Its interesting how in "Choices of One" Thrawn also hints that the Rebels may have a base on a colder planet like Hoth based on the equipment they had at their previous bases that was fitted for a colder climate.
*Thrawn:* I dunno sheev, those teddy best things creep me the hell out. Every time we’ve sent someone to scout them they don’t come back. *Palpatine:* you worry too much. Chances are they’ll too full from eating rebels to bother with the garrison.
Sheev's plan was a good one, and it almost worked except for some of those stroke of luck Star Wars contrivances that make these stories so memorable. The rebels were only able to get the shields down with the help of the Eewoks, and the Eewoks only went Viet Kong on the empire because one of the last Jedi in the universe brought his gold plated interpreter along.
and if the empire had burned the trees, they could have made the ewoks more aggressive against the empire, leading to a much stronger and angrier ewok counterattack
I feel like the empire, being the larger entity that can afford to play it more cautiously, with it’s vast resources and control of the galaxy, did not need to commit to a decisive battle and risk everything. It made more sense for the rebels considering they had more to lose. Maybe it was palpatines obsession with darwinism to prove who was mightier?
Palpatine was modeled partially after Hitler, who was a lazy leader that just expected people to somehow make his plans work. His character flaw is that no matter how powerful he is, he will always overestimate his own power, and the power of his empire.
Palpatine's one and true objective was the corruption or death of Luke Skywalker. Any losses the Empire might have suffered to reach that objective would be seen as acceptable by him. And he was correct.
The imperial fleet excelled at large scale set piece engagements. The alliance specialized in hit & run, raids and asymetrical combatives. With recent additions, the scope of their capabilities had drasticly increased. Therefore palpatine was tactically sound in his plan to decapitate the rebellion with a set piece batte that played to his strengths. Drastically fortifying the generator would have changec the scope of the mission to a more "black ops" infiltration style. This is something the alliance was also very good at and the empire, increasingly, was having difficulty with. The mistake, therefore, was to underestimate the combat effectiveness of some primitives coupled with the rebels willingness and ability to deceive them into dying for its cause.
It would be interesting to see Thrawn's approaches if he were in charge of the Imperial detachments involved in each battle in the Original Trilogy. He'd almost certainly have a Star Destroyer escort fleet deployed to defend the Death Star at Yavin (or at least have his command ship detached from the Death Star and command from there) and sent out a lot more TIEs if Red and Gold Squadrons got through. And I feel he'd put a more active effort into adapting to Ozzel's incompetence at Hoth than Vader is portrayed as doing in ESB. Regarding the Sequel Trilogy... Thrawn would end the Resistance within the first 10 minutes of TLJ.
Thrawn as the military leader of the FO would have been far more interesting. No massively dumb super weapons or ships, instead a completely structured fleet, a well planned military campaign to crush the weak republic and no Xyston class stupidity.
@@martinjrgensen8234 That's what Grand Admiral Savit stated when explaining why he was sabotaging project Stardust to Thrawn. A stronger and more advanced Navy would increase the reach and strength of The Empire. But a project like Stardust was diverting resources from the Navy.
Yavin: massive launch of all fighters, they never get close. Also, escort fleet of smaller picket ships capable of screening fighters. Tarkins arogance is what won Yavin. Hoth (with ozzel): send down TIEs outside the shield, get in and start blowing stuff up. The TIEs take out the generator, no shield, and probably no ion canon, and the TIEs could take the ion canon out anyway, while escorting thr ATATs. Hoth (without Ozzel): A large swarm of TIEs and landing craft make a skow stealth approach from the other side of the planet, catch the base off guard, remove defences, and the ISDs jump to orbit. In both cases, Thrawn would have an interdictor or two as well, a rebel base is important enough to warrant multiple. see
@@martinjrgensen8234, Starkiller Base and maybe the dreadnoughts could be Thrawn's concessions to Snoke who he needed to fill the role of ex-Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth in Legends, coordinating his forces through the Force. Especially if you delete the whole Sidious plotline. Perhaps make Snoke a failed clone of Sidious who is in something of a power struggle with Thrawn? Other Legends sources seem to suggest that Battle Meditation is an extremely high-level Force power, not something a mere Dark Jedi like C'baoth could do.
@@fluffly3606C'Baoth's clone pulls off battle meditation several times in the original Thrawn Trilogy. On top of that C'Baoth himself was much more than a "mere" Dark Jedi, he was one of the most powerful Jedi Masters before his fall, on par with Obi Wan and Plo Koon. Now whether his mad clone SHOULD have been able to pull off those abilities given his obviously fractured mental state and dubious sanity is a topic for a different discussion.
