At that point Luke probably has more confidence than Biggs and Wedge since the senile old squadron leader just put the rookie in charge as his last dying wish, over the two of them. Luke's ego would be soaring and Biggs and Wedge would just be left feeling deflated, inadequate and unable to understand what they did so wrong?
xD
I think as a kid, I always just thought the X-Wings were like Spitfires and Y-Wings were like Hurricanes. Both were important parts of the (Star)war effort but one was slighty newer and more advanced.
Not so sure about ROTJ's A-wings and B-Wings. I guess they were newer fighters developed since the battle of Yavin. What the EU says on the matter is of no concern to me.
Bingowings said:
He leads the run through Force of will.
Wedge and Biggs are both clearly lacking in confidence after the death of so many comrades
You are imagining things that aren't in the film to cover over the flaws (Not that I give a toss about those flaws myself). Luke leads the run because Red Leader says...
"Luke take reds 2 and 3, wait up here for my signal to make your run"
Hang on?!? A minute ago Red Leader was questioning Luke's ability to fly an X-Wing and is only reasured about his abilities when Red3 (Biggs) tells him he's okay. You have to assume he trusts Biggs' opinion from past missions, otherwise he'd be asking Biggs the same question. Then he's putting Luke in charge of Red3, a man he trusts?!?
And of course you are assuming that hanger bay exposition scene is in the film. Because for the first 20 years of Star Wars it wasn't. Unless you are saying that the SE is the definitive SW?*
*(;-) joking... thems fightin' words!)
All that aside, my general point is ROTJ has illogical things and so do the other two films. Lando saying the line...
"Someone must have told them about my little maneuver at the Battle of Taanab"
...is all the info we need in ROTJ, just as Luke saying...
"I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they're not much bigger than two meters"
...is all we need in ANH to establish his pilot credentials.
Wow this has gotten lively today! The bit I put in brackets as a side note about Luke having not flown an X-Wing has been focused on.
Luke flying his skyhopper through the strong winds and gravity of Tatooine with canyon walls as points of refrence would leave him ill equiped to fly a Starfighter in 3Dimensional space with no point of refrence. However his experiences in Beggar's canyon would be ideal for the trench run if he somehow managed to get his X-Wing to the trench.
But my original main point hasn't been addresed...
Ryan McAvoy said:
And in the original 1977 film where Luke is leading the trench run with two much more experienced pilots as his wing men is totally fine? Luke leads the trench run because he is the hero that we are all rooting for. It makes no sense logically but it feels so right.
Why is Luke automaticaly leading Wedge and Biggs, who are we assume more experienced starpilots. Even if we believe they've been in the rebellion for just a day longer than Luke, it's still longer than the hour Luke's been there.
Bingowings said:
As it stands ROTJ arranges many of the characters in dioramas without having any human reason for them being there.
It's like Lucas is a kid playing with action figures rather than people going through a planned sequence of events with unexpected obstacles and distractions.
And in the original 1977 film where Luke (Who has never flown an X-Wing or starfighter before) is leading the trench run with two much more experienced pilots as his wing men is totally fine.
Luke leads the trench run because he is the hero that we are all rooting for. It makes no sense logically but it feels so right.
The same can be said of all the characters being made instant generals in ESB (Plus Lando in ROTJ). It's daft but oh so cool. Of course in the real world Mon Mothma wouldn't get Lando to lead the final battle against the Empire. But it's totally awesome, infact if I could be one character in the whole of the OT it would be Lando in that epic battle. With films this much fun logic can go hang.
Would you send a panicy golden robot on a covert mission on Endor... nope. But then we would be deprived of the delight of Threepio shouting "Come baaaaack!" and "R2 stay with me".
Would our heroes have realistically escaped detection for most of the time they are on the first Death Star? Absolutely not, it's flat out insane, do I care? Nooooo.
Ronster said:
Theres no need to get in a flap about it ;)
Yes such a drag.
Seriously though that looks amazing Ady. Can't wait to see these last few props you've posted fully painted.
If Episode VII opens in the Senate pod chamber from the prequels I'm setting fire to the cinema 5 minutes later ;-)
Psammead
Time to make another mashup...
^ "It's the terror of knowing what this world is about, watching some good friends screaming, help me Obi Wan Kenobi... you're my ony hope"
Byakko said:
What's your preferred way to watch Episodes I, II, and III?
