Should the sequel trilogy have used more interesting ship designs?

[godisawesome]

I’m of the opinion they should have at least embraced a more clear “evolution” of ship designs than they did.

I’m with the poster who said that TIE Interceptors would have amade a better basis for the new ubiquitous FO fighter; it’s sleeker, meaner, and would better convey even just a brief amount of time passing.

The minor adjustments they made to the X-Wings and A-Wings were overall pretty disappointing as well.

I actually liked the design for the Supremacy, even if it’s ending was pretty pathetic and drama-breaking. It stands in firm contrast to TROS stupidly deciding the new Star Destroyers should just be classic Imperial SDs with big guns. Who thought that was good idea?

The Duel of the Fates script reportedly by Trevorrow apparently included a straight-from-Dark-Empire Eclipse Star Destroyer. That would have been cool.

[SuperiorIronman]

My suspicion over how that scene happened was that it has to do with Abrams.

Exegol doesn't have much going on with its surface and so the more interesting thing to do visually is put all of our heroes in the air save Rey who is facing Palpatine. Poe being the pilot is in his ship and when the decision came to bring Lando back so he has to be in the falcon. So we need to be in ships to give our heroes something to do. Now at this point we have a small resistance group going up against Palpatine who is instead of given one super laser has a fleet of them. It's a bit more realistic to have multiple ships fighting them and so in comes the group shot of all the ships Lando got.

Here's the problem.

A single ISD is a big problem and so by making a fleet of them you've risen the stakes exponentially, so now we need a new ship model right? Perhaps as an implication of Palpatine's resources they look like ISD's and or to be a callback to ROTJ. Either way you've now saved money by altering a model you have instead of making a new ship you're going to copy and paste anyways. But then there's the group shot of Lando's forces. Are you really going to make a bunch of new ships outside of a reference to the Ghost? No, you're going to go through your archives and reuse every digital model you have because its one new ship you don't have to model. Since everything is in a blue tint and goes by so fast anyways you upon initial viewing might miss them being copies as well.

The situation this creates is that the final battle is clearly either a rush job, or that it was JJ trying to be on the cheap, or even worse perhaps both. I find it hard to believe Kennedy would throw a budget restriction out there seeing as this film has an estimated budget of 275 to 300 million. It had the funds but I suspect much of the festival scene is where most of the budget actually went.

Redoing that final battle you'd only need what's left of the resistance and say, the eclipse. The heroes are unable to push through making heavy losses and when Palpatine accidentally lightnings everything he opens his own weapon up to attack.

[Godzilla2099]

New Hope we see the TIE Fighters and by Return of the Jedi we see the upgraded TIE Interceptors

Force Awakens we're back to the TIE Fighters and Rise of Skywalker...upgraded TIE Interceptors

[Moon Ronin]

Yeah, that's right, magnets. As far as being slow, well, Star Wars has always operated on "space battles are just like WWII dog fights" and "rule of cool."

The B-17 Flying Fortress (Of which I'm sure was the inspiration of the "Star Fortress") were built for long range missions with high altitude day time bombing in mind. I do like that Star Wars has does try the retro sky battles like Midway in space but it wasn't even close here. The B-17 could fly at almost 400 MPH in respect to what is going on it really wasn't that slow. The speed was more plot induced than anything, they had to be slow so that that they can all be destroyed to move along with Poe's story line.

[ChrisIII]

Some of the reference material states that the FO fighters are pretty much inspired by the TIE defender (introduced into Disney canon by Star Wars Rebels)-not technically the look I guess, but more the shields/hyperdrive and increased firepower.

I've always thought that the TIE silencer from TLJ had a close resemblance to the TIE avenger from the Lucasarts TIE fighter game: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/TIE/ad_starfighter

Although since both are inspired by Vader's TIE from the original film, I guess it's sort of convergent design evolution.

[Otto Gruenwald]

Characters could have used more interesting designs to.

[BeastieRunner]

The FO TIEs had mobile gunner seats, hyperdrives, moderate stealth anti-scan tech, and light shielding. That's a significant upgrade from the Empire's TIEs.

And FWIW, the tech jump during the Cold War took about 30-40 years to see big leaps. The hot war WWII saw MAJOR changes. So I could see a world with little changes especially since post Clone War ships were still in service and production during ANH.

But yeah, I would've liked new looks but the First Order is Empire Reborn, so it makes sense.

[WebLurker]

The B-17 Flying Fortress (Of which I'm sure was the inspiration of the "Star Fortress") were built for long range missions with high altitude day time bombing in mind. I do like that Star Wars has does try the retro sky battles like Midway in space but it wasn't even close here. The B-17 could fly at almost 400 MPH in respect to what is going on it really wasn't that slow. The speed was more plot induced than anything, they had to be slow so that that they can all be destroyed to move along with Poe's story line.

I was generalizing r.e. the "WWII dogfight" comments; the main point is that Star Wars space battles have never been "realistic," even if they create enough of an illusion of reality to last while the flick runs.

[Moon Ronin]

I was generalizing r.e. the "WWII dogfight" comments; the main point is that Star Wars space battles have never been "realistic," even if they create enough of an illusion of reality to last while the flick runs.

The idea of being able to suspend belief and realism has its limits. The Star Fortress was slow for obvious plot reasons, I see no issue with the magnetic bomb drop or any other issue with the space battle. It's the plot device of being "slow and ungainly" that makes the ship a space coffin and after the 2nd viewing it's just obvious. TLJ was full of plot device slow ships. There was no reason that the First order could have sent ships to head off the resistance ships form the front. Why did Snoke's ship come up from behind and not in front? Yeah the other movies also have issues but they are not as glaring and plot centric so its more forgivable.

