Rogue One The Battle of Scarif -- How It Compares

Again, why not do the same thing that was done against the SD? The only thing we saw in the movie is them attempting to shoot the shields down the gate produced for some unknown reason. Why not do the Ion torp trick on the station itself which would definitely taken down the whole thing because that's the point of ion weaponry. It's made to disrupt electronic systems.

Why try to brute force it when they have the equipment and tactics to finesse it like they did with the SD. I mean seriously, whats the point of planetary shield if it can be taken down by a few proton torps from a snub fighter?

This whole battle made no sense.

 

What makes you assume that a few proton torpedoes could take down the planetary shield?
At the very best it would damage the shield right at that spot, not take it down entirely.

The gate was protected by two Star Destroyers, bigger than anything the rebels had available. It was also protected by an endless stream of TIE-Fighters. The whole defense was set up to prevent someone from getting through or taking down the station. At no point did they think that someone would sneak down there to steal information. Like with the Death Star, the defenses were build for something entirely different than the attack that actually happened.

You are also assuming that the ion torpedoes would have the same effect against the station that it had on a (already damaged) Star Destroyer. There isn't really any reason to assume that this is the case. The SD had losts its shields, which made it vulnerable. And even then, the SD didn't crash, it had to be forced into a crash. There was never any comment that suggested the station had lost its shields, or that an attack with ion torpedoes would cause this to happen. Indeed, the only time we ever saw an ion-canon take down a not-damaged SD was the big gun in ESB. Every other time, shields were taken down with proton torpedoes, not ion torpedoes, thus making the attack as seen in Rogue One completely normal.

Of course the station itself is the weakness of the entire field, it isn't really possible to be otherwise. Hence the SDs and all the TIEs protecting it. Just like the generator on Endor was the weakness to the field protecting the second Death Star. An energy field that requires an access-gate will always be most vulnerable at that access gate. Which is why there were plenty of defenses around to protect that spot, while there was nothing to protect any other area of the field. As can be seen in the discussion held right before, the rebels have never attempted a large scale assault against the Empire. And the attack wouldn't even have succeeded if it weren't for a Star Destroyer crashing into the station.

Quite frankly, taking down the shield of the Star Destroyer with a normal assault, then using ion weapons to make it immobile, and ramming it to cause a crash of the two SDs so that one of them would crash into the station is very much the opposite of "finesse". This wasn't just a case of them sweeping in, firing of some ion-torpedoes and succeeding with that, it was an entire chain of events. A chain that included a desperate last-option attempt.

 

I didnt assume anything, i thought the opposite like i said. Some pilots in the movie were shooting at the shield and said they were surprised it was so strong. That was a super weird line.

Two SDs that didnt do anything but stay parked where they originally were and did nothing else. There were barely any shots showing them shooting.

Im not assuming anything i am saying, yet again, perform the same maneuver that was done on the SD on the shield gate. That means the whole series of attacks. If there station had it's own shields then take the generator down then have ion torps to disrupt electronics.

Why wasnt that done? Why not use Ion torps on the stations?

Like i said above, take down the station shield then ion torp to disrupt electronics.
I dont know why this is hard to understand.

The movie showed us a method of attacks to take down large things. Why was that done on secondary targets and not the primary one?

 

LOL - I seriously think there's a large divide in this thread between people who have played x-wing and tie-fighter and people who haven't

 

Why are you bringing up the Death Star?

 

I don't want to answer for ACoD, but I would assume he brought it up because we're discussing the Battle of Scarif and the Death Star was there in the Battle of Scarif.

 

My order:

Space Battles
1) Endor - Excellent, blew me away.
2) Yavin - The tension...wow
3) Scarif - Amazing batle that reminded me a lot of Endor
4) Asteroid Field - Amazing music and visuals
5) Coruscant - Visually great
6) Starkiller Base - Visually great but too much of a rehash
7) Geonosis - ??? Are we talking Obi Wan vs Jango?
8) Naboo - Stupid... Spinning is a good trick...