Thrawn wasn't so brutal in the Ascendancy books, on the contrary, he was in a sense a sensitive character. This is quite interesting and not the most usual character development.
Seems like Zahn just grew too attached to his own best known creation. "Ehat do you mean Thrawn was a warlord who wanted to restore the empire? Hes just a desperate leader trying to rally the galaxy against the real bad guys." Throw in some space orcs and sudd3nly Thrawn looks alot better than he ever really was.
@@ianmckee4726 don’t those books take place before he joins the empire? I can easily see it as a falling hero type, where he keeps making subtle compromises over moral quandaries, until he becomes the evil Imperial super genius we all know and love.
@@ryancarrell3186 As late as Treason, which is set during rebels ans i believe is supposed to shortly before he is "banished" to the unknown regions, Thrawn is characterized as basically the same as he was in tbe acendency, if abit wiser to the bigger picture. If it was supposed to be that, Zahn didnt go a great job of of making it clear.
Generally speaking I'm most interested why Thrawn went to war with the New Republic. All he needed was to protect the Chiss Ascendancy from invasion, so he could form an alliance with the New Republic, and that would definitely be better than starting another war.
The issue with any retroactive jus5ificstions like that is Thrawn as written in the trilogy is essintially just an imperial warlord abit alot better at the strictly military aspects of things. The Thrawn of the trilogy wasnt defending anything, he just wanted to rule. Any arguement about how he tjought the new republ8c was too weak shoukd have been shot down once he saw how imc9mpetent the empite had become, as well as the republic resist8ng him as much as it did. Espically once it becamae clear how insane his pet dark jedi had become and hoe unreliable that aspect of the plan was.
Probaly because he wanted to save the galaxy, the vong didnt need to take the chiss out, alls they needed was time to conslidate their gains on the galaxy and start buliding new ships, then the chiss would lose via attrition if nothing else. Also thrawn needed more military worlds like kuat to bulid more ships and high population worlds like coursant for conscription (despite having mount tantus, 20,000 soldier everyday 20 days isnt enough to fight an extra glactic invader should they get a foothold- they took coursant- something no one really was able to do ever in the fashion that the vong did) the new republic was its own worst enemyy and caused trillions of deaths in the war. Mostly due to feeylyas incomptence. For all of palpatines faults hes not such a a terrible leader and guy compared to the vong who simply want to kill the galaxy. Thrawn surely did want to rule however it was only a means to an end- that being the destruction of the vong. The moffs were the political people governing imperial places.
Thrawn refers to the new republic as the rebellion still, which I believe illuminates his reasoning. He conaidered it uncqpable of organizing itself.into a functional galactic government with sufficient strength to repulse the Vong, and whats more he was completely correct in this observation.
@@egoalter1276 Any imperial restoration wouldnt have been any better. Its not like the new republic member worlds would have just shrugged and accpeted the imperial flag even if Thrawn had won at Bilbringi. The imperial warlord also wouldnt just kneel before Thrawn, so im all likelyhood hed have been smashed by imperials on one side, and the newly reminted rebellion on the other. Mix in Vong agents and a mad dark jedi with an army of clones thrawn gave him, and things get ugly fast. Thrawn may win evey bsttle he personally tskes part in, but the galaxys a big place and he cant micro manage every imperial operstion.
Thrawn was a military genius. I would always listen to him. Especially in the sense that I would have funded his TIE Defender program over Death Stars. If the TIE Defender had become the Empires primary fighter, the Rebels would have been doomed.
I think in this case, both of them were right. Thrawn's idea was to protect the DS2 and do so in the most effective way, which would have worked without question. Palpatine wanted to finally end the Rebellion in an overwhelming victory. They both had solid plans and reasons behind those plans. The issue was dealing with the return of the first newly trained Jedi, and the turn of Darth Vader back to the light side, which neither of them predicted, and were ultimately the reason for why the Rebellion succeeded, plus the unpredictability of the "primitives."
What Palpatine really dismissed was a simple use of the Force could change the mind of others without mindcontrolling them directly. The guy so versed into the Dark Side of the Force simply lacked the vision of the Force being used more softly to achieve the same results. Being so into the Dark Side made him as arrogant as the Jedi were with their dogmatic view of the Light Side.
True, though even with the Ewoks, it would’ve made more sense if an entire legion of Palpatines best troops could’ve maintained enough dominance of the battle to hold off any threats to the generator until the fleet destroyed the rebel fleet.
