I was very happy for the sale to disney because Lucas was unfit to continue (and the original movies had co-directors who shot down the majority of his terrible *** anyways).
Not looking for spoilers, just strengths/weaknesses.Trying to be as non-spoilerish as I can.
Yet to see it, so would love to hear some opinions from those that have.Saw it just now.
Not looking for spoilers, just strengths/weaknesses.
Most interested in hearing from those who were disappointed (as I was) with TFA (and all of J.J. Abram's lacklustre reboot efforts tbh)
Overall it was entertaining, but I liked episode 4-7 better.
Also, one (spoiler) thing I personally found annoying:Spoiler
The scene were the rebels used the Hammerhead corvette to shove one (disabled) star destroyer into another, which in turn flew into the shield generator station. Who ever came up with that scene apparently doesn't know or care about f=m*a. How can a little corvette accelerate a Star Destroyer so fast that another Star Destroyer with, like, a thousand times more powerful engines can't evade? Or when they are so close together that it becomes impossible, how can the first Star Destroyer build up the energy to just just plow through the second one, when all the acceleration it receives comes from one tiny corvette for a short time? That's like me pushing one parking car into another and expecting them to both explode from the impact.[close]
Just saw it. Loved it.
The only disappointment..... is that it's a stand-alone story :-[
It's a film :D
Though how about..
SpoilerThe scene were the rebels used the Hammerhead corvette to shove one (disabled) star destroyer into another, which in turn flew into the shield generator station. Who ever came up with that scene apparently doesn't know or care about f=m*a. How can a little corvette accelerate a Star Destroyer so fast that another Star Destroyer with, like, a thousand times more powerful engines can't evade? Or when they are so close together that it becomes impossible, how can the first Star Destroyer build up the energy to just just plow through the second one, when all the acceleration it receives comes from one tiny corvette for a short time? That's like me pushing one parking car into another and expecting them to both explode from the impact.[close]
SpoilerYeah. Arguably even that short reaction time should have been enough to match the speed the corvette could have put on a Star Destroyer, but even if we suspend disbelief here - how could the collision have been so severe? They were just lightly bumping into each other, it's like the ships had proximity fuses. It just felt very wrong is all.[close]
SpoilerI'm not bothered that it doesn't make sense if you think about it, it's a space opera after all. And I'm sure there's technobabble that could "explain" it.
I'm bothered that it looked spontaniously, glaringly wrong to me, meaning they did a poor job of selling that important moment visually.[close]
Manages to fit itself very comfortably in the established (original trilogy) universeThere are some points where I'd debate that, e.g. the event which set up the point under discussion in the spoilers. Original (and prequel) trilogy starfighter weapons just aren't that powerful, or at least if there are any such potent starfighter weapons they were never shown, and the existence of such starfighter weapons calls into serious question the value of capital ships (especially battleship-type capital ships) in the setting, the basis of the Imperial Navy's belief that starfighters are not significant threats to capital ships, and the rationale behind the shift from the carrier-type Venator-class Star Destroyers shown in Revenge of the Sith, which last I checked carried around 428 starfighters, to the more battleship-type Imperial Star Destroyers of the original trilogy, which last I checked carried around 72 starfighters - barely more than one sixth the older Star Destroyer class's fighter complement, and with the newer class presumably having the benefit of the insight that a recent war gives into what constitutes a good ship design. It also leads to the question of why we never see starfighters make effective attacks against enemy capital ships while unsupported by friendly capital ships in the original and prequel trilogies outside a couple instances of extremely good luck. It does more or less fit with the EU's fascination with starfighters, however.
...we seem to have witnessed two Star Destroyers collide with one another during the Millenium Falcon's escape into the asteroid field. Those Star Destroyers suffered no visible damage...
There are some points where I'd debate that, e.g. the event which set up the point under discussion in the spoilers.
It's worth saying that if you're looking for physical realism, sci-fi is generally not a great place to go, but I find it super fun to think through all of this.
It put the Poe-blowathon in TFA to shame.
It's funny that you bring up the example from The Empire Strikes Back where the Star Destroyers collide, because they are clearly not able to evade even though they have quite a bit of time to do so. We can also assume that the reason the Star Destroyers take no hull damage is that they were shielded.If you're restricted to differential thrust for turning and do not have the ability to reverse the thrust on one or more thrusters, you have to go forwards to turn. The Star Destroyers that appear to have collided in The Empire Strikes Back already had a significant velocity towards one another and were rotating towards one another as part of a maneuver to pursue the Millenium Falcon at the time when their crews became aware of the possibility of a collision.
