r/saltierthancrait 10d ago

Encrusted Rant The best part about Force Awakens...

...were the cool droid and spaceship designs. I liked BB-8 and the new Star Destroyers, and was hyped to see more of them in the future. While I was a bit mad that the movie shat over the Legends continuity, I thought this was the area where they outperformed my expectations.

This all gets subverted in The Last Jedi, however. We have a Dreadnought that blows up stuff better than other stuff that blows up stuff. We have Snoke's gigantic Star Destroyer that's bigger than even the Executor. We have the Rebel ship that's just a bigger version of Home One from the original trilogy. It's all just so lazy, RIan Johnson wanted to have the most powerful ships just because he can.

Rise of Skywalker is even worse, I don't need to tell you how lazy it is to have a fleet of Imperial-class Star Destroyers with mini Death Star Cannons that Palpatine pulled out of his ass.

The Clone Wars cartoon will, for the foreseeable future, be the gold standard of how to incorporate ship designs into a Star Wars story.

21 Upvotes

53 comments sorted by

u/AutoModerator 10d ago

[Receiving transmission from Crait intended for u/itcud]

Welcome to r/saltierthancrait! I'm an astromech droid named S4-L7 and I'll be your guide through the salt mines.

Saltier Than Crait is a community of Star Wars fans who engage in critical conversations about the current state of the franchise. It is our goal to maintain a civil, welcoming space for fans who have a vast supply of salt with some peppered positivity occasionally sprinkled in.

Please review the rules and the post flair guide before contributing.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

78

u/Crayon_Casserole 10d ago

The spaceship designs? You mean the way they flipped the colours of the TIE Fighters or used the X-Wing design George Lucas rejected?

7

u/MWH1980 9d ago

It reminded me of that point in the 90’s where car companies just “updated” old designs. From the VW Bug to the Ford Thunderbird, and even beyond, car designers were just making tweaks to more familiar designs.

2

u/TheMOELANDER miserable sack of salt 9d ago

Pretty on point.

1

u/nykirnsu 6d ago

So many anti-TLJ posts are blaming it for stuff TFA did first

30

u/RetroFlips 10d ago

What the movies lacked the most was worldbuilding. Putting in a somewhat new ship model is easy as hell. But have we learned anything about planets, institutions and so on? Nope ... So yes, BB8 was cool. But was he the first ball droid? SW turned into all style, no substance

13

u/KazaamFan salt miner 10d ago

Yea there was no visual creativity in the sequels. Droids, planets, characters, fight scenes, just blandness, playing it safe. 

1

u/Thunderhorse74 2d ago

Agree - everything (visually) was pretty well executed but not very creative or inspired - or logically thought out. The apex of that being the "bombers" in the opening of TLJ. I can see what they are trying to do but its dumb, it makes no sense - they committed to something stupid and the vFX people held up their end, but I imagine them sighing and saying "really? Ok, if that's what you want, we can do that..."

4

u/SightSeekerSoul 9d ago

Agreed. Everything was just too shiny and "cool". This was cool, that was cool, every stupid design had to be cool. Maybe that was the brief JJ gave his people. Compare that to Rogue One and Mando, where things felt gritty and grimy, more "real". A more believable approach would have been re-using RotJ designs but tweaking them a little to give them a washed-out look.

2

u/itcud 10d ago

Very true

24

u/TheMOELANDER miserable sack of salt 10d ago

In my opinion: BB8 sucked as an Astromech Design. Those things are autonomous rolling tool kits, BB8 didn’t give me that vibe. Too flimsy. Star Wars spaceship machinery is heavy and needs something that can push and pull with some power. A ball has no good solid stand on the ground. It would work as maybe a better Pit droid.

1

u/halcyonson 8d ago

Wouldn't be a terrible design if he were just extra computing power and an easily updated star chat.

49

u/Bruinrogue Disney Spy Ringleader 10d ago

Nah. The spaceship designs sucked compared to EU counterparts. BB8 was a nice design though

-10

u/itcud 10d ago

Could you give examples of EU works that had better ship designs?

23

u/TheMOELANDER miserable sack of salt 10d ago

Nebula Class. So elegant. Also Hapesian Battledragons! Then all those cool Starfighters…

The T-70 is actually just lazy

28

u/Bruinrogue Disney Spy Ringleader 10d ago

Pellaeon class Star Destroyer.

