Understood. Interesting psychological profile.
Not to say i am perfect.. but on a large budget movie i would definitely hire a person JUST to call me out when I do something illogical. I would have them by my side .
Lord knows that doesn't seem to be Lucas's style.
I suppose that's why successful (and probably affluent) and fortunate writers have good editors and research assistants to save them from making big or embarrassing gaffes.
Just for the sake and fun of
friendly argument, you can probably make reasonable excuses for all of your issues with ESB.
1. Ships can't fly at night, but can during the day. That doesn't make any sense.
People can't be out of the base at night. Like Dready already said, maybe it's sooo ridiculously cold. Even with all their advanced technology, they can't bear it anymore (or well enough) than we can. Also, it's maybe more than the cold. Maybe it's wind and storms. Maybe it all plays havoc on the fighter ships. Maybe their instruments become useless.
Or maybe it's not the ships.
Maybe it's the people. Maybe those ships were never designed for those conditions. Maybe they were designed to operate in tropical or desert climates. Maybe they have inadequate heaters, or none at all. Maybe the ships would fly fine, but the pilots would freeze to death. This is the ragtag rebel alliance, after all. They're cobbling their armaments to together.
2. Why is Luke riding a Tundra Kangaroo and out by himself?
Why not? They're probably indigenous beasts of burden, or transportation. And back in the first
Star Wars films, the Jedi were still sort of mystics, or wizards, or even like quietist monks (similar to the Taoist or Buddhist mystics from whom Lucas obviously borrowed some of his mythos). Ain't that just like Luke, even if he's only a neonate in ESB, to go a little native or go off on his own riding a local kangaroo?
And maybe the ghost of Obi Wan lured him out there for his own mystical designs --a little bit of a test, a training exercise, or to put Luke in the right state of mind to hear Obi Wan's communique from beyond. Maybe it's not strictly logical or rational or reasonable. But it's also not out of line with that mystical aspect, which, as we know, later pretty much seemed to be abandoned in the prequels.
On a side note:
I think I've already written somewhere here on I.T. (for whatever it's worth) my feelings about that apparent abandonment. I see it as Lucas's attempt to move the force and the Jedi out of the realm of fantasy and place them into the realm of science fiction. I'm not saying I love or approve of that move, necessarily. But at the very least, I'm not entirely unsympathetic towards it, either. It has it's merits, depending.
3. Imperial walkers are lame.
But what makes them so unlikely? Okay, we might imagine something with wheels that would make more sense. Perhaps something like what they might send to Mars...like what they
have sent to Mars (and, if I'm not mistaken, are planning to send there in future), only on a much larger scale. Or maybe something with tank treads. But are we so certain tank treads would work well on Hoth terrain? Maybe walkers work better. Maybe walkers are more versatile.
Maybe it has nothing to do with that --how well or ill-suited walkers were for use on Hoth:
Maybe when they found the rebel base on Hoth and decided to attack it immediately, maybe they
wanted to use Imperial Tanks specially designed for combat on ice planets. But, maybe the nearest fleet of such tanks were on the other side of the galaxy at that time and they didn't have the patience to wait for them. At the same time, maybe they
did have some walkers on another mission or on station nearby, near enough to be redeployed to Hoth in time for the attack. Maybe the walkers weren't ideal for the mission. But maybe somebody made the decision to go with them because they wanted to attack immediately.
And maybe Darth Vader later used the forced to strangle that somebody to death.
Sure.
Anyway. Imperial Walkers look really cool. One of the reasons ESB is the best of the three. =)
* * * * *
That's a really interesting point, Josh, about the finding out the Empire is only about twenty years old. Another kind of disappointment with the prequels. I haven't read any of the other stuff, novels, etc., fleshing out the
Star Wars universe and timeline. So, being free of all that, I kind of thought it's implied in the prequels that the Sith had ruled at least once before. If that were the case, our childhood romance with the idea that the Empire was old could sort of be saved by imagining that not so long ago there had been a previous Sith empire or regime, and the Empire that we know from the first films was its inheritor, a continuance, really, a reemergence.
Yeah, still rather unsatisfying. Those damn prequels. =P
Just goes to show that Lucas, God bless him, really didn't quite work all that stuff out before production. It really wasn't necessary to getting the films made. But when fans start analyzing it and trying to put two and two together and beyond, well, things get a bit murky, if not messy.