I'd plumb for an epic and hyper emotional Rock song like...
Queen - No One But You (Only The Good Die Young)
or
Queen - Who Wants To Live Forever
...for the Jedi massacre.
And this would work beautifully to soundtrack Anakin's feelings about Padme...
Queen - Love of my life (Rock Montreal 1981)
^ Plus it's generally 4 of the best minutes ever recorded
Will keep a lookout for that one. I really like Goldthwait's last film 'God Bless America'. Is it better than the Norwegian film 'Troll Hunter'? (The bar by which found footage monster movies should be judged).
^ Hands up if anybody didn't read that really fast in Threepio's voice ;-)
NeverarGreat said:
Ryan McAvoy said:
Okay here are some unarguable facts about ROTJ...
- It has the best freaky alien creatures: Jabba, Bib, Ackbar, Salicious, Nunb etc. Nothing in the Cantina comes close and the Wampa was so bad it couldn't even be shown. The best ESB could muster is a blatant sock puppet in a hole.
- It's got the best use of the Falcon. Without the Falcon kickin' ass as the Rebel lead fighter in the battle of Endor it wouldn't be half as iconic. The camera work on the Falcon in ESB pales next to Jedi and the Falcon in ANH barely moves.
- It's got the most 'scale' of the three. Epic locations, epic battles and a huge cast of diverse background characters.
There are other points I'd be tempted to make, such as it has the best pacing but I'll admit that that could be argued against. F*ck it! It does! The opening to ANH is painfully slow and ESB is very static in the middle (Asteroid interlude while Luke is jogging round a swamp). Jedi's pace never lets up! xD
As I said (Apart from the last one) the above points are unarguable facts but let the argueing commence anyway...
I'll argue with these points...
-ESB has Yoda. This is one of the best characters in Star Wars, and he's a freaky alien creature. This is far better than the "blatant sock puppet in a hole".
-The Falcon flies around in ROTJ quite a bit, but we never see the interior like we did before, and when we do it looks more lifeless than it did in ESB. I remember hearing somewhere (perhaps here!) that the scene where the Falcon escapes from Hoth makes this ship into a real character, and this scene has two of my favorite aspects of this ship in it: the hidden machine gun, and its propensity to power failure unless given a well-aimed punch. In ROTJ it's relegated to merely a spaceship again instead of a character.
-It's been addressed, but ROTJ doesn't have the best locations. It just doesn't. Battles and characters perhaps, but not new locations.
-Yeah, not going to get into this one.
I didn't mention Yoda as he's not unique to ESB, but yes he's a great character, the best non-human in the saga. My general point about it having the best creatures overall still stands.
Good point about the character of the Falcon. I'd argue that it's the mixture of the "Piece of junk" and the "Fastest ship in the fleet" aspects that make it what it is. We love it because it is both the rust bucket that keeps breaking down in ESB and it's the awesome weapon we see in ROTJ.
You could say that Bespin and Dagobah are the only distinct locations (Various grey Imperial facilities aside) that we ever see in the OT. Tatooine is just a desert, Hoth is just snow and Endor is just a forest. That's what gives it the realism that the PT lacks. But in ROTJ Tatooine looks so much grander than it does in ANH and the huge Sequoias on Endor give it scale.
I didn't actually say ROTJ had the best locations (ESB does for the two reasons I just said) but they do look epic in scale. Scale is a difficult one to argue, you either feel it or you don't I guess. But I'd point to equivelant scenes like: the Dianoga from ANH versus the Rancor from ROTJ or the thermal-exhaust-port from ANH versus the giant DS2 reactor chamber.
Bingowings said:
People go on about how fake the podrace is and how great the speeder bike race is.
Both look fake.
Both were filmed with a mixture of sped up 'real' footage and special effects.
Indeed the demented deleted scenes outfrink Frink by turning the death of an alien driver into a sick comedy moment with his tearful comedy wife and kids crying over his comedy death.
LOL! In my TPM edit I recut that bit, so that the camera cuts to their crest fallen faces the moment he dies xD
It makes me laugh a litle evil laugh everytime. But in all seriousness, I did that to show that the Podrace was actually dangerous, because that was lacking. I'd say that the Podrace was brilliantly shot but it lacked the danger that the speeder chase has, due to a lack of shots showing the racers/stromtroopers dying in gigantic fireballs.