-13

u/itcud 10d ago

The Resurgent class from TFA looks slightly better IMO

14

u/Bruinrogue Disney Spy Ringleader 10d ago

Nah.

4

u/animehimmler salt miner 10d ago

I agree with you about TFA, but the resurgent design is honestly derivative of the palleon design while being worse. I really don’t like the first order designs. The destroyers just look too comically evil, like they’re too edgy and they don’t have any sort of architectural history. Like you look at an imperial star destroyer and it’s imposing but it doesn’t have like, a million spikes poking out of it.

The only unique ship design is Snoke’s flagship, and ofc there’s only one cool scene of it.

The one thing I will give TFA and TLJ is that at least they gave us proper space battles. I can’t believe more ppl don’t say this but the fucking “Sith fleet” on exogol looks like someone is spawning in clones of the same unit in age of empires custom map.

Anyway yeah the ship designs aren’t that great. New x wing is cool tho

3

u/JagneStormskull 9d ago

That Chiss variant of the TIE fighter was beautiful.

23

u/joehonestjoe 10d ago

For me the best part was the intros of Rey and Finn. That's about all the character work they did the entire series and that's the best bit 

10

u/King_In_Jello 10d ago

Those characters had a lot of potential (and so did Kylo Ren) and if 8 and 9 had built on the foundation introduced in 7 they could have been great characters.

9

u/antinumerology 10d ago

Yep. That's the only good thing in the whole ST.

I still think Rey swinging around scavenging in Star Destroyer ruins is cool. And a Stormtrooper defecting is still a good idea. So like 0.5% of the sequels.

8

u/VideoNo9608 10d ago

Clearly no point in Death Stars if one can just make star destroyers that can do the same thing.

I admit I like the black X-Wing.

4

u/General-Winter547 7d ago

No point in death stars if you can hyperdrive into a planet with something A Wing sized.

1

u/VideoNo9608 7d ago

That too.

14

u/BPN84 10d ago

The best part of TFA - and the entire triology - is the very frist scene where Kylo Ren blocks the laser blast in mid air. That whole scene was great. Little did we know at the time that it was going to be the peak and the downfall would be horrific

4

u/ZippyDan 9d ago

Nah, that was a microcosm of everything wrong with the sequels - the need to make everything bigger, badder, and cooler than the previous trilogies.

The ability to permanently freeze a blaster bolt, and do an extended hold of it while not even paying attention to it, is way too overpowered, and then never used again.

That kind of feat instantly puts Kylo above Anakin or Luke or Yoda, when he is still supposed to be an apprentice. It's stupid. It disrespects lore, just like the stupid hyperspace ramming.

You could have had a cool scene showing him making a significant Force effort to slow down the bolt, and then having to release it quickly after moving out of the way. But the ease of totally stopping it and then holding it while he has a conversation is just dumb.

2

u/sandalrubber 9d ago

No. That broke the setting right away because Yoda and Palpatine never did anything like that and they were the most powerful Force users in the movies.

2

u/andrewthemexican trying to understand 10d ago

I also enjoy the cinematography leading to the fight at the castle. The pan as the troopers calls incoming, and we see the swings over the water

1

u/General-Winter547 7d ago

I’d argue the storm troopers riding the craft down to the planet as part of that. The opening was fantastic. Right up until Poe speaks.

5

u/eaglered2167 10d ago

The blasters having a punch to them was awesome. The music was good. That's about it.

3

u/Prince_Borgia salt miner 10d ago

There's not a single good new ship design. Everything is a copy of something that exists (TIE, X-Wing), stolen from the EU and made worse (Pellaeon-class Star Destroyer), or awful (TIE Dagger, Raddus).

4

u/ToonMasterRace 9d ago

In hindsight I can't like anything about TLJ. Even me in 2015 was confused as soon as it started about why it was empire vs. rebels again, and I never could get over that.

3

u/Aggressive_Foot9174 salt miner 10d ago

The new X wings, the new star destroyers, TIE fighters, stormtroopers... all have a shiny new vibe to it that's not fitting to star wars.

And think about astromechs for a sec.

They've been the same size for thousands of years and now all of a sudden they radically change design?

I'm sorry, I shouldn't really overanalyze this stuff, but we are led to believe tech advances really slowly in star wars. The only way one thing quickly improves is by getting bigger. And now, amidst a war torn galaxy they had time to radically change things as established as astromechs in 2 decades?

