Poll: Which is the best trilogy of the Star Wars saga? PT vs. OT vs. ST

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

An attempt at deception. If you meet no resistance, there is a greater chance you become suspicious. Even though the heroes saw through it, that was the intention.

It’s still a tenuous excuse for what is a stupid scene. You can believe it if you wish but to me it just sounds like a hasty explanation first devised well after the film was made to try and cover up a plot hole.

 

[The Great White Lizard]

I'm probably going to trigger a lot of people by saying the prequels were the best. The droid army felt much more formidable foes than the stormtroopers, who literally couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat. Yes battle droids suffer the same problem, but at least you had stuff like droidekas that actually required some thought to destroy. I also feel like the actors, besides Anakin, were generally better in the prequel. however I think the originals are still amazing films and definitely have their advantages. Sequel trilogy is only tolerable if you completely ignore the plot, they just basically did a bad remake of the OT.

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

I'm probably going to trigger a lot of people by saying the prequels were the best. The droid army felt much more formidable foes than the stormtroopers, who literally couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat. Yes battle droids suffer the same problem, but at least you had stuff like droidekas that actually required some thought to destroy. I also feel like the actors, besides Anakin, were generally better in the prequel. however I think the originals are still amazing films and definitely have their advantages. Sequel trilogy is only tolerable if you completely ignore the plot, they just basically did a bad remake of the OT.

Have one of my famous Arnie thumbs ups my friend:

Because my opinion is pretty much exactly the same as yours. Between this and your support of Beastmen, I salute you!

With regards to the Battle Droids, yes they are weak on their own as you point out, but they become more dangerous as a horde and they actually have an excuse to be individually weak (they were made with cheap parts and designed to be as easy to build and store en masses as possible because the Trade Federation were tightwads), plus, again as you correctly say, there are more powerful Droid units such as the B2s (can take blaster shots and keep on coming), Magnaguards (who can survive being decapitated by a lightsaber) and Droidekas (who are pretty much unbeatable in an Infantry fight and can only be killed by Starfighter-grade weapons).

The Stormtroopers have no such excuse, except in Rogue One where the elite Death Troopers are also a significant threat.

The Legion of Righteous Thought grows!

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

It’s still a tenuous excuse for what is a stupid scene.

All these fantasy films (whether space fantasy or otherwise) have cannon fodder troops for the heroes to wade through. LOTR has orcs/goblins, TMNT has the foot clan soldiers, OT has stormtroopers, PT has droids and the ST has anybody not named Rey. You can argue that one is executed better than the other, but they all serve the same function.

You can easily point to scenes where stormtroopers are crap (i.e. fighting Ewoks), but the same can by done in relation to the droids too (i.e. getting picked off easily/accidentally by Jar Jar)

You can believe it if you wish but to me it just sounds like a hasty explanation first devised well after the film was made to try and cover up a plot hole.

It isn't a matter of belief, I was merely explaining the theory to you.

 

[Killer Angel]

All these fantasy films (whether space fantasy or otherwise) have cannon fodder troops for the heroes to wade through. LOTR has orcs/goblins, TMNT has the foot clan soldiers, OT has stormtroopers, PT has droids and the ST has anybody not named Rey. You can argue that one is executed better than the other, but they all serve the same function.

Yep, their function is pretty clear, however the droids have a justifiable weakness (mass production with "cheap" components: quantity has a quality of its own), while it's harder to swallow when you see the stormtroopers fail badly.
Kinda some old WW2 movies, where the germans act so stupidly and shoot with such a poor aim, that one really wonders why the allies took so long to win the war.

 

[The Great White Lizard]

The reason I was so astounded by the stormtrooper's seeming inability to be at all effective was that they were supposed to be highly elite shock troops. Yet somehow a ragtag group of rebels seems to have secured better weapons, gear, and starships (TIE fighters are ridiculously underpowered, they get massacred by X wings every single time). The Empire has vastly superior funds, but they have a vastly inferior military, which frustrated me. In the PT the Republic also has a large budget, so it's understandable that they can support an army of elite shock troopers such as the clones. How do the rebels get enough money to buy an entire fleet of X wings? More importantly, why doesn't the Empire use X wings as well? However these minor plot holes pale in comparison to the enormous mess that was the ST, and the OT was still a masterfully designed trilogy.

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

Yep, their function is pretty clear, however the droids have a justifiable weakness (mass production with "cheap" components: quantity has a quality of its own), while it's harder to swallow when you see the stormtroopers fail badly.
Kinda some old WW2 movies, where the germans act so stupidly and shoot with such a poor aim, that one really wonders why the allies took so long to win the war.

I would agree to some degree, however, there is no reason why the B1 battle droids should have been equipped with such a stupid AI. It is well established that better AI is readily available by that point. I understand the point of quantity vs. quality, but we're talking software here. It doesn't cost much more to upload a competent AI into all the droids. While it can be argued that you would possibly require slightly better hardware to run the superior AI, we see examples of far better AI being run in relatively cheap or even shoddily constructed droids. I'm not suggesting that they be equipped the most advanced AI available, but something that is at least competent.

Then again, I understand their purpose in the film, so it makes sense from a story telling perspective (in the same way as the Stormtroopers).

 

[Killer Angel]

I would agree to some degree, however, there is no reason why the B1 battle droids should have been equipped with such a stupid AI. It is well established that better AI is readily available by that point. I understand the point of quantity vs. quality, but we're talking software here. It doesn't cost much more to upload a competent AI into all the droids.

well, yes.
cons: even if you raise the cost of a droid by 1 dollar, the cost increase on a mass production will not be negligible.
pros: ...but we are talking about machines that should wage war for you, and i'd gladly spend an additional million to have deadlier mechanical troops.

