[losvedir]

> And I'm curious what exactly you think the effect of ramming into one ship with another ship transitioning into hyperspace should be

It has to be nothing, or else none of the other movies make sense at all. Kinetic energy attacks (accelerate a mass to a great velocity) are the most obvious attack there is, from the dawn of time with throwing rocks to bows and arrows to muskets to cannons on up. And in a universe where you can accelerate a mass immediately to light speed, nothing else will really compare.

So yes, at some level it makes obvious sense that a kamikaze of one starship to another "should" work. But in the Star Wars universe we had had to suspend that disbelief (in some ways justified because light speed jumping isn't real, so maybe it just doesn't work that way) because otherwise X-wings could take out Star Destroyers and the Death Star is unnecessary because you can just strap the hyperspace drives to large hunk of rock.

[krapp]

You have to take into account that Star Wars is not an attempt to simulate realistic space battle strategy and tactics, it's pew-pew space battles and laser swords and pulp adventure. It was never realistic. The Death Star is a patently ridiculous, extremely inefficient weapon, since there's no need to entirely explode a planet to destroy it, as is it needing to wait until the moon of Yavin is out of the way when it could easily destroy Yavin from any axis, as is the trench run, which only exists at all because George Lucas ripped off a World War 2 movie, scene for scene, as is the plot twist of the exhaust port. Yes, it's been retconned (like the parsecs thing) but it's still goofy as hell that two torpedos could cause a chain reaction big enough to blow up an entire moon-sized ship even if it hit the reactor dead on. People accept it because it's the OT and they have nostalgia glasses on but it really is kind of bullshit.

The Empire was just that arrogant and self-confident that they never noticed such an obvious flaw until it was too late? Still bullshit.

Sabotage? Better, and it got us Rogue One, which was a great movie. But even then it stretches credibility.

The walkers in Empire Strikes Back are ridiculous, no one would actually build those, with their obvious (and easily exploited) weakness. And in a universe with blasters, no one would ever be using lightsabers. Hell, if you can force choke someone, which even Luke did with that Gammorean guard, why not just force pinch an artery in your enemy's brain or heart? Why bother with all the spinny flips and shit? Just force heart attack from a concealed location, done.

Realistically, you wouldn't even have dogfights in space at all, much less with plane-shaped ships that bank through turns, you would have fully automated, spherical droids attacking from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away or just, as you mentioned, toss a big FU asteroid through hyperspace into the orbit of a planet. And yes, the elephant in the room is that any FTL drive is by definition a weapon of mass destruction.

None of it makes much sense. It never has, because it has always been more important that things look cool than make sense. But the point is, ramming a ship with another ship while going into hyperspace makes no less sense than anything else. The transition to hyperspace isn't instantaneous, you can see the ships zooming in and out of hyperspace and see the starfield warp. So logically there must be a point at which it works. Maybe the margin of error for that is so razor thin that it's not worth trying most of the time. Maybe the particular shape of the ships involved made it an optimal strategy that one time. I don't know, but one can come up with excuses a lot less goofy and contrived that the "maze of black holes" that justifies the parsec line about the Millennium Falcon to justify it.

People are just being particularly nitpicky about this one element while they're willing to forgive the decades of patent ridiculousness that came before.

[the_af]

Fully agreed with the gist of your point...

...with the addendum that it's still possible to dislike the silliness of the prequels and the new trilogy, while embracing the silliness of the OT. Rose-tinted glasses? You betcha! The OT meant the world to me when I was young.

I like Rey though. I think the accusations of her being a Mary Sue are mysogynistic -- isn't Luke's journey in the OT essentially the same? -- as is some of the backlash against the new trilogy. Which I also find boring, but not because the main characters are women or whatever.

What undid the new trilogy, in my opinion, was a couple of things:

- As a reaction against the worst excesses of the prequels, they instead stayed too close to the OT, especially during the serviceable but uninspired The Force Awakens, basically a remake of A New Hope.

- Then, it's clear JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson didn't see eye to eye (or their creative teams didn't, same thing), and so the rest of the new trilogy is essentially a flamewar between the two, with each saying "what happened before didn't matter, THIS is what matters now!" and undoing what the other did. Which was... embarrassing. Again, the OT was also full of retcons -- e.g. it's obvious Leia wasn't Luke's sister in Episode IV -- but at least it wasn't a glorified flamewar of writers actively undoing what others before had done.

[hyperhopper]

> I like Rey though. I think the accusations of her being a Mary Sue are mysogynistic -- isn't Luke's journey in the OT essentially the same?

Not even close. Luke had flaws, we saw real loss with Luke that motivated him, Luke spent a lot of time training, and even then couldn't compete with his enemies, he even lost his hand for trying!

I don't even know where you're bringing misogyny into this, seems like a crazy amount of virtue signalling to bring that up out of nowhere. I hate Gary Stu's just as much, that's what ruined Dune for me.

[saiya-jin]

Can't agree more. SW is just popcorn fun, brain better left elsewhere. I think people are being too harsh and pedantic, Lucas never bothered to make every single aspect of the universe and story infallible and scientifically correct.

I mean if I start taking apart every single aspect, logical issues are there. Why use useless troopers who can't hit barn when robots are so much better? Space bombers that drop bombs in WWII style doesn't make any sense at all. Empire of first 3 movies is bunch of incompetent idiots who couldn't run a local 7/11, not a galactic empire. Literally pick any aspect, it doesn't make much sense in real world.

I had blast watching new trilogy in cinema, simply because I expected same level of brainless fun as original movies, and it delivered. And that's enough, making SW into some infallible religion is as stupid as other religions.