Last Jedi spoilers thread

Contrabardus

Well-Known Member
#26
coconutED said:
Altered Nova said:
Luke is the best cranky old man. I find it hilarious how many people have complained about him not being a badass hero like the original trilogy. Apparently those people weren't paying attention to Yoda and Obi Wan - clearly becoming a weird old hermit is just what Jedi do. I love how he just tossed the lightsaber over his shoulder and off a cliff, and that he called it a "laser sword".
They're not complaining because Luke is a "cranky old man." They're complaining because the man who was able to turn the second most evil person in the galaxy back to the light side considered murdering his nephew because of the possibility that he would turn dark.

Altered Nova said:
My only complaint about the film is Holdo destroying the Supremacy by ramming it at light speed. While it's true that this would be a viable strategy in hard science fiction since any ship moving near or at the speed of light would defacto become a weapon of mass destruction simply do to the incomprehensibly vast amount of energy that would be needed to attain such speeds, soft science fiction franchises like Star Wars have traditionally just quietly ignored the possibly of weaponizing relativistic speed because it would render virtually all other forms of weaponry obsolete. Who needs fleets of manned spacecraft when you can just use swarms of faster-than-light kamikaze drones to wipe out your enemies? Hell, who needs a Death Star when you could strap a hyperdrive to a big asteroid and slam it into a planet at light speed? That strategy would have the added benefit that it would be basically impossible to defend against since they literally couldn't even see the attack coming. Seriously, if hyperspace ramming is a legitimate strategy in Star Wars than we should have seen it happen long before now and it should have become the primary tactic used in all space warfare.
I am getting increasingly perplexed by this argument...am I the only person in the universe who remembers that we previously saw a star destroyer shrug off being hyperdrived (inadvertently) head on by some escaping rebel ships? So following the in-universe logic, to be successful, such a tactic would require an object of adequate size and/or proper set up to ensure that the target is hit in the correct spot at the right angle. Plenty of constraints that can plausibly limit the viability of the maneuver.
This. We didn't really get a good scale for that ship in the movie to be honest. It was huge, twice the size of a standard Star Destroyer. Somewhere around 3,000 m, that's roughly two miles long.

It also had heavy shields that withstood bombardment from the Supremacy for most of the movie. Even at range that's quite a feat.

Throwing a hunk of spaceship that size as a missile would not be feasible even by Star Wars standards. Too many resources for too little effect.

It also cut through it, and didn't outright destroy it. So the effect was somewhat limited even in this case. The ship still seemed mostly functional after the hit. They didn't abandon ship and even the damaged area was still holding atmosphere despite the extent of the damage.

It's probably totaled, don't get me wrong here, but it didn't really stop the First Order. They were still able to operate from it well enough to assault the Resistance base. I don't know that it was going to go anywhere, but it remained mostly intact.
 

Rising Dragon

Well-Known Member
#27
Regardless of where you stand on the hyperdrive railgun argument, I think we can all agree that it should've been Ackbar to do it, not some feminist meme.
 

MastaofBitches

Well-Known Member
#28
Rising Dragon said:
Regardless of where you stand on the hyperdrive railgun argument, I think we can all agree that it should've been Ackbar to do it, not some feminist meme.
Ackbar's actor was dead, so they couldn't use him.
 

Altered Nova

Well-Known Member
#29
I'm surprised it wasn't Leia who heroically sacrificed herself, considering her actress recently died.

I've been thinking about the hyperdrive railgun argument some more On the one hand, it kind of makes sense that we haven't seen the tactic used as a last resort before - before The Last Jedi, anytime a ship was in a position to hyperdrive kamikaze an enemy ship, they were also in a position to just use their hyperdrive to escape. So the tactic has always been possible, but no one has ever been backed in a corner and made desperate enough to try it before. The introduction of hyperspace tracking technology changed that - committing suicide with a hyperspace ramming attack sounds a lot more reasonable if you know you can't escape and are utterly doomed regardless.

On the other hand though, hyperdrives can bypass shields. Han demonstrated this on Starkiller Base and this is presumably why Holdo's suicide attack was so effective on the Supremacy. This is an enormous potential combat exploit, and hyperdrives are cheap/common enough that X-wings and even escape pods are equipped with them. Why doesn't the Empire, with it's essentially unlimited resources, deploy fleets of hyperdrive equipped "bunker buster" torpedoes to destroy rebel command ships and to blow away shielded rebel bases from orbit? Why isn't the Rebellion using them to bypass the shields on Star Destroyers and take out their vulnerable and exposed bridges?
 

