CT The executor destruction technically questionable

This is SW; we don't do "massive coincidence."

 

Right, but Lucas only had so much money. He had a certain amount that he had to spend on ROTJ, which was $32 million. The other money went back towards building the Ranch, THX and Skywalker Sound. He even had to start relocating everything after TESB, because he had a larger staff than when he first started. He had two people in 1976 and had eighty in 1981, doing the job of just two. So he had to cut corners and then start relocating. Hell, Lucas even said that it was far more daunting to work on ROTJ than it was on TESB and ANH.

Paul Scanlon: Even though you're no longer directing, I get the impression that making a 'Star Wars' picture, even the third time around, isn't getting any easier.

George Lucas: Jedi almost killed everybody, every department, from costumes to building monsters to the sophistication of the mechanics to the special effects. Everything was very, very hard on everybody. This one was grim for me, just as bad as Star Wars, just as bad as directing. I don't know how I got into it. It's the demands, the amount of time one has to spend, and the anxiety, the worrying: ''Is it going to be good? Is this going to work? Why is everything going wrong all the time?'' And it's my personality. I'm very emotionally involved in it, and I've made a big commitment to it.

--Rolling Stone interview, 1983.

So for Lucas, if he felt that the Executor was good enough, then for him, it was. When the SE's rolled around, he was very selective about what he wanted to change. Some of which he had to be talked into by Dennis Muren. Note that he didn't change the shots of the Falcon being chased by the Star Destroyers in ANH. Basically, those shots still hold up, but as joked about in "Family Guy", the Falcon doesn't really do anything impressive when Han's stalling for time. Especially compared to the maneuvers in TESB, ROTJ and TFA.

Also remember that Lucas had a tight deadline on the OT. When he did the PT, he gave ILM all kinds of time to get things ready.

 

I don't think theres any need to go searching for them though when they aren't needed. My explanation might be quite long winded but really its just trying to explain something I think was intended to be self evident, you don't need to know much or anything about physics to recognised that the SSD is behaving in a similar kind of fashion to an object falling to earth.

Honestly I don't think Lucas can be blamed for this FX shot not being entirely convicing, I think it was more a product of the limits of FX tech at the time. I would say as well that the shot just before it with the SSD angling downwards is excellent and really sells the sense of giant mass for me.

 

I think Lucas can be blamed for not cleaning it up or replacing it when he did the SEs.... I mean we get Jedi Rocks but he leaves this in?

 

Yeah I'd agree with that, there's really little evidence that the SE's were about "realising his vision", it was always about either testing new CGI or trying to link the films to the PT.

 

Well to be fair - they did do a lot of great clean up work on some of the matte lines and stuff.... I just don't get how they could look at that scene and think "oh that's fine.. nothing to fix there.

I mean they basically re-did significant portions of the ANH DS battle

 

ANH was about that. He wasn't even going to do TESB and ROTJ initially, but then decided to go ahead. That's why there are fewer changes on those two films than there are ANH.

 

Keep in mind Palpatine's plan was entirely overconfident, and it showed rather quickly. He didn't want the fleet to attack and told them to trap the Rebels, which was just signing the Fleet's death certificate, in all honesty. I wouldn't be surprised if he told them to float around by the Death Star to draw the fleet in without alerting them to the true size of the fleet. At least, that's my headcanon.

But then the battle from the Emperor's throne room seems to show the Executor out with the fleet.

It doesn't make sense to me either. The destruction of a bridge logically shouldn't mean the end of the entire ship, especially one with 43,000 crew (or whatever the number is now). It's not like the bridge is the only part of the ship that has anyone working, that makes no logical sense. In fact, I've always wondered why there was not a secondary bridge, or secondary command for the ship's systems (for a ship that large, it only makes sense that there are multiple command centres coordinating). It especially doesn't make sense to me why the main bridge deflector shield domes are...well...right on top of the bridge.

The only explanation for all of this is that the plot called for it, and so that's how it had to happen.

 

Okay, I have to notice that nobody buys my rationalization I presented earlier: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...hnically-questionable.50037426/#post-53095453

However I feel very good about it, especially now having seen yesterday the first Clone Wars episodes, where the Malevolence exactly suffers the fate, I rationalized for the Emperor's SSD in ROJ a long time ago - sabotage.

 

In Lost Stars, a point is made of how damage to the engines happened as well - it was the combination of damaged engines and destroyed bridge that took out the Executor.

Maybe after TESB, the Emperor claimed the Executor as his own Star Destroyer (to punish Vader for losing Luke). - and used it to take him to Endor.