I agree with pointing out the lack of consistency in criticizing elements of the movies. I’ve been a vocal critic of the silliness of Imperial Walkers for decades. However, I appreciate the visual. It makes for an imposing presence and it’s cool for the audience. I thought they were interesting visually in 1980 and I think they’re interesting visually now.
To be clear, if you can do this;
You wouldn’t be bothering with this;
I’ve not been following this thread too closely (so tired of all the bickering, first with TFA, and now Rogue One). So apologies if I’m missing the point. But in ESB, the walkers were sent to take out the shield generator. We saw in R1 what happens when a ship flies into a planetary shield… And (I can’t believe I’m saying this) we saw in The Phantom Menace that walking slowly through an energy shield works. So maybe the imperial navy had every intention of sending a star destroyer down into the atmosphere on Hoth…?
As for the logicalness of walkers, they actually make a lot of sense in forrests or really steep and jagged/loose terrain. The original AT-ATs were inspired by an actual military research project.
Yeah, the initial Imperial plan was to sneak up on the system, drop out of hyperspace right on top of the planet, and orbitally-bombard the Rebels into spacedust.
The whole reason the Empire sent the AT-ATs was because Ozzel dropped out of lightspeed too close to the planet. This alerted the Rebels to the presence of the Imperial fleet, giving them time to raise their shield (“strong enough to deflect any bombardment”). It’s all right there in the movie!
But considering the planetary shield only covered a portion of the planet, couldn’t the star destroyers have descended into the atmosphere outside the reach of the shields and then approached Echo Base?
That said, the old pre-PT EU made it so that star destroyers were restricted from atmospheric travel, as were most other capital ships. I wish this was something that remained true, but obviously it has been completely cast aside. It was a logical restriction, and it did better explain the need for a land battle like that portrayed in TESB.