I think the idea of luring the Rebels in a trap was not good. If the Empire had kept the location of the second Death Star hidden until it’s completion, they could have attacked important rebel planets. Also, the risk of losing the Death Star, which cost a lot of ressources, is not worth it. If the second Death Star was complete, there would be no exhaust port that the rebels could use. The Empire should have waited and destroyed the Rebels later.
If Palps really cated abou5 any of that, sure. But the whole point of Endor, and maybe even the second desth star as a whole was the scene in the throne room with Luke and Vader. Also the prequels and the force unleased tells us Palpatine had a grest love of compmicated schemes deaigned to wipe out whole swaths of his opposition ay once. Schemes like that may have been the only things that got old palps out of bed in the morning.
Sidious plan is very cunning and sound plan at the outset with regards to its overall goals of luring the rebels and their main fleet into a trap from which there would be no escape. However said plan is undone by ewoks helping in destroying the shield gate, underestimating ability of rebel fighters to break imperial lines and inflict significant damage on capital ships, something that mass deployment of tie defenders would have prevented and rebel fleet mixing it up and engaging in close quarters fighting to great affect. While big strokes of luck like take down of the executor by awing and destruction of the death star made sure that the trap would backfire on empire and lead to over 50%+ losses amongst baulk up death squadron and command structure allowing for the birth of nerw republic to follow very soon after.
i suppose he could have left the forest there to be tempting..but buried mines everywhere to suddenly create a dead zone when needed, but...either rebel spies or the ewoks might spread that news..if interrogated by the rebels :-). so that might not work..but he could have had a secret precalculated firing pattern given to the ships around the death star to destroy the lanscape around the shield generator. hopefully star destroyer orders would be a better kept secret and chance the ground battle quickly..don't know if ship weapons could hit the shield producing moon quickly or if they'd have to ponderously go over to the moon.. and i guess if they found out luke was on the ground attack the bad sith might not want to take everyone out there..oh..or was he captive before any ground attack could have started...
To be fair he may have intended the ewoks retreat from the fires deeper into the woods but I doubt he would have felt too bad for the one's who didn't make it
Much as I enjoyed the Thrawn Trilogy, Zahn's fondness for trying to make his original characters upstage the previously-established ones (especially in his later books) is why he definitely is not my favorite Star Wars EU author. There was literally no reason at all that Choices of One needed to have a scene with characters discussing the Endor trap, but he put one in anyway, seemingly just so he could show off how Thrawn is so much smarter than Palpatine, and make it look like he'd have crushed the rebels if he'd just been in charge. I mean, yeah, there were a lot of things wrong with the Endor plan (and all of the villainous plans in the OT). But if you as an author are being allowed to write a spin-off to somebody else's story, to have your own villainous side-character come up to the series' Big Bad and poke a bunch of holes in his machinations just to make your OC look better, that's in bad taste.
Agreed. I also like the Thrawn Trilogy, but some of Thrawn's deductions require such huge leaps in logic that it beggars belief that he's able to reach such a conclusion in the first place. For instance, how the hell does he know how an enemy space fleet is going to react based on centuries-old art? Not only do social and cultural norms change over time (not to mention how individuals within a culture do not all think the same way), but military tactics and technology as well. It would be the real world equivalent of claiming that you know how to beat a modern country's military by studying its art from the Renaissance era.
@@sentrysapper45 its really even worse than that as he's basing his opinion on entire 'species' that way. It would be more like claiming you know how to beat a modern european country's military by studying *aztec* art, because its the same species so clearly it corresponds one to one...
Burning the whole Moon would be ideal, and no doubt that the Imperial Navy should have been prepared with enough firepower to destroy the Rebellion once and for all.
I think this mischaracterizes Thrawn. He knows that the Ewoks have a society, so he would take the time to find and study their artwork. It would not be long before he found out that they had a religion with what appears to be a gold metal deity, and he would realize that the Ewoks could become a useful resource if he just sent a droid or even just a stormtrooper painted gold down there to play god and tell them to kill any invaders on sight. This isn't that far off from how Thrawn utilized the Noghri in his original appearance.
Is it really surprising that a commander in a "modern" military would brush off primitives as basically less than "human"? Real world history has countless examples of military leaders who were heralded as heroes but who did things far worse than burning some forests and nor bothering to warn the locals. I'm not saying that it's okay, just that it's not surprising in the least. Even looking at it in-universe, he's a Chiss and most portrayals of them show them seeing humans as beneath them, and Ewoks would be seen as even beneath humans in Thrawn's eyes.
