strangegrey wrote:Monker wrote:It's the whole "High Noon" thing. Two cowboys going to shoot it out at noon. So, they go through the entire movie with a chiming of a church bell every hour...building up suspence until they finaly meet in the streets. They could do it at any time. One could ambush the other and any time, if he really wanted the other dead. That ould be more realistic, but it's not going to make a good movie.
It's the same thing with SW...They go through the space battle and every now and then flash to a scene where the moon ticks closer into range.You know Luke is going to blow up the Death Star...but it has to wait until the last possible moment...just as the Death Star is ready to fire.
The Death Star itself isn't a plot device...the reason for the long wait is. If the Death Star just popped out of hyperspace and blew up the moon, well, that would be pretty boring and not a good movie at all. It's classic story telling and that is where Lucas (and Spelberg, too) pull from when they do their writing.
The difference is that, while it's not entirely realistic, the character in a western (and the time period, i.e. post-civil war western frontier) make the high-noon duel more realistic or better stated, plausible to the viewer. The reasons for meeting at high noon could be things like 'impugning ones honor during a poker game', 'coming to a financial agreement on horse shoe', etc....
The gunfight 'duel' is a throw over from the so-called civilized dispute resolution of upper-class gents from back east. It's an understandable, plausable situation in a western.
Within starwars, the 'bad guy' is a ruthless dictator/empire that has likely sacked entire planets into slavery, killed entire civilizations...and in the very movie, they show this ruthlessness, by destroying a peaceful planet of humans. Once they establish the destruction of alderan for the viewers to digest...
...the 'restraint' the empire shows is WAY out of character. Irrespective of whether you want to semantically call the death star the plot device or the long wait.....the problem is the fact that the character (the empire) and the prop (the death star) both do NOT fit the storyline.
Find another way to establish the 'showdown'....I understand it's necessity. That's not what I am disputing...
...if the death star shows up, blasts Yavin to hell and back, take out the moon with it or with a successive shot, the movie ends with zero conflict resolution, zero plot resolution....the movie has zero opening for the following movies....and it likely hits the budget rack at blockbuster 10 years beforeblockbuster has a budget rack.
The necessity isn't the issue I'm questioning....but the manner with which the necessary wait was dealt out is SO utterly bad that I find the movie now hard to watch. They could have laid the ground work for the orbit around Yavin with a 4-5 word sentence buried in dialog somewhere....they didnt. They just assumed the audience was loaded with dumb fucks that wouldn't catch it.
I guess their assumption played out...because it took me 30 years to catch it....granted, I'm not a star wars geek and have only watched the movie a number of times.....but regardless, it's a truly AWFUL plot hole that should have been addressed....
....Lucas may be a good story teller, but what he's horrible at is filling in the holes....so he glosses over a story and hopes you don't catch them...and does a fantastic job at distracting you while the holes are being avoided. But they're still there....once you see them, the story falls apart.
It's like Gibbs telling William Turner about how Jack Sparrow escaped the island in POTC I.....explaining the story about roping sea turtles and using them as a raft. The story is delivered in such a cunning way, that if you don't question too much (and with ALOT of rum), it's plausible....until Turner goes 'what'd he use for rope'. Then, in an instant, the entire story is bullshit....thankfully, that wasn't a story being told within POTC, and not the story itself...regardless, I have to wonder if this was Elliot and Rossio's way of poking fun at Lucas.
Sorry man. I've seen STAR WARS over 100 times, and never once has this bothered me. And I'm fairly discriminating when it comes to my films (hell, I WORK in the performing arts for a living!)
Calling what is considered the finest SCI FI film of all time "bad writing" is just off the mark.
Now you wanna pick on those shitty prequels? I'm right there with you. To me, Monkers right. This is a non issue.
But...u say potato...