Finished rewatching Harmy's ROTJ and its reaffirmed my belief that it's the best of the three. 2 hours of blissfully action packed entertainment. A few immediate thoughts:
On the subject of the poor standing ROTJ is held in, with regard to it's FX. I think ROTJ is hard done by on the FX front in both the GOUT DVD and the SE:
- All the FX shots in the OT look terrible on the GOUT and since ROTJ has more of them and much more advanced FX it perhaps looks worse than ANH and ESB if you view that disc.
- Out of the 3 OT films, correct if I'm wrong, but ROTJ is the only one that had no "Improvements" in the SE (When I say "Improvements", I mean FX shots that were redone purely in a (Misguided) effort to make them look better). All the changes in ROTJ are things like 'Jedi Rocks' or adding a beak to the Sarlacc that fundamentally change the movie. In ANH and ESB things like the battle of Yavin and Bespin were heavily redone. Or they had extra dynamic shots of the Falcon added to give it a bit more movement.
Even in Harmy's superb restoration, it gets a tough deal since things like the original Jabba Palace and Sarlacc pit are in SD, since those shots don't exist in anything like HD. However the matte paintings look amazing (For the most part) in Harmy's restoration and not odd like they look on the Blu-Ray.
^ Shots like these take my breath away every time.
On the subject of ROTJ's pacing: I found after the thrilling Jabba's palace opening (At 36mins in) I was actually breathless and almost exhausted from the dazzling action. Then we get about 10 minutes of respite to gather our senses while Luke visits Yoda for the last time and Palpatine arrives on the DS2. Having caught our breaths we are plunged straight into the 'assault on Endor' plot. This is the kind of perfect judging of pace that I was talking about with ROTJ. However if I was trying to be ultra-critical, I'd say the pace slackens during the night spent in the Ewok village.
Another great thing is how cool Luke is in ROTJ. Before that we'd only seen him as an inexperienced boy. But as soon as Luke strolls into Jabba's palace flicks his hood down and tells Jabba to free his friends or die, we know it isn't a threat, he means it. This is a wiser, more confident and fearless Luke than we've see before and I only wish we'd had another movie to see more of him.
On the subject of Ewoks (That I never had a problem with), they are setup as dangerous creatures from the get go. We first see one sticking a spear in Leia's face, then fearlessly attacking a Stormtrooper, followed by them capturing our heroes with a decapitated horse, then they try to cook them alive in a ceremony presided over by a Voodoo witch doctor and a chief adorned in the bones of his fallen enemies. I never found them overly cute and it seems odd to me that others do, given the way they are portrayed.
A final thing I noticed was that Harrison and Carrie's performances aren't that bad (Not Oscar bait but still okay). They don't often reach the emotional heights/depth that we see in ESB but when they have to, they deliver.
Btw Thanks Harmy for your wonderful work on this film "Yub nub!"
^ Probably my favourite moment in any film.
Anchorhead said:
I respectfully submit the boat chase from Live And Let Die as my favorite film chase.
Sorry, just can't get on board with any Return discussion. I've seen it twice for sure (the last time about fifteen years ago) and I just can't stand a single moment of it.
You know what, that comes DAAAMNN close to the Speederbike chase!
That scene is just one of the reasons I'd put 'Live and Let Die' in my top 5 Bond movies.
After the recent lively debate in this thread I'm going to sit down and watch Harmy's ROTJ tonight. Haven't watched ROTJ in a while so will be fun.
There are plenty of great chases in the movies (Bullitt and TFC are two of them) Mad Max, Death Proof, The Driver, Drive, Tron, T2, Vanishing Point, TDK and of course the skateboard based chase from BTTF. But none of them can touch the exhileration of those trees wipping past your face in ROTJ. I find myself almost ducking and dodging the incoming trees myself. Probably 50% of the credit goes to Ben Burtt's sound design.
Another point. While it could be argued that Harrison and Carrie didn't bring their 'A game' I think too often people just see that, then assume it was the same for everyone on ROTJ. It's just not the case...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvDlg1My0Cc
For most people on ROTJ, they wanted to finish the saga by topping everything that had gone before.
imperialscum said:
DominicCobb said:
Yep, I get it. This one's a joke.
I really get pissed off by such arrogance.
No buddy, it is not a joke. It is an opinion on the matter which is as valid as yours. Do you think your opinion is Newton's fourth law or something?
In Dom's defence I did put a " xD " symbol at the end of the paragraph in question.
