General Star Wars Random Thoughts Thread — Page 292

Frank your Majesty said:

MathUser said:

Seriously, Vaders breathing didn’t get explained in movies till 20 years after there was 3 movies of him breathing. So what’s the big deal that Grevious coughs? Anyway, that was explained in the first clone wars cartoon. I checked out the dvd and saw it myself. Mace windu crushes his chest with the force.

I probably wouldn’t mind Grevious’ coughing, if Vader hadn’t had it before. Two villains with the same kind of breathing problems is simply unoriginal.

See, before I saw the movie (or maybe early into my viewing of it), I liked the cough. I thought Grevious was gonna be Maul on life support with robot legs. Kind of a beta-Vader that didn’t work as well yet. I would have kinda liked that. But, no.

ray_afraid said:

Frank your Majesty said:

MathUser said:

Seriously, Vaders breathing didn’t get explained in movies till 20 years after there was 3 movies of him breathing. So what’s the big deal that Grevious coughs? Anyway, that was explained in the first clone wars cartoon. I checked out the dvd and saw it myself. Mace windu crushes his chest with the force.

I probably wouldn’t mind Grevious’ coughing, if Vader hadn’t had it before. Two villains with the same kind of breathing problems is simply unoriginal.

See, before I saw the movie (or maybe early into my viewing of it), I liked the cough. I thought Grevious was gonna be Maul on life support with robot legs. Kind of a beta-Vader that didn’t work as well yet. I would have kinda liked that. But, no.

This would have been a good payoff for the 3 films. Having Maul return, Obi Wan become obsessed with abandoning whatever his main mission was in order to track down ‘a ghost’ who killed his master, all while Palpatine uses this opening to end the war and turn an Anakin who has no Obi Wan to confide in would have given the story more importance. It would have increased Obi Wan’s guilt for the galaxy falling apart and his padawan becoming the 2nd most evil being in the galaxy.

Instead, because of Maul’s death in TPM, we are stuck with 2 subsequent fill-in villains that never seem very important.

ZkinandBonez said:

ray_afraid said:

flametitan said:

Hardcore Legend said:

The Battle of Yavin (according to SW Wikia) involved 30 Rebel starfighters. All but 3 were destroyed.

I counted roughly 25 pilots (plus Luke Skywalker)in the briefing room.

The medal ceremony featured at least 45 pilots celebrating.

Does that mean that the Rebellion had around 70 pilots for the Battle of Yavin but only used less than half?
Did they all not have ships?
If there were limited number of ships, why did they let a moisture farmer who no one had seen fly a ship up until that point take one of the precious few starships they had?
If they had plenty of ships, why did they send the guy who just walked in the door with no previous experience on the most important mission of their young rebellion’s existence?

Is there an official explanation as to why Red and Gold Squadron were essentially wiped out but there were probably one or two more squadrons at the Yavin ceremony that went unused?

To add on to this, what little we do hear about his piloting ability implies he should’ve been killed during the mission. He doesn’t seem to have an inkling of understand how to fly anything that wasn’t atmospheric (“I thought you said this thing was fast, why don’t you outrun 'em?”), let alone combat ready (“what’s that flashing?” when looking at the shield output. Even if his little T-16 had a similar layout to an X-Wing, I doubt that it had anywhere near same sort of sensory equipment)

All we have to go by with for his own flying ability up to that point is him boasting about his ability, and self boasting doesn’t mean much. It makes you wonder why Luke was brought along, if you’re not looking at it from a sense of narrative, in which case: Who else would you have as our PoV character in the climax?

This is why I wish our heroes weren’t wearing the same clothes during the briefing scene as they were the rest of the film. It would make it seem that a bit of time had passed and Luke could have had a a little training with the X-Wing. This is what happened in my mind. We don’t know how fast the DS moves, so it wouldn’t create any problems if Luke and CO. were on Yavin a couple days before the battle.

In the the 1981 radio play adaptation of ANH Biggs puts Luke through a flight simulator test which qualifies him to join the DS attack.

Ok, so he passes his driver’s test. But he passes over the other 45 or so experienced pilots that (eventually) show up? I’m hoping/guessing this will be addressed in RO as to where these pilots were/weren’t used as the DS1 bears down on Yavin.

Hardcore Legend said:

ZkinandBonez said:

ray_afraid said:

flametitan said:

Hardcore Legend said:

The Battle of Yavin (according to SW Wikia) involved 30 Rebel starfighters. All but 3 were destroyed.

