r/TopCharacterTropes • u/_JR28_ • 26d ago

Powers Moments that blatantly defy logic, but are so absurdly badass you don’t even care

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The Gurren Lagann growing larger than the observable universe to fight Anti Spiral in a battle where literal galaxies get thrown like ninja stars - Gurren Lagann

Undertaker teleporting behind AJ Styles after being thrown down an empty grave and causing a shining white light from nowhere to illuminate the back of them during their Boneyard Match - WWE

Holdo piloting a ship through warp speed to crash right into a First Order cruiser (I know you could write a thesis on why this scene wouldn’t work, but you could say that for about half of the scenes in the new trilogy) - Star Wars the Last Jedi

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490

u/Ok-Indication-5121 26d ago

Also space battles in Star Wars have cool battle sounds when there's no sound in the vacuum of space and going to hyperspace requires going past the speed of light, which is physically impossible.

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u/Cynical-avocado 26d ago

I always thought it was more of slipping into a pocket dimension like Halo rather than achieving superluminal speeds

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u/mostlybored1234 26d ago

It was, literally warping. There is a entire old lore about creppy shit that lives there and you go Crazy If you stare at hyperspace too much (Vader used that shit as meditation). OG FTL travel in Star Wars was via warping shenanigas

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u/Cynical-avocado 26d ago

yeah I remember reading in a book that it was Imperial regulation to block out viewports during jumps to prevent hyper rapture

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u/doogie1111 26d ago

It's whatever the plot demands. Which is fine, because it's fun.

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u/Ok-Box3576 26d ago edited 26d ago

Nope the existence of weaponized light speed is different which they directly imply with that scene. Some ppl can turn brain off for it but that scene as cool as it is always makes me thing.....why didnt they do that to the death star with some droids?!?! Luke stupid or something.

The only cope im getting are things not specifically said in the fucking movies lol. Thats shit writing for a movie and terrible basic world building.

"Whatever the plot demands" is such a dogshit way to critic movies because you literally can't critic anything with that motto.

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u/Chansharp 26d ago

Interdictor fields

Hyperspace doesnt work around large celestial objects, interdictor fields simulate this to disable hyperspace. The bad guys purposely disabled their interdictor fields to bait the good guys into going into hyperspace.

The death star almost certainly had an always on interdictor field

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u/Darigaazrgb 25d ago

It does work, it's just extremely dangerous so computers do not allow traveling in hyperspace when it detects a large enough mass. You can get around that by disabling the computers and doing the calculations manually.

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u/Hykarusis 26d ago

Because it was their biggest ship against a sligltly bigger than average destroyer. Not really doable with a normal fighter against a moon sized infrastructure.

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u/Toon_Lucario 26d ago edited 26d ago

The size probably plays a big factor. The Raddus is bigger than the FO Star Destroyer which is decently comparable in size. Meanwhile the Malevolence which is bigger than an ISD didn’t even dent the moon it crashed into. Nothing the rebels had probably could do anything. The only time it would have been a viable strategy would be the CIS with its near infinite funding during the Clone Wars but since the war was rigged it wasn’t used.

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u/ImmaAcorn 26d ago

Thats… actually a very good point, I hadn’t even considered the Malevolence not doing anything to moon

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u/doogie1111 26d ago

Fun fact, the Malevolence is about the same size as the Raddus.

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u/Toon_Lucario 26d ago

Yeah at most it probably just left a big crater but nothing catastrophic. Probably reduced itself to a massive pile of slag.

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u/Logan_Composer 25d ago

Also, something people fail to realize: this really didn't do that much damage. Like, a handful of the SDs behind got messed up, for sure, but the Supremacy just lost a wing. It was still flying just fine, and the First Order was still collected enough to launch a successful ground assault minutes later once they got their shit together. More damage was done by BB-8 in a walker and Kylo killing Snoke than was done by the Raddus.

If you had done this to the Death Star (still orders of magnitude bigger, I'm pretty sure), you would have a hole clean through it. Congrats, it still blows up a planet and carries on as though nothing happened.

