Rogue One - seen it thread. (open spoilers)

[Miller]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

BE CAREFUL YOU DO NOT *CHOKE *ON YOUR ASPIRATIONS.
:leaves
:comes back
YOU SEE, BECAUSE ASPIRATIONS MEANS AMBITION, BUT IT ALSO MEANS BREATHING.
…
AND I MADE YOU *CHOKE *ON YOUR BREATHING, BUT I WAS TELLING YOU NOT TO BE SO *AMBITIOUS *THAT YOU *DIED *FROM AMBITION.
…
IT WAS A DOUBLE PUN.
…
OH, COME ON, IT WAS FUNNY! WHY ARE YOU NOT LAUGHING!

I like to imagine that, as he walks away, Vader’s thinking, "Choke on your aspirations? Ugh! That was lame. I can totally do better than that. What was that one I thought of in the bacta tank last week? Dang it, I can’t remember! It was a really good one, too! I gotta write these things down.

“At least there weren’t any guards in there this time.”

[Chronos]

Quoth Miller:

Meanwhile, the Rebel fleet only has one purpose: kill Imperials.

Not really. The Empire, like the Republic before it, was highly hierarchical. Some systems were integrated more tightly than others, and most had their own fleets. The “Rebel fleet” is just the system defense fleets of those systems that aren’t so keen about the Empire, and they were built for all the same legitimate purposes as the imperial fleet was. For every ship you see used by the Rebel Alliance, there’s a planet somewhere whose leadership has decided that fighting the Empire is a higher priority than suppressing piracy or the like… but they’d still really rather be suppressing piracy.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

I don’t think it was posted here, my apologies if I’m wrong, but this critical obituary of General Leia Organa is written in nearly intolerable academic prose and is nevertheless delightful.

It has some insight into the Organa military strategy:

Most historians now see the Stardust/DS-class superweapons as relatively minor parts of the Empire’s war machine (The Imperial-class Star Destroyer remained the primary engine of its force-projection capabilities), but Organa demonstrated the importance of stymieing these and similar efforts through her landmark analysis of the Empire’s ideology and political economy. Later published as The Head of Clay: Elitism, Warlordism and Weakness in the Galactic Empire, her papers proved that as competition for political prestige motivated the Empire’s factions, they would necessarily centralize power, organizing capital in progressively less efficient “superprojects:” initiatives a clique could explain to the Emperor and his inner circle in simple, direct terms, and control through a centralized command structure. Superprojects caught the eye of the inner circle, while more complex proposals (such as Holonet infrastructure improvements) and those requiring cross-clique cooperation (such as maintaining Clone Wars era advanced military technologies) fell by the wayside.

The superprojects trend began during the Palpatinian Republic (and possibly earlier, if GAOR clone forces could be considered one of them), reaching an early peak in Stardust/DS-1 itself, a massive undertaking that consumed 1% of GaDP over nearly two decades. Alliance attacks on superprojects inflicted devastating economic damage and often led to the death and capture of key Imperial influencers, who preferred to personally supervise their work in case a competitor attempted to sabotage or seize control of it. Each attack made the Empire more reliant on successor superprojects to recoup losses and keep systems dependent on its common economy, but each failure prompted peripheral worlds to secede and escape the fallout. Although it would later become famous as a verse in Interstellar People’s War, Organa first explained her doctrine’s essence to Wilhuf Tarkin himself: “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” Yet the Empire remained locked into the cycle, to the point where the Emperor personally commanded a successor to Stardust/DS-1 in the hope that this economic necessity would at least create a viable terror weapon.

The Organa Doctrine is widely believed to have won the Galactic Civil War

[Chronos]

One of my Star Wars pet peeves, there: “Imperial” is obviously not the name of a class of ship (and “Super” even less so). In the phrase “imperial Star Destroyer” (or “super Star Destroyer”), the word “imperial” (or “super”) is just an ordinary adjective.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Chronos

One of my Star Wars pet peeves, there: “Imperial” is obviously not the name of a class of ship (and “Super” even less so). In the phrase “imperial Star Destroyer” (or “super Star Destroyer”), the word “imperial” (or “super”) is just an ordinary adjective.

It’s the adjectival form of “Empire,” which is always capitalized, since it’s not only a government structure, but the specific name of this government. Adjectival forms of proper nouns are also capitalized.

You can out-Star-Wars-nerd me, but don’t think you can out-grammar-nerd me!

edit: or were you objecting to the “-class” part? If so, that’s back to Star Wars nerdery, and I bow to your superiority there :).

[Battle_Pope]

@Chronos

One of my Star Wars pet peeves, there: “Imperial” is obviously not the name of a class of ship (and “Super” even less so). In the phrase “imperial Star Destroyer” (or “super Star Destroyer”), the word “imperial” (or “super”) is just an ordinary adjective.

In the case of the ‘classic’ star destroyer it’s both the Class name and the adjective. Imperial-class Star Destroyer | Wookieepedia | Fandom

There are also (IIRC) Venator (Clone Wars era, *Victory and *Intedictor class star destroyers as well.

[Raguleader]

Also, the “Super” prefix as a general descriptor of a type of ship has some real-world terminology, in the form of Super-Dreadnoughts and Supercarriers, although neither I understand was ever an official term. Then you have stuff like the F-100 Super Saber (a fighter jet based on the older F-86 Saber) or F/A-18/E Super Hornet (a fighter jet similarly based on the older and smaller F/A-18C Hornet).

Also, at least in the old Legends continuity, “Imperial” at least was definitely a class of star destroyer, a bigger follow-up to the “Victory” class star destroyers which factor in the EU but never showed up on screen as far as I know.