The FO TIEs had mobile gunner seats, hyperdrives, moderate stealth anti-scan tech, and light shielding. That's a significant upgrade from the Empire's TIEs.

And FWIW, the tech jump during the Cold War took about 30-40 years to see big leaps. The hot war WWII saw MAJOR changes. So I could see a world with little changes especially since post Clone War ships were still in service and production during ANH.

But yeah, I would've liked new looks but the First Order is Empire Reborn, so it makes sense.

I think with the resistance seeming to have use hand-me-downs from the rebellion with the new republic not having a standing military I think it seem kind of fitting for their ships to not have evolved too much from the previous generation. Where as the First Order was building and stocking up so their advancements and the evolution of the ships very reasonable.

[WebLurker]

The idea of being able to suspend belief and realism has its limits. The Star Fortress was slow for obvious plot reasons, I see no issue with the magnetic bomb drop or any other issue with the it's the plot device of being "slow and ungainly" that makes the ship a space coffin. TLJ was full of plot device slow ships. There was no reason that the First order could have sent ships to head off the resistance ships form the front. Why did Snoke's ship come up from behind and not in front? Yeah the other movies also have issues but they are not as glaring and plot centric so its more forgivable.

Guess none of that bothered me all that much, esp. once it was worked out that the First Order just needed to wait to finish off the Resistance without expending any more resources then they had on hand then and now (remember, the opening crawl indicates that they're also moving to seize New Republic territory, too). Mileage may vary.

[Moon Ronin]

Guess none of that bothered me all that much, esp. once it was worked out that the First Order just needed to wait to finish off the Resistance without expending any more resources then they had on hand then and now (remember, the opening crawl indicates that they're also moving to seize New Republic territory, too). Mileage may vary.

The Opening crawl also states that "Only General Leia Organa’s band of RESISTANCE fighters stand against the rising tyranny,...". The New Republic had no organized standing military and it's entire leadership was obliterated in TFA. Logistically finishing off the Resistance would be a top priority as, said even Snoke showed up for the event. In the scenes of the "Hodo maneuver" there was over 10 Star Destroyers it would have been easy to send 2 in hyper space to cut them off. The resources were there just incorrectly utilized.

Mileage may very... Of that I totally agree. I was in the US Army for almost 10 years and have being in combat more than a few times. I may over analyze the "military" aspects of movies, most I can brush off if it really doesn't drive the plot and is put in to just look "cool".

Speaking of Snoke I did like The Supremacy, It gave an Executor feel with a completely different design.

[WebLurker]

The Opening crawl also states that "Only General Leia Organa’s band of RESISTANCE fighters stand against the rising tyranny,...". The New Republic had no organized standing military and it's entire leadership was obliterated in TFA. Logistically finishing off the Resistance would be a top priority as, said even Snoke showed up for the event. In the scenes of the "Hodo maneuver" there was over 10 Star Destroyers it would have been easy to send 2 in hyper space to cut them off. The resources were there just incorrectly utilized.

As I recall, the tie-ins have been vague about how much of the New Republic fleet was destroyed (probably to fit in more stories if so wished). All I can see is that the leadership was overconfident.

Mileage may very... Of that I totally agree. I was in the US Army for almost 10 years and have being in combat more than a few times. I may over analyze the "military" aspects of movies, most I can brush off if it really doesn't drive the plot and is put in to just look "cool".

Speaking of Snoke I did like The Supremacy, It gave an Executor feel with a completely different design.

Sure,

[PwrdOn]

The B-17 Flying Fortress (Of which I'm sure was the inspiration of the "Star Fortress") were built for long range missions with high altitude day time bombing in mind. I do like that Star Wars has does try the retro sky battles like Midway in space but it wasn't even close here. The B-17 could fly at almost 400 MPH in respect to what is going on it really wasn't that slow. The speed was more plot induced than anything, they had to be slow so that that they can all be destroyed to move along with Poe's story line.

Whether or not it makes sense in universe, I do think that Star Fortress design was a lot more evocative of WW2 style aerial combat than even what we saw in the original trilogy even though Lucas was explicitly trying to recreate that. In battle, bombers do the vast majority of the actual damage and are almost always slow and awkward fliers because trying to make them more maneuverable would compromise the bomb carrying capacity. The primary job of fighters is to protect bombers, and chasing after enemy fighters to have these glorious dogfighting duels was a notorious habit that got plenty of bomber crews killed. But in the original trilogy, it never seemed like bombers were even necessary because pretty much all starfighters could carry some proton torpedoes at least, and blowing up enemy ships usually came down to hitting weak points like the shield generator tower, rather than blasting them with a huge load of ordnance. Not to mention that capital ships in Star Wars never seemed to be that threatening and just hang out in the background while the fighters duel it out. Sure, Star Destroyers are big, but they are basically armed only with the equivalent of anti-aircraft guns, and until the sequel trilogy, didn't have any kind of powerful main guns that had any oomph to them when they fired, so they always came off more just like these giant immobile targets rather than anything that presented real danger to the heroes. In fact, pretty much all Imperial stuff fails to be as intimidating as it should be, because the battles in the movies are usually so lopsided in the Rebels' favor, though this is true basically for villains in any action franchise.

[ChrisIII]

I think a lot of the big fleet at the end of ROS were meant to be private ship owners or local fleets (Like Naboo's), although they had ships that were rebel-ish. Zorri is flying a Y-wing for example. A Nebulon B frigate also showed up owned by a security force in Battlefront II.