A/V Episode VIII - THE LAST JEDI - Official Movie Discussion Thread

I think he means Holdo's Leap.

Shields arent going to stop a ship jumping to lightspeed from obliterating your ship. Nothing short of an interdiction field is going to do that, and i'm not even clear on how that would halt the momentum of a ship that started to jump outside of it and crossed it.

If anything, Holdo had to shut off failsafes that would prevent the Raddus from making the jump. Something only a suicidal lunatic would do in any other situation. So far, Holdo and Anakin Skywalker(the Malevolence) have done it.

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It's been established since Star Wars that you can collide with things in hyperspace, which you aren't supposed to do but it can happen.

 

Because it doesn't make sense, intuitively. It's just one of those things that because of how it doesn't make sense, could use a throwaway line to explain it. eg. call them "magnetised bombs" or mention that "faster moving craft couldn't get through the shields". Just something that makes sense.

Really? It makes no sense in the Star Wars universe. If a relatively small cruiser can utterly destroy a much, much larger ship and many others just by sacrificing itself then the entire mechanics of Star Wars space battles gets turned on it's head. As I said, a simple explanation along the lines of "Supremacy had it's standard shields down for some inexplicable reason so it worked when usually it wouldn't". That's all it would take.

I was clearly talking about the hyperdrive attack.

I don't understand what you're saying here or how it's relevant. We know the ships have shields, it's mentioned often and the scenes in TLJ show Resistance cruisers blocking laser blasts with their shields. The Shield thing would be an easy way to explain a scene that, the way a lot of people have interpreted it, destroys the mechanics of the setting.

 

The issue is though, why isn't it common tactic? Look at a standard space battle of similar sized ships, they slug it out and ships on both sides get destroyed. For the destruction of a given opposition you'd tend to sacrifice a similar sized force yourself. If you could destroy a much larger and more numerous force with a much smaller force as standard practice then everybody would just do that. Make hyperspace-ram ships as your primary weapons, turbolasers and torpedoes become irrelevant for battles between larger ships.

That's why it needs an explanation (as I said, maybe it does have one, I haven't actually read the novelisation). I've heard: "It's not cost effective" --> rubbish, standard warfare would incur significantly higher cost. "No one thought of it before Holdo" --> equally stupid. It's really not that huge an issue, like I said, all it needs is a throwaway line.

 

Yeah, uh, there's nothing that indicates that having shields up in Star Wars is going to have an effect upon having a ship smashing into them at lightspeed.

 

I disagree. I'd assumed these were the bombers the Resistance has, not the best bombers anyone could ever get. That said, each one has hundreds of what seem like really big scary bombs in them that they drop all at once, and they do destroy the Dreadnought, so just from watching the films and TV shows it seems like these pack a much bigger punch than torpedos, Y-Wings, or TIE bombers.

A relatively small cruiser moving (potentially many times) faster than the speed of light. Maybe it breaks Star Wars, but since it's potentially been a part of the universe since ANH I wasn't bothered by it.

Sorry, since you opened talking about how the bombers don't make sense I didn't realize we'd switched.

 

I don't care, that's irrelevant. I'm not saying that it would. I'm saying there needs to be a reason to explain why it worked that time and yet no one ever does it. That was just the first stupid example I came up, not a genuine suggestion that it's what I think happened

 

tbh I'm not that perturbed about the bombers. It might not make perfect sense but it's Star Wars, and not much does. As long as it looks cool it gets a pass I guess. The Hyperdrive thing just annoys me a bit more because it genuinely makes no sense for the tactic not to have been used all the time.

Interesting point. We haven't actually seen that many large scale space battles on screen so maybe it is a tactic but just hasn't been shown. It could still use a bit of an explanation as to why the FO forces were such sitting ducks for it though (from the Unknown regions and unaware of common battle tactics? who knows).

 

HAH! Just saw this pointed out on the CT forum, one of Luke's first lines in Star Wars "Teleport me off this rock."



BOYAH!

 

Going by the novelization - it hadn't quite reached the speed of light - the hyperdrive creates a portal into hyperspace (on the far side of the First Order Fleet) - it accelerates toward (but not reaching) the speed of light - crashes into the Supremacy - and what's left, enters the portal on the far side of the fleet and disappears.

