Lit Fleet Junkie Flagship- The technical discussions of the GFFA (Capital Ships thread Mk. II)

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but according to the latest issue of Star Wars Insider, The Last Jedi Incredible Cross-Sections will detail 13 different vehicles. Want to take a stab at guessing what they’ll be? I’ll give it a shot.

1. Resistance A-Wing
2. Resistance Bomber
3. Raddus
4. Mandator IV
5. Supremacy
6. Ski-Speeder
7. AT-M6
8. Canto Bight Police Speeder???
9. Black One w/ booster???
10. DJ’s ship???
11. ???
12. ???
13. ???


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Double post

 

Triple post (sorry)

 

TIE Silencer and FO 'All Terrain-Heavy Scout Transport.' (Name/Movie Appearance Pending; Case in point, the Quad Jumper)

I hope they don't waste pages adding those FO AT-ST and AT-ATs from the trailers, but hey I'm sure they wanna note whatever tiny changes they've made akin to FO TIE Fighters and Resistance X-wings. Jeez...

Not that TFA had much in the way of vehicles anyway. CGI complainers, thanks a whole heap.

 

What is your deal with CGI? You've brought it up in your last three posts. TFA made a point of using practical effects, but we saw a bunch of CGI effects, like the Finalizer, Kylo Ren's Shuttle, The X-Wings and Tie Fighters, The Falcon, The Quadjumper, The FO Transport, the Resistance Transport, Rey's AT-AT, The Planets, Han's Cargo Ship, etc.

 

Using practical effects isn’t anything new for a Star Wars movie.


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I made a couple posts some weeks back about the potential ICS candidates. We know the Ski-speeders are in because the cross section art is there on the cover. A-wings, Resistance Bombers, AT-M6, TIE Silencer, and Raddus are almost certain to be included. Likely further candidates include the Mandator and Canto Bight police speeder. There's also extraneous Canto Bight civilian speeders and the other Resistance cruisers/frigates in the fleet. Poe's upgraded X-wing could make it in unfortunately, but I suspect the Supremacy won't due to size - still no Executor cross section - and the retrofitted walkers probably aren't different enough to make it in, but I could be wrong. There's also FO walker hover carriers, a new Lambda-ish shuttle, some big long rolling caterpillar thing, and who knows what happened to the strandbeast scout.

 

Revised List
Confirmed TLJ vehicles so far from all sources (not previously seen in TFA):

1. Canto Bight Police Speeders
2. Canto Bight luxury speeders
3. Crait Ski Speeders
4. B/SF-17 Resistance Bombers
5. The Raddus
6. Raddus Lifeboats
7. Mandator IV Dreadnought
8. Mega Star Destroyer Supremacy
9. AT-M6
10. AT-AT retrofit
11. AT-ST retrofit
12. RZ-2 A-wing
13. Poe's supercharged T-70 X-wing
14. TIE Silencer
15. Unidentified Resistance frigate (horizontal)
16. Unidentified Resistance frigate (vertical) (possible Nebulon K or Starhawk)
17. Unidentified Resistance ship (clamshell) (GR75?)
18. Unidentified First Order shuttle
19. Walker Racks (can't tell if these are autonomous hovering carriers or connected to a gantry)
20. AT-HH - All Terrain Heavy Hauler (seen in Star Tours, possible replication of strandbeast walker?)

Not yet verified:

• Starhawk Battleship
• T-85 X-wing
• First Order TIE Bombers
• First Order Strandbeast

Most Likely to Appear in ICS:

• Ski-speeders
• Bombers
• Raddus
• Mandator
• A-wings
• AT-M6
• Silencer
• Something from the movie that hasn't been revealed in promo material yet

Moderately Likely to Appear in ICS:

• Police Speeders
• Poe's X-wing
• FO Shuttle
• Walker Racks
• Lifeboats
• AT-HH

Least Likely to Appear in ICS:

• Walker Retrofits
• Supremacy
• Civilian Speeders
• Resistance Frigates

 

I think it's fair to say that, at least in part, CGI Luddites are why so many new aliens look kinda boring. But this argument about limiting starships makes no sense at all.

 

Granted, but...My deal is that CGI, I always felt, added to the futuristic aesthetic of the SW Universe. Not to mention it allowed for bigger battles and numbers featured in a battle, but apparently it's too chaotic to keep track of for certain people.

In SW, we have things that CANNOT and WILL NOT exist in the real world. In the PT, certain of the locations you definitely cannot find in the real world. Granted the OT had similar locales but it definitely felt more prominent in the PT. We certainly wouldn't have any of the battle droids. Regardless of how 'awful' people thought them, watching the PT, I felt I was experiencing a galaxy far, far away.

Using practical effects isn't impressive to me, it just seems wasteful. And now I feel we've been returned to a state similar to the OT because of a lot of peoples' qualms with the PT's CGI-oriented universe, so now we have to settle for less because less is what people wanted.

It's limiting because people definitely weren't gonna go out of their way to construct more complicated designs for practical scenes.

 

...the space battle scenes in TFA are CGI. I have no idea what you're talking about.

(Also, when was the last time you watched the Battle of Endor?)

 

But... That's not it at all. If you actually look at instances of CGI being used in TFA, you can see how they weren't limited. For example: The hangar scene. The front part of the hangar was actually constructed while the back was CGI. They merged the two to make something cohesive.

People act like its either CGI or Practical, and that isn't the case. The two are best when merged together to make something incredible.