[SciFiSam]

@N9IWP

OK wise guys the (estate of Peter Cushing) and Carrie Fisher were thanked in the credits.

A lot of folks liked this better than The Force Awakens. Other than it was too much like a New Hope I think I prefer TFA. (A death star or something like it are in III (at least it is mentioned), IV, VI, VII, and R1).

I really like the blind monk. I know the EU talks about force sensitive (but not Jedi or Sith) folks – nice to have a canon reference. (are all of his fellow monks blind?) (I would possibly count Maz Katana as force sensitive as well)

Brian

I don’t think his fellow monks are blind, because his mate Baze was one of them.

[Chronos]

The movies certainly never implied that “imperial” (or “Imperial”; they’re pronounced the same) was a class. I think that that was just incompetent fanwanking that got canonized by an incompetent author. But nobody would ever assume that, say, a reference to “an American aircraft carrier” meant that “American” was the name of the class.

And yes, there’s such a thing as a “supercarrier”, or a “superdreadnaught”, as categories of ships. But you’ll have, say, a Nimitz-class supercarrier. By the same token, I could accept that “super star destroyer” would be a category, and you could have an “Executor-class super star destroyer” (I think it quite plausible that Vader’s ship would be the eponym for the class).

[Raguleader]

@Chronos

The movies certainly never implied that “imperial” (or “Imperial”; they’re pronounced the same) was a class. I think that that was just incompetent fanwanking that got canonized by an incompetent author. But nobody would ever assume that, say, a reference to “an American aircraft carrier” meant that “American” was the name of the class.

And yes, there’s such a thing as a “supercarrier”, or a “superdreadnaught”, as categories of ships. But you’ll have, say, a Nimitz-class supercarrier. By the same token, I could accept that “super star destroyer” would be a category, and you could have an “Executor-class super star destroyer” (I think it quite plausible that Vader’s ship would be the eponym for the class).

Re: American-class Aircraft Carrier: More trivia than anything, but we very nearly had United States-class Supercarriers., which is probably as close as that one gets to your example.

As far as the Executor-class Super Star Destroyer goes , I think that’s how they treated it in EU, with the Executor being the first but not only example of that type of ship. Whenever one turns up, it was considered to be a pretty noteworthy occasion, so they were never common. In the EU, it was more common for particularly nasty Imperial baddies to command a fleet of Star Destroyers rather than an individual Super Star Destroyer. Obviously that’s all in the Great Connex Of Unused Continuity what with the old EU becoming the Legends continuity. I was only ever kind of familiar with the Legends continuity, and I know nothing about the new EU except for a few scraps of info I’ve stumbled across online.

Now, as for why Star Destroyer and Super Star Destroyer and X-Wing Starfighter always seem to get capitalized, I think that might be a fourth-wall trademark thing more than anything that is assumed to be happening in-universe.

[Darren_Garrison]

@Chronos

I think that that was just incompetent fanwanking that got canonized by an incompetent author.

Sounds like a great summary of the EU.

[Raguleader]

Not really fair to all of the EU authors.

I mean, it’s pretty fair to Kevin J. Anderson, but Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole certainly have their shit together. For most of the other authors, it can be a crapshoot. I mean, Darksaber wasn’t as much of an outlier as many Legends fans would like to think.

[JSexton]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

BE CAREFUL YOU DO NOT *CHOKE *ON YOUR ASPIRATIONS.
:leaves
:comes back
YOU SEE, BECAUSE ASPIRATIONS MEANS AMBITION, BUT IT ALSO MEANS BREATHING.
…
AND I MADE YOU *CHOKE *ON YOUR BREATHING, BUT I WAS TELLING YOU NOT TO BE SO *AMBITIOUS *THAT YOU *DIED *FROM AMBITION.
…
IT WAS A DOUBLE PUN.
…
OH, COME ON, IT WAS FUNNY! WHY ARE YOU NOT LAUGHING!

Krennic looks up. “I the pun was a little forced.”

Vader gasps.

[AlsoNamedBort]

@JSexton

Vader gasps.

How could you tell?

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

“Sighs? Matters not.”

[Declan]

Seen it last night

3D did nothing for me, gonna watch it again and see it the way it should be. And it won’t be no reserved seating bullshit.

As for the movie itself, No way Jyn is dead, she signed a two film contract so just waiting to see if they ghost her or miracle shuttle at the last second, when we think that she has been nuked.

I would put it on par with Empire, it made the force awakens look like the clone war’s movies. As someone said, a proper star wars movie. Having said that, It did kinda feel like I was watching BSG at some points, and while the Reb fleet did show up, beyond fighters they seemed to have done fuck all, except for that hammer head vette.

[GuanoLad]

@Declan

As for the movie itself, No way Jyn is dead, she signed a two film contract

She signed that before the end of the movie was rewritten.

[Declan]

@GuanoLad

She signed that before the end of the movie was rewritten.

Still, it gives Disney options

[Dewey_Finn]

Given that this movie ends just before the original 1977 film, I don’t see how the character can be easily carried forward to a new film.

[Raguleader]

Option 1: She miraculously survives thanks to The Force or a timely shuttle or something. Next film has her and Captain Mustache on some daring mission between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back.

Option 2: She had to have gotten up to something between escaping Krennic’s troops in the beginning of the film and falling in with the Alliance years later. A film about her last mission with Saw Guerrera could be interesting.

Option 3: A slapstick comedy where her Force Ghost harasses Tarkin incessantly for the duration of his time between Rogue One and his demise in A New Hope.