I counted roughly 25 pilots (plus Luke Skywalker)in the briefing room.

The medal ceremony featured at least 45 pilots celebrating.

Does that mean that the Rebellion had around 70 pilots for the Battle of Yavin but only used less than half?
Did they all not have ships?
If there were limited number of ships, why did they let a moisture farmer who no one had seen fly a ship up until that point take one of the precious few starships they had?
If they had plenty of ships, why did they send the guy who just walked in the door with no previous experience on the most important mission of their young rebellion’s existence?

Is there an official explanation as to why Red and Gold Squadron were essentially wiped out but there were probably one or two more squadrons at the Yavin ceremony that went unused?

To add on to this, what little we do hear about his piloting ability implies he should’ve been killed during the mission. He doesn’t seem to have an inkling of understand how to fly anything that wasn’t atmospheric (“I thought you said this thing was fast, why don’t you outrun 'em?”), let alone combat ready (“what’s that flashing?” when looking at the shield output. Even if his little T-16 had a similar layout to an X-Wing, I doubt that it had anywhere near same sort of sensory equipment)

All we have to go by with for his own flying ability up to that point is him boasting about his ability, and self boasting doesn’t mean much. It makes you wonder why Luke was brought along, if you’re not looking at it from a sense of narrative, in which case: Who else would you have as our PoV character in the climax?

This is why I wish our heroes weren’t wearing the same clothes during the briefing scene as they were the rest of the film. It would make it seem that a bit of time had passed and Luke could have had a a little training with the X-Wing. This is what happened in my mind. We don’t know how fast the DS moves, so it wouldn’t create any problems if Luke and CO. were on Yavin a couple days before the battle.

In the the 1981 radio play adaptation of ANH Biggs puts Luke through a flight simulator test which qualifies him to join the DS attack.

Ok, so he passes his driver’s test. But he passes over the other 45 or so experienced pilots that (eventually) show up? I’m hoping/guessing this will be addressed in RO as to where these pilots were/weren’t used as the DS1 bears down on Yavin.

I couldn’t find the radio play episode on Youtube, but here’s the summary of that scene from Wookieepedia;
“Luke joins Biggs Darklighter, who tests his flying abilities using a flight simulator. It is revealed by Commander Willard that Luke was only “killed” twice, despite Biggs pitting him against the virtual equivalent of the entire Imperial Starfleet. (Whether Willard was actually exaggerating or not is left for the listener to determine, though regardless Luke does well enough that the Rebels are willing to put him into a starfighter for the assault.)”

I also thinks that “experienced” is a vague term for the Rebel Alliance, especially at this point in time. Keep in mind that this is before the Rebels had a proper fleet.
And I seem to remember there being some excuse about a lot of the pilots not being overly experienced and/or a lot of them being on missions elsewhere, or something like that, but I can’t confirm that until I get to listen to the episode again.

(Of course the more blatant excuse is that Luke’s the main character. This kind of logical nitpicking probably wasn’t that much of a concern for either filmmakers or viewers back in the 70’s.)

God help me, I just noticed something else horrible about the SE changes…

So, I was flipping through The Making of Star Wars, and they actually have a shot of the workprint that John Williams used during the scoring sessions. The shot in question is from the ‘Standing By’ sequence, with the fighters flying by Yavin… Except the moon is in the background! Tucked under the planet no less. I thought that it was strange, since I’d never seen that in the original, and lo and behold, it wasn’t! I checked Despecialized, and the shot was just how I remembered it, with no moon to be seen. They must have realized that in a spacial sense it made no sense that you could see the moon while the fighters were very clearly on a linear path for the Death Star. So, for the final composite, they removed the moon element entirely!

I have a question, then…

WHY IS THE MOON THERE IN THE SPECIAL EDITION!!?!??

Edit: Uploaded proof on imgur: http://imgur.com/gallery/mSQEb

Hardcore Legend said:

ray_afraid said:

Frank your Majesty said:

MathUser said:

Seriously, Vaders breathing didn’t get explained in movies till 20 years after there was 3 movies of him breathing. So what’s the big deal that Grevious coughs? Anyway, that was explained in the first clone wars cartoon. I checked out the dvd and saw it myself. Mace windu crushes his chest with the force.