In terms of the Executor scene in Return of the Jedi, you didn't take into account the gravitational forces of Endor, Endor's moon, or the Death Star itself, and since we can't see the actual alignment of most of those bodies, it's almost impossible to figure out what the capabilities of the Executor actually are.The distances involved are great enough that the gravitational attraction that the Executor feels towards any of the natural bodies in the system are unlikely in the extreme to amount to a net effect of more than perhaps a gravity or two of acceleration towards the Death Star, which is hardly worth accounting for when the constant-acceleration model's estimate puts the acceleration experienced at 150 gravities. The Death Star itself is the only large body both close enough and potentially massive enough to have a gravitational effect worth worrying about, but running numbers for the Death Star runs into a lot of issues - the size of the Death Star is unclear (the current canonical diameter of 160km doesn't really work for what is depicted in the movie, with the most egregious example being the scene where the Executor crashes into the Death Star; the geometry of that scene suggests that the smallest possible diameter for the Death Star is about 1000km, if the Executor is taken to be 19km long), the mass of the Death Star is completely unknown, and the distance between the Death Star and the Executor just prior to the Executor's crash dive is unclear but in excess of the Executor's overall length. We can maybe put an upper bound on the mass of the Death Star if we make some estimates of the Death Star's orbital altitude because we can see that the Death Star does not appear to be directly over the point on the moon's surface where the Rebel infiltration team is and does not appear to be massive enough to significantly affect the apparent gravity vector, but doing that introduces even more uncertainty into whatever number you were to come up with for the gravitational pull the Death Star exerts on the Executor and the overall effect is just a big question mark.
We know of course why the Death Star had a fatal fault in the first place.Justifying the existence of the thermal exhaust port is very, very easy. Assuming that Alderaan is the same size and mass as Earth, the Death Star needed to deliver at least 2e32 J with the superlaser shot in order to destroy the planet (given the violence of the destruction event, the energy delivered was likely considerably higher). The sequence of events within the movie suggests that Alderaan was destroyed roughly a day before the Death Star was destroyed over Yavin IV. The Death Star was expected to be able to fire the superlaser at Yavin IV, suggesting that the reactors have had sufficient time to generate the 2e32 J required to destroy an Earth-like planet, which puts the lower bound for the power output of the Death Star reactors in excess of 2e27 W, which is roughly 10 times the total output of the Sun. Even very small inefficiencies are going to generate enormous amounts of waste heat when dealing with power outputs of this magnitude and you need some way to get rid of that waste energy before it can build up enough to endanger the Death Star, thus the existence of the thermal exhaust ports.
Remember this is Star Wars, not Star Trek.Star Trek is at least as much fantasy in space as Star Wars is. The only differences are that Star Trek attempts (poorly) to pretend otherwise by making up technical-sounding nonsense to mask its lack of scientific accuracy (granted, Star Wars, especially in the newer movies, sometimes commits that sin, too), and that Star Trek is more of an episodic interpersonal relations drama while Star Wars tends more towards the heroic epic (original trilogy) or heroic tragedy (prequel trilogy).
It's fantasy in space; all it aims to present is loose believability, not scientific accuracy.
If you're restricted to differential thrust for turning
...appears to have demonstrated the ability to decelerate at something in excess of 1000 gravities...you've made this argument several times but I think it's worth noting that these ships are often decelerating from light speed and the technology that allows then to travel at light speed is separate from their sub-lightspeed propulsion technology. It's not clear whether the sublight tech gives them these capabilities or not. It's entirely possible that their hyperdrive technology is what allows then to decelerate so quickly and their sublight propulsion is not capable of the same acceleration.
Remember this is Star Wars, not Star Trek.
It's fantasy in space; all it aims to present is loose believability, not scientific accuracy.
I'm not asking for scientific accuracy just consistency
It wasn't the thermal vent he spoke about, Aeson.If you're arguing that the 'fatal flaw' is that the reactor blew up when damaged, consider that the minimum energy to destroy Alderaan, assuming Alderaan is approximately the same mass and diameter as Earth, is equivalent to that released by the annihilation of 1.1e15 kg of antimatter. If stored at 25 g/cm^3, that mass would fill a sphere more than 4km in diameter - and that's just for the antimatter; you need another 1.1e15 kg of matter with which to annihilate it.
If you're arguing that the 'fatal flaw' is that the reactor blew up when damaged
And I doubt we can assume any sort of technological specification and make okay reasonings based on the assumption since its planet-killing death ray is powered by magical crystals. Any scientific facts could have been thrown out of considerations.That we do not know how the magic crystals work is immaterial; with a minimum power output an order of magnitude greater and a total volume twelve orders of magnitude smaller than that of the Sun, we knew the Death Star used some process which was effectively magic to present-day science to generate its power anyways. Rogue One telling us that the reactors use magic crystals in some manner changes nothing.
The big advantage of kicking scientific accuracy out of the window is that you can make happen whatever is best for the story, dramatics, comprehensibility and visual presentation.I would say consistency is one of the most important things you can have in a fictional world. While you give up the ability to write whatever drama you want, the consistency is what gives that drama its relevance. If I say 'Bob the space mage destroyed the apocalypse orb with the aid of his powers,' it just isn't the same as watching Star Wars. Thats because every bit of the movie, from the scenery to the way people interact and the dynamics of power are building on the consistency of the world. Its not just scientific things, its things like "the empire is much stronger than the rebellion and when it loses it is the exception" and "The force is an inherit power in all living things."
I would say consistency is one of the most important things you can have in a fictional world. While you give up the ability to write whatever drama you want, the consistency is what gives that drama its relevance.
Fighting consistency-entropy is hard but it is necessary! For the good of nerdom!