 

I'm referring to SIZE and SCALE of battles. We might have seen more X-Wings and TIEs during the battle if they weren't afraid of using CGI. For example:





We should've seen at least this many TIE Fighters moving to defend SKB, instead...



Hell, I read a complaint from a guy who said THAT was too much CGI. WTH? Before anybody mentions Empire > FO; Plot-based excuse to avoid CGI.

I don't wanna start anything, I really don't.

I'm just saying, while I enjoy TFA very much, I wasn't satisfied with it.



I grew up with the PT. I just wanna see something of this scale again:




Sad thing is, I probably never will again.

(Ugh....I'm watching it right now. And you know what, there are quite a few problems with it. Size inconsistency being one of the biggest. They couldn't even include the B-Wings for too long because their models were 'tricky'. But again, I don't wanna start anything.)




Where did 'Heavy Haulers' even come from? Link?

 

As someone who has begged for more animation-based STAR WARS for decades to do this, I agree with you. The TIE FIGHTER anime on YouTube makes my point.

 

I blame the arrogance of certain Star Wars fans who still won't get over their somewhat stupid hatred of the Special Edition and Prequels as to why CGI stuff appears limited.

Honestly, as I have said in the past, Star Wars fans are their own worst enemies and the sheer arrogance by some posters on threads I follow are perfect examples.

 

I don't mean to gatekeep, but a lot of Star Wars fans are not really fans at all, any more than I can call myself a Star Trek fan when I only like TOS and the movies with the TOS crew. And there is a very select group of video reviews that shall remain nameless that are representative of this kind of elitist behavior.

Also the Heavy Hauler was discussed and shown briefly here http://boards.theforce.net/threads/starships-vehicles-tech-of-ep-8-9.50036209/page-36

 

CGI isn't bad. What matters is how its implemented.

My issues with the Prequels and the Special Editions aren't with the existence of CGI. Its with how it was used. Yes, you can use it to create whole new worlds, but if you don't do it right then the actors are gonna look lost and stunted. And, with the Special Edition, my problems are the overuse of it in scenes where it was unnecessary, and how needlessly difficult its become to actually watch the movies in their original form.

But none of this has anything to do with ships. Just wanted to point out that you can think the Prequels use CGI poorly and still advocate its use. And, to mention that not everyone that had issues with the PT and special editions is just blindly hating them.

 

On that subject the redo of the Battle of Yavin is by far the best use of CGI in the special editions

Spoiler

the sarlacc beak is the worst

 

The Sarlacc had no life in it in the original cut, it at least had life with the beak.

And before anyone goes on about the Max Rebo Band edit as well. Lapti Nek had little to no bounce in it (the movie cut anyway, the extended music clip with the real music however suited it). Jedi Rocks had more in it, it had the bounce that added to ROTJ .

 

This is getting totally off-topic, but honestly, with the exception of the agonized-looking '97 ANH Jabba, I think the Jedi Rocks sequence is easily the worst-looking part of the SE... but the original Sy Snootles puppet from Lapti Nek is possibly the worst-looking part of the OOT, too.

 

Not to come across as argumentative but do we even know if that is the Heavy Hauler (Are they even trying anymore?) That could just be something they come up with just for that ride. Unlikely, but possible.

The AT-HH's could be some clever (not really) renaming of those AT-AT lookalikes alongside the AT-M6s on Crait.

I've said it before, I really hope George Lucas didn't take his creativity with him when he retired. For the vehicle designs at the very least.

 

DP.......

 

I'll confess I don't like the SE Battle of Yavin. I'm just unable to get past how all the CGI X-wings have the wrong markings - they're all Red 2. They also don't move 'right'. The new shots were cool when they were new (and I didn't know we'd ever get any more Star Wars) but now they stand out too much.


This is one of my least favourite shots of RO. It's just ludicrous and shows an unnecessary amount of TIEs. Not least because it sets up an obstacle that the rebels couldn't possibly overcome given the capabilities of both, ie, stretching plausibility that the rebels would survive, but also because the sequence doesn't do anything with them. What's the result of all these TIEs entering the battle? Really not that much. Red 5 gets shot down, but it's only 4 TIEs chasing him (not the hundreds we see leaving, which are in addition to those that were already flying around at the beginning of the battle). We don't see a single one of these shot down by an X-wing. We barely see any of them shot down by the big ships. It creates more of a mess of the battle. By the time Vader shows up, where are they all gone?

It's also the Conservation of Ninjutsu trope. Are these guys cannon fodder or serious threats? At Yavin, TIEs were dangerous. Entering the asteroid field, they were dangerous. On Endor, they were dangerous. We see mroe here than ever before, perhaps combined across all 3 of the OT movies, but their effect on the outcome of the battle shows them to be merely background noise.

Conversely, I think TFA gets the scale just right. It's enough to make the battles feel significant, but not too much as to feel like the filmmakers are just distracting you with spectacle at the expense of storytelling.

 

So the Rogue One Visual Guide says that Green Squadron was at Scariff, but the movie doesn't ever say that. Though, it'd make sense to me, the amount of starfighters the rebels had at scariff could easily amount to another squadron (possibly like blue squadron it gets decimated as well).

 

It's much like Blue Squadron at the Battle of Endor. We know they're there but their squadron leader doesn't check in on-screen.

 

I'm guessing they might include one of the civilian speeders seen in Canto Bight on the ICS. Also, I reaaaally want the Supremacy in the ICS I just preordered the book just for all the FO goodies!