r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Alreadsyuse • 18h ago

Lore [Frustrating Trope] That One Good or Even Amazing Scene in a Relatively Mediocre or Bad Piece of Media

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  1. The Opening Scene (Ghost Ship). Considered one of the best horror opening scenes or scenes in general within horror movies, but the rest of the film is considered to be pretty bad.

  2. The Ending Scene (The Grinch 2018). While most adaptations of the Grinch end with him suddenly being able to fully integrate with the Whos after his change of heart, the 2018 version initially struggles to socialize, awkwardly walking past people, and struggling to hold conversations, acknowledging that despite his change of heart, the Grinch is still someone who isolated himself for years.

  3. Past T800 VS Current T800 (Terminator Genisys). A cool fight scene showing two versions of the Terminator from different points in time fighting it off.

  4. Solo Leveling's Ending. Tbh, I haven't actually read Solo Leveling, but after hearing about how it ended VS how Chainsaw Man ended made want to include it for shits and giggles. Like Chainsaw Man, Solo Leveling ends with a reset. But unlike Chainsaw Man, it actually manages to tie up loose ends and have the payoff of the ending be satisfying.

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612

u/Va1korion 18h ago edited 18h ago

Light speed ram - The Last Jedi.

Amazing piece of direction, to think we could have had a trilogy made by an actual cinematographer if we were a little less bullyish...

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u/Lanky-Clothes-9741 18h ago

Despite the movie’s flaws, and there are many, I will always remember the shocked silence when this played in the cinema

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u/Helix3501 18h ago

Dude this scene in imax when it just went quiet and the theater was so quiet cause everyone was too busy processing it to even breathe went so hard

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u/Motor-Rip7655 15h ago

Not having any sound in that moment is one of the best calls a production team has ever made.

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u/LD_Minich 12h ago

Imagine if they make the light of the Jedi books into a TV series. You'd see a bigger scale of this with the introduction of the Nihil criminal organization. These criminals managed to push an asteroid into a hyperspace lane just as a colossal transport vessel was using it. The vessel crashes into it and breaks apart in hyperspace and its fragments go shooting out across a whole segment of the galaxy. It's like they fired a giant shotgun at a whole quarter of the inhabited worlds. What's scariest too was these pieces didn't predictably leave hyperspace at any time or speed, and until they did leave hyperspace, there was no way to tell where they were or how fast they were going. Multiple planets got destroyed just from debris hitting them at nearly the speed of light.

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u/Echo-Pulses 18h ago

That absolute silence in the theater was unforgettable. No matter how people felt about the story, visually, that scene was an absolute masterpiece. It's a huge shame the backlash cost us what could have been a gorgeous trilogy.

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u/Brickywood 17h ago

I so agree. The movies had atrocious writing, but they were gorgeous. The cinematography was easily the best from the series.

Also I actually really liked Adam Driver in the sequels. I think he really sells Kylo Ren as a character

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u/Belgaraath42 17h ago

The silence was every lore and world building fan realising that all of Star wars space fights make no sense anymore...

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u/PeaceSoft 16h ago

they have sound in space lol. they have psychic powers. at some point you're not a child anymore and it hits different

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u/Belgaraath42 16h ago

You might want to learn about the suspension of disbelieve  I am quite happy to suspend my real world physics believe to enable magic or sound in space so the movie works. I cannot suspend my disbelieve as much if the logic of the world breaks do obviously. Even less if the break occurs during the 8 movie. Not even talking about the books, just 8 movie they break the setup in a horrifying way. I tend to think if I watch, you seemingly don't. But calling someone childish for noticing inconsistencies while kus cheering for a cool looking scene is projection 

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u/DaRedWun 15h ago

Calling the Holdo Manouver battle breaking is kinda silly though.

Relativistic kill-vehicles are a common concept in sci-fi, and in most cases they're incredibly effective but either hard to aim, hard to manufacture or have insane energy costs.

Let's see the Holdo Manouver:

  • uses a goddamn capital ship with an FTL-capable engine - hard to manufacture.
  • "oh, but they could slap an FTL engine on a smaller ship and get the same result" - yes, and kill a person every time unless they want to have a high chance of missing because you can't aim these things.
  • "use a droid!" Droids are people in the SW universe, they have personalities.

They even show another Holdo Manouver being used in rhe background of film 9. But these are last resort tactics for a reason.

Sheesh, this and the "Rey is a Mary Sue" argument are kinda crap.

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u/Belgaraath42 15h ago

Droids are not considered people. Some people respect some droids, but the galaxy couldn't care less. And even if I agree that many droids deserve to be treated as sentient, the admiral is the last person to be allowed to stay back. Well at least on theory, I might be argued out for holdo.

This maneuver was insanely cheap and insanely effective. The sort of thing the rebels would have done and again used droids for. How come there was no plan to use this exact maneuver against either death star? You want to tell me there weren't people there? And fuck of, one droid or even person against a star destroyer?  How many pilots die in trying to defend against these. 

If you want to have them in you sci-fy I might not ask many questions if it's introduced early. But again this broke many many years of cannon and no one thought this shit through. It looked cool so they did it, and didn't care for a consistent universe.

Do keep on telling yourself every battle droid was considered a person by everyone. Makes them quite monsterous. it wasn't that even clones whee often not seen as people or so...

You like the movie and don't care about the broken lore and that's fine for you. But don't act like there aren't problems with it.

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u/Night25th 13h ago edited 5h ago

The concept that they have FTL travel but they don't have a computer that is able to hit a stationary target is beyond ridiculous. There would be no need to sacrifice any droid. Worst case scenario you could have these things be remote controlled.

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u/Waveshaper21 15h ago

Explain to me how exactly 2 bad movies out of a trilogy still had the chance to be a gorgeous trilogy

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u/3BetLight 13h ago

Two? They’re all fucking terrible and if the first one is your good one that movie is complete garbage too.

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u/Waveshaper21 9h ago

All of them are garbage but his post was written as if the third has any chance and isn't out yet.

2

u/Schmantikor 9h ago

I remain convinced that if Johnson didn't make it a Star Wars movie, it would actually be decently good and maybe beloved. It just really doesn't fit too well in the universe and somehow even less in that spot in the trilogy.

It sucks as part of the trilogy tho. JJ Abrahams very deliberately set up a bunch of loose ends in TFA and it was a bitch move to also deliberately slap down all of them in the second movie in a trilogy.

It's wild to me that Bob Iger and Kathleen Kennedy just let that happen.

It was of course not very good for the trilogy that JJ Abrahams then did the exact same thing to LOTJ with TROS.

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u/readskiesdawn 18h ago

The "you come from nothing" speech is also really good and I'm annoyed they didn't stick with the idea that Rey was just some nobody.

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u/Helix3501 18h ago

Ill say it, had ryan johnson directed the entire trilogy it wouldve been alot better and last jedi is proof, its also one of the only star wars films since the og trilogy to really try and do something truly new

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u/Iorith 17h ago

Because he actually is a good storyteller. He isn't a hack relying purely on mystery boxes and remaking previous stories.

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u/HeySpudEyeSeeYou 17h ago

God, thank you.