Contrabardus

Well-Known Member
#30
Altered Nova said:
I'm surprised it wasn't Leia who heroically sacrificed herself, considering her actress recently died.

I've been thinking about the hyperdrive railgun argument some more On the one hand, it kind of makes sense that we haven't seen the tactic used as a last resort before - before The Last Jedi, anytime a ship was in a position to hyperdrive kamikaze an enemy ship, they were also in a position to just use their hyperdrive to escape. So the tactic has always been possible, but no one has ever been backed in a corner and made desperate enough to try it before. The introduction of hyperspace tracking technology changed that - committing suicide with a hyperspace ramming attack sounds a lot more reasonable if you know you can't escape and are utterly doomed regardless.

On the other hand though, hyperdrives can bypass shields. Han demonstrated this on Starkiller Base and this is presumably why Holdo's suicide attack was so effective on the Supremacy. This is an enormous potential combat exploit, and hyperdrives are cheap/common enough that X-wings and even escape pods are equipped with them. Why doesn't the Empire, with it's essentially unlimited resources, deploy fleets of hyperdrive equipped "bunker buster" torpedoes to destroy rebel command ships and to blow away shielded rebel bases from orbit? Why isn't the Rebellion using them to bypass the shields on Star Destroyers and take out their vulnerable and exposed bridges?
That's not surprising considering they said that they weren't altering Carrie Fisher's scenes in the movie. I wasn't expecting her to die to be honest, especially considering the fact that it was well reported that she'd have a large role in Episode IX.

They probably should have to be honest, but didn't as a tribute to her. I understand why they didn't, but still think they probably should have and let Laura Dern's character take over that role in Episode IX just to give Leia a proper sendoff rather than what will likely either amount to a CGI version of her for a similar scene in the next movie or a line in the opening crawl and mention of it in some dialogue in the sequel.

It's also worth pointing out that it isn't the first successful Kamakazi attack in Star Wars.

The Super Star Destroyer was brought down by an unintentional kamakazi attack by a rebel fighter in Return of the Jedi.

There's also the argument that Han is Force sensitive which is why he was able to pull off that maneuver. He's able to manually get out of hyperspace when approaching starkiller base and avoid crashing nose first into the surface. This is actually supported by Ben/Kylo's apparently massive force ability.

I don't think he could have been a Jedi, but his piloting skills do point to him probably being somewhat in tune with the Force even if he himself doesn't realize it. This is supported by the parsecs retcon which allowed him to make the Kessel run the way he did by piloting closer to black holes.

I don't know about how plausible making hyperspace projectiles is. I suppose it could be a thing, but might be prohibitively expensive, or have a limited effect.

As we saw it didn't outright destroy the ship, but cut through it, and the damage was extensive but contained. It could be a matter of mass and the sheer amount of energy of that much ship hitting the Star Destroyer as well, a smaller projectile could bounce off of armor, shields, or not penetrate much even at that speed due to how the ships are designed, or even just puncture the ship with a relatively small hole that is easily contained, much like shooting the outer hull of a large seafaring ship with a small caliber bullet that penetrates it below sea level.

The battering ram laser may have just been more cost effective than shooting a hyperspace "bunker buster" from orbit and only achieving limited damage by way of a relatively smaller hole punctured in the structure. To do significant damage quite a few may have been needed, and the type of tactic they used could have actually been more economical in more than one way. You've got to figure they've also got to store these missiles and just having a ground based battering ram system would take up a lot less storage space.

This could simply be a matter of something being plausible, but not really economical and possibly too specialized. It seems like a thing that may just be a matter of the details just not making it worth it.
 

Ordo

Well-Known Member
#31


Hamill's kids, watching Father go to work.



Hmmm, Finn is talking to Nien Num....I wonder if he'll get some flight training in between films...
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#32
Years down the line after the movie's release.It occurred to me quite some time ago that the whole 'hyperspace ram a ship into another ship' is doubly a terrible idea, because once the good guys have used the trick, there's no reason the bad guys can't use it later on in the film.

Kylo Ren: "Oh that's cute, you're holed up in an impenetrable bunker on this planet. Impenetrable by conventional weapons. Brb, gonna hyperspace ram one of my spaceships into your 'impenetrable' bunker."

Arguably, you could say KR was being irrational and mad as hell and just wanted to kill all the Rebels, but up until Luke appeared, he seemed bent on straight-up destruction.
 
Top