use the moon for shield generation), and assume that neither the Ewok films nor the novel are canon. Great.
20. As has been noted before, an explosion the size of the Death Star, especially when so close in orbit, would rain complete destruction upon the life below. Imagine a reactor clearly using unbelievable amounts of energy (it has to fire that planet-exploding superlaser, remember), detonating 2000 km above the surface, hailing down radiation, heat, large and small fragments, and explosive force...it's untenable that without a plantary-capable shield, anything would survive.
Do you know how many turbolasers the Rebels had available in their fleet? Enough to destroy the big chunks of debris, I bet. They shot all the big pieces into little pieces until it was all harmless-sized.
That's right, I have finally solved the biggest problem people have with ROTJ's logic.
21. While the loss of the Death Star and the Emperor would be bad for an evil regime, I find it hard to believe that the whole Empire would collapse. There were still hundreds or thousands of high ranking, ambitious, ruthless politicians wielding large military forces who could, at the least, hold sizeable portions of the Empire in their grip. But in the movie, the Empire's capital immediately overthrows the government, and it appears there are no repercussions.
Just because they had a night of rioting doesn't mean they overthrew the government permanently.
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