The Last Jedi - Full Spoilers

If Poe would not have disobeyed Leia and abandoned the dreadnaught, would the dreadnaught have destroyed the fleet after the first tracked jump? I think so.

It's also possible that the ramming isn't done at light speed, but near light speed (since the explosion should be bigger if at light speed).

IIRC, hyperspace is like 40k's warp... you jump to another "space" that allows you to travel much faster. So when I was watching the Holdo maneuver, somehow I was quickly thinking she must be jumping into and out from the hyperspace for a very short distance, carrying the residual speed when tearing into Snoke's ship.

Hard to say. The whole "they are too fast for us to get into range but too slow to actually pull away" bit was very confusing. Presumably the Supremacy has just as powerful a set of cannons, so the dreadnought would have been in the same stern chase situation. The chase in general was poorly conceived, I think. They couldn't jump to a system with friendly defenses? Hide in a nebula? I get the narrative trap they were in (need for Finn to have an adventure, somehow get to the end planet with just a few resistance members left, have a starting battle but then put it all on hold til the end give Leia and Holdo a "grand strategy reveal" over Poe, etc) but wow, was it really silly.

Sevej wrote: It's also possible that the ramming isn't done at light speed, but near light speed (since the explosion should be bigger if at light speed).

IIRC, hyperspace is like 40k's warp... you jump to another "space" that allows you to travel much faster. So when I was watching the Holdo maneuver, somehow I was quickly thinking she must be jumping into and out from the hyperspace for a very short distance, carrying the residual speed when tearing into Snoke's ship.

I think that may be how Star Wars lightspeed USED to work. But when they tossed out the EU and told directors to write whatever, that stuff got dumped.

What exactly is happening when a ship does the ZIP and goes into hyperspace? Is it accelerating to lightspeed or being pulled into a portal. Is the ZIP the actual ship or just a real space trace? Because clearly the occupants don't experience any acceleration. But then Poe DOES when he uses the x-wing afterburner. So can they cancel out some forms of acceleration but not others? If the ship is actually accelerating then how does the U-wing jump through an atmosphere in Rogue One without burning up? If their shields can resist that then they could resist anything, blaster fire is puny in comparison.

These are the problems when you dump canon. Creators NEED constraints. I bet Rian didn't give a crap about how hyperspace was supposed to work, probably didn't even ask. He needed it to do several things for his story and that was it. But now I gotta wonder why Star Wars has ships at all? They seem to be more than capable of hyperspacing pallets directly from one station to another, ground based stations at that!

Granted, the original hyperspace "rules" were written to accommodate Lucas's non-physics based idea. It had to be wanked around the "12 parsecs" line. But it made a kind of sense that reinforced how we see the world in the films and shows. But now you can hyperspace from anywhere, basically to anywhere, virtually instantaneously, and through anything (except when you don't want to). Too high a price for a single awesome scene, IMHO.

jeb wrote: Don't get too pedantic about the physics of it all. TIEs make noise as the "swooosh" by the bridge window, anything bigger than a proton moving at those speeds would destroy the planet, LASER SWORDS, &c. I feel like STAR WARS fandom is best served by not explaining these things. They don't make sense in our local galaxy.

Internal consistency and scientific accuracy are two different things. Grand world building and long series in fiction hinge upon internal consistency, IMHO, and if you throw it out then you are taking a long term hit for short term gain. Star Wars should have a rules bible for how things work. And it did, till they didn't.

I always thought Star Wars did the worst job explaining artificial gravity of all the sci fi properties

But I never really cared cuz it’s Star Wars and theYve always cleverly avoided touching science stuff. It’s all supposed to just be fun, not deep. This is why the Leia part is so off putting. They are directly tackling a science thing with the look and grace of a flash animation.

I think 90% of the people that go to see this movie don't think anywhere near that deeply. It boils down to "she rammed the ship" for almost all viewers. There's about 500 movies where that happens, from all genres, so it's solid ground.

"Canon" is important to people that will pay to see the film either way, so from a financial standpoint those people don't have much of a voice. The writer needs to tell a story, give him the latitude to make it a good one. That's what gets more butts into seats.

jason10mm wrote:

jeb wrote: Don't get too pedantic about the physics of it all. TIEs make noise as the "swooosh" by the bridge window, anything bigger than a proton moving at those speeds would destroy the planet, LASER SWORDS, &c. I feel like STAR WARS fandom is best served by not explaining these things. They don't make sense in our local galaxy.

Internal consistency and scientific accuracy are two different things. Grand world building and long series in fiction hinge upon internal consistency, IMHO, and if you throw it out then you are taking a long term hit for short term gain. Star Wars should have a rules bible for how things work. And it did, till they didn't.

Totally agree. That's why I was so bothered by all the ships in atmosphere in Force Awakens. TIEs and X-Wings never flew (combat) in atmo in the first trilogy, but suddenly that's a thing now. It makes no sense. The whole Battle of Hoth would have been overrun with those vehicles, if that had been canon at the time.

I've been watching The Expanse which is a show that I think mostly tries to get the science and physics of space travel right. So, you have stuff like ship's flipping over and decelerating for days as they approach their destination. Imagine if the X-wings and Y-Wings had been forced to do that en route to the final Death Star battle in "A New Hope." That would have been weird. It's just a totally different genre and storytelling focus. The Expanse is ABOUT technology. Star Wars is heroic fantasy dressed in sci-fi trappings.