I probably wouldn’t mind Grevious’ coughing, if Vader hadn’t had it before. Two villains with the same kind of breathing problems is simply unoriginal.

See, before I saw the movie (or maybe early into my viewing of it), I liked the cough. I thought Grevious was gonna be Maul on life support with robot legs. Kind of a beta-Vader that didn’t work as well yet. I would have kinda liked that. But, no.

This would have been a good payoff for the 3 films. Having Maul return, Obi Wan become obsessed with abandoning whatever his main mission was in order to track down ‘a ghost’ who killed his master, all while Palpatine uses this opening to end the war and turn an Anakin who has no Obi Wan to confide in would have given the story more importance. It would have increased Obi Wan’s guilt for the galaxy falling apart and his padawan becoming the 2nd most evil being in the galaxy.

Instead, because of Maul’s death in TPM, we are stuck with 2 subsequent fill-in villains that never seem very important.

Isn’t there some ROTS concept art of Grievous where it’s clearly Maul’s eyes behind the mask? Someone at ILM must have at least thought about the idea, even if George never did.

flametitan said:

ZkinandBonez said:

(Of course the more blatant excuse is that Luke’s the main character. This kind of logical nitpicking probably wasn’t that much of a concern for either filmmakers or viewers back in the 70’s.)

But of course. However, thought experiments like these can be fun.

I agree (I probably should have phrased that last sentence a little better).

These kinds of explanations are also examples of why it’s so nice to have an EU. It can help explain the more logical details of something which your suspension of disbelief can handle while watching a film for the first time, but which might get a little weirder as you get older and start to really think about it.

It’s also a good example of the kind of things that an EU should do, as opposed to, f. ex. Grievous’ cough. It should “expand” the universe, not necessarily “explain” it. ANH gave us enough clues, but not all the facts. ROTS just showed something at us with no explanation what-so-ever.

SilverWook said:

Isn’t there some ROTS concept art of Grievous where it’s clearly Maul’s eyes behind the mask? Someone at ILM must have at least thought about the idea, even if George never did.

Are you thinking about this one?

(This was the highest res. one I could find.)

I would also add to the Grievous complaint list the fact that he’c completely CG. Yes, that’s hardly a fair cmplaint for a movie that was more-or-less 80% CG, but I do think it’s funny that Hollywood keeps doing these types of character 100% digitally when even cosplayers can do it practically.

Imagine using the same basic technique as in the photo above, only with a proper Hollywood budget of millions of dollars. Maybe digitally erase the performer in the back rather than hide him in the cape, use CG for the more extreme movements, etc.

ray_afraid said:

Frank your Majesty said:

MathUser said:

Seriously, Vaders breathing didn’t get explained in movies till 20 years after there was 3 movies of him breathing. So what’s the big deal that Grevious coughs? Anyway, that was explained in the first clone wars cartoon. I checked out the dvd and saw it myself. Mace windu crushes his chest with the force.

I probably wouldn’t mind Grevious’ coughing, if Vader hadn’t had it before. Two villains with the same kind of breathing problems is simply unoriginal.

See, before I saw the movie (or maybe early into my viewing of it), I liked the cough. I thought Grevious was gonna be Maul on life support with robot legs. Kind of a beta-Vader that didn’t work as well yet. I would have kinda liked that. But, no.

I think I remember Lucas clearly stated in the commentaries that Grievous is a “beta-Vader”, an omen of what Anakin would’ve later became.
:\ I don’t like that his coughing was used mostly for comical purpose, though. What’s with him and Palpatine playing as silly villains in ROTS?

The one I recall was a closeup where it was obvious it was Maul’s eyes. Maybe it was just really good fan art?

I think you’re right!

Tobar said:

I’m in the middle of this year’s 2016 Turkey Day MST3K marathon so I can’t look it up but I believe the Maul eyes were from the animatic that Spielberg made to choreograph the chase on Utapau.

Spielberg?

ZkinandBonez said:

Tobar said:

I’m in the middle of this year’s 2016 Turkey Day MST3K marathon so I can’t look it up but I believe the Maul eyes were from the animatic that Spielberg made to choreograph the chase on Utapau.

Spielberg?

Roger Spielberg, noted animatic director.

Hardcore Legend said:

ZkinandBonez said:

Tobar said:

I’m in the middle of this year’s 2016 Turkey Day MST3K marathon so I can’t look it up but I believe the Maul eyes were from the animatic that Spielberg made to choreograph the chase on Utapau.