Land Battles
1) Hoth - I don't know how this isn't everybody's #1 land battle. The walkers are soooo intimidating.
2) Scarif - Walkers make the best land battles...but Hoth was better.
3) Geonosis - Just for the look of all the jedi igniting lightsabers.
4) Kashyyyk - Did you forget this one? I thought it was really cool
5) Naboo - I actually love the visual of all the droid firing and walking through the shields.
6) Utapau - Not too much of a battle here.
7) Takadona - Meh, the Finn lightsaber battle was dumb
8) Death Star - there was a land battle here?
9) Endor - Ewoks beating stormtroopers with rocks, enough said.

 

Battle of Scarif is so fast paced.

 

I think the battle of Scarif is right up there with the best space battles in the franchise. Do I prefer it to the one over Endor? That's a tough question. The fact that the Endor battle was made 34 years ago and still looks amazing to me holds a lot of weight, but the Scarif battle is just as exciting, and obviously has superior visuals. I'm struggling to separate them. Both are miles better than the Starkiller Base assault.

 

I think the space battles of Scarif, Endor, and Yavin are clearly and without question the top 3 space battles in Star Wars. How you order them is personal preference all the way. I can't argue against putting any of them at #1.

 

I honestly think the dogfight over Maz's castle is better than the SKB battle.

I think your point about the ROTJ space battle is a good one... that was created by optically compositing something like 300 different elements (which is really kind of insane!). To this day it still looks amazing and better than almost anything that has come since. It might be the best, most impressive "pre-digital" effects sequence ever filmed.

 

I think I agree with you.

And though it's not a space battle per say, after the big 3 (Scarif, Endor, and Yavin) I'm gonna go with this sequence which is truly amazing with the music and effects (especially for the time it was made):

 

Is that thing that happened over Maz Kanata's Medieval Themed Restaurant and Bar count as anything?

 

How does the space Battle of Scarif compare? Well, it depends on how many SW space battles you've seen. The majority of SW fans have only seen seven odd space battles. If you're like me and play SW mods for games like SW: Empire at War (Thrawn's Revenge and Phoenix Rising in particular) you've witnessed hundreds of space battles and even commanded them. How does the space battle of Scarif compare? Meh, it lacked depth. It was all quick cut, high speed movement, oooh! Explosion! Yay! Look guys! There's a cool space battle going on because you can see all the X-Wings blowing up stuff.
For me there was no real tension. I didn't get any real feel of progression of the battle. Tactics weren't used at all and if you call using the Hammerhead as a spectacle of brilliance then, well, it would've been nice to see some actually depth in use of all the other ships in both the Imperial and Rebel Fleets.

And another thing, the Ion Bombs are a rather self defeating conundrum. Let me explain:
The Ion bombs were used after the shields of the SD were taken out. This means that turbo laser weapons are strong enough to take out shields but too weak to penetrate armor in a quick fashion necessitating the use of the ion bombs to incapacitate the SD instead of destroying it outright. Skip forward a bit and the Hammerhead nudges the SD into the other SD. The 1st SD slices into the other SD without so much as a flicker of the shields going out on the second SD. This proves two things: 1st the shields on the SD don't block physical impacts, hence the ion bombs could've been dropped before the 1st SD's shields were down and you could've saved so much time dealing with only one SD and a space station since the beginning of the battle and; 2nd SD armor is extremely weak so the turbo lasers should've been enough to destroy the 1st SD when its weak shields went down and it's just one big confusing mess of a half cooked idea to fulfill the line, "They're better equipped than you realize" and to tie SW Rebels into the films.

Rather lame if you ask me.

 

The Battle of Scarif was a majestic, gritty, vital and costly dogfight.

 

The cutting between five different points of view in the Battle of Scarif (Jyn and Cassian, Baze and Chirrut, Bodhi, Krennic, and the Rebel fleet) is, as George Miller would put it, "nice and creamy."

