adywan said:
Well this is how i have seen it since 1980:
The AT-At's have armour and not shielding. The neck is not a weak spot normally but when it crashes to the floor the neck fractures and therefore creates a weak spot which the speeders exploit. If the neck was permanently a weak spot then they would have just aimed for that all along.I have no problem with the AT-AT exploding so i won't be changing that
i decided against adding any ground snowtroopers because surely they would have picked off luke as he was about to destroy the Walker or as he was escaping. I was thinking of adding some deploying from the walkers towards the end though but i don't think we could get hold of any snowtroopers for the shoot
Storywise it wouldn't be that far-fetched either way, as troopers would be deployed when they got close enough to the trenches, which themselves weren't too far away from the hanger bays (not to mention that the Nazis the Empire was based on frequently had companies of troops accompany their tank divisions).
Regarding Luke, it could be that they don't notice him (as they are ahead of him) and/or they are getting picked off by snowspeeders, who are strafing them.
The real problem is actually creating the shot FX wise. Even so, if it is FX wise possible, I think it would be a good addition to add snowtroopers at least getting out of the fallen AT-AT, as most sane people would not stay inside a burning tank while in the middle of a battle.
A good place to possibly show snowtroopers rapelling down the sides of the AT-ATs could be when you see the 3 strafing the rebel trench lines (with the newly added AT-ATs going down from the cable lines) or any of the AT-AT scenes "after" Luke does his thing (even if it is just "dots" moving along around the mid-ground to background fallen AT-ATs, something to show that the troopers are getting out).
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Hell, for that matter, another possibility could be that you see small arms fire coming from the windows on the top of the back of the fallen AT-AT and we briefly see the side door starting to open (the impression being that the side door was damaged from the fall) and are just about to escape when the snowspeeder destroys them. That way you would not have to actually show snowtroopers outside, but would create the illusion that there are snowtroopers inside the AT-AT before and during its explosion.
It could be similar to the "DS in the middle of firing- then explodes" shot from ANH:R (side door starts to open and maybe one snowtrooper is starting to get out as the snowspeeder blows it up - maybe take the spinning TIE pilot from the asteroid scene or one of the "flying orcs" from TTT attack on Helms Deep to signify the snowtrooper being flung off from the explosion).
