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.
I did a little research on this because I was interested in your response. From what I can tell, yes, there have been several projects researching walker technology, including military application. Nevertheless, I still stand by my statement for the following reasons: 1) our terrestrial technology does not include the superiority of hover technology; 2) wheels remain superior in level terrain in terms of speed and stability (which the Hoth battlefield was); 3) the AT-AT limbs are relatively inflexible, with each joint capable of bending only in specific directions; in other words, there are no socket joints, making stability a greater issue (imagine climbing uneven terrain with pelvic joints that bend only forward or back); 4) the AT-ATs are extremely top-heavy, with legs twice the height of the body proper, making tipping even more likely. I still feel that the Empire possessed technology that would render walkers inferior.
That said, I still believe the walkers are extremely fun and interesting. I don’t watch Star Wars to nitpick. I don’t watch it to be impressed by its realism. I watch it to escape reality and simply enjoy the fun of it. If we wanted, we could point out that small ships should not fly like aerial craft, that laws of inertia are largely ignored, and that ships have an apparent maximum sublight speed. We could complain about the fact that sound cannot exist in space, and if it did, that it travels so slowly compared to light that from the distances we are observing many things, we would notice a delay between the action and the time the correlated sound reaches us. We could point out that ships can travel in reverse in spite of engines that only face backward, that they can slow just as quickly as they accelerate without the powerful engines required to truly do so, that wings folding and unfolding is a needless use of mechanics when it makes no difference in space (and probably serves no purpose in atmosphere either, which in turn is another opportunity for something to break down. We could argue about how in the “perfect” film The Empire Strikes Back, the Millennium Falcon can travel from system to system at sublight speeds, that Luke can apparently breathe in a previously decompressed massive chamber with only a small chamber to supply air through an even smaller broken window without any ill effects. We could even complain about how Luke gets sucked into a tube on the side of that massive chamber in a room that apparently has little to no air under normal circumstances.
But why would I complain about facts, when I’m trying to enjoy science fantasy?
(Note to canofhumdingers, I am directing most of my argument to those who criticize the use of AT-ATs and other unrealistic aspects of Rogue One, and all that is really directed at you is my reason why I believe in a realistic setting, walkers would not be advisable. Again, I am happy to watch a piece of fiction and am happy with unrealistic things as long as they fit with established suspension of disbelief.)