CT The executor destruction technically questionable

During the rebel assault on Death Star II, the imperial fleet formed a blockade to trap the rebel ships in the Death Stars firing arc. The question is, why wasn't the executor with them?

What purpose did it serve to put the executor to such a close proximity to the Death Star? Such a manoeuvre would be considered extremely dangerous, even if there wouldn't have been battle conditions. Furthermore, considering it couldn't possibly qualify as normal orbital track, the ship probably had to combat extreme gravitational pulls. Why would you want to put such a strain on the ship in a battle condition? It escapes me... It's a sitting duck scenario, the ship would've been targeted sooner or later and perished, even if it's bridge wouldn't have been destroyed.

That brings me to my next point. Why would the destruction of the bridge send the ship on a collision course with the Death Star? Does the destruction of the bridge actually send a shutdown signal to the engines or something? Logic dictates the ship's systems should assume some type of fail safe mode. Imagine if it would be that simple. Just destroy the bridge systems when the starship is in low orbit, and watch it plunge. Such a design error wouldn't be conceivable.

I don't know how these ships were designed. But wouldn't it be fair to think that the bridge sent power requests to engineering, which then allocated? I seriously doubt they'd send their own ship on a suicide course willfully.

 

It wasn't just the Executor - most of the fleet had gotten closer. The battle seemed to have moved over time - we see Imperial and Rebel ships, from the Executor's windows, before the A-Wing hit.

 

I wholeheartedly agree.

All I can offer as a conjectural explanation and/or rationalization is that apparently the automatic emergency procedure program of the Emperor's Super Star Destroyer had been somehow tempered with by Rebel spies aboard the ship.

If we look at the conning tower of that Star Destroyer that got pulverized in ESB alongside Vader's Executor in an asteroid field you'd either expect that instantly an auxilary bridge of some kind takes over and/or that an automatic program would instantly steer the rest of the ship out of harm's way (i.e. get it as far way from other objects in the area, for its own and other Imperial ships' protection).

What we saw in ROJ is quite the opposite, hence my belief that the emergency program had been deliberately sabotaged.

 

The destruction of the Executor was easily (IMO) the worst part of the ROTJ space battle. That is still arguably the best space battle ever put to film.... just amazing effects work.

EXCEPT for the shot showing the Executor crashing into the Death Star - that shot is laughably bad. I kind of don't get why Lucas didn't clean that up or replace it instead of giving us Jedi rocks or the whacko sarlacc

 

In TFA: Incredible Cross Sections, a point is made of how the Resurgent-class Star Destroyer was designed to not have the Super Star Destroyer's vulnerabilities - it has a less exposed main bridge as well as an auxiliary bridge.

 

this is what i call overthinking star wars.

 

The odds of a starfighter collision wrecking a SSD's entire flight control system are 3720 to 1.

Luckily, the A-wing pilot was Corellian.

 

I don't like the destruction of the Executor
It's my favorite ship
whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

since it's zero G why does does it move downwards into the deathstar?

It's a tragic scene in ROTJ

 

The Deathstar would have pretty significant gravity so I don't think that part is unrealistic although I'd agree with Lobot that the FX shot could have been worked on in the SE, moreso than anything I think the Deathstar model doesn't really hold up showing its scale with that lighting as it hits.

 

ah I didn't even think about the DS having gravity, but I suppose it would make sense since its huge

still don't like the Executor getting destroyed

Vader dying + Executor getting destroyed =

 

I concur that the SSD crash scene should have been worked on for the SE. You would think that impact would have left a huge crater on the DS.

As for the SSD, it doesn't make sense a ship of that size doesn't have any auxiliary bridges. Even real battleships from over a 100 years ago had two bridges.

 

Things like this (of which there are a few in ROTJ) is why I think it's the laziest of the OT. It has some great stuff (as I said, the space battle other than this scene is still one of the most amazing things ever put to film)... but man there are definitely a few places in ROTJ where they mailed it in and must have been like "whatever, good enough"

 

It's not just that the bridge was destroyed. It was rammed by a fast-moving fighter, fueled and heavily armed. Add in the speed it was traveling and it would've caused a blast powerful enough to take down several decks both above and beneath the command deck. There was also whatever other damage the ship suffered that caused the bridge shields to go down in the first place. Finally, since Executor was one massive ship, even at the best of times it wouldn't exactly be easy to maneuver it quickly. Hit the retros and it'd still keep traveling for a few hundred thousand miles, and with the guidance system compromised, it'd be almost impossible to get her stable before impact.