 

[The Great White Lizard]

True, but if the B1s become too smart, they might rebel against their creators a la Terminator. They are treated pretty horribly by most Federation authorities. They would not want to fight for the TF. They had to keep them dumb or they could not control them.

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

well, yes.
cons: even if you raise the cost of a droid by 1 dollar, the cost increase on a mass production will not be negligible.
pros: ...but we are talking about machines that should wage war for you, and i'd gladly spend an additional million to have deadlier mechanical troops.

True, but if you slightly increase the cost per droid, but it becomes as effective as two, three or more of its dumber counterparts, you end up saving money.

True, but if the B1s become too smart, they might rebel against their creators a la Terminator. They are treated pretty horribly by most Federation authorities. They would not want to fight for the TF. They had to keep them dumb or they could not control them.

In the Clone Wars we see tactical droids that are much smarter and don't rebel. I agree with you that there is probably a threshold where that becomes a distinct possibility, but the B1 battle droids are VERY FAR from that point.

 

[pendrake]

Not.
Even.
Gonna.
Vote.

 

[The Great White Lizard]

Fair point @NIGHTBRINGER, I guess they could have marginally increased BI intelligence. Still though, the TF is lazy and perhaps don't want to entirely alter production schematics after they already started making the droids. It's a moot point anyway as they are designed to be stupid for plot convenience, not for any actual production reason.

 

[The Great White Lizard]

I would agree to some degree, however, there is no reason why the B1 battle droids should have been equipped with such a stupid AI. It is well established that better AI is readily available by that point. I understand the point of quantity vs. quality, but we're talking software here. It doesn't cost much more to upload a competent AI into all the droids. While it can be argued that you would possibly require slightly better hardware to run the superior AI, we see examples of far better AI being run in relatively cheap or even shoddily constructed droids. I'm not suggesting that they be equipped the most advanced AI available, but something that is at least competent.

Then again, I understand their purpose in the film, so it makes sense from a story telling perspective (in the same way as the Stormtroopers).

@NIGHTBRINGER saw this and immediatly thought of your comment on the B-1s.

 

[Scalenex]

All these fantasy films (whether space fantasy or otherwise) have cannon fodder troops for the heroes to wade through. LOTR has orcs/goblins, TMNT has the foot clan soldiers, OT has stormtroopers, PT has droids and the ST has anybody not named Rey. You can argue that one is executed better than the other, but they all serve the same function.

I am hard pressed to think of a movie where the bad guys have hordes of minions that don't suck relative to the good guys.

There is also something called Villain Decay, where a group of enemies starts out deadly and quickly becomes less deadly. Arguably the stormtroopers decayed very quickly because they started out deadly when they boarded the Tantive IV and again when they hit the Jawas and Skywalker family on Tatooine, but my mind often thinks of Star Trek.

The Jem'Hadar were accused of having Villain Decay because they seemed to be gradually less effective as Star Trek Deep Space Nine progressed. Though I watched DS9 a lot. The Jem'Hadar never stopped being deadly foes, they just are not allowed to kill the main characters. When Quark killed two alert guards face on, that seemed mahrlect weird.

Maybe the Matrix would qualify (not he Matrix sequels). I think if you have competent enemy foot soldiers and the good guys still win battles then everything kind of looks like the Matrix (before Neo gains his power at least).

I played a lot of RPGs and I've played them a lot since I was a tween. I had a friend who was a big fan of Imperial characters liked Vader and Thrawn but disliked emperor Palpatine (this was before the prequels btw).

He wanted to run a game in an alternate universe where three or four years after the Battle of Endor, rather than the Empire collapsing into civil war and disintegrating while the Rebellion forged into a New Republic, he created homebrew characters where competent Imperial officers took over the reigns of the Empire (it was probably Thrawn but we never found out who was in charge).

One of the things the new Imperial leaders did was create a new elite branch of stormtroopers and an elite batch of starfighters. Note, they still had a lot of the crappy stormtroopers and starfighters. They were being phased out, but it was slow.

The way a mission would work is a Rebel commander would explain to us what the McGuffin was.

We sneak into the Imperial base or board the Imperial ship. Fight about a bunch of crappy minions, grab the McGuffin. Then we find out the Empire's real soldiers are coming and we have to run like Hell.

Remember early in the Matrix when Trinity slaughters a bunch of cops then has to run away when one agent shows up. Basically that was how every story played out.

It was fun at first, but eventually it got dull. Also, once in a while the bad guys got the McGuffin before we got it, especially if both the Rebellion and the Empire were chasing after a McGuffin in neutral territory.


Now I'm thinking about the Pareto Principle. The Pareto Principle is that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the people. Some people go further and argue that that something 5% of people are responsible for 50% of consequences.

Why am I getting into this? I did a lot of background research on modern and ancient warfare. For instance in WWII, a large percentage of the infantry (all sides) didn't even fire a weapon outside of training. On the whole, thousands of shots were fired to get a single kill, but there were many snipers with hundreds of confirmed kills.

Benjamin Lewis Salomon was an American army dentist who took out ninety-eight Japanese soldiers who attacked his infirmary.

Ancient and medieval warfare was often similar where you had lots of soldiers who barely swung a weapon in battle while a small number of soldiers ended up killing dozens of men single-handedly.

Maybe the Pareto Principle means that it's not that ridiculous that a small number of elite heroes can defeat a huge number of enemies.

On the other hand, maybe movies shouldn't use hordes of mooks. You tell a good story where five heroes kill fifteen enemy soldiers as opposed to five heroes kill 500 enemy soldiers.