Spielberg?

Roger Spielberg, noted animatic director.

Ah, right. I though that maybe you just accidentally wrote (Steven) Spielberg instead if Lucas.

EDIT: I googled Roger Spielberg and I can’t find anything about him.

ZkinandBonez said:

flametitan said:

ZkinandBonez said:

(Of course the more blatant excuse is that Luke’s the main character. This kind of logical nitpicking probably wasn’t that much of a concern for either filmmakers or viewers back in the 70’s.)

But of course. However, thought experiments like these can be fun.

I agree (I probably should have phrased that last sentence a little better).

These kinds of explanations are also examples of why it’s so nice to have an EU. It can help explain the more logical details of something which your suspension of disbelief can handle while watching a film for the first time, but which might get a little weirder as you get older and start to really think about it.

I get that the EU can ‘clean up’ something like this but I have to believe that the true answer to this is simply that ILM did not have the time or resources to show an all-out assault on the battle station.

Again, it comes back to Rogue One and what they explain/don’t explain. From the trailers I have seen, this first assault on the DS/Scarif looks massive. I always covered up for the old SFX (the scarcity of ships) during the DS battle as the Rebellion having been decimated in an earlier battle or simply being in their infancy. Through the newer materials (Rebels/Rogue One), it appears the Rebel Fleet has been running for awhile.

It wasn’t until the other night I actually thought about how many pilots survive the DS Assault and counted the pilots in the ceremony. Now I feel like an explanation would be nice.

ZkinandBonez said:

Hardcore Legend said:

ZkinandBonez said:

Tobar said:

I’m in the middle of this year’s 2016 Turkey Day MST3K marathon so I can’t look it up but I believe the Maul eyes were from the animatic that Spielberg made to choreograph the chase on Utapau.

Spielberg?

Roger Spielberg, noted animatic director.

Ah, right. I though that maybe you just accidentally wrote (Steven) Spielberg instead if Lucas.

http://movieweb.com/steven-spielberg-helped-out-on-revenge-of-the-sith/

Hardcore Legend said:

ZkinandBonez said:

flametitan said:

ZkinandBonez said:

(Of course the more blatant excuse is that Luke’s the main character. This kind of logical nitpicking probably wasn’t that much of a concern for either filmmakers or viewers back in the 70’s.)

But of course. However, thought experiments like these can be fun.

I agree (I probably should have phrased that last sentence a little better).

These kinds of explanations are also examples of why it’s so nice to have an EU. It can help explain the more logical details of something which your suspension of disbelief can handle while watching a film for the first time, but which might get a little weirder as you get older and start to really think about it.

I get that the EU can ‘clean up’ something like this but I have to believe that the true answer to this is simply that ILM did not have the time or resources to show an all-out assault on the battle station.

Again, it comes back to Rogue One and what they explain/don’t explain. From the trailers I have seen, this first assault on the DS/Scarif looks massive. I always covered up for the old SFX (the scarcity of ships) during the DS battle as the Rebellion having been decimated in an earlier battle or simply being in their infancy. Through the newer materials (Rebels/Rogue One), it appears the Rebel Fleet has been running for awhile.

It wasn’t until the other night I actually thought about how many pilots survive the DS Assault and counted the pilots in the ceremony. Now I feel like an explanation would be nice.

Well, maybe there simply weren’t that many left after the battle over Scarif. Maybe that’s why there’s so few left on Yavin in ANH.

Hardcore Legend said:

ZkinandBonez said:

Hardcore Legend said:

ZkinandBonez said:

Tobar said:

I’m in the middle of this year’s 2016 Turkey Day MST3K marathon so I can’t look it up but I believe the Maul eyes were from the animatic that Spielberg made to choreograph the chase on Utapau.

Spielberg?

Roger Spielberg, noted animatic director.

Ah, right. I though that maybe you just accidentally wrote (Steven) Spielberg instead if Lucas.

http://movieweb.com/steven-spielberg-helped-out-on-revenge-of-the-sith/

Well, that explains it.

But what wad the point of the the whole Roger thing? Was I supposed to know that Spielberg secretly worked on ROTS?

Do the ring theorists specify if “You’ve taken your first step into a larger world” is supposed to rhyme with “You catch on pretty quick”? If so, does this reveal Lucas’ original intention to have Ric Ollie be the mentor figure to Anakin throughout the trilogy?