No not burn em all, his plan did not mean the complete annihilation of the Ewok species. Any Ewoks caught in the 100 km of the shields would be taken out & it is highly likely they would also retreat to escape the fire
How could someone with so much love for art want to just burn half of Californias forest preserve? I know that "sactuary moon" is remnant of it's location over Had Abbadon, but they still use it in the movie, suggesting it's high cultural value.
Endor is the planet's name, the thing people typically refer to as Endor is technically "the forest moon of Endor," but the whole system is still the Endor system
Don't normally watch videos under 30 minutes, as I find people just don't put in substantial effort. This video was poorly produced. Making videos under one minute will grantee my avoidance of this channel.
Its interesting how in "Choices of One" Thrawn also hints that the Rebels may have a base on a colder planet like Hoth based on the equipment they had at their previous bases that was fitted for a colder climate.
But admiral, there are so many ice planets across galaxy. They could be anywhere. ;)
@@derrickstorm6976 It was based on a colder planet, not Hoth specifically, but uninhabited was Thrawn's specific point.
Guess they should have checked that, Rhen Var, and Ilum.
@@michaelandreipalon359 Orto Plutonia is also an option
@@michaelandreipalon359 I miss Rhen Var
To be fair, he also told Palps that building a death star to begin with way a stupid , wasteful and a strategically and logistically terrible idea.
*Thrawn:* I dunno sheev, those teddy best things creep me the hell out. Every time we’ve sent someone to scout them they don’t come back.
*Palpatine:* you worry too much. Chances are they’ll too full from eating rebels to bother with the garrison.
Sheev's plan was a good one, and it almost worked except for some of those stroke of luck Star Wars contrivances that make these stories so memorable. The rebels were only able to get the shields down with the help of the Eewoks, and the Eewoks only went Viet Kong on the empire because one of the last Jedi in the universe brought his gold plated interpreter along.
As Obi-Wan once said, "in my experience, there's no such thing as luck."
The Death Star itself over the TIE Defenders is already a bad plan.
and if the empire had burned the trees, they could have made the ewoks more aggressive against the empire, leading to a much stronger and angrier ewok counterattack
@@adriel3295If the forest was in fact destroyed, the Ewoks stealth ambush of the shield generator wouldn’t have been possible
I feel like the empire, being the larger entity that can afford to play it more cautiously, with it’s vast resources and control of the galaxy, did not need to commit to a decisive battle and risk everything. It made more sense for the rebels considering they had more to lose. Maybe it was palpatines obsession with darwinism to prove who was mightier?
Palpatine was modeled partially after Hitler, who was a lazy leader that just expected people to somehow make his plans work. His character flaw is that no matter how powerful he is, he will always overestimate his own power, and the power of his empire.
Palpatine's one and true objective was the corruption or death of Luke Skywalker. Any losses the Empire might have suffered to reach that objective would be seen as acceptable by him. And he was correct.
I would love to hear how Thrawn changed, viewing a character's development from a meta point is so rarely done but its interesting.
The imperial fleet excelled at large scale set piece engagements. The alliance specialized in hit & run, raids and asymetrical combatives. With recent additions, the scope of their capabilities had drasticly increased. Therefore palpatine was tactically sound in his plan to decapitate the rebellion with a set piece batte that played to his strengths. Drastically fortifying the generator would have changec the scope of the mission to a more "black ops" infiltration style. This is something the alliance was also very good at and the empire, increasingly, was having difficulty with. The mistake, therefore, was to underestimate the combat effectiveness of some primitives coupled with the rebels willingness and ability to deceive them into dying for its cause.
It would be interesting to see Thrawn's approaches if he were in charge of the Imperial detachments involved in each battle in the Original Trilogy.
He'd almost certainly have a Star Destroyer escort fleet deployed to defend the Death Star at Yavin (or at least have his command ship detached from the Death Star and command from there) and sent out a lot more TIEs if Red and Gold Squadrons got through. And I feel he'd put a more active effort into adapting to Ozzel's incompetence at Hoth than Vader is portrayed as doing in ESB.
Regarding the Sequel Trilogy... Thrawn would end the Resistance within the first 10 minutes of TLJ.
Thrawn as the military leader of the FO would have been far more interesting. No massively dumb super weapons or ships, instead a completely structured fleet, a well planned military campaign to crush the weak republic and no Xyston class stupidity.