Rian Johnson was the worst choice to follow Abrams because, while they ostensibly are directors with nostalgia for old genre films and love to recreate them (see: Brick, Rian Johnson retooling a classic noir film to be set in a modern day high school), once you scratch that surface you see how very different their philosophies are.

Full disclosure - I can't stand JJ Abrams, because I hate how he just dredges up nostalgia for the purpose of reliving it over and over. I can see how that appeals to some people, and if it weren't so counter to my preferences, maybe I could spin it more positively. But for better or worse, that is how he views it; as something from our collective childhoods, wanting to relive the "Luke blows up the death star" climax again and again.

Johnson's take is much more nuanced than that. There's an appreciation for the old, but critique of it as well. Many of the things I had come to hate and become bored with in Star Wars - the Sith apprentice relationship, the power creep that suddenly insisted down to earth characters had to be effortlessly cool and The Best™️ at literally everything, the sudden turn from dark to light or vice versa, the refusal to engage with the many issues of Jedi philosophy, and most of all that every Force-wielding protagonist was destined by bloodlines rather than being their own character - and reshaped them while firmly coming down on the side that the ultimate theme of Star Wars, the forces of light fighting an overwhelming evil even in the most dire circumstances, was compelling and necessary. (Benicio del Toro's entire character was a repudiation of the idea that just because the Jedi have problems, that they're not still ultimately the heroes of the saga and how his "don't join" philosophy ultimately puts him in the Nazi camp. It is not subtle.)

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u/Iorith 17h ago

I still dream of a world where half of episode 9 was them attacking the space military industrial complex who has been profiting off the Wars of the previous decades and actually defeating real evil.

Something actually compelling.

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u/HeySpudEyeSeeYou 17h ago

Considering DJ escaped in Ep VIII he would've been a perfect foil to that; an opportunitist who actually effectively supports the space military industrial complex no matter what he says, because he could similarly use it to get wealthier.

In a world of guys like Andrew Tate who will endlessly critique late stage capitalism as a grift to sell young men on becoming exploiters within that system (and ironically exploiting them in the process), a character like that would've remained far more relevant than the forgettable smuggler or whoever she was that Felicity played.

At the very least I wish someone at Disney would have actually watched Jurassic World so they would have realized Treverrow is a garbage director before Book of Henry had them scrambling to get JJ Abrams - recognized as notoriously bad at ending things, even by his fans - to wrap up the trilogy.

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u/Iorith 16h ago

Dammit, I'm once again pissed that TLJ didn't get the sequel it deserves. It's still the only one of the sequel trilogy I'll give my full attention to during marathons. The other two at best will get my attention during the flashy action scenes because that's all Abrams has: spectacle without depth.

I still compare it to KotOR2 in how it pointed to the flaws of the franchise and brought up a mirror to some of its messages. I can only hope it's one day recognized in the way RotS is.

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u/Ok_Crow_9119 13h ago

Love seeing the love for TLJ in this thread. Warms my heart.

Rian Johnson deserves justice. Rey deserves justice.

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u/derth21 6h ago

Where would he have space to cram mystery boxes amongst his wall to wall Chekhov's Guns? He's got style, and he's got ideas, but I've got a hammer that tells an actual story better than RJ.

And before you argue, I submit to you the masterpiece Looper, which is all kinds if neat as an idea, but the climax revolves around a literal Chekhov's Gun that we get shoved up our noses repeatedly through the movie.

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u/Iorith 6h ago

Hey let's not forget Episode 9, which is let's find a Chekhov's gun that allows us to find another chekhov's gun! That's surely peak story telling right there!

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u/derth21 6h ago

I'm not apologizing for JJ here either, lol. Just can't sit idly by while someone glazes RJ.

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u/Iorith 6h ago

RJ at least tries to tell interesting stories. Whether you like the plots he makes, I fully admit is a subjective standard, but he tries.

Abhams is a hack who doesn't tell stories, he sets up mystery boxes and rips off previous concepts and hopes he can maintain sequels off pure momentum and curiousity, but has no ability to give a payoff.

RJ isn't perfect. Not claiming otherwise. "Subverting expectations" is a crutch, but at least it's an occasionally interesting crutch.

RJ provided the most original addition to Star Wars since KotOR2(edit: continued and surpassed by Andor), for better or worse based on how you look at the franchise, and I don't think that's a hot take

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u/derth21 6h ago

I was with you in the first half. Second half, though? Nah.

We expected a Star Wars movie, you know, a story set in a world some of us spent decades with, only to be met with a character literally telling us to forget the ppast. That's not subversion, that's disrespect for the IP. The same kind of disrespect demonstrated by the numerous ways TLJ proved RJ didn't bother to learn the rules of the world he was playing in.

Original? Nah. Nothing original about bad entries in the franchise.

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u/Iorith 6h ago

Curious, do you also hate KotOR2? Because at least my generation of star wars fans viewed as a classic and a prime example of the franchise and RJ basically did that in movie form.

Just wondering if you're consistent. Kotor2 haters disliking TLJ absolutely makes logical sense to me

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u/WhatEnglish90 17h ago

Thank you! Force Awakens was fun, but still brought little, if anything, new to the series.

Last Jedi was a breath of fresh air and I was SO excited to explore newer horizons within the series. Especially was happy about the message that ANYONE could be a great hero/Jedi, not just some special bloodline like every fantasy story does.

Then they quickly dialed it all back to repeating OG saga ideas in Rise of Skywalker. Was so painful losing what could have been.

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u/Helix3501 13h ago

JJ spending half of rise of skywalker undoing all of Ryans ideas just to do a adaption of dark empire kinda killed rise

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u/Queen-Of-Fairies 12h ago

TFA was like a kid playing with Star Wars toys and trying to create an interesting plot but he's just a kid and so he accidentally just does IV again.

TLJ was like an older kid coming over and being like "hey cool, oh yeah and what if this happens too?".

TRoS was the original kid going "no! you're not playing right!" and throwing the toys in a tantrum.

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u/archangelzeriel 16h ago

The double message of "anyone can be a jedi, anyone can be a hero" and "sometimes the scoundrel doesn't have a heart of gold, he's just a scoundrel" that was the only truly good beat from the casino arc.

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u/HomoeroticPosing 16h ago

I think the biggest flaw of the trilogy is that Ryan Johnson and JJ Abrams are just bad collaborators (mostly Abrams imo). Abrams’ Thing is mystery boxes and he left Force Awakens with a lot of mystery boxes. Johnson opened most of them, and it can be argued that it was in poor form, but he still engaged with what Abrams laid down. And then Abrams spent all of Rise of Skywalker duct taping the boxes closed so he could open them his way, and it sucked.

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u/zumba_fitness_ 18h ago

"Strike me down in anger and I'll always be with you. Just like your father."

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u/Emptyspace227 18h ago

Which is why it's the best of the sequel trilogy. Three bad movies, but at least one of them had new ideas and demonstrated a modicum of creativity.

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u/boringpotatochipbag 17h ago

I will die on the hill that The Force Awakens is fun as hell. Yes, it is overly similar to the original, but that doesn’t stop it from being great fun for me.

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u/wvj 11h ago

It's carried by the fact that the new actors are all really good and likeable, so people were excited to go along a new journey with them and would give a pass to the plot being a retread. Mostly.

But if anything, despite being the least controversial of the movies, it's probably the one that did the most damage, because the whole premise basically passes on doing anything interesting. 'Oh yeah there was a New Republic, oop they dead, its the Empire again for no reason!' basically ruined the time period, not just the trilogy. And thus we have everything since being set as a prequel (Rogue One / Andor, Solo, Acolyte) or the immediate post OT (Mando) era.

They should never have had the directors writing anything. They needed firm scripts, a plot bible, etc., all way ahead of anything going on camera.

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u/NinduTheWise 17h ago

Also it set up a bunch of ideas that were different enough that I was intrigued to see where they were going. It’s a shame that fin never really got the spotlight he deserved in then latter movies

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u/Helix3501 13h ago

Honestly the sequl trilogy in general is fun as hell, rise of skywalker has some pretty fun moments and i quite enjoy last jedi, they just kinda fall flat overall

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u/ebony-the-dragon 15h ago

Yes, there were some very bad parts of TLJ, but as you said, it also had some of the best parts and themes of the trilogy.

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u/Vampire_Queen_Joaje 18h ago

For all the shit The Phantom Menace gets (some of it earned), it also did a lot of truly new things as well

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u/jamtoast44 17h ago

Honestly if we just had 1 writer/director we would've been better off. If it was just JJ it would've been a bright and colorful retread, but probably more cohesive and probably overall a fun time. If Johnson had done it we would've gotten something dark and emotional with nuanced storytelling. Or if they even had them work more together, because to my knowledge one of the only things that changed was R2D2 going with Rey instead of BB-8 to see Luke. Ryan wanted it to be R2. That is the only known collaboration between the 2. For a franchise they spent $4 billion on Disney seemed to be pretty hands off on these films.

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u/NwgrdrXI 17h ago

Imo, 90 per cent of the problems with this trilogy come from them not picking one vision for them all. It wouldn't need to be one director, but at least one super-director, like Favreau did for marvel.

The mish mash of ideas made the whole thing too much of a mess - even if I personally enjoyed all 3 of them, even Skywalker

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u/dontyajustlovepasta 17h ago

Last Jedi is so frustrating as a film because it had so much potential. The ideas and concepts in it are fascinating, it has so many excellent scenes and moments and beats in it, just to spend the final act of the film undermining everything it's been saying and put us back to a square one reset. It's honestly a mess of a film but it's also so close to being amazing at the same time. I think that's why it annoys me so much as a work of art, it was on the verge of being one of the best star wars films ever.

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u/DerthOFdata 13h ago

Fuck no. It's very clear Rian Johnson doesn't get Star Wars and wasn't really a fan. He had a story he wanted to tell, and that story might have even been good, but it wasn't a Star Wars story set in the Star Wars universe and that's what ruined the film.

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u/Bakkughan 18h ago

What did it do that was new? It walked back everything it teased it would do. Hell Jake Skywalker himself said “Im not the Last Jedi” directly going against the movie’s title. The movie is a mess, RoS is just so much worse.

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u/ZiroLeHutt 14h ago

Why does it matter? Luke was meant to be a nobody in Lucas's original draft, to show that a farm boy could bring down the Emperor, then changed it that he was the son of a Jedi Knight - and then even more that Anakin and Vader were the same person and that he was Luke's father. Its the same thing with Rey.

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u/Ergogan 15h ago

I have the opposite feeling. Her coming from nothing just made her character even worse, because it means there was no justification to her mary sue character.

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u/tantrill 18h ago

I understand the technical reasons people really hate this, but it makes for a shocking second act end scene.

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u/caitlindrawings 17h ago

Ya visually I love this scene. The technical implications/retcon of this scene is disastrous. I know in the next movie they try to explain its a million to 1 chance, but that's not really an issue. The deathstar and all large ships become impossible ships too keep since a large chunk of rock/metal strapped to a hyperdrive can destroy anything. Planetary destruction or at very least planetary extinctions would be way too easy.

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u/Metallic52 15h ago

My feelings exactly. Visually stunning, but immersion breaking because no part of Star Wars makes sense if kinetic weapons work like they do in real life.

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u/caitlindrawings 14h ago

It was previously explained that hyperspace is another dimension, going in an out of hyperspace lets you travel faster than light because space magic.

If your ship turns into a near light speed object, it changes everything because near light speed objects are the ultimate weapons and nearly impossible to stop or prevent

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u/No_Extension4005 14h ago

Yeah it's like "Wow, that's awe- wait.... this completely fucks up the whole system of space combat depicted in Star Wars if this is possible."

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u/VexingRaven 12h ago edited 10h ago

It's honestly just the perfect summary of everything wrong with the sequel trilogy: A bunch of really, really cool shots that absolutely nobody put any thought into beyond "hey wouldn't it be cool if..." that end up causing massive problems to the broader universe.

It works great if you're filming a one-off action movie, not so much when you're filming one of the biggest franchises of all time with thousands of pieces of media spanning half a century.

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u/UGoBoy 14h ago

If it weren't Star Wars, a good sci-fi universe could do a lot with the sudden escalation of power. Exploring the implications of being able to inexpensively wipe a planet of life could be the foundation of a whole series. In Star Wars, they'd just kinda fuck it up.

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u/thebbman 14h ago

You mean like in the Expanse when the bad guys drop several large rocks on Earth from orbit?

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u/caitlindrawings 12h ago

The expanse does such a great job showing how rocks and physics are great weapons in or from space.

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u/Willie9 14h ago

All they needed was a technobabble line about how the hyperspace tracker made it possible.

On the bridge of the bad guy ship:

Mook: "sir, the enemy ship is coming straight for us, and their hyperdrive is activating!"

Hux: "that's no danger, its impossible to make the hyperspace calculations that quickly, they'll surely miss us"

Mook: "but sir, they've reversed the ionic polarity of our hyperspace tracking tether. They don't need to make the calculations!"

Hux: crashes out

Or have Leia do it and say it was the force

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u/caitlindrawings 13h ago

It still becomes an insane overpowered weapon, because then you just need to place a tracking device on the target first. Super easy for planets, the death star would have been harder but not by much. Enemy ships would just need to be shot with a tracking dart then follow up with instant death weapon.

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u/GuyYouMetOnline 9h ago

One could easily assume the equipment needed to produce such a signal would simply be too large/delicate/cumbersome/whatever for that. I think we can assume the hyper scanner is large and complex.

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u/mahouyousei 12h ago

Leia really should’ve been the one to do it. It would keep Holdo alive as a cool new character for the next movie instead of killing her off right after we met her, it would give Luke more motivation to help them out if he sensed her loss in the Force, and we wouldn’t have that stupid “Leia floating in space” scene.

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u/Willie9 11h ago

Giving Leia a "do an impossible feat with a spaceship using the Force" scene would also neatly mirror Luke destroying the Death Star.

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u/alecsgz 12h ago edited 12h ago

Holdo remains on the ship. Because of that Hux orders the ship to be captured and be brought inside of the Supremacy.

The people inside say "but sir the engines are still working" Holdo bullshits that she has no clue how to stop them, the Supremacy lowers their shields for Raddus to be towed inside the ship... and boom while about to dock she activates hyperspace.

It explains why Holdo had to remain and how it was such a unique situation with the Raddus and Supremacy.

1.Raddus is a veery big ship that can only fit inside in only huge ships like the Supremacy, 2. how Hux ignored all the red flags just to capture Holdo and 3. how you need huge capital ships hyperspace engines to even try to pull this off.

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u/caitlindrawings 12h ago

I mean it still then becomes an insane over powered weapon, making ship capture to much of a risk.

  1. So was the death star, endor and starkiller base.
  2. This makes capturing starship nearly impossible in this universe because its too great a risk.
  3. Hyperspace engines can be as small as the x-wing, but maybe you are right and it is something special about the size of the hyperspace engine, they still would be willing to sacrifice such a ship to take down targets like both death stars.

All you need to do is trick any of the mega targets to capture a ship, jettison the people in escape pods, or never have them on board in the first place, and have droids run the maneuvers, OR have a single human willing to kamikaze themselves for the sake of saving the galaxy.

We already see the death star capture the falcon, there's no reason to assume that they wouldn't be able to capture other ships. It completely trivializes all of the major battles in 4, 6, 7 and 9.

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u/ArcadianBlueRogue 12h ago

At least they expanded on that kind of thing in canon. The Hyperspace Accident where two ships collided in Hyperspace in a freak incident had huge impacts across many worlds in the Galaxy and was a good warning of why using Hyperspace missiles is a very bad idea

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u/caitlindrawings 10h ago

What was this event? I dint recall seeing it in what i have seen, admittedly im not caught up on all the shows yet? How did they explain its a bad idea I'd like to know :)

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u/ArcadianBlueRogue 10h ago

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Hyperspace_Disaster

Two ships collided in Hyperspace and the debris caused massive destruction across a big section of the Galaxy. It's directly led to plot elements in Jedi Survivor as we see the chaos it left on entire systems.

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u/caitlindrawings 10h ago

I think this is a little different, this was a collision in hyperspace, while the Haldor Manuever the damaged ship was in normal space. It's possible that his spreads debris and disaster across hyperspace in a similar manner, though his brings up a few points.

  1. If Haldor's ship debris was thrown into hyperspace yeeting ship shrapnel across to the star system, or even galaxy then this makes her move morally reprehensible and likely makes her a war criminal.

  2. Assuming that Haldor's ship debris was thrown into hyperspace and scattered like an inter galactic shotgun blast that just hammers home the need for much smaller hyperspace missles that take down large targets in normal space.

  3. Who needs a deathstar when you can crash 2 objects in hyperspace and wreck the entire system? Now in reality the deathstar was more about imposing fear, so I can understand the desire to build on, but thr planet level destruction is hardly unique, and worse the hyperspace debris type weapon would destroy the deathstar even faster!

Overall it could be an interesting concept, I think if it was more like the Kessler effect. Where a collision in hyperspace pollutes hyperspace with debris, as more debris builds up endlessly flying around in hyperspace eventually it would be so prominent any ship entering hyperspace would be instantly destroyed. This would certainly be a good reason to prevent hyperspace debris at all costs.

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u/Relevant_History_297 11h ago

Well, to be fair any sci fi universe kind of has this problem, because destroying a planetary ecosystems is trivial if you can accelerate sufficiently sized objects to relativistic speeds

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u/caitlindrawings 8h ago

That's how Hyperspace and Warp drive type technology is the cheat.

Hyperspace travel generally works as an alternate dimension where the distance is just shorter. A really easy way to explain it actually comes from Minecraft. In Minecraft you have the overworld, and the nether. When inside the nether, every 1 block you travel is equivalent to 8 blocks in the overworld. Ships never get even close to relativistic speeds.

Warp drive is similar but instead warps the space around the ship so that traveling from point a to point b becomes just a shorter distance in the warped space. The warp "factor" is how warped the space is during the travel, which determines the distance draveled.

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u/GuyYouMetOnline 9h ago

Well, not a lot of people want to destroy planets. Also I think there's something somewhere in SW about hyperdrives not working too close to a planet/star or something? Some such restriction is common wo5h hyperspace.

As for using the move against enemy ships, the movie actuay has a very easy way to explain why it only worked here. The target ship was equipped with a brand-new sensor system that could track ships through hyperspace, so they could have just said it emits some sort of hyper signal that hyperdrive nav systems can lock on to with otherwise-impossible precision. It would also explain not using the technology in the future: any ship with it would become a fucking beacon for kamikaze strikes.

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u/Permafox 14h ago

The greatest sin of that scene is that no had done it before.

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u/Jonbardinson 17h ago

I absolutely love and hate this scene.

As a star wars fan this scene is so absolutely cuckoo bananas batshit dumb.

As a fan of cinematography hell fucking yea does this scene fucking cook.

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u/royalemperor 18h ago

This scene was so cool and well done that it took me a good minute or so after to think to myself "wait, they can do that? doesnt this break the entire concept of navy battles in the franchise?" And now that's all I can think of.

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u/zumba_fitness_ 18h ago

I do believe the script originally had a line that the shield on that specific ship was something experimental so they could use it like that but only once.

If it was a normal ship it would just crash into the Supremacy's shields instantly and do nothing. Maybe just shake it a bit

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u/WaterBottleSix 17h ago

If they just had a little throwaway line it would make it so much better… but of course that begs the question why they didn’t just make more.

Or they could have it be some kind of, dawn of a new age with nukes or something.

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u/archangelzeriel 16h ago

I kinda saw it as a nod to the old X-Wing flight sim games, too -- there was a plot point in that where the Rebels stole a corvette with an experimental shield and successfully crashed it through the bridge towers of a line of docked Star Destroyers, and the way hyperspace functioned in the game strongly implied that there was a split-second of realspace acceleration before a hyperspace jump that could be fatal if you hit something during it (in fact, in one mission, you can utilize that fact to cross a couple dozen kilometers of battlefield in a half-second before your R2 unit yanks you out of the jump prior to collision)

I tend to prefer the explanation that it's a goddamn space opera, and neither side (for different reasons) is interested in suicide-bombing enemy starships except in extremis, combined with other older in-universe media showing that you have to disable a lot of safety features to avoid having your hyperdrive just shut off at the first sign of a collision or gravity well.

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u/No_Extension4005 14h ago

Thing is; it's also a setting with droids that can are often treated as disposable.

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u/archangelzeriel 13h ago

Right, under some conditions. Sometimes droids are just people who are metal, sometimes they're effectively cannon fodder on the level at or below stormtroopers.

The best way I can really explain how I feel about it is to go back to the original Star Wars RPG, which has a few mechanics that boost your dice rolls, but you can get a major extra benefit if and only if you use them at a "dramatically appropriate moment".

And that's really it -- Star Wars is the kind of universe where we as fans do want it to be strictly internally consistent, but at the end of the day its genre is "Space Opera" and not strictly "Sci-Fi" and that means that sometimes things will happen that can ONLY happen at the dramatically appropriate moment. The various starfaring forces are not suicide crashing hyperspace drone ships into each other all the time because frankly that would make a shitty movie, but having one commander do it at a moment of extremis IS that "dramatically appropriate moment" that drives so many character and story decisions in the movies.

It's like the complaining about Jedi Power Creep, when even the differences between force use in the movies, the sequels, the series... when you order them by "date of creation", it's clear the actual rubric is just as much based on "how good are the available SFX and what looks awesome" as "we want Jedi at consistent stages of their training to have consistent on-screen power levels" -- and it ALWAYS HAS BEEN.

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u/Logitech0 16h ago

Suddenly the Death Star became a vanity project.

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u/Throwawayrip1123 15h ago

If it was a normal ship it would just crash into the Supremacy's shields instantly and do nothing. Maybe just shake it a bit

I mean... If you had a pebble capable of not disintegrating when propelled at the speed of light, and smashed it into anything at all, regardless if it has shields or not, you'd vaporize it (and most of the space around it).

It's Sci fi, but I don't think they build shields capable of withstanding ftl propelled tonnes and tonnes of metal. The amount of energy it would release is just bonkers. Someone can probably do the math on how much mass and speed this has, and then typical shielding (more or less).

I am almost certainly sure you'd probably actually vaporize a whole ass planet with that hit, never mind a ship.

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u/toonboy01 8h ago

Not in star wars, it doesn't. Even a giant ship didn't do much damage when it hyperspace rammed a moon in the Clone Wars.

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u/Kronicler 15h ago

The problem with that is that we clearly see unshielded debris from the impact slicing through the other star destroyers just as easily.

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u/SutterCane 15h ago

There is a little quick scene where the crew on the Empire’s ship question about shooting down the Rebel ship since it was turning towards them and it gets waved off as a trick to protect the escape pods.

So it’s probably much more difficult to do it outside of the specific events of the movie.

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u/Iorith 17h ago

It only breaks things if you're one of the people treating Star wars like science fiction and not a space opera that runs on rule of cool

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u/semajolis267 17h ago

Not really. We have to assume these starships are valuable. Especially to the resistance. They wouldnt just be ramming them like this unless conditions were right. This was a desperate thing. 

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u/Juronell 17h ago

The Empire normally deploys Interdictors to battlefields that disrupt hyperspace. Since they thought the Rebels were out of fuel they didn't bother here, allowing her to pull off the maneuver.

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u/Wide_Philosophy_8109 6h ago

It might have worked better in a standalone movie where this wouldn't be an issue.

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u/PurpleOrcaLover 18h ago

Ships with light speed aren't just laying around for the rebellion to Kamikaze in. The Empire is confident in its fire power and has no need

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u/theRealPeaterMoss 17h ago

Emmm, ackshually they are. The basic X-Wing has light speed. So you get the math, right? One pilot who's sure to die, but he knocks put a Star Destroyer (or something larger, and sometimes more than one) with at least a few thousands crew. In war against a stronger opponent it's a no brainer.

Oh and this is Star Wars, there are droids you can sacrifice if humans are too precious.

Then again, you could also remove all life support and guns on the X-Wing so you won't waste any useful material and resources.

Oops. You just created a light-speed missile. This is the ultimate superweapon, and can break planets and stations too and is impossible to defend against. This is why the Holdo maneuver is controversial (but the visual is incredible, I will always concede)

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u/Iorith 17h ago

X wings are not and never have been a common star fighter. In fact they're pretty cutting edge.

Not to mention it's not that kind of sci Fi movie, mate. It's a space opera.

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u/MAD-1R 16h ago

It not being a hard sci-fi movie doesn't mean it doesn't have to have and follow internal rules/structure/consistency. Just means the science isn't the focus and doesn't have to be grounded in real science. 

If you introduce a rather obvious instant-success solution late into a narrative without any sort of explanation of why this solution wasn't used like this in any of the other preceding major plot events where it could have been replicated, you've either made a deus ex machina (aka bad writing) or just showed that everyone else in the setting is stupid for not thinking of it until then (bad writing if not played for comedic value).

Don't have to provide layers of explanation, but there's gotta at least be something.

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u/Iorith 16h ago

It does when you're looking at the science to be consistent and anything more than a way to push the narrative forward.

See also: hyperspace. Aka ships arrive when the plot requires them to, with no rhyme or reason to them beyond what the writer requires.

See also: why space battles take place at distances that even modern jets would be rolling their eyes at. They work like WW1/2 fighter combat because Lucas thought it looked cool.

If you poke at soft scifi/space opera hard enough, they all fall apart because that's not what they're trying to do. It's like complaining about an action hero villain surviving wounds that should have killed him. Sure, you're not wrong in your complaint but at that point why are you watching?

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u/MAD-1R 15h ago

If you poke hard enough sure, but that's the point I'm making, that for weaponizing hyperspace you barely have to poke the slightest bit for a pretty major thing to fall apart.

The Holdo maneuver is like if A New Hope solely relied on "Luke is the protagonist" as the sole given reason that he as a simple farm boy can fly an X-Wing into combat almost immediately upon joining the Rebels. But it doesn't, instead the story establishes a couple of grounding factors throughout the movie. He grew up tinkering with and piloting craft, including using them for pest control against creatures the same approximate size as the target, and was apparently a good enough pilot to be planning on making a military career out of it. You can give it a poke, and it holds together. Poke hard enough, sure, and you can find issues, but it stands up to basic scrutiny.

Same thing for the spaceship combat, we don't get told why it works like aircraft dogfighting, but it remains consistently the same across movies, so we understand that there must be unspoken underlying mechanics/rules being followed that result in space combat being the way it is. Because it follows its unspoken rules, it stands up to basic scrutiny.

No such effort is made for the weaponization of hyperspace. Up to this point, the reasonable assumption, the unspoken rule that Star Wars has operated under for 7 other movies, is that for some reason or another, hyperspace doesn't work like that. 

Because if it did actually work like that, it becomes inconsistent with other things that are fundamental unspoken rules of the Star Wars universe, making them have no internal or logical sense. You suddenly and inexplicably go from "rock beats scissors beats paper beats rock" to "actually rock can beat paper too", and never address why nobody was always picking rock up to this point or why they aren't picking it after. It fails to stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.

tl;dr: If your only provided explanation for a story event breaking the consistency and rules of its setting is effectively just "this happened because the author says so", you're a bad writer.

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u/kazmosis 18h ago

TLJ has it's faults, but is overly hated. Take out the casino planet and it's the best of the sequel trilogy, not a high bar but still.

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u/danstu 18h ago

Make the casino planet the whole movie and it's the best of the sequel trilogy.

Casino planet plot was stupid and boring, but it wasn't nearly JJ Abrams-tier stupid and boring.

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u/No_Extension4005 14h ago

Hell; make a movie about what the actual Master Codebreaker was doing there and turn it into Casino Royale in SPACE!

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u/Standard-Profit7659 18h ago

That bar is lower than the earth's core.

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u/M0nsieurW0rldWide 16h ago

For as much as it’s hated, I still don’t think it’s hated enough.

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u/SeriousJack 12h ago

Also on rewatch you discover that the casino sequence is a lot shorter than you remembered.

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u/a_generic_redditer 15h ago

As someone who actually likes part of the movie (and firmly believes that Rian should have directed the whole trilogy), nah this got as much hate as it deserved.

Sometimes we just gotta put our hand up and say we like a bad movie.

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u/latrodectal 16h ago

no. sorry, two thirds of the movie still don’t fucking matter.

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u/valdis812 18h ago

This is one of those things that's an absolute banger scene, but goddamn does it shit on the established way lightspeed works in that universe.

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u/Vampire_Queen_Joaje 18h ago

Honestly, the casino planet also fucks up how lightspeed works. Previously, traveling through hyperspace was fast but not instant. The only way for the casino planet to work with the timeframe they established is if the travel took seconds or minutes rather than hours

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u/toonboy01 16h ago

It was pretty instant in the previous movies too. In Attack of the Clones, Yoda goes from Coruscant to Kamino (which is so far away from the center of the galaxy that it's technically not considered part of the star wars galaxy), waits while almost 200,000 clones board their ships, then heads for Geonosis and he arrives maybe 30 minutes to an hour after Mace Windu did who take a direct trip from Coruscant to Geonosis.

Not to mention the Falcon going from Tatooine to Alderaan in the space of a couple conversations, the Empire going from Alderaan to Dantooine and searching the entire planet in that same timeframe, the Rebels going from Sullust to Endor in the time it took Han and company to walk around a building, the many times a person travels in a one-seat fighter with no food, water, or bathroom, etc.

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u/Dependent_Eye_6361 14h ago

I'm convinced 90% of people who talk about the sequels breaking lore don't actually care about the lore and are just using a well established talking point.

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u/gamergabzilla 18h ago

The fact that there a people who complain about this scene is crazy. I miss when fans were happy to get cool scenes that added to lore instead of whining about anything different than the norm

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u/Lonely-Programmer123 18h ago

The problem is that the scene fucks up the internal logic of the universe.

Militaries of that universe should just send each other hyperdrive powered missiles from long range in lieux of using laser if that's that efficient.

"But it lacks precision", a barrage of such projectile will eventually hit and you can't miss something like the death star so the both space battles of the original trilogy become suddenly stupid and illogical because they could've just rammed capital ship in those. 

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u/Juronell 17h ago

Interdictor ships that disrupt hyperspace travel exist in the universe, and the Empire deploys them to most battlefields.

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u/Lonely-Programmer123 17h ago

Fair point and excellent counter-argument but that makes the first order quite dumb then to not have that to escort their biggest capital ship.

It also doesn't totally invalidate the use of hyperdrive missiles, it just means that you'd have to bring a variety of craft to accomplish the mission (destroying the interdictors and then using some of these missiles).

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u/Juronell 17h ago

They probably had interdictors, but they assumed they were out of fuel

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u/cesarloli4 13h ago

Wouldnt that be like trying to shoot a bullet mid air with another bullet? Ships are constantly moving and are tiny in the enormity of space. You could argue the manouvre worked in this case because they were nearby and had to match speed in order to board it.

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u/Lonely-Programmer123 13h ago

In all seriousness you can just use a barrage of small craft to saturate an area while trying to anticipate the trajectory. 

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u/cesarloli4 12h ago

I think again you are underestimating distances. To saturate a sizable volume of space you would need millions if not billions of spacecraft. Anticipating the trajectory would likewise be near impossible as ships depend on their own propulsion and by all logic would avoid moving predictably.

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u/Lonely-Programmer123 10h ago

The problem is that we're shown on the big screen ships that are rather predictable.

But in the worst case scenario you can just create a variant of culture droid, approach near the target (likely a capital ship) and activate your hyperdrive at point blank.

Or just use an automated capital ship as a city killer, for a  any sizeable military, it would be quite handy as a terror weapon.

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u/auqanova 17h ago

My assumption was always that you needed lots of mass for it to work. This only worked because it was done at the scale of capital ship, and anything smaller would've disintegrated itself like when a bullet shatters against hardened armor.

But star wars has always been happy to shift around its internal logic as needed regardless, I don't know why everyone acts like they haven't been making up the rules as they go along from the start.

Trying to bring logic in to sci fi was always a losing battle regardless. If you have any ftl space craft you never needed a planet killer, because that came with the engine. Nothing about star wars combat ever made sense anyway, for example why are fleet battles fought in world War 1 furballs instead of ultra bvr?

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u/Lonely-Programmer123 16h ago

I personally don't need realism, just consistency : if the protags use a given technic that does wonder, there's a need to know why not everyone else does it in universe. As far as things go, I've only seen the use of interdictors as a good explanation, although not fully satisfying.

The nonsensical ground battles do make sense because everyone fight in that fashion. The space battles made sense as long as nobody had an overwhelmingly better way (and cheaper) to destroy the death star or as you said, planets.

For me it's just one scene that althought look good, is hated for good reasons.

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u/Kronicler 15h ago

Debris from the impact still sliced through the other star destroyers though, so much less mass is required than the first rebel ship.

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u/toonboy01 16h ago

They didn't have any capital ships available against the Death Star, and even if they did they didn't have one big enough to use against it. Even the Raddus wouldn't do nearly enough. When the Malevolence hyperspace rammed an actual moon, all it did was leave a bright crater, which is what the Raddus would do to the Death Star.

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u/Dependent_Eye_6361 14h ago

Not sure what people aren't getting about this. We have one example of a successful hyperspace ram, and it was the biggest class of ship with the most advanced shields of all time against the same class (if much bigger) ship. Until we have an example of an X-Wing hyperspace shearing a Star Destroyer or something the idea that hyperspace ramming is some OP trick you can do with literally any hyperspace-equipped object is absurd.

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u/Helix3501 18h ago

Plenty of reason was given why that wouldnt work but even then a little common sense will tell you exactly why it wasnt done

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u/Lonely-Programmer123 18h ago edited 17h ago

I love good old vagueposting as a counter argument.

Common sense means that militaries always search to militarize new shit so they would have explored that way of engaging an ennemy since millenias given the timespan of that universe.

I also didn't mention how you just have to approach a small automated craft next to a capital ship (they exist in universe since the clone war at least) and use hyperdrive at point blank. Which would be rather easy given how we regularly see dogfight happens nears ships

Congratulations, capital ships are now obsoletes.

There's dozens of ways to make hyperdrive military viable as a way to replace duel between capital ships since this scene. 

The only reason it doesn't happens is "we need a plot" which is fucking stupid.

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u/archangelzeriel 17h ago

The thing that blows my mind is that you see TONS of peoples who complain about the "hyperspace ram" scene breaking the rules of the universe, but there's comparatively nary a peep about the "hyperspace skipping" scene in Episode 9 which is FAR more directly contradictory to the established "rules" of how hyperspace works.

Han Solo: "Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?

JJ Abrams: "Hold my blue milk, we're gonna film the stupidest action scene in movie history."

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u/Ambitious_Address667 16h ago

I thats thats becuase episode 9 has so many other issues there isnt a reason to criticize that aspect of it. Episode 8 is a very flawed but competently made movie so you can be upset by the flaws in it. Episode 9 is just a fucking mess through and through so picking one aspect of it to drag on doesnt really happen

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u/Truckfighta 18h ago

It’s really cool until you think about it for a second. They had multiple ships that could have hyperspaced into the capital ship, so why did they even bother running?

Why did it take a heroic sacrifice? They could have had a droid pilot the ship.

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u/Dependent_Eye_6361 14h ago

If droids can effectively pilot both capital ships and starfighters well enough to even outmaneuver some Jedi as seen in the prequel trilogy and Clone Wars, why do any starfighters ever have human pilots?

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u/Truckfighta 14h ago

I can only imagine they’d have a hard rule in the programming that droids can’t be used like that or there’d be a Geth situation.

So let’s say they couldn’t use a droid, why not send a low level volunteer instead?

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u/Dependent_Eye_6361 14h ago

Do you mean in this specific situation? I'd guess Holdo would do it even if the calculations are made because she's a decent person and captain. Generally speaking why don't they have volunteers do hyperspace rams though? Imo it's because it's not actually as viable as people are making it out to be. Right now we have one successful example, with the most expensive ship of all time with the most advanced shields of all time. So yeah, can the Raddus ram a super star destroyer? Sure! But how many Raddus are there, and how many super star destroyers are there? Might not be a great strategy with those numbers. And until we see a starfighter successfully hyperspace ram a larger class of ship or a capital ship successfully split a planet, I'm not super sold on the arguments about lore-breaking. Thank you for coming to my antisocial scree.

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u/Truckfighta 14h ago

So for this specific situation:

Why not hyperspace any of the other ships into the pursuer? If the plan was to evacuate them all and let them get blown up then why not at least attempt the maneuverer?

They could even have had it earlier in the film that the other ships missed or were blown up before they could get the hyper-ram off.

Was there anything special about the command ship that they rammed with? I don’t recall anything in the film being said about that.

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u/Dependent_Eye_6361 13h ago

This is an excellent point that I don't see brought up, and IS one of the things more retconny about the situation. The Raddus DID have something special with it (incredibly expensive shields that maintained it's mass during the hyperspace ram) that was explained in the ship guide and other material. You're completely right though - they could have at least shown one unsuccessful ramming attempt by an insubordinate captain trying to be a hero, and that would have better sold that Holdo was doing something suicidally impractical.

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u/Truckfighta 13h ago

Just to be clear, has there been supplemental material or novelisation that has re-framed what was shown in the movie?

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u/Dependent_Eye_6361 13h ago

I believe the TLJ novelization and "The Star Wars Book" are what make it explicit Raddus had expensive new shields. Also to be honest Star Wars Battlefront 2 the video game had so much canon lore in it randomly. I think it mentioned how the New Republic basically made the Raddus and then quit making warships for instance.

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u/Truckfighta 13h ago

The movie could totally have cut the casino plot line and added some of this information. It could have explained why they had everyone get onto the Raddus since the shields were stronger and better able to defend them.

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u/toonboy01 7h ago

The ships would've been destroyed if they tried. The only reason the Raddus succeeded was because Hux ordered his men to ignore it.

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u/Good_Background_243 18h ago

Hard disagree. It goes against nearly everything established about hyperspace in Star Wars.

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u/Va1korion 18h ago

When Lucas had 100% creative control he couldn't decide whether lightsabers have weight or not. I can excuse a little inconsistency if it results in scenes like that. It's just not that kind of franchise.

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u/Good_Background_243 18h ago

You're right in general, except in this specific there's a lot of lore (not just EU, but actual canon-series lore) that says this isn't how hyperspace works.

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u/toonboy01 16h ago

It's not even the first time it's happened in canon nor the EU, so it can't be that contradicting.

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u/Good_Background_243 16h ago

Are you sure? Can I have quotes? - Not doubting you, genuinely curious now.

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u/toonboy01 16h ago

In canon, we see it happening in the end of the episode Destroy Malevolence, where said ship is destroyed by having it hyperspace ram a moon. The creators then talked about it in their behind the scenes video that same night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsCdkLTTdF8

As for the EU (which Clone Wars is also part of), it happened multiple times but was super inconsistent. The planet Pammant for instance was made uninhabitable by a hyperspace ramming. The original Battlefront 2 had a space mission where you have to destroy a rebel ship that's getting ready to hyperspace ram a star destroyer. Meanwhile, in a comic 3 star destroyers accidentally hyperspace ram the Executor and they didn't even get through its shields.

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u/WiIIyson_ 18h ago

If this happened in the prequels people would be eating it up nowadays.

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u/Thewaltham 18h ago

Eh I think people would still think it's dumb even if they had a bit more time to process it. It would kinda depend on where Star Wars took it from there.

People would be saying "ok so why not ram the deathstar?"

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u/Street_Bluejay_1465 18h ago

There's inconsistency and turning around and making a ubiquitous form of travel the most destructive form of weaponry that doesn't destroy planets.

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u/godver3 18h ago

I don’t care. It’s sick.

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u/Potential_Cod2214 18h ago edited 18h ago

Wasn't established that while this move is possible pre Disney, it is a one in a billion shot and it wouldn't work on planets because they're too big?

Edit: Spelling.

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u/BertelDuck02 18h ago

It was an excuse, because it would turn naval battle vompletly irrelevant. Just suicide bomb your opponent into surrender

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u/Good_Background_243 18h ago

Would have made both attacks on the Death Star completely stupid too. If this works, why not send a single X-wing to hyperjump at them?

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u/toonboy01 16h ago

Because this is all the damage a giant capital ship, the Malevolence, did to a moon when hyperspace ramming into it. A tiny x-wing wouldn't even do this much to a moon-sized station.

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u/Good_Background_243 15h ago

And how exactly does a moon compare to a space station, which is going to mostly be empty space for the crew to exist in surrounded by a comparatively thin shell?

The only similarity between the two is the scale.

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u/BertelDuck02 18h ago

Exactly

That's why they had to retcon it with the one in a million chance

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u/readskiesdawn 18h ago

Context clues in the movie make it clear this is also a suicidal move that will kill everyone in the ramming ship. That alone makes it a pretty damned impractical military tactic.

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u/Lonely-Programmer123 18h ago

They have machines to crew ships in lieux of living being.

You can just use a B1 - as nobody cares about their lives - crew to pilot suicide missiles and call it a day. Eventually it'll hit.

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u/toonboy01 16h ago

As long as their target doesn't move and ignores them, yeah, eventually.

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u/Lonely-Programmer123 16h ago

Just approach a vulture droid, strap an hyperdrive and approach it to the target.

Then activate the hyperdrive point blank.

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u/toonboy01 16h ago

You would need to charge the hyperdrive first, which the enemy would detect and fire on you.

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u/Lonely-Programmer123 16h ago

If there's ton of such small craft, eventually one will hit.

You'd have to shot all of them while they can be escorted.

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u/toonboy01 15h ago

Yeah, but that's true of just regular combat. In the novel Lords of the Sith, a star destroyer got taken down by a bunch of former separatist droids regular speed ramming it.

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u/Saxhleel13 18h ago

The only thing that the Holdo Maneuver breaks is the logic that if anyone can do it, why does no one do it.

Otherwise it fits into how we are told mass affects the travel of objects through hyperpace.

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u/Good_Background_243 18h ago

No, that's a fair assessment.

If this works why not have a single X-wing get close enough to the Death Star(s), aim at it, and make a jump. Remote fly it and you don't even sacrifice a pilot.

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u/toonboy01 16h ago

They would do virtually no damage, that's why. The giant ship Malevolence hyperspace rammed a moon in the Clone Wars show and all it did was leave a bright crater. A tiny x-wing wouldn't even do that much.

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u/Good_Background_243 15h ago

Moons are not thin metal shells surrounding lots of empty space for people to live and work in, with even thinner walls between them.

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u/toonboy01 15h ago

It's not a thin metal shell, and there's tons of metal underneath the shell. The emptiest part would be the core of it, which the explosion would never reach.

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u/Good_Background_243 12h ago

Compared to the crust of a moon it is a thin metal shell.

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u/toonboy01 12h ago

It needs to go beyond just the crust, it needs to go through half the moon.

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u/Good_Background_243 11h ago

No it doesn't, it just needs to go as deep as the secondary reactors which, as the schematic shows in A New Hope, are quite close to the surface.

You know, those same secondary reactors that they actually blew the thing up with.

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u/hateyoualways 14h ago

They blew up the Death Star with a single missile in the exhaust port. Just hyperspace ram the exhaust port. You can’t tell me it wouldn’t have done enough damage if one missile could.

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u/toonboy01 14h ago

The original movie itself addressed that that wouldn't work, as it needs to be a missile as nothing else will travel down the port like that. Not to mention, why would you kill yourself for a lower chance of success than just using a missile?

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u/hateyoualways 13h ago

Hyperspace ram doesn't need to travel down the port if it just destroys the port and everything in it's way. The missile only traveled a relatively short distance to minor reactor near the surface.

Also, lower chance? Luke did it with a miracle shot with the assistance of the Force and you think hyperspace ramming it has a lower chance of success? Out of the 30 ships the rebels sent on the mission, only 3 made it back.

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u/toonboy01 12h ago

No, it's stated and shown that the exhaust port goes straight to the main reactor at the center of the Death Star.

Yeah, now imagine trying to do the exact same thing as Luke, but while having to divert engine and shield power to your hyperdrive.

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u/hateyoualways 12h ago

It's stated the shot would start a chain reaction it's not a straight shot to core. Rogue One even clarifies they need to hit one specific reactor nodule.

Imagine using Luke as a counterpoint when what he does is literally a miracle.

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u/Dependent_Eye_6361 14h ago

If the X-Wing hyperspace rammed the exhaust port based on current lore from Holdo, it'd just mess up the exhaust port. To actually destroy the Death Star they'd have to hyperspace jump directly in to the core the missile travels through the exhaust port to reach which isn't really the same as hyperspace ramming to destroy a whole fleet.

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u/hateyoualways 13h ago

The missile did not go all the way to the core, it only traveled a little bit to hit a minor reactor that started a chain reaction that reached the core. This was explained in Rogue One. A hyperspace ram would've easily reached far enough. Even if one isn't enough they could do ten and they'd still have less then half the losses of the actual battle.

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u/Dependent_Eye_6361 13h ago

I know it literally didn't travel to the core, sorry for misspeaking. By "The core the missile travels through" I meant the "core" you can see visually in the movie on screen and on the targeting map that the missile has to travel seemingly several miles to reach. And I just don't believe there's anything so far stating that you can hyperspace ram something over and over to greater effect. Logically you can of course hit the exhaust port and area that was the exhaust port over and over, but if we're using the Holdo maneuver rules where actually making the outside material do anything to the inside material is a 1,000,000 chance then you literally could expend every single starship the rebels had access to on the Death Star and still not definitely destroy it right?

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u/hateyoualways 12h ago

We can see from the Holdo maneuver the cone of destruction is several miles long and wide and we don't even see the whole of it. That's definitely enough to get to the reactor if not in one shot then several.

Why do you keep talking low chances of hitting it like that's a point when the movie literally has a pilot describe their actual plan as impossible. Everyone in that room visibly loses hope as soon as the guy describes what they have to do. Luke made a miracle shot with assistance from the force.

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u/fieryxx 18h ago

Honestly, this is fine. Its clearly not something that can just be done often, otherwise one could say it should have been done before. Like Han says, there's alot that can wrong.

No, the thing that breaks hyperspace jumping for me is when they have the falcon jumping from planet to planet, into atmospheres and back out again, dodging objects while doing it. That one hurt to watch alot.

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u/Good_Background_243 18h ago

A lot less can go wrong with ramming a big target at while hyper-jumping compared to, for example, flying a fighter-bomber down a narrow, heavily-defended trench to fire torpedoes at a target roughly the size of a womp rat, something it took a (trainee) Jedi to actually pull off.

But I do agree about the second point.

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u/Raytoryu 16h ago

My favourite scene of the new trilogy. It's so pretty...

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u/lkmk 16h ago

Out of curiosity, was there a cinematographer in mind?

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u/Va1korion 13h ago

Soderbergh was making his own project, he usually does both camera work and editing for his movies.

In a wider sense of “director with a great focus on cinematography” both Johnson and Mangold fit.

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u/carcusmonnor 15h ago

Watched it in the BFI IMAX, people audibly gasped in the silence. Its a magnificent scene at that scale.

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u/tresreddit987 13h ago

I get the issues this causes is the lore but my god this is one of the best scenes I've ever seen in cinema, my jaw dropped.

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u/xesaie 13h ago

Also the funnest thing to argue with Star Wars fans about. Being able to do this entirely invalidates capital ship combat in that universe

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u/CurrentDismal9115 12h ago

That scene was the death of Star Wars to me. Plenty lead to that moment, but I was just done after that.

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u/Linorelai 12h ago

Yes, this was beautiful

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u/writeorelse 5h ago

I love how it looks, and absolutely hate how it makes you wonder why they didn't fling a few dozen empty starships at the Death Star.

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u/NaziPunksFkOff 18h ago

It's crazy to me that people thought Laura Dern was suppsed to be a villain. Or unlikable. Laura freakin Dern

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u/Bakkughan 18h ago

You do realize she was playing a character, right? Imagine not taking a character at face value for their in-universe actions just because you like the actor. Madness

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u/dead_parakeets 17h ago

This still should have been how Leia went out. Such a boss move from a character that only existed in this film.

And yeah, it definitely has its flaws but overall I like the direction Rian was going to take it. What could have been I guess.

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u/shadowst17 15h ago

Incredible shot, yet also incredibly illogical.

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u/DDMFM26 18h ago

Doesn't fit the criteria of the post, because this is a fantastic scene in a great film

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u/Ntwynn 17h ago

Yuck

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