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It's hard to grasp the scale of a space battle looking at words on a script page or sketches within storyboard frames. The jaw-dropping attack on the Death Star in Return of the Jedi seems hard to top, and since reports of the battle that opens Episode III have consistently stated that it will be bigger, many fans are asking how that can be possible.

It's not so much the number of participants that raises the bar, as it is complexity. The effects technology in the 80s meant that true interaction between starships in Jedi was always limited. Extended shots of starfighters soaring through capital ship flotillas were impossible. The destruction of vessels were also a stylistic cheat. ILM had largely abandoned blowing up models with miniature pyrotechnics, since the scale of the explosion and size of the models worked against each other. Such destruction was typically accomplished by matting scaled explosions onto model photography, thus leaving out the true interaction of lighting and debris. An explosion would often just cover up a ship, allowing for the removal of that model element, without the true chaos of fiery debris.

This new battle definitely captures that chaos. No wonder such emphasis was put on differentiating the shape of the Republic and Confederacy cruisers. When all the ships are aligned in the very upper atmosphere of a planet slowly turning towards dawn, and the wreckage, laserfire, missiles, missile contrails, starfighters and more are layered in, the skies suddenly become very crowded.

It's a messy battle, with capital ships exchanging broadside fire and bodies tumbling into space, bulkheads rupturing and depressurized atmosphere rushing to fill the void, complete with fire and smoke.

Think Pearl Harbor in space, and you're on the right track.

Of course, creatively mining WWII for space inspirations is nothing new. George Lucas drew from the great documentaries and film accounts of that conflict for much of the original Star Wars. You can see it in the hurried shots of Death Star gunners manning their laser turrets, but back in those days, there was never a real connection to what the gunners were doing and the outside battle. It was all implied through editing -- piecing together the strafing runs of the X-wing fighters and the corridor explosions of the Death Star.

To the critical eyes of today's moviegoers, such approaches would result in a sense of isolation -- the differences between studio shooting and motion control effects shots would keep attacker and defender separated in time and space. But now, digital effects merge those worlds seamlessly, and the results are dramatic. The gunnery crews on these capital ships -- droids and clones alike -- are in real danger. They're in the space battle, and not in some isolated studio, and the starfighter attack runs and capital ship broadsides really do involve everyone and really do make an impact.

It'll be a new kind of space battle in Star Wars. One that appears to have the customary beauty and elegance when seen from a comfortable distance, but reveals itself to be a much more dangerous place when you get in close.

At least, that's the intent. We'll see how this develops over the coming months.

Mange the Swede wrote:Clone Sergeant, I don't think it's allowed to quote the entire text from Hyperspace. It's O.K. to paraphrase, but not to quote it in its entirely.
It's sure looks as if the opening space battle of Episode III will have some of the traits that Mike mentions on his page Naval Tactics (under Imperial Naval Tactics): http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tac ... ctics.html
I'm sure it will be one of the highlights of Episode III along with The Duel...

"Fans keep asking if this battle is bigger than Return of the Jedi," I say to David, explaining that I never know how to answer that since what exactly does 'bigger' mean? David types in a command line to pull up a list of digital assets involved in this one shot.

"Oh yeah, it's bigger." He says without hesitation. "There's about 5,000 ships."

And that's just the capital ships. The take I saw didn't even have the all the starfighters -- a whole swarm of battles between the tri-fighters (which are back, by the way) and other midground fighters -- at least another few hundred ships.

Clone Sergeant wrote:The latest Hyperspace Postnotes dropped this little tidbit about the space battle today.

"Fans keep asking if this battle is bigger than Return of the Jedi," I say to David, explaining that I never know how to answer that since what exactly does 'bigger' mean? David types in a command line to pull up a list of digital assets involved in this one shot.

"Oh yeah, it's bigger." He says without hesitation. "There's about 5,000 ships."

And that's just the capital ships. The take I saw didn't even have the all the starfighters -- a whole swarm of battles between the tri-fighters (which are back, by the way) and other midground fighters -- at least another few hundred ships.

We can only hope that the fleet numbers stay the same by the time the movie is released. But this scene will without a doubt be epic.

Ender wrote:No doubt this will be potrayed in the EU as the entire Confederacy fleet vs the entire Republic fleet.

Ender wrote:No doubt this will be potrayed in the EU as the entire Confederacy fleet vs the entire Republic fleet.

There seems to have been some rumors about some band I've never heard of (Ash) having a cameo in Episode III (much like the rumors of N'Sync and AotC), but have turned out to be false.

Whatever, I say...