Books A/V STAR WARS: ROGUE #$^$%&ING ONE: A STAR WARS STORY

Alert: Rogue One is on Showcase channel in Canada all day today. (Corus media in Canada bought the rights to the cable versions of all the Star Wars movies, including the PT/OT/ST and R1 and Solo). The best is if/when they do the R1/ANH double feature, that should be an all day thing too hopefully.



Although slight factual error in the cable box description that a Jedi is involved but Chirrut Imwe is a Guardian of the Whills. Also who the heck in Cable box description land gave this 3 stars anyway? And why do Cable box description even have star rankings, that should not be a function of a independent and neutral cable box guide!

Also of note the rest of the description on the cable box says "the first of several planed Star Wars spin-off movies" fun factiod. Although it looks like that is going to be "the first of two planned Star Wars spin off movies"

oooh showcase made a factoid video!

 

Yep, because those films performed, wait for it, "below expectations", which is corporate-speak for: We didn't make as much money as we wanted to, so we've thrown our toys out of the pram, crapped our pants and killed it all as a protest.

 

I am just being a cynic although I thought it was funny that it's included in the cable description. I think the LFL "A Star Wars Story" ethos has been punted to Disney+ miniseries, I don't see them entirely shutting down the whole "A Star Wars Story" sub-franchise. As much as Solo is putting out some Sequel Bait with Maul, it is pretty done in one, and that is especially true of R1. So I do like the notion that we get more one shot movies, just don't know when. LFL spending 250+ million Solo probably didn't help the cause a lot. But, hey, just wait a few years. We got a Tron sequel fer crissakes. From Disney! Tron!

 

So very wrong, so very funny:

 

Whenever I have the urge to see R1 but only have 3 minutes to spare, this is my go-to.

 

this is cool, but...i mean did we land on the exhaust port itself being the flaw, again? Because that doesn't track super well with the films.

 

That's because there's directly contradicting canon information from LFL itself on this matter. The Rogue One novelization, per Krennic's dying thoughts, pinpoints the exhaust port as the flaw. The 'From a Certain Point of View' 40th anniversary anthology outright has Krennic wondering (also around the time he dies) about what the flaw is, indicating the exhaust port is not the flaw.

Ironically for a system that's supposed to be "All Canon now (really)" and did away with G canon, T Canon, and C canon, this is quite confusing.

 

"All canon" doesn't equal "no mistakes". From a Certain Point of View especially was an exercise in letting authors do their thing without worrying too much about minutiae. Besides which, Krennic thinking one thing or another would just indicate his confusion and indecision, rather than an objective lore statement.

 

Mistakes are fine if someone comes out with a correction. But years have passed, and has Leland or Pablo or another story group member made a statement on whether the Novelization or Point of View takes precedence?

Even in the EU when mistakes were pointed out like with Ventress in Obsession or Piell in Coruscant Nights, Leland would come out with the official canon stance online. They don't seem to do this anymore.

 

The novelization. There've been plenty of statements about FACPOV being just that: from a certain point of view. Some of the stories in it aren't even canon at all.

And yes, they make corrections and clarifications all the time; Leland and Matt Martin do it on Twitter.

 

If the novelization takes precedence, that means the Exhaust Port was the flaw. Period. Those were Orson Krennic's last thoughts.

And as he envisioned the cataclysmic energies building within the vast station, he saw it-a detail he had overlooked and forgotten, some trivial adjustment of Galen's: a single exhaust port leading from a narrow trench down and down, down kilometers of blackness, past conduits and hatches and radiation plating, down and down...

-and into the main reactor.

The primary weapon of the Death Star battle station fired.

Orson Krennic, advanced weapons research director and father of the Death Star, died alone on Scarif, screaming in fury at Galen Erso, at Jyn Erso, at Wilhuff Tarkin, and at all the galaxy.


So it seems strange we're still getting statements like:

That indicates it's still not clear among fandom.

 

Krennic wouldn't know what the flaw actually was; he's speculating, and imagining what could cause the station's destruction. The whole point is that Galen hid what he was doing so that Krennic didn't find out.

 

The novelization does not take precedence. They've been really clear about that since day one, we certainly argued about it plenty here: "movie novelizations are canon where they align with what is seen on screen".

And that part of the novelization does not align with what is on screen. Galen Erso says "I’ve placed a weakness deep within the system. A flaw so small and powerful, they’ll never find it. [...] Saw, the reactor module, that’s the key. That’s the place I’ve laid my trap. It’s well hidden and unstable, one blast to any part of it will destroy the entire station." Nothing about exhaust ports there.

 

Considering that speculation ended up being what actually happened, we have strong circumstantial evidence that this is indeed the flaw. It also points out Galen himself added the exhaust port as a "trivial adjustment". As you said, the novelization takes precedence.

 

I agree; I was referring to the novelization taking preference over FACPOV. As I say, Krennic' thoughts are uninformed and subjective, and as you've pointed out here, the film itself gives us the actual weakness straight from the horse's mouth.

That isn't what happens. The exhaust port leads to the actual weakness, which is the instability planted in the reactor core.

 

I don't think it does, though. From a Certain Point of View aligns with what is on screen better than the novelization does.

Ultimately, though, it's like arguing about how both Matthew and Luke can be in the Biblical canon when they contain contradictory details. They're canon because an authority put them there, that's literally all that means.

