Matticon said:
HOTH ESCAPE:
The Rebel Hoth escape has always kind of annoyed me for one reason. We are lead to believe that the Imperial Fleet establishes a blockade around the planet to catch the rebels escaping. The ion cannon fires, disabling one star destroyer, and then the rebel transport escapes through the hole in the blockade. Luke then pretty much makes his escape like he is on a sunday afternoon drive while the Falcon has to run for its life.
The part that doesn't make sense is that, if a star destroyer was disabled, wouldn't the imperial fleet redistribute itself to now cover the new hole? Why wouldn't the Falcon follow Lukes path out of Hoth? It sure is a lot easier and luke leaves Hoth less than 1 minute after the Falcon does. Personally I think, TPM gets the blockade thing right with forcing the Naboo starcruiser to blast past the Trade Federation ships.
How do we solve this then?
1)Perhaps more disabled Star Destroyers?
2)Have a more exciting escape for Luke?3)Show that Vader distributes his fleet to chase after the Falcon letting the other rebels go?
Just some thoughts.
Matticon.
Some fair enough points there Matticon, and I'd like to address some of them, as this is a sequence I'm especially keen to see Adywan's version of eventually.
The way this whole sequence is currently constructed onscreen, throws up a few questions about the Fleet's numbers and positioning over / around the Hoth Planet in general.... There is also the question of whether the single ION Cannon just fires several times in the SAME direction every time....OR is it able to easily change the direction it aims at, and therefore capable of disabling Stardestroyers in various surrounding positions, allowing for DIFFERENT escape routes?....
Regards a couple of things though, I don't reckon the Millennium Falcon would follow Luke's path, because the crew probably had no idea of where he actually was, at the time they blasted out of the Base....and he hadn't taken off yet.... With the Imperial troops storming the Rebel Base and breathing down their necks, Han probably just blasted away from the planet as quickly as he could, with a view to making a rendezvous with the others whenever possible, and likely just chose his own route when heading towards space. If the ION Cannon was capable of shooting in various directions at different Stardestroyers, then Han was just unlucky it hadn't previously targeted either the 'Avenger' or the 2 'oncoming' ones, that were in the vicinity of his chosen route by this time.... (However, I usually think of it as clearing a path in roughly the SAME 'sector' of the 'blockade' each time, around about where the initial Stardestroyer was targeted, which works fine)
As far as the number of NON-disabled Stardestroyers still around to 'blockade' Han and Luke's chosen escape routes, it depends on how many ships the ION Cannon might have targeted during the bulk of the intervening battle since it's first salvo.... There is approx. 6.5 minutes of ongoing (in 'real-time' I'd say) action that happens in-between the first Stardestroyer being disabled, till when the 'Command Centre' operators start to evacuate the Base....and approx. another 1.5 minutes on top of that before the Shield is taken down by General Veers.... (just after either of these events, which come near the end of the battle, the ION Cannon might then have been destroyed by either an AT-AT /AT-ST, or targeted by a Stardestroyer from above....unseen by us. Either way, it could be argued that the ION Cannon would probably have disabled a few other Stardestroyers in the intervening time, to protect some other Rebel 'Transports' that evacuated too....) However, it also depends on how many, or how few Stardestroyers actually travelled to the Hoth System in the first place.... This number is unknown to everyone but Adywan at the moment!
If for instance, we keep to the amount of Stardestroyers seen in the initial shots of part of the Fleet gathering, it could be argued that there are about 9 or 10 individual ones (including the 'Executor') actually shown onscreen in that vicinity. If we go by that number, then that doesn't seem over-many ships to cover all potential escape directions....never mind having to re-distribute some to them to cover the positions of any ION Cannon- damaged ones. So this could account for why the current shots of Luke escaping, make it look easy - He happened to be one of the last to leave, after the ION Cannon had an opportunity to disable a few of the Fleet by this time, and there might not have been more than 10 to begin with, if you go by the EXISTING onscreen footage....
I don't know if Adywan is going to totally replace any shots / or put in an extra establishing shot or two in-between the current shots in this sequence, or not....OR if he only wants to add extra elements into the EXISTING shots....but the following post shows a rough idea of how the EXISTING shots of Luke's escape could just be added to in some way, to elaborate on how he might have gotten away so easily -