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Post #1274568

Author
Shopping Maul
Parent topic
Rogue One * Spoilers * Thread
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1274568/action/topic#1274568
Date created
22-Mar-2019, 1:54 PM

I’m probably gonna get slapped here, but I despise this film. Talk about Special editions - this film is ‘Han Shot First’ on steroids. Placing the Tantive at the battle itself and having Vader - who had just seen the rebels passing the plans through a doorway - suddenly get his facts wrong (“several transmissions were beamed to this ship…”), followed by an interrogation with Leia that doesn’t remotely reflect what Vader has supposedly just witnessed (perhaps Disney could do a Lucas and replace Vader’s lines with “Princess, I just saw you at the battle receiving the plans firsthand for Sith’s sake!”)…and all so we can see Vader exhibit a particular badassery that he fails to wield ten minutes later in 1977?!?

But the worst crime (no, it isn’t the appearance and repeated dialogue of the cantina aliens from ANH) is the Death Star exhaust port fiasco. The whole point of the exercise was that the shot was basically impossible. It was a desperate plan. That’s why every rebel in the briefing room was shifting nervously in their seats. That’s why Wedge Mk 1 said “that’s impossible, even for a computer”. That’s why the first attempt failed despite said computer. That’s why General Dodonna didn’t say “good news guys, a weakness was planted in the station for our benefit!”. That’s why it took Luke trusting in the Force to make this seemingly impossible shot work. If a dude was really going to plant a weakness in the DS, would he make it so effing difficult that only a budding space wizard could pull it off?

The Death Star wasn’t blown up because of insider sabotage. It was destroyed because Imperial hubris failed to account for rebel ingenuity and tenacity (hence the argument between Taggi and Motti in ANH), not to mention the wild card that was Luke Skywalker. Why mess with this?

Not to state the obvious on a site dedicated to this one truth but, as we’ve been stridently pointing out to Lucas for decades now, Star Wars '77 was fine as it was.