No, not that Chewie didn’t get a medal.
There are a shitload of fighter pilots in the crowd. Uh, didn’t every pilot except Luke, Wedge, and whoever was in the only Y Wing left sort of get sploded during the battle? Where did all these other pilots come from? It can’t be they were holding them in reserve, because what reserve, they were seconds away from being utterly obliterated by the d-star, there was no point in keeping reserves.
maybe they had more pilots than space craft?
Could also be pilots in training. Wouldn’t do too much good to send them out in combat before they are ready, and they’d still need them around to replace combat losses.
Maybe they got a deal on flight suits from the costumer so they put most of the extras in them.
Apparently the extra involved in that scene openly mocked and insulted the actors as they filmed as they thought the movie was going to be a total disaster.
…and US Marine uniforms for some, international orange US Navy flight suits for others.
…unfortunately, the uber-nerd contributers to Wookiepedia don’t seem to have an explanation of why all of those pilots are at the ceremony (I couldn’t find one, anyways).
I’ve always though it was along the lines of a previous poster…that the Alliance simply didn’t have enough hardware.
Why couldn’t the additional personnel have come from Rebel bases other than Yavin? Surely it wasn’t the only one left in the Galaxy.
There were rebel forces not on Yavin at the time of the DS attack. You don’t know how much time passes in the cut before that scene.
That’s pretty much my fanwank - these were pilots from bases/ships too far away to have helped out against the Death Star, but made it for the awards ceremony.
Remember, the Rebels had very little notice that the Death Star was on the way - a day or two, at most, and more likely less.
If your enemy has a world-killing gun, the one thing you never want to do is gather a lot of your forces on one world.
I’d say a lot of Rebels would come out of hiding after the Death Star was destroyed.
After all those pilots died there were a lot of extra hand me down suits to pass around.
Especially since it takes the Empire at least two years to strike back, and they’re even less effective than they were at the beginning.
There are pilots for all sorts of ships besides just fighters.
Tangentially related:
Throne Room without the Music.
They aren’t all pilots; it’s like Star Trek, where everybody from any given planet wears exactly the same clothing. The guys who were flying the fighters happened to be from one planet, and everybody from there dresses in flight suits.
Pilots for non-fighters don’t wear flightsuits.
So they were all from Tatooine, since that’s where Luke and Biggs were from and they were wearing the suits. I see. Odd such a remote dustball at the ass end of the galaxy would prove such fertile recruiting ground for the rebellion!
To those saying they came from other bases (and yeah, I never disputed they had more at other bases, clearly since they had more on Hoth in Empire), that’s probably the most logical answer, but seems like it wouldn’t fit with the timeframe unless they waited an oddly long time to hand out the awards and didn’t instead use that time to evacuate their no longer secret base (even if not in immediate danger from the d-star anymore, there are still plenty of Star Destroyers that could jump in and wreck their steez).
Without music, that is literally the weirdest, most uncomfortable ceremony ever.
As the OP notes, there is truly something odd about the awards scene.
Presumably there was a full symphony orchestra playing in the loft… :rolleyes:
Especially Chewie’s periodic shrieking.