I don't disagree with any of the above. But the main issue is not the tech. If a mile long spaceslug can live in an asteroid that apparently does eat something then fine I'll buy a planet with a watery core. I'll also buy the yellow submarine going through a planet's core even if it's completely moronic. It's not the imaginary tech I have a problem with (well mainly, there's only so much I can suspend my disbelief but fine). The main problem I have is simple maths that you can't cheat, it's like saying the poopoo is peepee.
Please excuse the crudity of this diagram but I didn't have time to make it to scale or paint it.
The red dot on the surface is Theed. The quickest way from point A to point B is the straight line. So the ONLY time the quickest way to Theed throught the core is if they start from the EXACT opposite side of the planet (green line). Any other route is bound to be a triangle like the blue lines and the brown and we know that two sides of the triangle (blue lines) are always longer than the third (brown line). If they really do follow the green line then why did the army land on the exact opposite side of the planet? It's like saying we're in South England and need to land in Normandy so we go through the planet core and when we are 2/3rds towards Tasmania we will turn and come up at Normandy.
But that's nothing new, this has been discussed multiple times. It's in the Plinkett review as well. This is just for context. My issue is when bits like that in the script are there to "sound cool" as JoeG said and it just complicates things. Like I get GL wanted to make it sound ominous like ooooh planet core. But there is nothing about the planet core in the story. If they said the quickest way is through the Dragontooth Trench that would also have sounded ominous, the same big fish bigger fish schtick could have been done and it wouldn't have made any difference. It's just that things like that stick out to me cuz it's a peek behind the curtains to see how lazy the filmmaker/scriptwriter is. It's as Plinkett said Order 66, you can see the thought process: "What should be the big bad thing? Execure Operation Shadowblade...no, that's dumb, how about a number, what's an evil number? 666, but too obvious...Execute order 6...no, maybe order 66? Yep, fine moving on.".
Or the other day I was watching the Witcher series (god that's horrendous). There's a pig farmer, his deformed hunchback good-for-nothing daughter outside and a sorceress comes:
"How much for a pig?"
"10 crowns"
"And how much for your daughter?"
"6 crowns"
"I'll give 4".
"Ok".
And I'm just like why on earth did she ask the price of the pig other than obvious in fyour face exposition for the audience? There are at least a hundred ways the same message could have been conveyed and they went with the laziest where the character in the context has no reason to have the conversation this way. I dunno, I know I'm overthinking it but laziness like this frustrates me so much.