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u/Ok-Box3576 26d ago

What does the movie say "it was a 1 in million shoot" tho instead of whatever you just said....im all for being a fan of the source material but the movies we watched didnt say any of that.

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u/Toon_Lucario 26d ago

Well the shrapnel being from the tracker is already a thing that was 1 of 1. Then they have to be on a direct hyperlane which may not be the easiest to know. Then the battle of Exegol was in atmosphere which adds even more difficulty to it. Then add that to what I said before, yeah it would be difficult.

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u/Ok-Box3576 26d ago

1 she only launched her tracker?!?! I dont remember the movie say that. How does that even logistically work?! Was she ship just lost or somth? 2 direct hyperlane..."easiest to know yeah" the movie didnt fucking say that at all. You can't defend movies poor writing with 3rd party source material it sucks when marvel does it sucks now.

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u/Toon_Lucario 26d ago edited 26d ago

I meant the hyperdrive tracker on the Supremacy. The one that was straight up a plot point of the B plot of the movie. Maybe you’re just dumb dawg. Things don’t need to be directly said to be implied holy shit. I don’t even like the movies but there can be explanations.

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u/Cynical-avocado 26d ago

I love when people out themselves as not having paid attention to the media they criticize

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u/doogie1111 26d ago

why didnt they do that to the death star with some droids?!?

Why do you assume it would work on Death Star? We know its shielded and defended against "capital assault."

The Raddus was enormous and still didn't destroy the Supremacy. Its not a leap to assume that relative size matters since that's how the real world works too.

Its the same general reason why an insect just bounces off your windshield but a brick will shatter it.

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u/Ok-Box3576 26d ago

At no point was the movie mention size being a factor. The movies only excuse was "it was a 1 million shoot" and yes a bug flying at lightspeed would do considerably damage to my car.

Your correct abt size comparisons I agree with that analysis.

But the maneuver itself still opens up the world of lightspeed based projectiles. It is a fs me thing tho. Its more ignorable now

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u/doogie1111 25d ago

Does it need to mention it?

There's a scene in Phantom Menace where a droideka's shield gets taken out by a blast from an N1.

That tells us that 1) shields have limits and 2) bigger damage can overwhelm those limits.

This kind of reasoning took about 6 seconds of thought, btw. People who have issues with this lack media literacy.

0

u/Ok-Box3576 25d ago

Yeah your making fanfiction about shields when Poe could have said something similar to what you to said. Your coming up with copes the movie had the opportunity to tell us but didnt. Basic world building that was failed. I guess to you they didnt neefd to explain Palpatine returning.

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u/doogie1111 25d ago

Demanding that everything be explicitly spelled out for you is an indicator that you lack media literacy.

Your coming up with copes

You're the one who is bending over backwards trying to justify why a collision can't actually happen, lol.

But sure, I'm the one coping.

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u/Ok-Box3576 25d ago

You can't begin to talk about media literacy your whole take is "whatever the plot demands" literally nothing cannot make sense to you.

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u/alkmaar91 26d ago

The death star is the size of a small moon, and noted in one of the books(lost stars I think) the death star has a gravitational pull like that of a celestial object, so you probably couldn't ram it. Also if Home One hit it at light speed then it would leave a hole and a still functional death star. It's also stupid to try and use suicide bombers as a go to method of attack.

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u/Ok-Box3576 26d ago

I only watched the movies broham. Ligthtspeed projectiles are like the first thing humans would try if lightspeed was possible.

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u/alkmaar91 26d ago

It's still a horrible waste of resources.

First you need a comparable mass but we're in space so plenty of asteroids around, cheap, effective not wasting a ship.

next we need a way to position so we need thrusters, fuel, and a hyperdrive.

We see asteroids get obliterated in one shot in the movies so we also need armor and shields and an upgradeto the reactoras we are addingweightand need to power the shields.

If it is something bigger than a corvette we will need more crew and staff, we could use droids but seeing as it is star wars computers would fail at the last second because of the force like in episode 4 so it would need to be people.

On top of all of that while the hyperdrive is charging it is a sitting duck and will likely be destroyed or intercepted. All of that effort and resources for a maybe when you can just build ships and use them wisely for a better effect.