 

It really doesn't matter what speed it was at. What matters is that regardless of the stage of the jump it was at it's a tactic that could seemingly be replicated everywhere and always and why hasn't everyone done it whenever the opportunity arises?

 

Safety features.

Maybe you can't place a portal anywhere dangerous when calculating the initial jump - only the fact that the jump path had remained in the computer after being plotted, long enough that the FO fleet had moved in front of the initially "safe jump path" - allowed it to happen.

 

Did smashing the Eclipse 2 into the Galaxy Gun break Star Wars space combat?

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The "Holdo Maneuver" didn't even destroy the Supremacy. Don't forget there's a whole sequence of events that takes place on that ship after the Raddus smashes into it.

Here's what we know about the maneuver:

• It needs the sacrifice of a large ship; Vader's Star Destroyer interrupts the jump to lightspeed of a small ship in Rogue One and the small ship just disintegrates.
• It needs the sacrifice of a person; there were plenty of droids that could have done it for Holdo but didn't, so presumably something in their base programming prevents them from doing something so insane.
• A well-timed kamikaze attack in a starfighter is more effective than the maneuver; see Return of the Jedi.
• Regular bombs are more effective than the maneuver; the bombing run at the beginning of the movie obliterates the Fulminatrix, but as said above, the Holdo Maneuver doesn't do the same to Supremacy.

Gee, I wonder why it doesn't take off as a standard military tactic?

Like, you don't actually need some horribly clunky line of dialogue to explain everything to you if you just watch the movies.

 

Since the issue with the Resistance bombers is still being brought up as nonsensical, I thought it may be worth posting this video again:


I recommend watching the whole video because it's very fun, but for the bombing sequence only go to 4:26-6:49.

 

My understanding of hyperspace collisions allways was that if you are in hyperspace and you run into somethings mass shadow, well that sucks for you, but the effect on the real space object that you just ran into is somewhere between minimal and non existent. I thought TCW supported this when the Malevolence didn't, you know, partially destroy the moon it got jumped into.

 

The only ship I remember breaking up against Vader's Destroyer's bow in Rogue One was a transport - it looked more like it hadn't had a chance to jump - that, while the engines were glowing, the collision took place right before the jump would have.

 

There is a disproportionately enormous explosion on the moon when the Malevolence crashes into it. I have to imagine a celestial body is a little denser than a ship.

 

Which is fine. As I've said a few times, it's far less of a sacrifice than standard warfare would require to achieve the same result.

In a universe as large as Star Wars, with thousands of characters sacrificing their lives in battle all the time, many even in literal suicide missions, you don't think there'd be someone willing to sacrifice their life to take out potentially millions of enemies and huge amounts of enemy war material? Come on

Not sure what you mean by this, hard to compare relative effectiveness, but I sort of agree. That manoeuvre in ROTJ is similar in that it raises questions, but IIRC it was explained in some sources as being a freak incident. The fighter was out of control, spinning, and coincidentally in the perfect lane to get within defensive lasers, the cruiser was distracted I think? I don't really remember but yeah, further supports my point, thank you.

Not really, to any of this. It was a much smaller craft than what the hyperspace manoeuvre took out of action (didn't it also destroy a bunch of other big ships too?), required a freak pilot to take out the defensive lasers, and took the sacrifice of far more people.

Given that nothing you said even begins to answer the questions (and is mostly just entirely wrong), yes, it is a very fair question to wonder.

Well, that's the point. Sure it's a matter of opinion whether it needs a line of dialogue to explain it, it wouldn't be the first time a movie didn't make sense. But you can definitely see why a lot of people are asking questions about it, which would indicate that an explanation might be warranted.

 

"This fleet you built for us is awesome, Ackbar! We can't wait to hyperspace smash it into every single ship we see!"
"What, what?!"
"Whooo! I'm gonna get drunk and fly me a spaceship!"

 

Fair enough. I can see when intelligent and rational discussion is not desired.

 

The Holdo Maneuver is something that definitely need further exploration. A technique as potentially as devastating as the Hyperspace ram has the potential to change the entire face of space combat. Massive hyper-drive equipped remote battering rams tearing apart fleets, Swarms of hyperspace droid fighters ripping though critical ship systems. Both sides trying desperately to find and field as many interdictors as possible.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, they can't just put it back in.