[OT] More George Lucas bashing.

[Barnacle Bill]

Atrocities said:
I like Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back. Episode VI however left a lot to be desired.

Gotta disagree. The very first wrong turn was the Imperial Walkers - the importation of Battletech nonsense where it didn't belong. The big trick to armored warfare is low silhouette, and even in the original Luke's speeder demonstrated a suspention that would be great for a tank (a la "Hammer's Slammers"). All else (armor, weapons, training) being equal, a force of grav tanks taking advantage of terrain is going to wipe out a force of walker tanks sticking up like trees. It's painfully obvious that they did it because Battletech was popular with the comic book crowd about then. However, the point of Battletech was not futuristic armored warfare, but rather translating the medieval Samurai system hi-tech (i.e. not a tank with a crew, but a suit of armor for a noble warrior). That might have fit the Jedi thing, but as portrayed (Stormtrooper battle taxis) it was completely out of place.

Then there was the shift in mood from heroic fantasy to this dark... whatever you want to call it.

Finally the romance between Han & Princess Leia, with Luke conveniently removed from the triangle by being revealed as the gal's brother. Total crap. Luke was the hero => supposed to get the girl. Especially in the classic "Hero rescues the Princess" paradigm. Han, the mercenary side-kick of the idealistic hero, has no business getting the girl. At least not the Princess. If they wanted to introduce some lightsaber-waving Space-Zena, then Han could have her...

All in all, completely unsatisfactory.

[Atrocities]

Walkers are not really praticle weapons of war, they are mainly TERROR weapons.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

...Yaay for stories conforming to tired, old cliches!

That was sarcastic.

I had a longer rant, but I'm quite sure you didn't mean to imply that female characters are simply prizes to be handed out.

[Barnacle Bill]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
...Yaay for stories conforming to tired, old cliches!

That was sarcastic.

Actually, the tired old cliche is what happened in the movie - in real life the streetwise cool guy with the hopped-up ride gets the girl, not the starry-eyed nerd. So, in fantasy it should work the other way around. Inspires the nerds...

narf poit chez BOOM said:
I had a longer rant, but I'm quite sure you didn't mean to imply that female characters are simply prizes to be handed out.

Depends entirely on the story. Zena the Warrior Princess - obviously not. The Avengers - surely you jest. Star Wars? The Princess was fundamentally a plot device. A reason for the heroic dering-do. Nothing more.

[Barnacle Bill]

Atrocities said:
Walkers are not really praticle weapons of war, they are mainly TERROR weapons.

Still comes across as hokey, though...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

The nerd already gets superpowers and becomes head of an ancient order of knights.

Han doesn't even get payed, if I remember correctly.

And the princess manages to be a character in her own right at least a few times in each movie. Which is a good thing.

Now, if they really want to have bucked convention, she would have gone off with Chewie...

[Barnacle Bill]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
The nerd already gets superpowers and becomes head of an ancient order of knights.

If you truly understood nerds, you'd realize that the only point of stuff like that is to justify getting the girl. There is absolutely no point in saving the universe if it doesn't get you laid by a beautiful princess (or a reasonable facsimile thereof)...

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Han doesn't even get payed, if I remember correctly.

As a nerd who married a beautiful doctor from a family of doctors, I can assure you that getting the girl - when the girl is a beautiful princess - is much better than getting paid for taxi services.

narf poit chez BOOM said:
And the princess manages to be a character in her own right at least a few times in each movie. Which is a good thing.

...but pretty much beside the point, in the context of the first movie & a hypothetical Star Wars series that remained true to the spirit of the first movie.

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Now, if they really want to have bucked convention, she would have gone off with Chewie...

That would have gone beyond realism (as opposed to romantic fantasy) into absurdity. I supposed you could have introduced Jar Jar a movie earlier & had him get the girl, too

[Suicide Junkie]

Atrocities said:
Walkers are not really praticle weapons of war, they are mainly TERROR weapons.

When they are total crap in actual combat, they will quickly cease to be Terror weapons as soon as somebody fights back.

For example, how scary are Jaffa and their staff weapons in SG1? Sure they look scary, but when you shoot them they die, and they're big, noisy and use slow flashy weapons.

Walkers take that slow, flashy and vulnerable to a whole new level. Target practice.

Orbital Bombardment ftw

[Spectarofdeath]

I'm with SJ on this one. Seriously, if you want to wipe out the rebel base, why do you send in troops first? I mean come on, two droids, one jedi, one smuggler, one princess and one farmboy are able to elude hordes (not to mention all the ones they killed) of your soldiers on (probably) the biggest base in the galaxy (which you constructed, why aren't those troops being trained better?!?) And you call for a "Ground invasion".

[Hugh Manatee]

They had the shield generators focused over the base and the weapons platform that could disable a whole ISDII for several minutes. Now logic says you could have immolated the areas around the shield turning the planet into uninhabitable slag with a boiling atmosphere but that would have been a boring plot device and I think vader wanted most of them alive so they HAD to invade the base under the shield.

IMO the AT-AT(elephant) walkers were cool, but just a flawed design, like most of the imperial crap(IE fighters without shields, the shoot here buttons, the blindspot behind a star destroyer ect, they just don't give a crap about the safety of their troops they just want big guns for cheap. I'm thinking that hydraulics are bound to be cheaper then an antigrav nit and may require less power to opperate). For one thing the guns only cover about 180 degrees or less in front of the thing, if they had put a turret on top, maybe a few SAM launchers, guns in the back, a few on the sides, and a few underneath(like the one that drops out of the falcon when they escape tatooine in Ep4) it could be a dam near unnaproachable walking fortress.

They were however covered by the AT-ST(chicken) walkers, so their exposed rears would have been covered save for the retarded marksmanship of the imperial gunners they should have been fine. And they did route the rebels from the base.