Star Trek vs. Star Wars (and a collection of memes)

Says who? Star Wars almost never did that, and they are highly inconsistent about what someone or something can or cannot do. Par for the course. Rule of cool wins and that was a very cool scene. It breaks nothing at all.

 

People are overreacting, as always. That's why.
If you apply the same scrutiny to the old Star Wars movies they contain a lot of bad stuff but nobody cares.

The Force and the Death Star are great examples because it is not explained what exactly they can or cannot do within the movie. And that's OK since it is part of the mystery. The audience in the OT has no clue at all what Vader, the Emperor, Obi-Wan or Luke can do either. It is part of the mystery.

The Death Star is clearly able of interstellar travel and it can shoot planets. Why doesn't it shoot the moon's planet? Why doesn't it just fly around it but instead waits for the moon to come over the horizon? Never explained.

In the PT the Gungans have a vessel that can travel through a planet's core and withstand the pressure. That means that they are able to build vessels that withstand basically everything.

But wait... The planet's core is filled with water.
That alone breaks _everything_. Physics is bonkers in Star Wars and Star Wars is chock full of stuff that is never explained in the movies.

And as a fellow Star Wars fan you surely know the movies well enough to spot dozens of such things. I certainly can, and have filled whole evenings talking and joking with my friends about those things, years before the new movies. That is entirely possible while still enjoying Star Wars.

 

My dad said it the Force was great for stories because it's magic and it's vague. It can easily solve some situations and be unable to solve others as the story dictates. The Force is both a good storytelling tool and a weak one at the same time.

For all I know. George Lucas didn't think about why the Death Star didn't just destroy Yavin as opposed to flying around the moon to destroy the moon on Yavin 4.

The Death Star RPG sourcebook did answer that question. Two reasons actually.

1) It takes roughly a week to charge up the OG Death Star's planet destroying laser. That's why the second Deathstar had two setting, planet destroying (still takes about a week) and capital ship destroying (which takes about fifteen minutes).

2) The gas giant Yavin is bigger and more resilient than the moon of Yavin 4. The Death Star would have to hit a gas giant several times to destroy it. Hitting the gas giant with the giant laser might at best cause a weather disruption on Yavin 4.

Among other problems, Tarkin really liked shock and awe tactics. The Death Star has a fleet of support ships on it with roughly the firepower of two or three Star Destroyers, but Tarkin wanted to show off the super weapon. The only ships that were launched was Darth Vader's personal squadron.

Though later, X-Wing my favorite Star Wars computer game retconned a mission where you have to fly to the Death Star ahead of the main attack force to take out the TIE fighter launching bays closest to the exhaust port trench and a preceding mission where you knock out their communications array so they cannot coordinate their supporting fleet with the Death Star.

That said, it's a failure if you need the expanded universe to make something good. That's a big problem with Phasma. The Disney handlers were trying to recreate Boba Fett's popularity only female. They false assumed Boba Fett was popular because his armor looked cool. That's all Phasma had.

Boba Fett was popular because of this clip.



It demonstrates that Vader worked with Boba Fett before. Boba Fett made a mistake in the past and Vader still respects him enough to work with Boba Fett again as opposed to choking him to death. That creates bad ass credentials. Phasma debuted butchering unarmed people than was dumped in a garbage shoot. She had no bad ass credentials. Expanded universe tie-in novels gave Phasma a badass backstory but if you need a tie-in novel to fill in a plot hole in the movie that is a failure on the movie's part.

Along similar lines, Boba Fett's ignominious death was probably my biggest gripe with Return of the Jedi.

Anyway, building Death Star's is harder than it looks.

Agreed that was really really dumb. Not only because of physics. It was purely unnecessary. Let's assume Naboo is geological anomally where water pressure doesn't obey Earth physics. Okay fine.

Why did the Federation invasion fleet land all their ships on the opposite side of the planet as the capitol? The story would have worked just fine if they said something like "It's five hundred miles to the capitol, we need to get there before it's too late!" They didn't have to cross the diameter of the planet.

I can only assume Naboo also has trace amounts of gas that cause brain damage and hormonal imbalances to humans. That is the only explanation for Anakin's romantic dialogue wooing Padme.

Unlike the Holdo maneuver. "Naboo is a messed up planet that makes no sense." That doesn't invalidate every space battle or every ground battle. Just because Naboo breaks reality doesn't mean that Tatoonine and Geonosis have to break reality. The Holdo maneuver breaks every space battle and it was badly delivered.