As for the ship being too close to DS II, remember that the Alliance fleet had moved in towards the Imperial fleet to trade broadsides at point blank range. Executor may have been ordered to stay by DS II to provide extra protection, just in case the shield did fail. Besides, earlier in the battle, they probably figured they have enough standard Destroyers to do the job. Why send in Executor where it wasn't needed? Truly, their overconfidence was their weakness.

As for the VFX for the impact, I thought it was OK. I had no complaints.

 

I was witness to a First Watching of Jedi a week ago. One of the girls watching said "Why is it falling into the Death Star? It's in Space! Why would it fall?"

Star Wars Physics.

 

Far more important than Vader or the Super Star Destroyer... Poor Admiral Piett! So, unfair.

 

Congratulations, you just quoted George Lucas' attitude on making a SW film. As a matter of fact, that was one of the reasons why he didn't like the expensive work of Kersh & Kurtz on ESB. He just wanted it to be "good enough", they wanted it to be better. IIRC, Rinzler reveals the difference of philosophies in his Making of ESB, George Lucas' "good enough" is quoted several times.

 

Why would the Death Star have had "significant gravity"? Apparently you had artificial 1 G on the outer sphere and 1 G on the horizontal deck layers in the equatorial ring section.
Had there been artificial gravity in the center (to simulate Earth like conditions), everybody in the equatorial section would have gotten stuck on the walls.

 

It's not that different from the Invisible Hand in ROTS.

Given that the Death Star II is not in geostationary orbit (it's too close) but "suspended" (it remains in the same place always - above the shield generator -probably on repulsorlifts) - then it would follow that, so is the Imperial Fleet. Take out the repulsorlift and the ship will drop.

 

^^ You mean that it was actually the gravitational pull of the forest moon of Endor that attracted the Super Star Destroyer?

Sounds like a good rationalization but wouldn't the repulsorlift effect of the Death Star diminish that pull effect and wouldn't the ship rather slowly decline in altitude?

 

My guess is that the Death Star's own repulsorlifts don't affect anything near it - which need their own to stay up.

It takes place rather quickly in the movie, it is true.

 

I don't think gravity had anything to do with it. The primary controls on the bridge were destroyed, the backups apparently malfunctioned (maybe some kind of feedback from the primaries getting fried), and poor old Exec swerved in a random direction. The Force was not with her, and that random direction happened to be a collision course with DS2.

 

Lucas didn't have the money to make it look any better. Unless they were willing to cough up a million dollars, he was going to go with what worked. Going over budget, knowing full well that Lucas couldn't afford it, is what got him fired.

 

That's a bad argument given the incredible financial success of TESB. Maybe it was ok not to cut corners and put out a better product. TESB cost like 18 million to make and has now made over 500 million dollars

Edit - BTW I'm not a Kurtz apologist by any means... he definitely has a history of going over budget

 

Really though this just reveals that the concept of "artificial gravity" in Star Wars is highly questionable. Leaving that aside though both the Deathstar and the SSD have a ton of mass that would mean the latter would be attracted to the former being more massive, exactly how much attraction might be questionable but the basic concept is sound.

The way the SSD moves for me clearly seems to imply that the Deathstar is having an impact on it, when the bridge gets hit it starts to angle downwards until it ends up at what looks like exactly 90 degrees to the deathstar at which point its angle remains stable. Either that's a massive coincidence or that represents the point at which gravity from the Deathstar is having maximum effect on it.

Now you could argue that might not be entirely realistic as the SSD would just fall directly downwards into the Deathstar(maybe invent some reason like the repulsorlifts at the front but not the rear failing or somehow it having more mass at the front from some kind of ultra dense fuel souce) BUT I think the important thing is the way it reacts relative to the Deathstar, it starts changing direction when directly exposed to its gravity and then reaches a point of equilibrium and stops changing angle only moving directly towards the Deathstar.