 

Funny then how this reactor instability weakness seems carried over into Death Star 2.

It's like saying the warp core on the Starship Enterprise is a sabotage weakness designed by Scotty, when common sense would indicate that any attack on the warp core would destroy the Enterprise (and this does indeed happen to ships on Star Trek).

 

I mean blowing up the thing powering the entire station would work regardless. The exhaust port allows a charge to be planted directly in the middle of the instability, rather than somehow penetrating the armour and obliterating the entire reactor.

Also, whose plans would they have to go on but Galen's to replicate his work?

 

I'll just let more canon evidence, (this one from the Canon novel 'Moving Target') do the talking for me. To show that by ROTJ, even the Rebels themselves believe that the exhaust port was Galen's flaw.

Leia knew the Alliance was in no shape to take on another Death Star. Yes, the rebels had gained allies in the fight against the Empire, but the fleet was dispersed-rather than battling the Empire for control of the galaxy's star systems, the rebels were simply trying to stay alive.

The first Death Star had taken decades to build, at astronomical cost in credits and resources and lives. By destroying it, the rebels had struck a powerful blow against the Imperial war machine. But the Emperor had simply constructed another one.

Against such enormous power and wealth, what chance did they have?

"So we destroy this one, too," Madine said.

"It won't be that easy," Cracken said, beginning to pace the room. A part of Leia wanted to laugh at the idea that what Luke had done at Yavin was easy. "The Empire will have eliminated the flaw that allowed Skywalker to destroy the first battle station."

"Agreed," Ackbar said. "If this new battle station is completed, it will be invulnerable to external attack."

 

And yet Galen himself doesn't.

As presented on screen, we have Galen saying that the reactor contains his "flaw so small and powerful". Then we have Dodonna explaining in A New Hope that their analysis revealed a means of accessing the reactor, via the exhaust port.

Additionally, we could argue that the Empire did fix the flaw Erso introduced into the system; it takes the Falcon and Wedge's X-wing several shots to take out the reactor there, as opposed to "one blast to the reactor module and the whole system goes down."

 

Nothing in that excerpt from Moving Target actually requires Cracken and Ackbar to be talking about the exhaust port. It reads exactly the same if you assume they are talking about the reactor instability as the flaw.

As far as Krennic's dying thoughts go, consider Jyn's dialog in the film just prior to Krennic being shot: "My father's revenge: he put a flaw in the Death Star. He put a fuse in the middle of your machine, and I've just told the entire galaxy how to light it." His dying thoughts aren't speculation about what the flaw is, they are his realization of how Galen's "fuse" can be "lit."

 

"It won't be that easy," Cracken said, beginning to pace the room. A part of Leia wanted to laugh at the idea that what Luke had done at Yavin was easy. "The Empire will have eliminated the flaw that allowed Skywalker to destroy the first battle station."

"Agreed," Ackbar said. "If this new battle station is completed, it will be invulnerable to external attack."

Note the word "external" by Ackbar--this only refers to the exhaust port.

Cracken talks about how the Empire will have fixed the flaw. Yet the Alliance easily fires torpedoes at the reactor and destroys the entire station again in Death Star 2, meaning Cracken is NOT talking about the reactor flaw here, since he outright says this would have been fixed.

Galen outright says, "Any pressurized explosion to the reactor module will set off a chain reaction that will destroy the entire station" as if this is something new, when we know 30 years ago kid Vader destroyed a Trade Federation ship with a similar blow to the reactor.

 

All of this, yeah. My assumption is that Krennic is realizing at the last moment how you can take the whole thing down, maybe also finally understanding what's wrong with the reactor.

Galen says that setting off a concussive blast in the reactor will tear apart the whole station - that's the flaw. He's basically rigged it to blow on a hair trigger.

The plans are necessary because they need to figure out how to get to the reactor...and it's, notably, received as a terrible, impossible plan that no one has any faith in.

If the exhaust port is the flaw, there's no reason to steal the plans at all. Galen can just say: "Shoot the exhaust port. It leads to the reactor."

You have to assume, then, that the port isn't a flaw, really - if it makes no sense to try and attack the reactor that way, then it stands to reason that it makes no sense to fear the reactor being attacked that way. It also makes sense, if anything in space would need to/be able to vent exhaust, an enormous reactor would.

 

There's nothing in ANH that makes me think the Death Star reactor is any more unstable than the Trade Federation battleship Vuutun Palaa's reactor in the Phantom Menace, or more unstable than the Death Star 2 reactor (which presumably fixed Galen's sabotage per Cracken's canon dialogue), both of which also completely destroyed the station when the reactor was hit.

The idea that the reactor was somehow made more unstable by Galen ignores TPM and ROTJ entirely.

EU Death Star 2 showed how the exhaust port was a flaw--exhaust was instead vented through multiple micro ports that could be sealed off at any time. I believe the Rogue One novel also showed the exhaust port was unnecessary and Galen installed it through some reverse psychology holonet emails.

This is like Scotty claiming he sabotaged the Enterprise and telling the Klingons a direct hit on the Enterprise's warp core will destroy the Enterprise, with the Klingons wondering how this is any different from any other Federation starship where a direct hit on the warp core will destroy the ship.

 

Then I guess we're done talking about it. :shrug: Star Wars '77 can also just be that movie, that's totally fine.