We saw a Star War! Last Jedi spoiler thread

Morrus · Dec 16, 2017

doctorbadwolf said:
It’s like suggesting that the US should have abandoned battleships with the engines at full to throw them at enemy ships in WWII. It would have been an incredibly stupid tactic in 99% of scenarios.

If a single, smaller ship could destroy the *entire enemy fleet* that way, I'm sure they would have done.

Water Bob · Dec 16, 2017

Morrus said:
I hope we never find out. They ruined Boba Fett and Vader when they showed their origins. Han Solo, possibly, too next year. Some characters don't need an origin story - they work better when they're mysterious.

I definitely see your point, especially about Vader.

But, I think it is inevitable that there will be some explanation about Snoke somewhere. It may not be in Episode IX. It may be in a novel (most likely) or a comic.

Man, I do not envy J.J. Abrams. First, he's got to follow up that great film with the final installment, and on top of this, Johnson has left Abrams little to work with. Snoke is dead. It looks like Phasma is dead. All the leads from the original trilogy are either dead in the films or passed in real life. Abrams could get creative with Leias death in the films--something nice to honor Carrie Fisher.

My guess is that we're going to get a slew of new characters.

doctorbadwolf · Dec 16, 2017

Morrus said:
If a single, smaller ship could destroy the *entire enemy fleet* that way, I'm sure they would have done.

It isn’t the entire enemy fleet, though. It doesn’t even destroy all of what’s there.

And no, they wouldn’t have done. Because the ship in TLJ is their best, biggest, ship, and what we see in Rogue One tells us that such a maneuver, at the very least, doesn’t always have that result.

So, in nearly every situation, it would be stupid to throw your biggest (most advanced, most expensive, most limited in supply, most tactically) class of ship ship at someone on the slight chance that it might blow them up, if you time it just right and catch them with their defenses down. Like, that would be extremely bad tactics.

Morrus · Dec 16, 2017

doctorbadwolf said:
So, in nearly every situation, it would be stupid to throw your biggest (most advanced, most expensive, most limited in supply, most tactically) class of ship ship at someone on the slight chance that it might blow them up, if you time it just right and catch them with their defenses down. Like, that would be extremely bad tactics.

You're changing it. Nobody said that "in every situation you should throw your biggest, most advanced, most expensive, most limited in supply, most tactically class of ship".

You don't throw your biggest ship. They threw their only ship (and it worked). If it were a *standard* tactic, you'd throw a smaller, empty ship. Some cargo ship or something. If you *have* to have a pilot do it, make it a droid.

...what we see in Rogue One tells us that such a maneuver, at the very least, doesn’t always have that result.

Not at all. The whole point of the tactic was that it hit the target at FTL speed. The ships in R1 aren't moving at FTL speed; they're just gearing up for it. They crash into the star destroyer at regular speed. The key to the tactic is the FTL speed part.

And it's worked exactly 100% of the times they've ever tried it. So, absent evidence the contrary, it works.

But, hey. It's not something I care enough about to try to defend any more. We're both talking nonsense about whether ramming ships at hyperdrive speeds is a valid tactic, after all.

epithet · Dec 16, 2017

Water Bob said:
Here's another question...
...
Who the HELL was Snoke? Where did come from? How did he get so strong in the Dark Side? What happened to him to screw him up so--the damage to his body?

Morrus said:
I hope we never find out. They ruined Boba Fett and Vader when they showed their origins. Han Solo, possibly, too next year. Some characters don't need an origin story - they work better when they're mysterious.

I don't think we need to know what he was like as a child, but there really has to be some context provided for Snoke. A dark side force master of that magnitude, who takes control of an army of space nazis and controls a significant percentage of the galaxy, is A Big Deal. To leave his nature and origin vague, as if it doesn't matter, is to suggest that the galaxy is actually full of them--that any group of space nazis with a fleet of ships will almost inevitably find a dark side demigod to lead them.

That said, I feel pretty certain we've not seen the last of Snoke. All you have to do is to look at him to see that he's been killed before, at least once by having his head crushed. I don't know how he's going to get reanimated or reassembled, but you don't tease his ability to survive like that and then kill him off with one slice, especially considering that Darth Maul already overcame an almost identical injury. In fact, I speculate that the entire reason Snoke's background has been left so vague so far is to avoid making it too obvious that simple straightforward mortal wounds are not enough to kill him permanently. Once he comes back and his background is made somewhat more clear, we'll be shaking our heads at how stupid Kylo has to be to have not seen it coming.

Snoke was built up as The Big Bad over a movie and a half, then summarily dispatched. I don't buy it. His bodyguards were more formidable than Snoke turned out to be (that was a pretty great fight scene.) It's like Rey's parents--the search for her parents was the defining motivation for her for a movie and a half, but we're supposed to accept that plot thread wrapped up with "they're nobody?" Pull the other one, it's got bells on. If her parents were "nobody" we would have seen them by now, in her memories or her vision in the cave. You don't make a big deal out of hiding "nobody."

Besides, we are certainly going to get more backstory on Ben Solo being seduced to the dark side, and the nature of the "Knights of Ren (and Stimpy)."

epithet · Dec 16, 2017

Morrus said:
...Nobody said that "in every situation you should throw your biggest, most advanced, most expensive, most limited in supply, most tactically class of ship".

You don't throw your biggest ship. They threw their only ship (and it worked). If it were a *standard* tactic, you'd throw a smaller, empty ship. Some cargo ship or something. If you *have* to have a pilot do it, make it a droid.
...

Ideally, you would throw a solid tungsten slug with the mass of a heavy cruiser, or just bolt a hyperdrive onto an asteroid.

Water Bob · Dec 16, 2017

As to the suicide run of Vice Admiral Holdo (I keep thinking Hodo, from GoT), that's an expensive ship. It would be an expensive way to fight a war.

And, you would need the mass. You could develop smaller, fighter sized missiles with droid brains and hyperdrives to do what Holdo did, and there would be some damage. But, I don't think the damage would be devastating to the target. They might not even punch through a target vessel. Rather impacted on the surface, as we've seen with the Death Star and other vessels, like the A-Wing that suicides into the Executor's bridge in RotJ.

I wonder what the smallest limit it on a hyperspace capable craft? The size of a fighter? Smaller? Could hyperdrive missiles be used, or are missiles too small to house hyperdrives?

Water Bob · Dec 16, 2017

Variety is reporting a $215 million opening weekend, which puts TLJ as the fourth largest domestic opening in history behind The Force Awakens, Jurassic World, and The Avengers.

Water Bob · Dec 16, 2017

Early reviews by viewers are not good. Not good at all.

Critics love it. (I love it.)

Rotten Tomatoes has the reviews from Critics at 93%, but the reviews from viewers at 57%.

MetaCritic is similar. Metascore for Critics is 86. For viewers is 5!

RangerWickett · Dec 16, 2017

With the Emperor, the backstory we got was, "The Emperor has dissolved the Senate. The last remnant of the old republic is now gone."

Sure, with the First Order and Snoke I'd like a couple lines, something like Hux proclaiming, "Our Supreme Leader found the quivering remnants of the old empire and forged us into a sword that has cut through our enemies on a hundred worlds," but that would be enough. How big is the First Order, was Snoke part of the empire or an outsider, and maybe a few other tidbits to provide contour for the personal stories of the characters.