Exactly. And, to be clear, this is a pretty minor violation of that principle of favoring re-use of elements, and it’s also not the case that violating it’s always a mistake. I just think it’s (along with some other cues) why a lot of people assumed it was the equatorial trench. We knew of one trench, and it hadn’t really served any trench-related purpose yet, so… why wouldn’t it be that one?
Scale’s remarkably consistent in Star Wars. There exist crazy-comprehensive analyses on the Web that check relative sizes of ships and elements of ships (and even things like blaster bolts) against one another in different scenes/shots and against stated sizes in other sources and it’s clear that’s something the SFX crews on (at least) the original trilogy paid tons of attention to, despite how much pain that must have caused, since they were working with physical models.
The planet’s a gas giant. Not clear what the superlaser does to such a body. Maybe not enough to harm the moon before the rebels have time to evacuate. Maybe it’d be dangerous to the Death Star, as well.
> They sort of did this by ruining Luke’s character, only to reverse it at the end and have him save the day anyway. Really, Luke’s characterization really follows the same pattern. He was strongly characterized in all the other Star Wars films. This was thrown out the window for no reason whatsoever.
This complaint about TLJ resonates the least with me, as a (super, at one time) fan from well before the prequels. The seeds of this later Luke and of the situation of the Jedi are there in the OT, and I’m not sure what else you do with hermit-Luke in the setting established for the new trilogy. Sticking with “he’s still a gung-ho hero” doesn’t break “routine” (Johnstone’s terminology) and wouldn’t be good storytelling, and the way in which the routine will be broken has already been hemmed in by choices in VII (he’s withdrawn from taking an active role in galactic politics). At least with this direction, there’s somewhere to go with the character, and conflict for his scenes that’s not a straight repeat of him and Yoda in Empire.
It also follows ordinary narrative convention more closely. We can tell from distant shots of the Death Star that there’s an equatorial trench, but not other trenches. If you’ve already introduced a trench, conventionally you’d just use that if you need a trench. The difference between a narrative and just a bunch of stuff happening is precisely that kind of re-use and tying-together of elements.
633 isn’t as based-on-true-events as Dambusters. AFAIK there was no actual collapse-a-cliff mission, though various sub pen destruction bombing attacks were carried out.
It’s true that the action in 633 is closer to Star Wars, though. Dambusters is what Lucas cribbed some lines and the cutting between the action and the control room thing from, but the action itself is more from 633. It’s also a better movie. The action in Dambusters is remarkably ugly and hard to follow even by the standards of contemporary (and much older!) air combat movies.
[edit] oh, and talk about ripping off 633—the new Top Gun! Complete with all the mocked-up training runs! Hahaha.
> This is an issue that exists everywhere though solutions perhaps vary a bit. Usually it is a combination of relay loans (not free) and conditional contracts (tricky and pretty much the same result).
We use both in the US. I’m assuming a “relay loan” is akin to what I’ve seen as a “bridge loan” here—a temporary loan to cover a down payment while waiting for your current house to sell.
More often, we use conditional contracts. This would be classified as a “contingency”—we’ll buy this house on date X for price Y if the money from the sale of our house is in the bank by date X, that kind of thing. Needing one of these tends to make an offer less attractive, though.
I'm not following. Science gives us good guidance on what works well or will let us achieve our goals, all the time. It's basically the whole point of doing it at all.
I took the poster as meaning UX that considers the results of, and perhaps even performs, actual user testing & observation, to decide what works and what doesn't. Like operating system vendors used to. I'll grant that "scientific" UX that's just incompetent (99% of the time) application of "telemetry" and A/B testing is awful. But that—and the other bad kind that's just trend-following, personal preference, and whatever will get the best reaction in a design presentation meeting full of non-experts—aren't what I understood as being advocated.
The good kind performs & pays attention to science.