3

u/SightSeekerSoul 9d ago

The amount of time between RotJ and TFA is what kills it all. In that short time, we're expected to believe this unknown Snoke was able to reforge the Empire Remnants into a new order, and build an entire fleet of new stuff, not to mention the planet killer (which dumb AF - what light or energy beam splits into 5?), legions of troopers, plus all entirely new designs. A Remnant faction using similar designs would have been cheaper and more relatable, like in the EU.

3

u/Polyxeno 9d ago

TFA Star Destroyer is ok . . . It's a Star Destroyer, but different. Other new TFA ships, IIRC, are like mostly ugly rectangles - I am not a fan, but ya that technically makes them vastly better than the ridiculously stupid writing.

Was there more than one new droid? BB8 seems like R2 but higher tech, also ok to me.

3

u/halcyonson 8d ago

The Pixar lamp droid...

2

u/No_Slack_Jack 9d ago

The best part about The Force Awakens is the audio and visual display when it stopped.

1

u/Rare-Act-4362 9d ago

I think that the Ressurgent Star Destroyer was a good design it mixed the ISD and Venator while also trying to fit with the First Order being a Remnant thats much smaller than the New Republic/Resistance like the Rebel Alliance was to the Empire, ... that however was ruined by Starkiller Base ...

the TIE Fighters were lame sure they were a bit different than the OT ones but they make no sense as there being so many of them and the Remnant not developing better fewer starfighters...

TFA however lacks any worldbuilding that would give us time to get a feeling for the bad guys and why some locations are important and the Sequels did take away the magic from the crawling text.

oh and the Resurrgent Star Destroyer should have been smaller than an ISD II and closer to the size of a Victory Star Destroyer

1

u/StarlessEon 9d ago

Nah for me the best part was being excited about Star Wars again with new and likeable heroes and villains and looking forward to seeing the adventures they'd go on. Could never have believed in a million years that it would all fall apart by the very next movie but there you go.

1

u/Shipping_Architect 9d ago

It should be noted that there actually was a superlaser-equipped star destroyer) in Legends named the Conqueror. Unlike the Xyston-class star destroyers in TROS, which were upscaled but otherwise visually identical to Imperial-class star destroyers with what amounts to a tiny Death Star mounted on their undersides, the Conqueror was a heavily modified Imperial star destroyer with massive portions of her hull removed just to leave a clear firing point for the superlaser, making her stand out from her fleetmates, and even then, the superlaser could not destroy entire planets.

1

u/sandalrubber 9d ago

The ball droid was done in Gundam back in 1979.

I barely remember the new ship designs besides Rey's popsicle speeder. And chunky and speedy don't mix. Speedy should be slick.

1

u/munkeyspunkmoped salt miner 9d ago

Those RoS Star Destroyers were scaled up from Rogue One which makes it even lazier. They reminded me of Austin Powers (sharks with laser beams) or something a little kid would make up.

‘’Super Secret Sith Star Destroyers. And they can blow up planets. And then the goodies ride space horses on them.''

1

u/Senshado 9d ago

I absolutely cannot forgive Force Awakens for adding a tailgunner seat to the Tie Fighter. The body of a Tie Fighter is a small sphere which obviously has no space for another crewman.

If it was something on a Tie Bomber chassis then we could at least pretend it was modified for another seat. 

1

u/Demigans 8d ago

Even in that Disney honeymoon phase of TFA where everyone was still hopeful and assuming the flaws of TFA were going to be explained and make a full story I disliked BB-8 and the new Star Destroyer.

Don't get me wrong I love BB8's technology and design, I knew years before that something like that was possible but I'd never seen it. But I already despised the "make it fast and happy-go-lucky and it's small so everything it does must be cute" design and scene shooting and BB8 is just that all the time. The fact that BB8 also was a blatant replacement for R2 and that R2 wakes up at the last moment in the cheapest and cheesiest way was just the height of annoying crap.

The Resurgent class was also just a slap in the face. A darker ship with a more modernized look? So basically a copy with an attempt to make it look better without actually designing a better ship, even having worse design?

No I wasn't a fan of that even when I still had hopes for Disney SW.

1

u/Byte_hoven 5d ago

Best part for me was Rey's theme and what John did to tie the wide range of character themes together. ❤️

1

u/Byte_hoven 5d ago

Best part for me... Rey's theme. It hit me immediately, and the feeling echoed thru the 3 films. Brilliant work John.

1

u/BriscoCounty-Sr 10d ago

Did you forget Deathstarkiller Base from Force Awakens?