Lets talk all things Star Wars
- Status
TPM was the only prequel that felt like it was finished. And it was GL's lifetime achievement with realistic SFX.
The other two felt rushed-through and there was a sharp decline in some of the CGI quality.
Shooting the last two on 1080 video was a bad idea. I thought so even at the time. With the special editions, GL had just finished trying to wring every last bit of resolution out of the old film negatives of the OT. Then he turns around and shoots the final two movies on a video resolution that is well short of 35mm? WTF?
The other two felt rushed-through and there was a sharp decline in some of the CGI quality.
Shooting the last two on 1080 video was a bad idea. I thought so even at the time. With the special editions, GL had just finished trying to wring every last bit of resolution out of the old film negatives of the OT. Then he turns around and shoots the final two movies on a video resolution that is well short of 35mm? WTF?
Yeah you'd think someone as technology minded as George would've thought ahead on that one.
Last edited:
ScourgiousJinx
Master Member
Technical aspects are very important and they can easily ruin a movie but they aren't as paramount as other things. I can deal with crappy CGI & lower quality film better than horrible acting or atrocious writing. The PT is a mixed bag. I see TPM as being a better film than ROTS but not by much.
Last edited:
sztriki
Sr Member
Riceball
Master Member
I saw this over on Military.com and though some of you might get a kick out of it and/or find ways to tear their arguments apart.
www.military.com
6 Reasons Why It Would Suck to Be a Stormtrooper in 'Star Wars'
Out of all of the troops in the "Star Wars" canon, no one has it worse than the Stormtrooper.
Laspector
Master Member
The PT comes on TV all the time. I have tried and tried to watch them, even if it is just bits and pieces. I just can't do it. After just one or two minutes I realize I am wasting my life and the channel gets changed. ST, The Force Awakens, I can at least view most of it without changing channels. Not that it is that good, but at least it doesn't turn my stomach to watch it. The other two, not much at all. In fact, I think I've only watched the last two twice, once in the theater and again when the blu-ray came out. Just have no desire.
Well, the aim thing is bunk, but we've been over that a thousand times.
They're the Empire's version of Marines mixed with the Waffen SS. Sure, they train and drill and are indoctrinated to be loyal to the Emperor and obey orders without hesitation, but they don't do it 24 (or whatever) hours a day (or whatever). They'll cycle on and off duty to stay sharp, and a lot of their off-duty time will be structured in ways that their minds can relax, but the Empire's conditioning will be subtly reinforced. Movies, books, comics, music, games -- all stuff that pump up the Empire and depersonize dissidents. They give up their individual identity, but their new identity is the Stormtrooper Corps. Ironically, the unofficial motto of the Grand Army still holds, spiritually: "An army of one man, but the right man for the job."
As for the physical, astrographical, and environmental matters, we have no idea how well -- or not -- the Humans of the GFFA have become inured to such things over the 100,000-plus years they've been kicking around the stars there. Certainly, Stormtrooper armor will minimize the impact of everything but gravity -- and I'm willing to bet they can handle a wider range of variation than the average civilian or even Imperial Starfleet Trooper, and beyond that they'll have high-gee and low-gee equipment to compensate.
I saw this over on Military.com and though some of you might get a kick out of it and/or find ways to tear their arguments apart.
6 Reasons Why It Would Suck to Be a Stormtrooper in 'Star Wars'
Out of all of the troops in the "Star Wars" canon, no one has it worse than the Stormtrooper.
A year ago my dad said "What's the point of Stormtrooper armor?" I just said that it's supposed to stop a glancing blow, not a full power direct hit, because that's the EU explanation. I said it's mainly for intimidation. He just said it seems pointless. I said the Clonetroopers had better quality armor that would actually stop decent hits, but the Empire didn't want to keep paying for all that.
I still watch the Prequels when they're on if I'm looking for something to watch, but I still liked them despite the flaws. I could watch TFA if I had to, but will never watch TLJ a second time and will never watch whatever that last movie is called.
Except for the most blatant examples, I don't presume every trooper that goes down is dead. Assuming those plasma bolts have some impact to them, even with armor, getting hit is going to take the wind out of your sails for a minute. The action always moves on before we can sort out who's dead from who's unconscious/dazed/saying "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck..." as they try to control the pain/whatever. Stormtrooper armor is meant to ablate the incoming attack energy, not deflect or reflect it. Some will always get through. Especially if your enemy is shooting at you with military-grade weapons.
Those blaster bolts are doing pretty serious damage to everything in the scene that they hit. Metal objects, control panels, etc. A direct hit in the head/torso is gonna fatally scramble a man's internals. I don't see any other way unless you give the armor fictional powers.
"Galaxy of Sounds" on Disney+, another one of these "WTF?" productions. 
No magical powers needed. It just needs to not be regarded as the 1/16" thick plastic it is -- and sounds like. I've rolled my eyes at the whole "plastoid" thing since it first appeared to explain why they clattered like a Tupperware party in a windstorm. Never mind what sort of exotic materials they might have access to in the GFFA, even if it was, say a few millimeters of sintered ceramic composite (like the dense stuff they make the space shuttle's heat shields out of) over a mounting/strapping substrate, with a synthetic diamond coating to further refract the incoming energy, that'll absorb a lot of directed energy before failure. And we don't know if there are further internal elements to the armor, or what sort of armoring properties the undersuit has. Pretty sure those Stormtroopers weren't standing guard duty outside in hard vacuum with air tanks and lycra bodysuits.
We also don't know how much damaging energy is in a blaster bolt. We see effects, sure, but what does it mean? So we don't know how much energy dissipation will render a fatal shot less than. But there's enough reasonable doubt, even without force fields or whatever, that I don't automatically assume every blaster hit on a Stormtrooper is an insta-kill, even if some definitely are.
The way I see it is that a full on blast would be the equivalent of getting hit with a modern armor piercing round. That will kill you instantly. Other blasts, whether it's some angle, a lower powered shot, or maybe you're just past the max range and the bolt loses power, hit the armor and it absorbs it. If the armor doesn't absorb all of the power, the bodysuit is the next layer and it absorbs even more. I think Karen Traviss did a good job explaining how it worked, at least as far as Clonetrooper armor in the Republic Commando novels. The Commando armor can pretty much stop everything short of something like an E-Web cannon.
And there's still the kinetic energy to consider, even if the bolt doesn't penetrate -- or if enough energy is lost that it isn't instantly lethal. Even if the armor was utterly impervious, it's still going to be like getting hit in the chest with a well-aimed car.
"Into the garbage chute, flyboy!" <-- one blaster hit obliterated a big chunk of (presumably metal) grating.
ST armor could be 1/4" plate steel and it's still not gonna stand up to that. Same with ceramic heat-dissipation efforts; I get the idea but those blaster bolts are delivering too much instantaneous damage. The thermal tiles on a real space shuttle don't even see that much heat/energy that fast. We're talking about going from intact metal bars to a big hole inside of 1/24th of a second.
With earth armor tech, the troopers should probably be getting blown in half by a single shot. The amount of damage in the movies is already enough to prove that some kind of fictional material/tech must be involved.
ST armor could be 1/4" plate steel and it's still not gonna stand up to that. Same with ceramic heat-dissipation efforts; I get the idea but those blaster bolts are delivering too much instantaneous damage. The thermal tiles on a real space shuttle don't even see that much heat/energy that fast. We're talking about going from intact metal bars to a big hole inside of 1/24th of a second.
With earth armor tech, the troopers should probably be getting blown in half by a single shot. The amount of damage in the movies is already enough to prove that some kind of fictional material/tech must be involved.
- Status
Similar threads
