Return Of The Jedi - a general Random Thoughts thread — Page 4

Cthulhunicron said:

It does seem weird, though, that she doesn’t know Han is in charge of the Endor mission until it’s mentioned in the briefing.

Not every member of the military, ranking or not, knows the doings of the entire operation.
Han was keeping it from her because he knew she’d be upset & worried. This is before Han forgets that they’re in love. That stupidity happens later in the film.

SilverWook said:

I’m amazed that Jabba doing a Pizza Hutt ad hasn’t happened yet.

Soon you will learn to appreciate my Ultimate Cheese Lover’s® Pizza.

darklordoftech said:

Pizza The Hutt in Space Balls made Jabba in ROTJ worth it.

What?! What is it about Jabba you don’t like?

The only thing I don’t like is the language he speaks. No way they could make that gaping mouth make those vowel sounds & have it sync together. They should’a made his language more frog-like so his mouth could do what it does & the sounds would look believable.

When Luke strikes Vader down the Emperor says to Luke that if he strikes Vader the final blow he’ll take his father’s place by his side meaning Luke would’ve given in to the dark side.

I never believed that Jedi’s kill, they only harm in self-defense with their lightsaber but if Luke had not thrown his lightsaber away and was able to deflect Palpatines Force lightning with his lightsaber and taken the Emperor down would he have still given in to the dark side?

People often complain about the ground battle of Endor and how rebels and ewoks beating the imperials is unrealistic. However, I would say it is much more realistic than rebel fleet beating imperial fleet in the space battle over Endor. At least in the ground battle the imperials were severely outnumbered (it appears to be only one infantry company plus 4 AT-ST involved in the that area) and were also being ambushed. On the other hand, in the space battle rebel fleet is severely outnumbered (judging from the scenes, around 30 ISDs plus Death Star vs around 20 rebel ships) and were the one being ambushed by the imperials.

The only reasonable explanation for the outcome of space battle I can see is that Death Star’s huge TIE fighter/bomber complement was not used at all in order to slow down the rebel fleet’s destruction and buy time for Emperor to gradually turn Luke to the dark side. Then the Death Star was destroyed before its fighter/bomber complement could be deployed.

This still leaves the advantage in number of ships. Assuming the inspiration came from WW2 (as stated by Lucas), where ships were very vulnerable to air attack, I guess the same could apply to Star Wars universe. The explanation then could be that since imperial ships initially sent all TIE fighters to engage the rebel fleet and they themselves did not attack, their TIE fighter complement was destroyed by rebel fighters and ships. Then by the time the Death Star was destroyed, the imperial ships were left extremely vulnerable without any TIE fighter protection.

DID the Death Star II have a “huge TIE fighter/bomber complement”? Since the station was unfinished, its fighter defenses might not be at full capacity.

ATMachine said:

DID the Death Star II have a “huge TIE fighter/bomber complement”? Since the station was unfinished, its fighter defenses might not be at full capacity.

A very good point. Since it was only at 1/4 of the construction phase, it certainly did not have a full TIE complement as the finished DS would have. However, the structure was still huge and could accommodate many hangars. So I would assume they still had a lots of TIE fighters to patrol and defend the construction site. At least that would be a smart thing to do.

They fought on …like cadets .

Mocata said:

The number of capital ships alone makes it kind of ridiculous. Admiral Piett says they have orders not to engage, but what happened after DSII exploded did they all just retreat?

Well the only explanation for their retreat (or destruction) would be the one I mentioned before. See below:

imperialscum said:

Assuming the inspiration came from WW2 (as stated by Lucas), where ships were very vulnerable to air attack, I guess the same could apply to Star Wars universe. The explanation then could be that since imperial ships initially sent all TIE fighters to engage the rebel fleet and they themselves did not attack, their TIE fighter complement was destroyed by rebel fighters and ships. Then by the time the Death Star was destroyed, the imperial ships were left extremely vulnerable without any TIE fighter protection.

For example, in the pacific theatre of WW2, aircraft carriers were quite useless without aircraft cover (and other type of ships even more so by default) if enemy had air power. In both Battle of the Coral Sea and Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands Japanese basically achieved tactical victory, but since they lost almost the entire aircraft complement in the air attacks on US fleet, they were forced to retreat. Like I said, ships were very vulnerable to air attacks without air cover.

screams in the void said:

They fought on …like cadets .

While I like the Thrawn Trilogy, that explanation was very silly. I mean even if the Emperor used the force to enhance their performance (which by itself is silly), when it stopped after his death, the Imperial navy officers were in the end still experienced experts, not cadets.

In the annotated edition of Heir to the Empire Zahn admitted that that idea was based on Sauron from Lord of the Rings.