I was being serious. Provocative yes but serious. My comments are genuinely what I believe is beyond dispute about ROTJ.
- Re battle. I meant a military engagment... a "Star War" if you will. So the Hoth ground battle, Yavin DS assault and the capital ship battle from ROTJ. Nothing at stake? Ackbar and Lando deciding to stay and face certain death for the entire rebellion on the slim chance that Han and co can pull through? It's a massive gamble! "We've gotta give him more time!!". Correct me if I'm wrong but the term 'Stake' is from gambling ;-)
- I'll assume deep down, you agree that the Falcon looks amazing in ROTJ since you've elected to discount just because Lando is piloting?!?
- I've watched an unhealthy ammount of cinema xD but honestly can't think of a chase in any other film that takes you into the rush of movement like the Speeder Bike chase. Name one?
- Again with the FX. If you think ANH and ESB GOUT doesn't have lapses in Green screen or sub par matte paintings think again. Semi-transparent snowspeeders being just one example.
And I wasn't joking about the pacing of ROTJ.
ANH starts with a bang but then settles down to introduce various characters and locations on Tatooine for a full 40 minutes 'til Han turns up and kicks the film into gear. The pace doesn't let up after that but almost half the movie is gone. Even Lucas has said he kept it slow because he didn't think audiences would be able to keep up with this new type of film making.
In ESB Han and Leia are essentially in a holding pattern through the middle of the film until they are needed to get into danger just in time to interupt Luke's training. The genius of ESB is that the banter between Han and Leia in this mid film 30 minutes is so electric that you never care. In a normal film your main characters having engine troubles for fully 1/2 an hour would be painfully boring. In ESB it's turned into a plus.
In ROTJ, everything is always moving in a fluid way from thrilling scene to thrilling scene.
Okay here are some unarguable facts about ROTJ...
- It has the best epic battle: Endor. Yavin and Hoth don't come close.
- It has the best freaky alien creatures: Jabba, Bib, Ackbar, Salicious, Nunb etc. Nothing in the Cantina comes close and the Wampa was so bad it couldn't even be shown. The best ESB could muster is a blatant sock puppet in a hole.
- It has the best non-vader villain: Palpatine. Cushing is great but not a patch on McDiarmid. We all love Fett but you can't really suggest he's better than the Emperor.
- It's got the best use of the Falcon. Without the Falcon kickin' ass as the Rebel lead fighter in the battle of Endor it wouldn't be half as iconic. The camera work on the Falcon in ESB pales next to Jedi and the Falcon in ANH barely moves.
- It's got the single most exciting chase sequence in cinema history: The speeder bike chase. A masterpiece of sound, photography, design and FX.
- It's got the single greatest use of a Lightsaber: Luke flipping up and catching his shockingly green sabre out of the air. I won't try and argue it has the best duel as the Bespin showdown has that honour (Emperor's throne room comes close though)
- It's got the best FX. If you think it doesn't, you are probably confusing memories of the SE in your head with the GOUT. Go look at the GOUT Bespin or many of the shots from the GOUT battle of Yavin.
- It introduced force lightening. An iconic special effect and an iconic representation of evil.
- It's got the most 'scale' of the three. Epic locations, epic battles and a huge cast of diverse background characters.
There are other points I'd be tempted to make, such as it has the best pacing but I'll admit that that could be argued against. F*ck it! It does! The opening to ANH is painfully slow and ESB is very static in the middle (Asteroid interlude while Luke is jogging round a swamp). Jedi's pace never lets up! xD
As I said (Apart from the last one) the above points are unarguable facts but let the argueing commence anyway...
Trooperman said:
Hi everybody,
First of all, that was me, and I did go crazy early this year, I am embarrassed to say.
Nothing to be embarrased about, it happens to the best of us. If you've not seen it, check out Stephen Fry's two part documentary about his own mania...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGDl6-lyfMY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF7yiQxn35I
...and he's pretty much the most brilliant, funny, clever and talented man on the face of the planet. Beautiful film featuring interviews with Carrie Fisher and fellow Lucas alumni Richard Dreyfuss. I can't wait to see Stephen starring in the 2nd Hobbit movie.
btw Your PT project sounds very cool and the covers look great too!
Episode VII: The Day the Law Died
Episode VIII: Song of the Surfer
Episode IX: The Quartz Zone Massacre