 

Never played Phoenix Rising, but I have spent many, many hours with Thrawn's Revenge (Love it - wish they had the galatic civil war and prequel eras also... really well balanced mod with vastly improved mechanics from the base game). I will say that none of the SW films have done a great job depicting capital ship combat. There's a few shots in ROTJ that are fairly cool and Vader's entrance in Rogue One is more what one would expect from an ISD. It does appear that the Capital ships for most of the Scarif battle were staying far apart and possibly out of range (or close to it) from one another. Perhaps the Imperials were willing to simply park the ISDs by the shield gate and the Rebels were happy to focus on using their starfighters as the primary assault vector.

I will say that the Ion torpedoes are much more consistent with X-wing and Tie-fighter if you've ever played those games. In X-wing and Tie fighter you can use ion weapons to disable a target once the shields are down (ion weapons are effective against shields also... but in the case of ion torpedoes you'd be better off saving them until the shields are down against a capital ship since you have a limited magazine). There's actually a mission in x-wing where you have to blow up the shield generators of an ISD just like they did in Rogue One

 

Then we're both spoiled then lol. Granted, in the case of Tie Fighter and X-Wing the capital ships have to be dumbed down a bit to make it possible for a single starfighter to destroy them (because they are single player games and team play with bots doesn't really work). Although with my experience with Rouge Leader (the gamecube game, rather arcady and not to be compared with X-Wing) the first level where you have to take out an ISD was super difficult. I don't even think I beat that level, one of my brothers must of finished it. But gosh, how many tries it took to shoot the stupid thing down. The funny thing about that game was that you had to shoot the two domes on top of the bridge and the bulge on the bottom to bring the shields on the bridge down so you could kill it. this is an allowance made for the game of course because the domes on the bridge wouldn't be able to be destroyed until the shields were down that they were supposedly generating lol.
I remember watching a video of Tie Fighter gameplay (of the game Tie Fighter) where the person flying the Tie/In couldn't take two hits without exploding. Kind of a neat challenge actually.

I've finally put my finger on what the battle of Scarif was lacking when I say it lacked depth. Now the film is detailed and layered, I'll give it that. The details are good but IMHO the layering was bad. In each shot of the space battle for instance, there is a whole lot going on. More than you can even notice or process when you see it for the first time. There is stuff happening in front of you, stuff happening in the back, off to the side, implied off screen. All of the shots are layered. Unfortunately, after multiple viewings of youtube clips, most of the shots are layered with the same icing. The same detail. You see a dogfight in the front of the screen, you see everything else is a dogfight in the background of the scene. You see close up of the Rebel capital ships, you only see the capital ships. You see an attack run on the shield gate, all the other fighters are making an attack run. This is what I mean when I say the battle lacked depth. If it had the depth I was looking for, there would be different things going on in the different layers. The Ties and X-Wings would be dogfighting in the foreground, Y-Wings coming up behind them doing an attack run of an ISD, the shields failing for a moment with the Rebel capital ships unleashing a barrage of laser fire at the ISD before the shields come back online. All in the same frame, all in the same shot, zoomed way out, without any cuts. That's just me but that's the way I like my battle scenes. Zoomed out so I can see the whole thing, with as few cuts as possible so I can see all of the action. AND NO SHOULDER CAM. Ugh, not done right, those things remind me so much that there is a guy standing there with a camera filming the whole thing so much it takes me out of the movie.

 

Then the Battle of Scarif is most certainly the Battle of Endor DONE RIGHT after all of these years! The skirmish in Jedha City was fantastic and most certainly that type of combat has never been seen before in a Star Wars movie and I also love the dogfight at the Imperial Kyber Refinery on Eadu!

 

I have a feeling that the original space battle of Endor, as it was intended, would be nearly untouchable. But with squadrons missing, dialogues and pilots mixed up, entire acts cut, and a slew of other 'errors', we are still left with something great.

As for Scarif, it was pretty great. I can always ask for more (TIE Pilot dialog, more fighter pilot chatter, Imperial frigates/support ships) but this is likely the best we will get for a while.

 

Recently rewatched R1. The Battle of Scarif is so epic. Both space and ground warfare really contribute to the 3rd act finale. I love the rebel fleet hyperspace exit and the combination of air support, walkers, stormtroopers, explosions.. It's so amazing.

 

Damn, the cutting is so fluid for five different points of view. It just goes to show how spectacular the whole sequence truly is.