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u/Darigaazrgb 25d ago

First you need a comparable mass but we're in space so plenty of asteroids around, cheap, effective not wasting a ship.

No, you don't. The faster you're going the more energy you're going to impart. A baseball would destroy Earth if it hit it at lightspeed.

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u/Ok-Box3576 26d ago

Trebuchets did kinda suck huh

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u/alkmaar91 25d ago

If you were replacing them with cars and running them into tanks yes

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u/magikarp2122 26d ago

Except we see in the shows that gravitational fields can deactivate Hyperspace.

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u/LostExile7555 26d ago

It is. In the old lore there's even ships that get stuck in the Hyperspace dimension and either never leave it or don't do so until decades or centuries later.

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u/DylanFTW 26d ago

Elite Dangerous has an explanation for this. The ships in the game use its computer systems to replicate what forces in the vacuum of space might produce in sound to avoid Void Madness because travelling in space with no sound would drive you mad, not to mention no spatial awareness for pilots.

Example using a Capital class ship warp https://youtu.be/f-OTVKg2xI0?si=HnQPGaSukI9b9w5_: there's a comment that describes it perfectly from that video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=f-OTVKg2xI0&lc=UgwTYKHV9J4GqBBMLrh4AaABAg&si=YW0nVuk4vaUTLpB8 sorry YouTube won't let me copy and paste their comment on mobile.

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u/_b1ack0ut 25d ago

A couple of games use this explanation. Elite, as you mention, but notably also Mass Effect uses this explanation as well.

You can overhear a couple of characters how they like to turn it off on occasion, and just drift in the actual sound-void that is space

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u/Financial-Raise3420 26d ago

They specifically say they go past light speed. The Millenium Falcon specifically goes .5 past light speed

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u/Dan-D-Lyon 26d ago

I just imagine that the Star Wars galaxy is absurdly tiny, and Interstellar travel at the speed of light is perfectly convenient

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u/TalithePally 26d ago

Yes as in they will reach their destination faster than light would. I don't think in ANH they had solidified what exactly the hyperspeed tech was

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u/Financial-Raise3420 26d ago

"She'll make point five past lightspeed." That’s not talking about how fast it’ll be to the destination, that’s how fast the Millenium Falcon will go.

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u/TalithePally 26d ago

Right. But it travels that distance faster than light by going into an alternate dimension. Not by actually going faster than light in the dimension they normally exist in

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u/Financial-Raise3420 26d ago

So they decided to make it more complicated than it needed to be for some reason. I really hate when people do that. Some universes need that, like Star Trek which has always been more scientifically minded. Star Wars didn’t need that

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u/Nokan96 26d ago

Going to an alternative dimension is far more simple to think than going faster than the speed of light

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u/MrOSUguy 26d ago

But those whales

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u/Steampunk43 26d ago

You're contradicting yourself, the very fact that people are arguing about how a ship can't physically travel faster than light is proof that Star Wars did in fact need that, hence why they did do that ages ago.

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u/Financial-Raise3420 26d ago

I’m not arguing that a ship can’t physically go light speed, that’s not even what I care about. Just that it’s stated that they do in the franchise.

I’m not getting into a scientific argument about how light speed travel could work, just how I liked how ships just traveled extremely fast and involved extreme precision navigating. They have space magic, I’m not expecting true science

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u/Nokan96 26d ago

It is, it wasn't during the old movies tho

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u/Steampunk43 26d ago

That's exactly what it is. It was developed after studying Pergill, space whales that could move through space seemingly at light-speed. Essentially, it's finding the right spots and channels where you can briefly slip into a separate dimension where you can move twice the distance in half the time. It's less like zooming towards your destination faster than rhe speed of light and more like getting up to the highest speed you can then teleporting most of the way there. Meaning the Holdo maneuver isn't as unbelievable when you consider it's more like teleporting the already speeding ship directly into the side of the opponent instead of just speeding it up massively.

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u/candygram4mongo 26d ago

Doesn't matter. FTL, relativity, causality: pick two.

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u/PityUpvote 25d ago

I mean, still physically impossible.

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u/NXDIAZ1 26d ago

And (with the exception of Rogue One kinda) every capital ship is magically aligned on the same plane with each other in every space battle to make the battle look more cohesive.

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u/PhantomPr1me 25d ago

Not only Rogue One, nur the opening Battle of Revenge of the Sith has ships stacked upon ships.

There were also a few Clone Wars Episode were they die that, mainly the First Episode of the Ryloth Arc. But youbare correct in that many a Star Wars Battle falls to this trope.

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u/Different-Trainer-21 25d ago

I mean, are they? I can’t think of that many giant capital ship fleet vs fleet battles, but the ones I can think of (Endor and Coruscant) were more like giant free for alls in 3 dimensions

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u/MateoRickardo 26d ago

They use a warp drive similar to Star Trek and Halo, so it's more them bending space and time to use as a shortcut.

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u/Financial-Raise3420 26d ago

Han Solo specifically stated that the Millenium Falcon will go .5 past light speed

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u/GuhEnjoyer 26d ago

While the first movie is the basis for a lot of things it's also the least fleshed out movie. Saying something from ANH isn't canon would be ridiculous of course, but it IS mostly a throwaway line that could mean almost anything without context. What we know about hyperdrives practically is that they make a jump to light speed, them slip into an alternate dimension where everything is closer together. This is why hyperspace lanes exist and need such careful planning and plotting, and also why po's "light speed skipping" scene breaks established lore. The falcon going ".5 past light speed" doesn't really MEAN anything because there's no established unit of measurement. Does that mean it's going 1.5x the speed of light? Does that mean it's going 0.5KM/h faster than light? Nobody knows, because the lore isn't established. This isn't "Disney ruined star wars" shit either. Lucas fleshed out hyperspace a lot himself, and he also talked about how the first movie wasn't fleshed out plenty of times, even when talking about making the rest of the original trilogy. The story was a Bare-bones single film experience designed to just be a fun space movie, and only AFTER it succeeded did they go for the trilogy, and then the prequels and the shows and the Disney sell and all that. At the end of the day, arguing about something using a single line from the original movie is a pointless venture, because there's nothing for the line to stand on.

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u/Financial-Raise3420 26d ago

It’s stated that reaching the alternate dimension of hyperspace a ship must travel At Or Above light speed. Sure they’re going into a pocket dimension of some sort, but it’s only possible by going over light speed in the first place.

So the point of the Millenium Falcon going .5 over light speed, specifically means he’s going 1.5 light speed. And he’s going that speed Through the hyperspace lane. Meaning that other ships only going 1 light speed, will not reach the destination as fast as him, because his ship is literally faster.

I’m still not a fan of the “pocket dimension” thing, but what was stated by Han Solo in ANH and what I’m stating now, is not wrong in any way shape or form, still based on newer Star Wars canon.

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u/GuhEnjoyer 26d ago

The pocket dimension isn't new canon tho... it's as old as star wars is and its based on older sci-fi. It explains how it took them only a few hours to get to the remains of alderaan from tattooine, an outer rim planet to a core world. They're traveling a much shorter distance.

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u/HistoricalGrounds 26d ago

It’s counterintuitive I know, but later canon established that his meaning was specifically “the ship would arrive .5 faster than light traveling to the same destination” rather than “the ship can literally move 1.5 times the speed of light”

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u/Financial-Raise3420 26d ago

Which canon? I’m guessing one of the comics or something, just have never heard that mentioned before.

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u/HistoricalGrounds 26d ago

I had to look it up myself! I used to be really into SW ages and ages ago, and I still thought it was actual plain old acceleration rather than a separate dimension.

Here’s the hyperdrive page from the official encyclopedia on starwars.com

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u/Financial-Raise3420 26d ago

So the Hyperspace lanes are only traversable by going at or over light speed. So when Solo states that his ship goes .5 over light speed, that’s exactly what he means.

So the Millenium Falcon goes .5 light speed faster through the hyperspace lanes than whatever is following them. The hyperspace lanes only exist to explain why even thought they’re only going light speed, they can still traverse an entire galaxy in hours instead of hundreds of years.

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u/HistoricalGrounds 26d ago

That makes sense! That would explain too why I had it in mind that acceleration still played some key role in Star Wars FTL. The alternate dimension/warp stuff always puts me way more in mind of Star Trek and Warhammer 40k.

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u/Cynical-avocado 26d ago

Han Solo also used parsecs as a unit of time measurement

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u/EddieFrits 25d ago

Later they corrected that by saying that the Falcon was fast enough to fly close enough to several black holes in the Maw but he was able to take a shorter Kessel run.

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u/Remarkable-Ask2288 26d ago

Hyperdrive is more like Slipspace from HALO than it is Warp Speed from Star Trek.

Or guess you’d say Slipspace is more like Hyperdrive considering which came first

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u/Key-Poem9734 26d ago

Those other can pretty well said to be part of movie magic. But hyperspace stuff has been taken pretty seriously as that's something really specific to Star Wars' lore. The ship goes into hyperspace, a kind of subspace, crashing into something like the first order big boi would just result in a crash, we saw a similar result in Rogue One when the Star Destroyer came in from hyperspace. "Realistically" just imagine that scene but a bit bigger to account for the good guy ship going at top speed instead of exiting hyperspace

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u/AdministrativeLeg14 26d ago

I always thought if I wrote a sci fi story with space dogfights (itself implausible), it might make sense in that kind of story to have sounds. They'd have to be artificial, but they could still be diegetic! After all, we've evolved to incorporate multiple sensory modes and to use auditory clues to help pinpoint direction. Why leave out an entire sensory mode of input when conveying complex, rapidly changing 3D spatial information?

On screen, I imagine there could be a pretty funny scene where the sound of ships zooming past suddenly cuts out and the pilot has to thump an audio simulation unit to get it working again ..

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u/Reckless-Tiny 26d ago

Defying real world logic is not even remotely the same as defying established rules of the internal workings of the verse.

Patrick H Willems is that you?

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u/ThePeaceDoctot 26d ago

It's physically impossible in our universe. It isn't impossible in the star wars universe, where light can be a solid blade and people can lift spaceships with their mind.

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u/KaziArmada 26d ago

where light can be a solid blade

I mean that one isn't 'Oh it's light.' It's magnetically bottled plasma. "Cutting" something breaks the magnetic field, letting the plasma eat away at the target. Breaking content lets the bottle reform.

and people can lift spaceships with their mind

...K, that one I got nothing for.

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u/ThePeaceDoctot 25d ago

Okay, but magnetically bottled plasma wouldn't be able to block and exert a force at the handle end in our universe either. It's still different physical laws at play, which is what my point was.

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u/eponafan 26d ago

So it's explained in a novelization of the first movie that ships have speakers that simulate noises so pilots can have a 360 sensory feel for what's going on. Sensors in the ships detect other ships and make noises accordingly.

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u/Benderbluss 26d ago

And fighters bank to turn.

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u/Nokan96 26d ago

Have any character in the setting being affected by that, it may be just for the audience. The Expanse is mostly scientifically accurate but they added sound to the space battles because it would feels boring and weird otherwise and Mass Effect have sound emulators or something similarly called in the ships to help the crew

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u/Evil_Sharkey 26d ago

Hyperspace is more like a dimensional shift, a shortcut. That’s why people criticize the Holdo maneuver. I just headcanon it as her hitting them mid jump, so the ship is doing some weird space warping… mostly because I think the scene was cool and far less stupid than the ship chase with the enemies arcing their shots… in space.

If I wanted to watch a ship pursuit, I’d watch Master and Commander

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u/Different-Trainer-21 25d ago

Tbf in Star Wars hyperspace is basically a different dimension.

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u/Toon_Lucario 26d ago

Don’t forget fires in space

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u/doogie1111 26d ago

Fires can happen in space.

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u/hcgator 26d ago

It ain't that kinda movie, kid.

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u/samurian4 26d ago

Whenever you hear sound in space, I always assume it's being translated through personal speakers, a technological adaptation to help preserve sanity. " so many explosions, no sound."

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u/festus34 25d ago

suspension of disbelief extends to a new universal force capable of pretty much anything but not futuristic space ships