What was the point of Admiral Ackbar?

As annoying as one may find Jar-Jar and the Ewoks, at least they served a purpose (Jar-Jar offers advice and gives power to Palpentine, the Ewoks help defeat the stormtroopers). Ackbar only calls for retreat and recites redundancies. As an admiral, he sure doesn't do much but smile after the Death Star is blown up.

 

Aside from coming up with the master plan which resulted in the destruction of the death star.....

aside from having the fleet focus on the superstar destroyer to divert fighters away from those going after the death star

yeah, pretty useless

 

He looks gross too!

 

But you have to admit he panicked in the face of an unexpected scenario. He seems pretty inflexible as a commander, as once he learned the shield was still up, Lando had to devise most of the strategy. Hell, his order to retreat was pretty worthless, considering a fully completed Death Star would be a practically invincible planet & fleet destroyer with the Emperor still alive. He couldn't find any ways to buy time in what was essentially the Alliance's last stand.

 

The Rebel fleet needed a commander at Endor -- both for symmetry (he is Piett's opposite) and to explain to the audience what the fleet is doing. If there was no Ackbar, the fleet would basically be pretty background, instead of a character on the screen. It would be the fleets from RotS.

 

They needed to show some cool alien.

BTW, Lando is basically the one ordering the fleet. Case in point, Ackbar tells Lando to wait for the mark to jump into hyperspace. Lando disobeyes orders and jumps directly into hyperspace.

 

That's a good one

 

How can you be a good military strategist when your eyes are suck on the sides of your head?

 

Lando didn't give orders to the fleet, he gave orders to the fighters. If he had been running the fleet, he wouldn't have argued with Ackbar over whether or not to retreat -- he would've just countermanded the order.

This is the first I've heard of Lando jumping to hyperspace early, too. I've never interpreted the scene that way. Ackbar says stand by for a mark, and Lando gets some kind of signal -- the novelization describes a light blinking on the Falcon's console; although we can't inspect the entire console of the Falcon in the scene, we do hear a high-pitched buzzer or beep. This sound is not part of the hyperspace sound effects, so it's clearly signalling Lando that he can make the jump to lightspeed. Whether it's a signal sent by Ackbar, or the result of the countdown ordered by Ackbar earlier in that scene, it's what Lando was waiting for -- he didn't just make the jump at that moment because he felt like it.

 

I guess I'm with the minority on this one. I felt he was a good leader, and have always held some high respect for him. Although I do agree that Lando called a lot of the shots in the battle. The thing about Lando is that he knew Han probably better then anybody else, and trusted him quite a bit. Ackbar was concerned with the safety of the fleet, calling for the retreat when the Death Star opening fire. He was thinking of minimizing losses at the time, not thinking to much ahead about not destroying the death star right then and there. But who can really blame him, with the Death Star capable of wiping out capital ships. He was doing his duty, to how he knew best. Lando wanted to give Han more time because he knew what Han was capable of, and knew that if anybody could pull off blowing up the shield generator, it was Solo.

An interesting decision Ackbar made was concentrating all fire power on the SSD Executor. But of course it was Lando who earlier on advised to attack the ISD's at point blank range. But in taking out the Executor, they took out a few of the higher up officers, and also put kind of a dent in the Death Star. This also probably affected the morale of the Imperial pilots in battle. Seeing their greatest capital ship go down, proving that they where not as invincible as they once thought.

 

This is it in a nutshell. Ackbar's concern was to maintain the Alliance Fleet: Without it the Alliance would be no match for the Empire and would it would fade away into submission. He did not know Han as well as Lando did and undoubtedly thought the attack on the shield generator had failed. However, notice that he listens to Lando's suggestions and carries them out when he could easily dismiss them. the responsibility of the fleet lies with him and he makes the final decisions to risk everything. Finally, he makes the call to hit the Executor and as GrandWarlord says, this is a mighty and effective blow.

 

Hey, someone had to let them know it was a trap.

 

I don't think anyone that is criticizing Ackbar understands the role of the Admiral/General/Leader of the entire army, their role isn't to micro-manage every situation, their role is to oversee and only make the biggest of decisions. Ackbar laid out the battle plan that was put into effect, and while he did what most leaders do and ended up making some other decisions during the course of the battle the bulk of the improvised decision making was left in the hands of his field generals, ie; Lando.

 

Towards the end of the battle, Ackbar even talks about the destruction of the Fleet, but Lando pursudes Ackbar to stay.

 

By the time Ackbar orders the attack on the Executor, Wedge and Lando are already well into the Death Star's core, making its destruction that much more anticlimactic (see my earlier posts on this). Lando essentially issues the more vital order of screening the Rebel fleet by fighting the Star Destroyers head on. He is the real hero of Endor, along with Chewie on the ground.

And everyone who says that retreat was a viable option doesn't realize the Emperor essentially set this up perfectly as the Alliance's last stand, as if they retreated, they would have to contend with a near flawless space station that would end the war anyway. The Alliance had to fight to the last ship, and at least that part of Palpatine's plan worked.

 

Well, if Han's strike force had used the the shuttle to land on the destroyer on an infiltrator type mission. They could have destroyed the Executor before the fleet had even arrived on Endor.

Heck, they could have used that stolen shuttle, got on board the Death Star, and taken out the Emperor and Darth right then. Luke sensed Vader was on board the Executor, so he knew he would probably be all right. He didn't sense the Emperor. The worst that could happen was that the Luke, Vader, Emperor fight would take place much earlier.

 

Admiral Ackbar is a badass.

 

The decision to retreat only looks bad because the EWOKS (whom nobody knew were helping), saved Han's $#@%. If the shield had not been taken down, the entire rebel fleet would have been carved up. then it would not have really mattered if the death star was completed or not.

 

But if the Alliance retreats, they will have to contend with a nearly invincible battle station that would eventually destroy their fleets. What was so ingenious about Palpatine's plan was that he was able to draw the majority of the Alliance's fleet to destroy in one battle instead of having to go from system to system wiping planets out. He set up the Alliance in a catch-22 situation and almost succeeded had it not been for the Ewoks leading the strike team to the back door.

 

Watch HBO right now and find out.

 

Ackbar owns U!

 

If you're trying to buy time and stay alive wouldn't attacking the SSD have been one of the worst choices? If anything, Ackbar should've been trying to put as many ISD's between his ships and Executor to avoid getting slaughtered. But that didn't matter since the Rebels ended up getting so many lucky cheap shots during the whole battle.....

 

Something about "Forest Moon"... "Forest Moon"... "Forest Moon"...




I do love the "It's a Trap!" line. Gets frequent real world use.

 

It all depends on how you look at it, taking out the Executor was a good military strategy because it took out one of the Empire's main ships, demoralizing the Empire's forces in the process, bought time for the reorganization of the Rebellion's fleet, and put a natural barrier in-between Ackbar's fleet and the rest of the Imperial fleet. On the other hand if that attack plan fails then Ackbar will have no resources left and will be totally vulnerable.

 

So now we hatin' on my homeboy Ackby? I mean come on! he said, "It's a trap!" he saved the entire rebel fleet with 3 words..

someone should lock this, cause it's too much hatin! the guy is as cool as Boba!