Rogue One The Death Star Questions/Discussion thread

You do realize that north and south are not the equivalent of top and bottom?

Orbiting the south pole of a planet does not mean you are below it, and orbiting the north pole of a planet does not mean you are above it.

 

It looks upside-down because Gary the Stormtrooper is flying it!

 

Then come on Gary USE....THE...FORCE!!!!

 

Star Wars does tend to have Up and Down in space. The spaceships are all oriented the same way, which there is no need for at all. Star Wars Physics.

 

Ok ok. Part of Star Wars Physics is the law "Whatever looks good."

 

Didn't they even play with that in ANH? Han goes up to a turret, Luke goes down, both end up coming out sideways.

 

Why are the Death Star Plans all wonky?
Here, the "laser dish" is way too big.


Here, the trench is crossing it.

 

Indeed. But designs do get revised - they may have been forced to shrink the dish slightly due to unforeseen design issues - which were solved in time to use the proportionally larger dish, for the DS2.

That is probably because that's the way the Death Star was originally conceived by McQuarrie & Lucas - he changed his mind part way through, after that computer work had already been done.


Matte painting of the original Death Star concept:



(It also looks more spherical and less flattened top to bottom).

 

The dominant vertical orientation of the SW franchise can be observed at the end of ESB. The conventional plane of battle, at least according to WEG, is based upon the galactic plane. Further astronomical conventions and nomnclature can be leveraged to characterize the wide variety of orbital mechanical depictions in the property. Without having my Rinzler Storyboard book handy, I recall two storyboards from ROTJ where the Rebel fleet, poised outside the galaxy, as in the novel (but not in the film of course), is aligned with the plane of the galaxy. I.e., period storyboard evidence of a preferred/dominant vertical conventional orientation.

 

Does no one else think Lucas was playing with "there is no up" in ANH?

Luke goes up the ladder, Han goes down (might be the other way around, regardless) both come out the side into the respective gunner stations. Even as a kid I thought it was odd, but I've never seen anyone else ever mention it.

 

It did suggest to me that artificial gravity on a ship didn't have to all be in the same plane.

 

In ROTJ the DS2 is typically shown "south pole pointed at the planet's surface":

When seen in hologram, however, the south pole is pointed at "the floor of the room the hologram is in"

So it could be said to be vertical orientation being in play again - it has to be "upright" - even if that means the hologram does not match the reality.

 

I know about the behind the scenes reasoning, but what about in-universe?

 

In-universe, the plans may have been an old set - from a time when an equatorial superlaser was mooted (the Geonosians may have revised the design several times).

Alternatively, you could go with

"in-universe, the plans look different from the ones we see in ANH - because the movie doesn't get everything "right"."

Or, as Obi-Wan puts it "Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them."

 

Oh.

Got it.

 

But in the movie, after the ship arrives at the bottom (southpole) of the planet, it flips around (barrelrolls) as it flys into the atmosphere.

 

Maybe the firing dish can traverse the face of the death star, thinking gyroscopic layer, and not the entire orb flipping....this scene had me thinking a lot on how you could position the death star for an optimum firing approach (localized surface firing rather than distant firing resulting entire planetary destruction). Maybe the death star travels laterally - based on N/S axis, but it has sliding panels movement around the circumference - the curvature would mess that idea up....idk.

 

The first death star was so awesome! Can't wait to see it back in cinema.

 

Maybe even a subtle hint to that theme, so ANH retains that bombastic cue played it all its glory.

 

It's not the bottom of the planet, and you also can't know that it's the south pole either. Could be the north pole. Or any other point on the planet.

 

Just give up and start going "yep!"

 

Yep!

 

The most iconic super-weapon of any Sci-Fi movie makes its long-awaited return to the big screen... That's one great reason to watch Rogue One!


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Yep!

I do think, in this context, that Abrams should have come up with a different plot device than the SKB for TFA, though. "Another Death Star!?" is becoming a meme that sticks.