Admiral Holdo had no reason to not tell her senior staff what her plan was. By keeping her big play secret from the people carrying out her plan she provoked a muntiny. She was also generally an unlikeable character and she replaced Admiral Ackbar, a beloved character. That didn't help.

 

No. I didn't say everyone is overreacting. Most people don't even care. A small but very loud minority is making this the end of the world.

Yes.

I like @Scalenex as much as anyone here, but that doesn't mean he is always right, just like any of us. You are doing an argumentum ab auctoritate there.

No. See above. It is very different.

No you didn't list all of them, and yes it is the same thing. That's why I included a few more of the points.

We don't know. And we don't need to know. We just know it isn't that easy, otherwise we would have seen it more often.

I know you made a joke there, but I see it as provoking and insulting. Pure argumentum ad hominem.

It is auto-win because pressure and temperature is _everything_ in physics.
If a planet can be like that, then it means that all of physics as we know it is not applied. I chose this example because it would literally break the universe, in contrast to the silly Holdo maneuver which doesn't.

It doesn't. We don't know. That was the point you made. You claimed that if something is powerful but not explained in the movie then it breaks it. And that's just not true.

Oh, I thought this was obvious by now. But OK, why not.
I would use whatever is preventing that from being done on a regular basis. Can't be that hard, because the pure fact that the Holdo maneuver isn't carried out or even attempted all over the known Star Wars history tells us that it cannot be that easy.

Agree. For the reasons @NIGHTBRINGER mentioned. Magic (like everything else) needs defined limits. Only then breaking them means something in the story.

Exactly. And he didn't need to. Everyone knew it was just a way to tell the story and build up suspense.
No need to over-analyze it. And that's exactly my point. You don't need to explain everything.
@NIGHTBRINGER said that

and that's just not true. You don't have to. Sometimes it is advantageous to not do it. And George Lucas did exactly that.

About the Death Star in General:
That's all well and good, I know that book and I like it.
The book was printed in 1993 though, which is around 15 years after the movie. And that contradicts Nightbringer's point that you have to explain limitations of powerful things within the movie. You don't have to. We all think some stuff in Star Wars is perfectly fine because it is _old_. Basic human behaviour.

About Naboo: Yes I think it does, see above. Naboo has a wide range of consequences for the universe. If something breaks physics in one place, it breaks physics everywhere. And you need to break several fundamental rules of physics to build Naboo.

If you can have something as powerful as the Bongo (much more resistant to temperature and pressure than anything else in the universe, definitely more than Star Wars space ships) then, according to @NIGHTBRINGER you have to explain in the movie what its limitations are.
...
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........or maybe you don't! It is a silly Fantasy movie in Sci-Fi packaging! It doesn't make sense to begin with, starting with basic physics. Transformers movies are more believable (Ok, they aren't. They are as bad). So all the theorizing about the Holdo maneuver is completely pointless.
I chose Naboo and the Bongo as an example to show how bonkers Star Wars is. The Holdo maneuver is kinda dumb but it isn't half as universe breaking as other stuff.


I think the maneuver itself was well delivered. It looked awesome and it was reasonably surprising. I however agree with the rest of your statement, below.

That one is gold.

Yep. That was Captain Kirk level dumb. Certainly not a way to command a space ship.

 

You got me wrong there. I meant that saying such a thing, even with a smiling emote is an insult, and informed you about it.
I am not offended, and I am not passionate about it since I know that you didn't mean it that way, we have discussed enough in the past for me to know your style. You are right in thinking that would he an overreaction.
I am merely telling you that if you want to be taken seriously you should maybe stop with such things. That's what kills discussions.

Not the same. You and I have no clue how many people say that the Holdo maneuver (the topic of this discussion) is breaking Star Wars.

So no, what you posted does not prove anything.

I will not discuss what Scalenex meant or not, or his standing here, which is not part of the topic, does not matter at all. A single scene that offers a lot of interpretations doesn't break a franchise. That's just exaggerated.

You spend most of your post discussing your ad hominem and my perceived reaction to it, instead of the topic. You don't have to. It's all cool as far as I am concerned.

 

I rarely say this @NIGHTBRINGER but "You give me too much credit".

That is probably the best call. Back to the wacky memes!

Needs a dalek it does. Complete it will be.