Rogue One Mon Mothma & the Council Discussion Thread

oncafar wrote

mon mothma is a politician (a senator). from ROTJ i thought mothma was high up in the alliance and a strategist. she is mainly a political strategist i think. *is confused*

Yes, your insight serves you well. The Alliance briefing in ROTJ rather clearly portrays their responsibilities (screenplay excerpts):

MON MOTHMA, the leader of the Alliance, enters the room. She is a stern
but beautiful woman in her fifties. Conferring with her are several
military leaders, including GENERAL MADINE and ADMIRAL ACKBAR

(so Mon Mothma is apparently not a military leader or the screenplay wouldn't make such a distinction)

MON MOTHMA The data brought to us by the Bothan spies pinpoints the exact location
of the Emperor's new battle station. We also know that the weapon
systems of this Death Star are not yet operational. With the Imperial
Fleet spread throughout the galaxy in a vain effort to engage us, it is
relatively unprotected. But most important of all, we've learned that
the Emperor himself is personally overseeing the final stages of the
construction of this Death Star.

(apparently what you'd expect from a political strategist)

ACKBAR You can see here the Death Star orbiting the forest Moon of Endor.
Although the weapon
systems on this Death Star are not yet operational, the Death Star does
have a strong defense mechanism. It is protected by an energy shield,
which is generated from the nearby forest Moon of Endor. The shield
must be deactivated if any attack is to be attempted. Once the shield
is down, our cruisers will create a perimeter, while the fighters fly
into the superstructure and attempt to knock out the main reactor.

(obviously the commander-in-chief of the Rebel Forces at this time)

GENERAL MADINE We have stolen a small Imperial shuttle. Disguised as a cargo ship, and
using a secret
Imperial code, a strike team will land on the moon and deactivate the
shield generator.

(apparently General Draven's successor as the head of Alliance Intelligence. Had the Mon Cal footage not worked, he would have become commander-in-chief instead, as the deleted footage of him leading the fleet instead of Ackbar suggested)

The problem with Rogue One in these briefing scenes is the obvious and unusual lack of General Willard, the commander-in-chief of the Rebel Forces at the time when Leia and company arrive on Yavin IV in ANH:



I guess that's what the Rogue One filmmakers (and ultimately us) got for listening too much to erroneous EU conjecture, although the ANH screenplay (and the first draft for ESB, based on what George Lucas had in mind) clearly identified him as "the commander of the Rebel Forces".

Perhaps we was sick in the medical center during events in RO, so Mon Mothma had to assume his role and function during the briefing scene, too.

 

In my headcanon, Gen Willard was out on training maneuvers with the rest of the fleet and his return for the R1 briefing was delayed by Imperial entanglements; he had to take a long detour to make sure he wasn't followed back to HQ. He got back just in time for Princess Leia to return with the plans.

 

...and was later among the few to be evacuated from Yavin IV but couldn't return in time to attend the medal ceremony. IMHO the Alliance have been stupid not to evacuate at least top brass personnel when the Death Star arrived in the Yavin System.

 

My are the Rebels always preoccupied with Assassinations. Cassian takes out a defector. Cassian is sent to assassinate Galen. Mon Mothma intends to have the Emperor assassinated. They could focus on cutting the Empires supply lines. Disrupting the war machines construction projects would cause immense havoc for the Imperial officers and Moffs.

 

It's pretty odd that Leia immediately asks to see Willard upon arriving at the base, yet this guy is nowhere to be found in RO.

 

Well, keep in mind that we don't know how long it takes to get from Alderaan (or the remains of Alderaan) to Yavin 4. The movies like to indicate that it only takes a matter of minutes, but it may take a day or two, even at light speed.

 

Right, but Willard wasn't on Aldaraan. Leia wanted to see him first, suggesting his importance.

 

I know, but she was a prisoner on the Death Star, and Willard could have returned to Yavin 4 by the time she arrived there. That's not to mention how long she was actually a prisoner on the Death Star before Han and Luke freed her.

 

Oh, yeah. That makes sense. I just misunderstood your wording. I still have no idea why he wasn't in RO.

 

The rebels had a handful of ships. The Empire had the whole galaxy with a million worlds' worth of supply lines and thousands upon thousands of ships. The Alliance just didn't have enough assets to make a meaningful dent in Imperial supplies. If they had attacked one source of supplies, the Imps would just get what they needed from somewhere else. It would be like fighting a million-headed hydra.

 

Exactly. In the Twilight Company novel, it's explained that even if the rebels took out Kuat Drive Yards, it would only be a minor and temporary wound on the Empire. The Death Star's destruction showed that the Empire could simply just build another one. But if you cut out a leader (Palpatine), especially one that has legions of followers, chaos and disorder happens, allowing the perfect opportunity to get the upper hand.

 

Bob the X-Winger wrote

Disrupting the war machines construction projects would cause immense havoc for the Imperial officers and Moffs.

That's exactly what George Lucas had in mind for the battle or victory mentioned in the ANH prologue, here is the excerpt from the third ANH draft that Carrie Fisher also read during her casting session:

HAN
What’s that little ‘droid’ carrying that’s so blasted important?
LEIA
The plans and specifications to a battle station with enough fire power to destroy an entire system… Our only hope in destroying it is to find its weakness, which we will determine from the data I stored in Artoo.
LEIA (CONT’D)
We captured the plans in a raid on the Imperial shipyards, but we fell under attack before I could get the data to safety, so I hid it in this Artoo unit and sent him off.

