I read something saying that they were native to Hoth, but I don't think that has anything to do with the movie, I think it's something that some other author wrote.
Jaitea said:
Who are Lei & Tarken that you talk about?
J
OK, I guess I was spelling those wrong. I think it should be Tarkin and Leia.
I don't know, to me he seems more cold and calculating than that. Rational, but in a purely evil way.
For me there's some stuff in Star Wars films that I can just sort of ignore even though it's implausible, like Luke understanding R2D2's computer language and the domesticated tauntauns in the second film, but for certain things it just makes it harder for me to get into them because it makes it hard for me to forget that I'm watching a movie. It just sometimes seems like it's not a logical possibility at all.
SilverWook said:
History has proven a small determined group of people can be a constant thorn in the side of a larger, more powerful foe. We never saw the entire rebel fleet until Return of the Jedi, so it's clear there was more than one base of operations.
A powerful WWII vessel could be sunk by a well timed torpedo or bomb drop, so the DS getting blown up isn't that much of a stretch.
Allowing the Death Star to track the Falcon was an attempt to lure the battlestation into a vulnerable situation, away from the rest of the Imperial fleet. (And bank on Tarkin's overconfidence.) The window of opportunity to exploit any weakness found in the plans wasn't going to be very long either way.
But even the fleet in the Return of the Jedi seems to small to me. The picture that's painted of the galaxy in the movies is one of civilization on an incredibly huge scale. It's hundreds of planets and the capital is a planet that's one big city with skyscapers that are two miles tall in some cases. Using the rebel fleet to fight against the government of that would be like five guys trying to take over Manhattan with just handguns.
Also Lei didn't know that there was a weakness, she was just hoping there could be a weakness. But the weakness in the movie is so incredible that she would have had no way of knowing that there was even the slighest chance that they could destroy the Death Star with the small forces that they had.
Also, when the Death Star is being attacked, nobody on it is saying "hey, what's going on here? What are they trying to do? They can't hurt us with such a small number of small fighters? Have they found some hidden weakness that we don't know about? What are these guys up to?"
And Grand Moff Tarken says "I think you overestimate their chances." But he doesn't say what "chances" he's talking about? Their chances of doing what? Does he know about the weakness or does he know that there might be some weakness and the rebels can blow the whole thing up?
Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
Stu said:
Also, the idea that they could blow up the Death Star with just one shot from a single small fighter really strains credibility.This is the theme of a lot of great movies - the small and meek defeating the big and strong. The classic David and Goliath. And in this case, it wasn't just one shot... that one shot required a whole team effort to research, prepare, and execute.
But if the empire was advanced enough to build something like the Death Star, you'd think they wouldn't use a reactor design that would allow the thing to blow up like a bomb because that would be to vulnerable to sabotage. And if they did, they would take every precaution to prevent that. It seems pretty amazing that the rebels could find this weakness when the very people who designed the thing didn't notice it, especially when the empire has a lot more resources than the rebels.
One thing that seems inconsistent in the original triology is the way things sometimes happen on huge scale, like giant star destroyers and a battle station that can destroy a whole planet and intimidate everyone in this huge galactic empire - but then the imperial forces are so intent on finding the location of rebel base and destroying it when the rebel base is smaller than a US air force base and the rebel fleet is smaller than the US air force. If there really was a rebellion that threatened this galatic empire, there would need to be hundreds of rebel bases hidden throughout the galaxy and they wouldn't be able to crush the rebellion just by destroying one.
Also, the idea that they could blow up the Death Star with just one shot from a single small fighter really strains credibility.
Also, when the main characters leave the death star Lei seems to have no problem leading the Imperial forces to the rebel base when she knows that the Millenium Falcon is being tracked. You'd think she would tell Han Solo to take the ship somewhere else to trick the Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader.