Poll of the Day > Research Finds Half of Last Jedi Hate Aimed at Director Rian Johnson Came From P

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Zeus
10/03/18 1:33:27 AM
#51:


darkknight109 posted...
Poe disobeyed direct orders and his actions got a lot of people killed. In addition, he lost roughly half of the Resistance's already limited starfighters, including its entire contingent of bombers. If Poe had done something like that in real life, he wouldn't have been slapped and demoted, he would have been court-martialled, charged with insubordination and dereliction of duty and, depending on how strict the Resistance's code of military justice was, would be facing either a long time in prison or a summary execution.


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likehelly
10/03/18 1:35:14 AM
#52:


OhhhJa posted...
1975: "I bet we'll have flying cars in the future"

2018: "if you liked TLJ, you're a racist, nazi, sexist bigot!"


Fixed
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darkknight109
10/03/18 1:52:04 AM
#53:


Unbridled9 posted...
Ignoring how stupid them not having forces to spare is... so what? You traded a bunch of crappy bombers which would be useless in a fight and some X-wings... FOR A FUCKING CAPITOL SHIP! It doesn't get much better than that in terms of trades.

Rule #1 of warfare: always understand the terms of victory. You can be slaughtered to a man and still win; you can completely rout the enemy and still lose. It all depends on what you are trying to achieve and what your long term goals are.

The Resistance, being a military force of extremely limited means, simply cannot afford to make the sorts of sacrifices that Poe was making and hope to emerge victorious, especially against a foe as well-equipped as the First Order. The Resistance gets straight-up creamed in a war of attrition, even if they did manage to pull off the kind of "trades" that Poe was doing. It's the very definition of a Pyrrhic Victory.

Yes, Poe took out a big ship... but that's not exactly a crippling blow against the First Order. By contrast, Poe lost about 2/3 of the starfighters in the entire Resistance, including the entirety of their bomber wing. And he very nearly cost them a lot more - when it was destroyed, the Dreadnought was seconds away from firing on the Raddus, the Resistance's flagship and its only large cruiser/carrier (which also happened to be carrying all of its leadership and senior officers at the time). Had the (already damaged) last bomber failed to drop its payload or been taken out by a TIE Fighter before it got in range, the Raddus - which was only still there because it couldn't leave while its starfighters were still in combat - would have been destroyed and a good 3/4 of the Resistance would be dead. If that's not a deathblow, it's pretty close to it.

This is all not touching on the whole "disobeying a direct order" thing, which is probably the more pertinent issue (and Poe even doubles down on it by pretending the resultant demotion didn't happen when he introduces himself to the officer who takes over command)

Also, I ran out of space for a couple things in your last post:

Unbridled9 posted...
Plus let's not forget the stupid 'drop bombs in 0-G' bit

As mentioned above, Star Wars makes a bunch of dumb things with gravity in space (this one, by the way, is justified in lore as having the bombs be "magnetically charged" to "fall" towards their target). The absolute worst one is in Episode III - when the ship Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Palpatine are on in the opening battle tilts towards Coruscant, all the gravity in the ship for some reason tilts with it. This despite the fact that ships are clearly established to have their own gravity generators which ensures that "down" is always relative to the ship itself.

You can't even make the excuse that maybe the generator was destroyed or offline, because the ship was falling into the planet's gravity well, meaning that for people inside they would actually be pulled in the opposite direction because of inertia.

Unbridled9 posted...
Which is why I'm also not going to tell you about my super-secret plans despite having no reason to and doing so both actively hampering the plan and making you suspicious of me!'

Yeah, no reason to do so. After all, look at what Poe did when he DID know all the details to the plan.

Not to mention, Poe himself completely validates this approach when he learns of the new plan and, once again, launches his own instead. Worth noting that Holdo's plan would have been a complete success had Poe not fucked it up by blabbing details of it on an open comm within earshot of a slicer with no particular allegiance to the Resistance.
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Unbridled9
10/03/18 2:36:29 AM
#54:


A single Y-wing did not have the punch to bring down a ship this size.

Neither should a single bomber have had the punch needed; especially when it's payload was what appeared to basically be freaking thermal detonators as opposed to, you know, bombs. The bomber ships were crap vulnerable on their way up to the run, yet had a payload strong enough that one could take down a capitol ship. Had they said it was, say, a corvette I might have let it slide... but a ship of that size? No. Fuck you Johnson. No.

You mean a large, seemingly-invulnerable construct has defence systems designed for large ships rather than starfighters, allowing small, one-man ships to penetrate the outer defences and exploit a vulnerability? And it even has an officer lampshading that by saying something like, for example, "We count 30 rebel ships, but they're so small they're evading our turbolasers?"

PAHAHAHAHA! No. If we were talking the guns meant for ship to ship combat we wouldn't have a problem. Those turrets were anti-fighter ones... that couldn't handle fighters. Rewatch ANH. Notice how the Death Star managed to have turrets that could at least reliably shoot back? There's a reason larger capitol ships have guns like that. Because they're huge targets and if a single fighter could easily harass them just because they couldn't bother with basic anti-fighter defenses they wouldn't last long at all.

Which didn't seem to help in ANH, where Y-wings were getting one-shotted left and right.

The Y-wings in ANH were damaged and not at full power due to the prior battle. However the trilogy and EU make it pretty clear that Y-wings are pretty freaking durable.

You mean like Snowspeeders?

Snowspeeders were garbage craft that had the advantage of having been designed to operate in cold weather. The fact that they had, of all things, a TOWCABLE should clue you in to the fact that they were not designed for combat. Unlike, you know, a bomber.

We see hangar bays open to the hard vacuum of space with things (in this case ships, rather than weapons, but same dif) going in and out of them constantly. Star Wars just kind of assumes there's a magical anti-vacuum shield that keeps all the air in on their ships.

Actually, they don't. Just the opposite. The series have multiple instances of shields failing and the games make the shields blatant multiple times. While they're no longer 'canon' it's a basic attention to detail that could have been resolved with just a bit of CGI or even something like 'Warning: Environmental Shield Failing' alert in the background. Plus, later on, we see things like the characters opening a door leading into space with no problems to let Leia in and the like. Face it. Johnson didn't give a crap. I'm not even complaining that things aren't 100% realistic in a movie with space samurai wizards; just that he couldn't give a crap and only cared about pushing his vision as opposed to making a Star Wars film.

There are literally fewer movies where this doesn't happen in Star Wars than where it does, and most of the cases are even worse than this. In Episode IV Luke takes out an entire moon-sized Battlestation with just one fighter-bomber, and in Episode VII Poe does the exact same thing to its bigger, badder cousin. In Episode I Anakin blows up a pivotal droid control ship almost by accident while flying a ship mostly designed for self-defence, and in Episode V the Empire's huge walking tanks are literally tripped up by what amounts to flying tow-trucks. Episode VI offers us a two-for-one as a single fighter - not even a bomber, but a fighter - takes out the Empire's flagship while yet-another-Death-Star is destroyed by the ever-reliable X-Wing and its smuggling freighter partner.
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Unbridled9
10/03/18 2:38:40 AM
#55:


In Episode IV it's established to be a critical weakpoint that lead down to its reactor that the imperials didn't know about prior. R1 established that it was intentional as well, but even without it it's understandable. In VII Poe also got into a key and critical area. Likewise in I Ani fired off torpedos while INSIDE the ship. V's walkers had a weakness not even the rebels realized initially (and the imperials did learn from; though it's still a mystery as to why they abandoned AT-TE's). In VI, yea, but not only did that make at least some sense the guy was aiming on a precision strike for his kamikaze run. Compare that to bombs landing on the OUTSIDE OF YOUR HULL where things like 'armor' and 'shields' should have been and resulting in your ENTIRE SHIP blowing up and the payload not even being something fancy but a ton of basically grenades and... you have a ship designer who needs to be executed.

In short, it's not that 1 ship took out a capitol ship... it's that 1 ship took out a capitol ship when said ship should have had ample defenses and ways to stop it; especially when the thing is as nimble as a beached whale.

Poe disobeyed direct orders and his actions got a lot of people killed. In addition, he lost roughly half of the Resistance's already limited starfighters, including its entire contingent of bombers. If Poe had done something like that in real life, he wouldn't have been slapped and demoted, he would have been court-martialled, charged with insubordination and dereliction of duty and, depending on how strict the Resistance's code of military justice was, would be facing either a long time in prison or a summary execution.

Bombers like those would have been crap in a real fight (another reason why Y-wings were superior) and that doesn't change that the trade-off was a stellar one. His entire job is also to do exactly what he did. Want to also talk about 'losses'? Leia's actions caused them to lose their best pilot and have him get grounded in the following fight. They had their best pilot unable to help because they got pissy that he made the odds more favorable to them.

....you lost a sizable portion of your force -- apparently those were the LAST bombers they owned -- to take out a ship that the FO had dozens of. As far as "trades" go, it's Pyrrhic victory; hell, it's arguably even worse because they didn't even "win" following that engagement.

They lost a larger percentage of their force in that failed battle.


Pha! You don't know what 'Phyrric' means. A trade like that isn't 'Phyrric' by any means. Especially since those bombers were useless in fighter combat and could only be used for bombing runs (which the rebels had no way of doing). If anything it was 'Phyrric' for the empire since, even though they drove the rebels off-world and got them running, it cost them a capitol ship and multiple TIEs to take down a relatively small amount of fighters and otherwise-useless bombers.

It's a terrible trade when your only remaining bombers -- ships that could have been used in many other attacks with greater impact -- are sacrificed to take out a ship that the FO has plenty of. This wasn't a Death Star run, this was a far smaller win.
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Unbridled9
10/03/18 2:38:57 AM
#56:


Those ships had exactly one use; bombing runs. The reason they all got exploded wasn't because of Poe's actions; it was because someone made the worst possible design choice in making what was basically the equivalent of a flying 'shoot here to explode everything' sign. Had Poe NOT been there, had the odds been even SLIGHTLY less in favor of the rebels (and they weren't in favor at all), and had the bombers been even SLIGHTLY less lucky they would have been completely useless instead of almost completely useless.

There's just no way to justify the film right from it's opening scene. It's just... wrong... on every front.

Rule #1 of warfare: always understand the terms of victory. You can be slaughtered to a man and still win; you can completely rout the enemy and still lose. It all depends on what you are trying to achieve and what your long term goals are.

The Resistance, being a military force of extremely limited means, simply cannot afford to make the sorts of sacrifices that Poe was making and hope to emerge victorious, especially against a foe as well-equipped as the First Order. The Resistance gets straight-up creamed in a war of attrition, even if they did manage to pull off the kind of "trades" that Poe was doing. It's the very definition of a Pyrrhic Victory.


The Resistance 'wins' if they manage to successfully escape. Poe's actions not only delayed the FO by forcing them to fight and defend their ships, but walked away with a kill and a massively favorable K:D ratio. If the Resistance had had one or two more wings of Poe's they probably could have sent the FO packing right there. Even afterwards it wasn't moot since that ship had fighters that would have joined in the battle but were now kind of blown up.

Had the (already damaged) last bomber failed to drop its payload or been taken out by a TIE Fighter before it got in range, the Raddus - which was only still there because it couldn't leave while its starfighters were still in combat - would have been destroyed and a good 3/4 of the Resistance would be dead. If that's not a deathblow, it's pretty close to it.

Which only happened because of the shitty design of those bombers.

The absolute worst one is in Episode III - when the ship Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Palpatine are on in the opening battle tilts towards Coruscant, all the gravity in the ship for some reason tilts with it. This despite the fact that ships are clearly established to have their own gravity generators which ensures that "down" is always relative to the ship itself.

While there are some possible explanations (kinetic force and what-not) it's just one scene and the issue is that this isn't. Johnson repeatedly ignores what space is like in favor of his own narrative (EX: Leia's entire force scene).
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Unbridled9
10/03/18 2:39:44 AM
#57:


Not to mention, Poe himself completely validates this approach when he learns of the new plan and, once again, launches his own instead. Worth noting that Holdo's plan would have been a complete success had Poe not fucked it up by blabbing details of it on an open comm within earshot of a slicer with no particular allegiance to the Resistance.

Holdo's plan was to flee to a planet with the imperials actively firing on them, losing ships in the process, then pray that the imperials don't notice an entire evacuation down to a planet where they'd have no way off-world and PRAY that the FO doesn't have things like 'land forces' in the event that they do. She would have had a much better time sending Hux an advertisement claiming he'd won the Hutt Lotto and just needed to submit the banking info for the entire FO to claim it since that wouldn't have cost her large ships (including their capitol ship) while hoping that the imperials lack things like 'scanners' or 'eyes'. But Holdo's ass of a plan, and terribleness in general, isn't my focus. It's that, from the getgo, the film is just a black hole of narrative storytelling that exists purely because Johnson wanted to make his Johnson feel good.

Why are you even bothering to defend the film? Rewatch it for christ's sake! Nothing about it makes sense and is just terrible throughout.
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Mead
10/03/18 2:42:09 AM
#58:


The people in the space movie made decisions that I dont like!
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Zeus
10/03/18 2:57:33 AM
#59:


Unbridled9 posted...
Pha! You don't know what 'Phyrric' means. A trade like that isn't 'Phyrric' by any means. Especially since those bombers were useless in fighter combat and could only be used for bombing runs (which the rebels had no way of doing). If anything it was 'Phyrric' for the empire since, even though they drove the rebels off-world and got them running, it cost them a capitol ship and multiple TIEs to take down a relatively small amount of fighters and otherwise-useless bombers.


If you think losing the bulk of your fleet in a single battle for a token win isn't a Phyrric Victory, it's you who needs to learn what the term means.

And the FO losing one dreadnought to almost take out the entire remainder resistance? That's a fucking bargain. If they lost half their dreadnoughts in the process of taking out the resistance, it wouldn't matter because they'd no longer be at war and therefore would have a diminished need for the dreadnoughts.

Unbridled9 posted...
Those ships had exactly one use; bombing runs. The reason they all got exploded wasn't because of Poe's actions; it was because someone made the worst possible design choice in making what was basically the equivalent of a flying 'shoot here to explode everything' sign.


Uh, it WAS because of Poe's actions. Those bombers clearly weren't designed for that kind of combat. They clearly aren't made for dog fighting.

Unbridled9 posted...
Had Poe NOT been there, had the odds been even SLIGHTLY less in favor of the rebels (and they weren't in favor at all), and had the bombers been even SLIGHTLY less lucky they would have been completely useless instead of almost completely useless.


Had Poe NOT been there, they would have jumped sooner and avoided a bloodbath.

Unbridled9 posted...
The Resistance 'wins' if they manage to successfully escape. Poe's actions not only delayed the FO by forcing them to fight and defend their ships, but walked away with a kill and a massively favorable K:D ratio. If the Resistance had had one or two more wings of Poe's they probably could have sent the FO packing right there. Even afterwards it wasn't moot since that ship had fighters that would have joined in the battle but were now kind of blown up.


When your force is in the tens and theirs in the hundreds of thousands, a favorable K:D is a moot point because you're going to lose on attrition every single fucking time.

Mead posted...
The people in the space movie made decisions that I dont like!


Hush, Mead, the grown-ups are talking. Go play with your puppies.
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MICHALCOLE
10/03/18 3:13:22 AM
#60:


NNNNNNNEEEEEERRRRRRrRRRRRRRDDDDDDDSSSSSSSSS
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Mead
10/03/18 3:13:46 AM
#61:


Hush, Mead, the grown-ups are talking. Go play with your puppies.


Theyre sleeping
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#62
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darkknight109
10/03/18 3:41:44 AM
#63:


Unbridled9 posted...
Neither should a single bomber have had the punch needed; especially when it's payload was what appeared to basically be freaking thermal detonators as opposed to, you know, bombs.

Already pointed out that Star Wars has a long and storied history of small ships taking out really big ones. You can argue whether or not that's logical, but

Also, thermal detonators (even the handheld ones in RotJ, as opposed to the large bomb-sized ones we see in TLJ) are ordnance - there's a reason why C-3PO is terrified of the one Leia brings to Jabba and that's because it has enough power to flatten the entire palace. Even as far back as the 90s these things were in Star Wars stories as ship-based bombs that had an enormous payload.

Unbridled9 posted...
If we were talking the guns meant for ship to ship combat we wouldn't have a problem. Those turrets were anti-fighter ones... that couldn't handle fighters. Rewatch ANH. Notice how the Death Star managed to have turrets that could at least reliably shoot back? There's a reason larger capitol ships have guns like that. Because they're huge targets and if a single fighter could easily harass them just because they couldn't bother with basic anti-fighter defenses they wouldn't last long at all.

First off, no, those turrets weren't anti-fighter and were never specified as such. That's exactly why Canady is saying that they need to scramble fighters, because that's the main anti-fighter defence (that and the ship apparently has armour that is too tough for most starfighters to breach).

As for the Death Star and its guns, no, those turrets could not reliably shoot back. That was the entire point and the reason why they were using starfighters in the first place. Turbolasers, in Star Wars lore, are for ship-to-ship combat, not point defence; they turn too slowly to reliably handle starfighters (and unless I am forgetting something, not a single rebel fighter dies to turbolaser fire in the Battle of Yavin; all were taken out by Vader and the fighters).

And that quip about why starships have anti-starfighter guns? You just spelled out the Rebellion's exact tactics against the Empire. They discovered that while they were significantly outgunned in ship-to-ship engagements, their starfighters were far superior than the Empire's and their best method of attack was using starfighters to engage things like Star Destroyers, which had limited means of countering them (which is exactly why the Empire would eventually develop things like lancer frigates as a hard counter).

Unbridled9 posted...
The Y-wings in ANH were damaged and not at full power due to the prior battle. However the trilogy and EU make it pretty clear that Y-wings are pretty freaking durable.

What prior battle? The ships were all fresh for Yavin. The Y-wings being durable was an EU convention; if you want to stick with that, fine, but in the EU the Resistance bombers are even hardier, so that's not really a point in your favour.

Unbridled9 posted...
Snowspeeders were garbage craft that had the advantage of having been designed to operate in cold weather. The fact that they had, of all things, a TOWCABLE should clue you in to the fact that they were not designed for combat. Unlike, you know, a bomber.

The point is, the rebels had ships that were designed to have multiple crew (and if you're factoring in the EU, Y-wings and B-wings usually had one pilot and one gunner, along with a slew of lesser-known starfighters on both sides).

Hell, why is having multiple crew-members a disadvantage? I'm not even sure what you're complaining about with this.
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darkknight109
10/03/18 3:41:54 AM
#64:


Unbridled9 posted...
Actually, they don't. Just the opposite.

Bullshit they don't. When the Millenium Falcon is pulled into the Death Star or a shuttle lands on the second Death Star, there are enormous bays that seem to open out into space (again, previous lore basically says that all ships have a protective shield keeping the atmosphere in, which the bombers would presumably have had too). Or, if you want the least defensible of the bunch, how about when Han and Leia walk out into what they believe to be an asteroid cave with nothing to protect them other than a gas mask?

Again, this isn't a "TLJ" thing so much as it is a "Star Wars" thing. Don't think about it too hard.

Unbridled9 posted...
Bombers like those would have been crap in a real fight

They seemed to do just fine in the first one, in spite of significant odds against them.

Unbridled9 posted...
Want to also talk about 'losses'? Leia's actions caused them to lose their best pilot and have him get grounded in the following fight. They had their best pilot unable to help because they got pissy that he made the odds more favorable to them.

Fucking what? Did you even watch the movie? Leia's actions did jack shit to Poe; Poe wasn't flying in the next fight because in the time he (and every other Resistance pilot) were running to get to their ships, Kylo Ren shot a missile directly into the hangar bay and obliterated the lot of them. If anything, Leia saved Poe's life because the brief delay from him running from the bridge meant he was on the outskirts of the hangar and was blasted away from it, rather than in the middle of it where he would have been killed.

Unbridled9 posted...
Pha! You don't know what 'Phyrric' means.

Says the guy who proceeds to post the exact opposite of a "Pyrrhic victory", while misspelling it in the process.

A Pyrrhic victory is one where you achieve victory in a nominal sense, but at a cost so significant to your cause that you are ill-positioned to deal with future engagements. The first battle is a great example for the Resistance - yes, they took out the Dreadnought while sacrificing comparatively few ships in return... but those ships were far, far more valuable and difficult to replace for them than the Dreadnought was for the First Order. Even without the Dreadnought, the battle group that the FO had available was more than enough to obliterate the Resistance's entire fleet, but now the Resistance has no bombers and a third of their fighters are gone, leaving them with limited abilities to counter an FO bomber-rush had they chosen to use one.
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darkknight109
10/03/18 3:43:06 AM
#65:


Unbridled9 posted...
The reason they all got exploded wasn't because of Poe's actions

Dude, the only reason they were there at all was because Poe told them to be. That's why they were subsequently blown up - no other reason.

Unbridled9 posted...
The Resistance 'wins' if they manage to successfully escape. Poe's actions not only delayed the FO by forcing them to fight and defend their ships, but walked away with a kill and a massively favorable K:D ratio.

You managed to post an accurate first sentence, then completely took it apart with your second.

Yeah, the Resistance's job was to escape. Not blow up the FO - escape, with as many of their ships intact as possible. Poe delayed the FO, yes... and also delayed his own ships by the same amount, because they could not flee while the fighters were still launched. The K/D ratio is completely immaterial because K/D is unimportant when you are in a controlled retreat and facing a massively numerically superior foe.

This is exactly what I mean when I say "Understand the terms of victory". You're looking at a tactical retreat and treating it as though it were a pitched battle.

Unbridled9 posted...
Johnson repeatedly ignores what space is like in favor of his own narrative

I think you mean "Star Wars repeatedly ignores what space is like in favour of its own narrative". This is an issue that long predates Johnson and I have full confidence it will continue to exist long after he leaves the franchise.

Unbridled9 posted...
Holdo's plan was to flee to a planet with the imperials actively firing on them, losing ships in the process, then pray that the imperials don't notice an entire evacuation down to a planet where they'd have no way off-world and PRAY that the FO doesn't have things like 'land forces' in the event that they do.

And guess what? The plan worked. The Resistance was halfway through their evacuation and the First Order had completely missed them fleeing until DJ spilled the beans. Again, had Poe not been a fucking idiot, the Resistance likely would have made it planetside unmolested and with the entirety of their personnel intact.

Unbridled9 posted...
Why are you even bothering to defend the film? Rewatch it for christ's sake! Nothing about it makes sense and is just terrible throughout.

Because these sorts of complaints are stupid and not well thought-out.
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Unbridled9
10/03/18 4:25:36 AM
#66:


*groan* Okay... Let's try this another way. Let me ask you this. Why did these things happen? Why did Poe's action cost the Resistance (why are they even called that?) such a large portion of their fleet? Beforehand the... you know what? Screw it. Beforehand the New Republic (because that's what they should have been!) was the dominate force in the galaxy. They didn't just control a small portion of it but they successfully drove off the Imperials to the point of putting them in full retreat. Yes, the FO destroyed their capitol, but if someone nuked D.C. tomorrow America wouldn't suddenly cease to exist with its entire military force mysteriously vanishing overnight. So, why did these things happen? Why was the New Republic down to so few fighters when they should have had ample amounts since you would need much more to do even basic stuff across the galaxy? Why did Poe call Hux for a lame pun? Why did the imperials not notice the advancing Republic? Why did the Republic use beached whales that have no use outside of being giant targets for pretty explosions? Why did an entire capitol ship go down to a single bombing run that wasn't even on a vulnerable spot? If you can come up with any reason that's NOT 'Because Johnson wanted to do it' then you're lying to yourself. Because there is no reason why these things should have happened beyond Johnson wanting them to happen.

If you don't mind, there's a lot to chew through and I'm already exhausted as fuck, so I'm going to pick the stuff I've got the most immediate answers to and get the rest after bed.

What prior battle? The ships were all fresh for Yavin. The Y-wings being durable was an EU convention; if you want to stick with that, fine, but in the EU the Resistance bombers are even hardier, so that's not really a point in your favour.

Rogue 1 ended with the Rebels in a massive battle and only a small portion escaping. It leads right into Episode IV as well (like, almost literally 5 minutes before IV starts, possibly less). But okay. Let's play EU vs. movies. You claim the Resistance bombers were hardier? Then they didn't carry that over in the slightest since those bombers went down super easy. The movies showed they had no agility either. The only thing in their 'favor' was their payload. Now, you can say that the movies show Y-wings as being no better than X-wings (and what happened to A-wings?) but ANH was the first movie in the franchise. We can be a bit forgiving that Lucas hadn't worked out the relationship between the fighters. However, even were we to wipe that forgiveness away, the fact is that the Y-wing was shown to be much more capable and mobile, having actual weapons, and could be used in multiple roles. In movie vs. movie they're more capable due to being able to do things like 'dodge' while their rival is just a easy kill. In the EU the Y-wing is a very capable bomber with multiple roles that it can fill even if it's primary is bomber while the dumb-wings role is... 'glowing target that you'll need to shoot and has no dodging capabilities'. What do these dumb-wings do, that isn't Johnson wanking his johnson for slow bombing runs, that a Y-wing couldn't?
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Unbridled9
10/03/18 4:25:46 AM
#67:


Hell, why is having multiple crew-members a disadvantage? I'm not even sure what you're complaining about with this.

It's not an issue so long as there is a reason for it. A Y-wing can be crewed by one person easy. A Snowspeeder is basically a Snow tow-truck and was not designed with combat as its primary function. Something like an AT-ST is designed with the notion of a dedicated pilot and gunner in mind. However an AT-ST can still be piloted by one person, a Snowspeeder isn't suddenly useless because it has only one person, and you can still pilot an AT-ST and at least have an AT-AT function as a transport with one person. Dumb-wings need two people. A pilot and someone to handle the bombings. That's why Rose's sister had to do what she did; because her bomber died. This could have been handled via computer, droid, or something else. Instead they had to waste a second pilot, a person who could have been driving another X-wing, just so that a dumb-wing can do its ONLY purpose.

Bullshit they don't. When the Millenium Falcon is pulled into the Death Star or a shuttle lands on the second Death Star, there are enormous bays that seem to open out into space (again, previous lore basically says that all ships have a protective shield keeping the atmosphere in, which the bombers would presumably have had too). Or, if you want the least defensible of the bunch, how about when Han and Leia walk out into what they believe to be an asteroid cave with nothing to protect them other than a gas mask?

Those bays have been long-established to have forcefields for that sort of thing. As for Han and Leia, in theory the innards of the beast provided enough protection in order to keep them from getting spaced. Though the real question should not be 'how did they survive' but 'how did they not notice that they had basically become a space-suppository'. I mean, if you told me they were in the things colon I could believe it. If you told me that they got into the colon without noticing... That's the hard part.

As for the Death Star and its guns, no, those turrets could not reliably shoot back. That was the entire point and the reason why they were using starfighters in the first place.

They were using them because they had no other ships. It was basically 'deploy the fighters and pray to god for the mother of all hail marys' or 'take a drink and finally tell Akbar that your love for him was not a trap before being blow to bits'.

I'll get the rest after sleep.
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TaKun782
10/03/18 5:53:30 AM
#68:


The only good movie I ever liked of his was Looper.
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darkknight109
10/03/18 6:09:07 AM
#69:


Unbridled9 posted...
the Resistance (why are they even called that?)

Because the Resistance and the New Republic are two separate entities.

I am not fully up to speed on the new lore, but to the best of my knowledge after the Empire was pushed to the fringes of the galaxy, the Rebellion took control and formed the New Republic. At that point, most of the next 30 years was spent rebuilding a galaxy that had been rocked by the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War.

Meanwhile, the remnants of the Empire reformed under Snoke and became the First Order. Using resources from largely untapped worlds that they had discovered during their retreat, they began to rebuild and bolster their forces. When word got out that the Empire was arming themselves again, two factions emerged within the New Republic. One sought a sort of detente with the First Order, a "If you don't bother us we won't bother you" kind of uneasy peace; the other, believing that the First Order could not be allowed to continue to amass power and potentially pose a threat to the peace that had been hard won during the GCW, basically broke away from the edicts of the New Republic and formed an armed Resistance (hence the name) to fight the First Order. They are, in essence, allied with but separate and distinct from the New Republic.

All of this, by the way, was set during TFA; Rian Johnson had nothing to do with it.

Unbridled9 posted...
Yes, the FO destroyed their capitol, but if someone nuked D.C. tomorrow America wouldn't suddenly cease to exist with its entire military force mysteriously vanishing overnight.

That's pretty much exactly the plot of TLJ. The New Republic is currently reeling after the events of TFA, including the destruction of their capital; they have no central authority anymore and the FO is advancing to try and subjugated the galaxy. The entire reason why Leia and the others are so desperate to get the word out is because they want to rally the various disparate groups and say "Hey, we're fighting back, please join us and lend us your military support!"

The Resistance is small and has relatively few resources; the various factions comprising the New Republic are much better armed, which is why the Resistance is trying to get in contact with them so that they can put together a force that's actually capable of taking on the First Order.

BTW, a "capitol" is a building; "capital" is the word you're after.

Unbridled9 posted...
Why did Poe call Hux for a lame pun?

OK, I'm not going to try and defend that. Remember when I said TLJ had some missteps? This was one of the biggest.

I found that the first half of the movie stumbled, but the second half made up for it.

Unbridled9 posted...
Why did the Republic use beached whales that have no use outside of being giant targets for pretty explosions?

Because those were the only ships that had enough punch to actually bring down something the size of a Dreadnought?

See aforementioned comment about Y-Wings being too weak for the job. Not to mention, Y-wings were already considered outdated during the events of the original trilogy; flying them by the time of TLJ would be like trying to deploy a Spitfire in combat today.
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darkknight109
10/03/18 6:09:19 AM
#70:


Unbridled9 posted...
Those bays have been long-established to have forcefields for that sort of thing.

Exactly - so why wouldn't the bombers have the exact same thing?

Unbridled9 posted...
Rogue 1 ended with the Rebels in a massive battle and only a small portion escaping. It leads right into Episode IV as well (like, almost literally 5 minutes before IV starts, possibly less).

And? The Battle of Yavin is at the end of that movie. In between, Artoo and Threepio crash on Tatooine, a day passes before they wind up in Luke's hands, another day passes before everyone meets Obi-Wan, then they spend an indeterminate amount of time in space heading to the Death Star, then on to Yavin, then some more time passes while the Death Star plans are analysed and everyone's briefed on the weakness.

At bare minimum we're talking three days between the end of Rogue One and the Battle of Yavin. That's more than enough time for the Y-wings to be refueled and prepped for combat.

Unbridled9 posted...
Now, you can say that the movies show Y-wings as being no better than X-wings (and what happened to A-wings?) but ANH was the first movie in the franchise. We can be a bit forgiving that Lucas hadn't worked out the relationship between the fighters.

I'd buy this, except Lucas never *does* work out the relationship between any fighters in his movies - they all perform pretty much the same (aside from the fact that TIE Bombers can drop bombs). It was entirely the EU that came up with the Y-wing + B-wing = slow but tough bomber, X-wing = jack of all trades fighter-bomber, A-wing = fast but fragile interceptor.

Unbridled9 posted...
In the EU the Y-wing is a very capable bomber with multiple roles that it can fill even if it's primary is bomber while the dumb-wings role is... 'glowing target that you'll need to shoot and has no dodging capabilities'. What do these dumb-wings do, that isn't Johnson wanking his johnson for slow bombing runs, that a Y-wing couldn't?

Blow up a Dreadnought. I've been saying that for a while now.

The Y-wing was a fraction of the size of the Resistance Bomber; it could not carry enough ordinance to have a hit like that. Does the Resistance Bomber give up manoeuvrability and speed as a tradeoff? Yes - that's why it needs a fighter escort and isn't expected to fight on its own. It is more focused in its role than the Y-wing, but it has far greater yield in return.

And for all your calling these ships badly designed, they pretty closely mirror how bombers operated in WW2 (which is where Star Wars dogfighting draws nearly all of its inspiration). The Boeing "Fortress" line of bombers (on which the Resistance "Starfortress" Bomber is based) had a reputation in WW2 for being slow, but tough - very vulnerable to enemy fighters, but capable of sustaining significant punishment and still completing their missions.

Also, as previously mentioned, even in the EU the Y-wing was known for being an outdated pig; it was being used by the rebels because they were desperate, not because it was effective (they were swiftly replaced by the B-wings and K-wings when those went into service).
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darkknight109
10/03/18 6:10:41 AM
#71:


Unbridled9 posted...
It's not an issue so long as there is a reason for it.

And there is - keep in mind the Resistance Bombers were not really true starfighters simply by dint of their size; they were more like small freighters. As such, they had more functions and more crew to man them (a pilot, two gunners to man the point-defence guns, an engineer, and a bombardier to oversee the bomb drop). Yes, you can fly with a smaller crew at the cost of functions, same as anything else (the Y-wing, for instance, couldn't use its turret without the second person serving as a gunner).

Unbridled9 posted...
They were using them because they had no other ships.

You just brought up Rogue One, where a good chunk of their fleet managed to flee to hyperspace before the Devastator showed up to ruin the party.

They absolutely had more ships than that (what do you think they evacuated to Hoth in?), but those ships were useless for that assault, as General Dodonna himself references in the briefing to attack the Death Star when he points out its defences were designed around a large-scale assault, not starfighters.
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