Snax Rebo wrote

Right, but Willard wasn't on Aldaraan. Leia wanted to see him first, suggesting his importance.

Actually, we don't really know whether she asked for him upon her arrival or whether he was the first one who felt it necessary to greet her once he learned that the princess had arrived.
His name was a reference to "script doctor" Willard Huyck who helped to fine tune the final screenplay, and obviously felt it necessary that at least someone should hint some grief over the destruction of Alderaan (which Lucas had been oblivious to in his draft from January 1976)

I still have no idea why he wasn't in RO.

I do have a theory: The early EU contributors completely missed his significance (although the screenplay clearly stated "the commander of the Rebel Forces") and overlooked his unique rank badge (i.e. 4 red dots and 1 blue dot, IMHO, the Alliance equivalent of Admiral Motti's rank badge). Since the RO filmmakers or consultants apparently didn't want to 'offend' the EU fans by correcting this erroneous flaw, they simply evaded the issue by not featuring him at all (still better than featuring him in the RO visual guide and reducing him just to another lower ranking Alliance officer).

 

It could still take a couple of hours from Alderaan to Yavin IV.

Hyperspace travel time always confused me. It takes however long the plot needs it to take.

 

Snax Rebo

Add to this that they apparently made several hyperspace jumps to different locations to confuse the Death Star where they were actually going (probably all Solo was willing to agree to as a safety measure).

Obviously, the cockpit scene occurs just after they made their first jump somewhere as Solo is taking his "gunport gloves" off. There is no hyperspace environment outside and since Lucas didn't change this in the SE of ANH I believe the suggestion is clear. Wherever they are, they are probably waiting for the hyperdrive to recharge and/or "hold still" so that the homing beacon might create the erroneous impression they just landed somewhere.

I'd speculate that the Death Star, too, made several hyperjumps before actually arriving in the Yavin System, but to do so might take the battle station longer than the Falcon, so ultimately the Alliance probably had a couple of hours to plan for the attack.

 

It was great to them fight out their arguments about the Death Star before Jyn stepped in.

 

Lt. Hija, I forgot about the other jumps. I don't know what to say, then. Hyperspace has always been a plot device, and it always will be.
And wow, the mental image of the Death Star going through hyperspace is hilarious.

The bickering was top notch. I laughed during my 2nd and 3rd viewings when the senator that sort of resembles a goat exclaims something along the lines of "Well if it weren't for General Draven!". He sounds like a little kid ready to tell the teacher what Billy said to Sarah after she spilled his apple juice. Kylo pointing at Hux with his arm cartoonishly outstretched during the 2nd Snoke scene in TFA gives me similar feelings.

 

Yeah me too the fear against the impossible hope was unbelievable.

 

During their debating about the death star, Mon Mothma & the council were acting all frightened ready to give up & surrender when they should've been listening to what Jyn Erso was saying about how REBELLIONS ARE BUILT ON HOPE & actually start to fight the empire for REAL as Saw Gerrera & HIS rebels were doing!

 

Brandon G wrote

During their debating about the death star, Mon Mothma & the council were acting all frightened ready to give up & surrender

During this scene I really felt the strange absence of General Willard, the (military) commander of the Rebel forces...

But remember what the Death Star had been designed for. In an earlier draft of ANH Admiral Motti suggested that they should destroy every planet just "suspected" to provide funding and support to the Alliance.

Thus it looked rather understandable to me that all the Alliance supporters immediately got cold feet and instantly worried how they could prevent anyone from backtracing their support.
I believe in previous worst case scenarios they would have called for the Alliance fleet to protect their home planets should the Imperial Starfleet have arrived in their systems to carry out punishment, but with the seemingly undefeatable Death Star they were at first looking at a completely different and much worse threat.

 

No, Mothma wasn't ready to surrender. She was Chairing the Council and merely decided that an offensive strike against Scarif was not possible due to divisions in that Council. She said nothing about disbanding/ surrendering, and that was underlined in her conversation with Bail later.

 

Spoiler: Star Wars Comic #40

Looks like Bail greenlit Raddus' incursion to Scariff and sent Leia with him. This ties things up a bit better than what we got to see in the film. To be fair, for the film to tie directly into ANH in the best manner possible they had to save Leia and Antilles for the very end.

 

Oh really? cause it sure seemed that way to me! The time to fight WAS NOW as Jyn Erso was trying to tell all of them, at least that one mon calamari was agreeing with her as the rest of them really should've been instead of being ready to just give up so fast.

 

You know that from the audience perspective, because you saw everything that Jyn was telling the Council about. But understand that from the Council’s perspective, there was a ton of uncertainty and a legitimate fear that a major attack
on a massive Imperial military base might doom the Rebellion. Jyn was right, but I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss Mothma and the others as cowards. It was a difficult spot to be in, and had Jyn’s mission failed, the Rebellion could’ve been decimated. And s failed attack would have likely eroded their support in the Senate, which was an important Rebel objective until Palpatine dissolved it.

 

I do think the scene makes the rebels look lame. They don't come off as rebels, they come off as timid. There's no rebellion in them. No anger. No bloodlust. And Jyn's little speech is just weak, she sounds like a brunch eating, Occupy Democrats re-tweeting resistance lib. Most of them do. The whole focus on hope in the movie is weak. Hope is a weak thing.

I really would have liked to see a scene with someone, I guess Raddus despite him being lame, reacting to the news of the attack on Scarif like a Klingon who wasn't going to be left out of the fighting.