Now, that being said ... I totally agree that consistent rules and world-building are a key factor in any speculative fiction, and Star Wars is pretty sloppy about it.

jason10mm wrote:

jeb wrote: Don't get too pedantic about the physics of it all. TIEs make noise as the "swooosh" by the bridge window, anything bigger than a proton moving at those speeds would destroy the planet, LASER SWORDS, &c. I feel like STAR WARS fandom is best served by not explaining these things. They don't make sense in our local galaxy.

Internal consistency and scientific accuracy are two different things. Grand world building and long series in fiction hinge upon internal consistency, IMHO, and if you throw it out then you are taking a long term hit for short term gain. Star Wars should have a rules bible for how things work. And it did, till they didn't.

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What the EU? Which is, to me, more like commercialized fanfics or someway to milk more money from Star Wars fan?

No, just no. I'd rather have good stories than consistency on "canon", especially "made up canons". As you said yourself, there was no established rules within the movies. Does the speed during entry and exit of hyperspace the same? How do physics work before, during transition and within hyperspace? Do they even behave the same during entry and exit? Does the inside and outside part of the ship suffer different strains? What the fuck is all these crap about "hyperspace shadow" etc?

These are never established in the movies, because Star Wars is mainly a soap opera. A LOT of things never are. Since it's fantasy to begin with, someone could easily bullshit and bullshit physics out of all the movies to keep it "consistent". The originals have so many plot holes and inconsistencies that they *need* to be explained by made up can... sorry, Star Wars Extended Universe. For me it's all about the movies, everything else are just more commercialization.

Heck, A New Hope had plothole the size of Death Star's exhaust, that needs to be explained via a WHOLE NEW MOVIE. Still the movie had remote-controlled missile capable of making sharp turn that is NEVER used anywhere! Fuck consistency (in Star Wars).

When screenwriters (who are apparently reviled only slightly less than lawyers) sit down to write a story, the last thing they consider is any kind of consistency with BS make believe physics. What they write, if they are doing it correctly, serves the story, characters, themes and audience above all else. If that means some nerd coming forward with a dot matrix printout of all of the technical inaccuracies in The Hunt for Red October, so be it. Because the reality of it is that if what you are presenting is plausible enough for 99 percent of the audience and it serves the aforementioned elements, then whatever nitpicks the 1 percent have mean absolutely nothing. It is a problem if you violate some very basic rules of plausibility or established (and clearly stated) notions within the story.

With fantasy and sci fi, you are between a rock and a hard place. Because you have far more freedom to violate natural law, science, and other parameters. But these genres also appeal to the people who are most likely to spend time completely dissecting everything and applying their personal expectations to what is a public work. And there is always the assumption that things like physics and other parameters are the same in the worlds on screen as they are in ours.

Maybe in the SW world, there is sound in space and you can live for a few minutes without freezing to death or exploding. Maybe the Holdo Manuever is a fluke that happened that one time and never again.

On the TIEs and X-Wings in atmosphere thing- that has always been around. Rogue Squadron Springs to mind. And if these ships can and often do take off/land in atmosphere, why can’t they fly combat?

Anyway, I saw it again and loved it even more- the shock of the new was relaxed and I was better able to get more familiar with the new pieces. Like DJ- I liked him more this time and I also really, really, really, really appreciated the underlying message of divorcing spirituality from organized religion that I sensed before but wanted to confirm.

One thing I noticed on second viewing...the main plot line with the fleet is VERY Battlestar Galactica.

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Michael Barnes wrote: One thing I noticed on second viewing...the main plot line with the fleet is VERY Battlestar Galactica.

Oh hell yeah. That part of the film lasted EXACTLY thirty-three minutes. Coincidence?

It's not only that, the Poe maneuver is very, VERY BSG. It's nothing like the usual Star Wars atmospheric dog fight in space.

Michael Barnes wrote: Anyway, I saw it again and loved it even more- the shock of the new was relaxed and I was better able to get more familiar with the new pieces. Like DJ- I liked him more this time and I also really, really, really, really appreciated the underlying message of divorcing spirituality from organized religion that I sensed before but wanted to confirm.

I had a similar response on my second viewing. So often our faith in institutions is either misplaced (like when the First Order and the Resistance are both empowering arms dealers) or simply holding us back (like Luke's veneration of the Jedi texts). And I say that as someone who is neck-deep in organized religion.

Most of all I appreciated the theme of needing to let go of the stuff that holds you down. We all go through life with a ton of baggage, and it has the potential to really anchor us down to the point where we can no longer function. The interesting thing is that it LOOKS like Kylo Ren has the right idea here, but the truth is that he hasn't let anything go. He is obsessed with all of the people who wronged him, even after he's killed them. It's more like what Luke has to learn, that the things you held on to, your institutions, your friends, stuff like that, never really belonged to you in the first place. Rose HAS to give up her necklace, because otherwise they can't accomplish what they need to accomplish.

That's really meaningful for me as I go through the process of taking inventory of my life. I've been forced to determine what stuff needs to go with me and what needs to be left behind, and that's a very challenging process. Having Star Wars there to walk through it with me was very special for me.