ST Best Opening Space Battle

I was curious since we now have 3 of them, one for each trilogy. The Devastator chasing the Tantive IV is a classic. The Battle of Coruscant is a CGI epic. Now we have the battle of D'Qar.

 

The Battle of Coruscant, easily.

 

ANH opening is simple yet beautiful, just too short. ROTS opening was pretty fun but a little visually cluttered at times. The TLJ opening felt just as fun as ROTS's plus I slightly preferred it visually as well (& no, the "bombs with no gravity" didn't bother me)

 

zero gravity bombs > buzz droids

 

A New Hope opening battle. Classic SW.

 

A New Hope I guess, but that's pretty much by default. I don't care for the other two at all.

 

A New Hope is my favorite opening, but I don’t really consider it a space battle. So I picked TLJ. It’s more straightforward than the cluttered ROTS opening and also generates a lot more tension- I got very anxious when Paige was kicking the ladder to try an drop the detonator.

 

ANH has the best sense of drama to it. You can feel the weight of what is happening aboard the Tantive IV. The tension is high and I’m immediately in it. RotS felt cartoony.

TLJ was also cartoony, though to a lesser degree. The Paige part was the best part, but that’s a credit to the actress. The context was too silly to invest in that heavily. It was after Poe’s dumb crank call, Hux being reduced to the butt of all jokes (and therefore not scary but reminiscent of Spaceballs), and yes, the bombs dropping was too much good Lord. I don’t expect science in SW, so I tolerate fire and sound in space without blinking. I do have my limits though lol. I still want it feel like space. Once I saw how the bombers worked, I figured out why they were designed the way they were, and I hated them as additions to SW. Also, the Resistance fleet is almost decimated in that battle, and no one ever acts like it is. That’s a theme of the entire movie. If the characters don’t care that much that they’re getting exterminated, why should I?

 

1. Actually, if the bombs are propelled downward out of the bomber (and they are), they would keep moving downward in space, gravity or no gravity. It’s simple conservation of momentum- Newton’s first law.
2. They do take note of the Resistance losses. Did you miss Leia staring at the casualties list? Or the fact that she demoted Poe? Or the fact that Holdo (I think) explicitely blames Poe for the loss of the bomber wing?

 

Were they propelled? I missed that I guess. You could be right, I’ve only seen it once. It just didn’t look like that to me. And yes, I do understand momentum in vacuum. I just didn’t see propulsion, I saw Paige push a button to open a hatch and drop the “bottom” out from under the bombs.

Yes they talk about it and Leia slaps Poe and Poe is all cocky and arrogant still. None of it conveys the drama those losses warranted in my opinion. Throughout the movie it’s like that, just kind of slapstick.

 

I've never really understood that criticism as it's a fairly simple concept. The real flaw with the ship is the fact that it doesn't even appear to be adequately shielded given its size and that it directly exposes its payload, a flaw that no other bomber in the Star Wars universe prior to this film possessed, solely to take the WWII parallels to extremity.

As for the topic of this thread, I honestly think Revenge of the Sith's opening is the most surprising and has the most impressive level of scope.

 

Yeah I'd agree Sith and Last Jedi both had there faults in terms of straying into cartoonishness, I'm not a fan of Poe pushing things that far in terms of one fighter against an entire Star Destoryer either, yeah the series has always played on the WW2 theme of fighters taking out battleships but not to that degree which to me takes gravity from the situation. The bombers themselves as well feel like there pushed too close to there WW2 inspiration, the same way we see laser blasts with arcs like battleship guns, all rather Space Battleship Yammato where as the existing SW ship designs take a more subtle inspiration.

One thing that also didn't make much sense to me is the whole idea of Poe wanting to take out the dreadnought, the way he says "we don't get a chance at this very often" to me implys that the First Order/Resistance conflict is a much wider scale thing involving many confrontations with dreadnoughts and presumably other ships. What we see in the rest of the film though doesn't back this up at all as the resistance is shown as a tiny group of a few ships unable to engage in this kind of conflict, taking out one of the implied many dreadnoughts having little worth.

Some would say that plays into the Poe story I spose but for me that feels like a cheap twist that strains logic, selling one thing but switching to another. It would I think have made much more sense to play Poe's actions as needlessly gunho right from the start.

 

interesting results so far.

 

The three scenes are equally good in their own way I guess. The IV opening is a classic one of course, but I don't consider it to be a real battle. The one in VIII is really tense and emotional and I really enjoyed that one too. And when I saw the ROTS opening for the first time I was completely blown away. There is just so much happening!

I went for ROTS, because (as a kid that grew up in the 90s/00s) it really has that nostalgia factor for me. But at this very moment (and in the long run) I like the one in VIII best, I think.

 

Did it annoy anyone else during the opening battle in TLJ the way Poe spun his X-Wing round through 180 degrees rather than in an arc? That move was something more akin to the General Lee!

 

yeeeHAWWW!

 

Revenge of the Sith. It was the first Star Wars scene I saw on the big screen and it blew me away. An epic scale with drums of war that shows just how big a Galactic Clone War can be. So massive that there could multiple stories happening at the same time, but the film still keeps focus on two Jedi trying to rescue the Supreme Chancellor.

 

To me this is not a fair comparison the ANH scene wasnt even a battle it was a one sided affair. best battle in star wars to me is in ROTJ followed by rogue one battle, than TLJ. my personal favorite battle of all time is in the battlestar galatica series though

 

Revenge of the Sith.

 

The battle in TLJ had loads of weird shows (so many face close-ups?!), so I voted ROTS.

 

Saw that. Wondered why he didn't pass out or his brains turn to jelly considering how fast he was going. Zero gravity? No idea.

 

Revenge of the Sith. In some of the scenes, you can see below on the planet, parts of Coruscant getting trashed with all those ships going down.

 

ROTS easily. That's what a full scale battle should be like over a capital world.

 

ROTS. Still gives me chills every time the two Jedi starfighters flip the perspective to reveal the battle at large. And that's just the first few seconds.

 

Maybe what it should look like, but that doesn't make it a great scene. Many movie battle scenes have an epic scale but fall flat due to a lack of tension, and I think the opening of ROTS is one of them.