@@martinjrgensen8234 That's what Grand Admiral Savit stated when explaining why he was sabotaging project Stardust to Thrawn. A stronger and more advanced Navy would increase the reach and strength of The Empire. But a project like Stardust was diverting resources from the Navy.
Yavin:
massive launch of all fighters, they never get close.
Also, escort fleet of smaller picket ships capable of screening fighters.
Tarkins arogance is what won Yavin.
Hoth (with ozzel):
send down TIEs outside the shield, get in and start blowing stuff up.
The TIEs take out the generator, no shield, and probably no ion canon, and the TIEs could take the ion canon out anyway, while escorting thr ATATs.
Hoth (without Ozzel):
A large swarm of TIEs and landing craft make a skow stealth approach from the other side of the planet, catch the base off guard, remove defences, and the ISDs jump to orbit.
In both cases, Thrawn would have an interdictor or two as well, a rebel base is important enough to warrant multiple.
see
@@martinjrgensen8234,
Starkiller Base and maybe the dreadnoughts could be Thrawn's concessions to Snoke who he needed to fill the role of ex-Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth in Legends, coordinating his forces through the Force. Especially if you delete the whole Sidious plotline. Perhaps make Snoke a failed clone of Sidious who is in something of a power struggle with Thrawn? Other Legends sources seem to suggest that Battle Meditation is an extremely high-level Force power, not something a mere Dark Jedi like C'baoth could do.
@@fluffly3606C'Baoth's clone pulls off battle meditation several times in the original Thrawn Trilogy. On top of that C'Baoth himself was much more than a "mere" Dark Jedi, he was one of the most powerful Jedi Masters before his fall, on par with Obi Wan and Plo Koon. Now whether his mad clone SHOULD have been able to pull off those abilities given his obviously fractured mental state and dubious sanity is a topic for a different discussion.
Thrawn wasn't so brutal in the Ascendancy books, on the contrary, he was in a sense a sensitive character. This is quite interesting and not the most usual character development.
Seems like Zahn just grew too attached to his own best known creation. "Ehat do you mean Thrawn was a warlord who wanted to restore the empire? Hes just a desperate leader trying to rally the galaxy against the real bad guys." Throw in some space orcs and sudd3nly Thrawn looks alot better than he ever really was.
@@ianmckee4726 don’t those books take place before he joins the empire?
I can easily see it as a falling hero type, where he keeps making subtle compromises over moral quandaries, until he becomes the evil Imperial super genius we all know and love.
@@ryancarrell3186 As late as Treason, which is set during rebels ans i believe is supposed to shortly before he is "banished" to the unknown regions, Thrawn is characterized as basically the same as he was in tbe acendency, if abit wiser to the bigger picture. If it was supposed to be that, Zahn didnt go a great job of of making it clear.
I always loved how we could see Vader's skull from all the force lightning.
Generally speaking I'm most interested why Thrawn went to war with the New Republic. All he needed was to protect the Chiss Ascendancy from invasion, so he could form an alliance with the New Republic, and that would definitely be better than starting another war.
The issue with any retroactive jus5ificstions like that is Thrawn as written in the trilogy is essintially just an imperial warlord abit alot better at the strictly military aspects of things. The Thrawn of the trilogy wasnt defending anything, he just wanted to rule. Any arguement about how he tjought the new republ8c was too weak shoukd have been shot down once he saw how imc9mpetent the empite had become, as well as the republic resist8ng him as much as it did. Espically once it becamae clear how insane his pet dark jedi had become and hoe unreliable that aspect of the plan was.
Probaly because he wanted to save the galaxy, the vong didnt need to take the chiss out, alls they needed was time to conslidate their gains on the galaxy and start buliding new ships, then the chiss would lose via attrition if nothing else. Also thrawn needed more military worlds like kuat to bulid more ships and high population worlds like coursant for conscription (despite having mount tantus, 20,000 soldier everyday 20 days isnt enough to fight an extra glactic invader should they get a foothold- they took coursant- something no one really was able to do ever in the fashion that the vong did) the new republic was its own worst enemyy and caused trillions of deaths in the war. Mostly due to feeylyas incomptence. For all of palpatines faults hes not such a a terrible leader and guy compared to the vong who simply want to kill the galaxy. Thrawn surely did want to rule however it was only a means to an end- that being the destruction of the vong. The moffs were the political people governing imperial places.
Thrawn refers to the new republic as the rebellion still, which I believe illuminates his reasoning.
He conaidered it uncqpable of organizing itself.into a functional galactic government with sufficient strength to repulse the Vong, and whats more he was completely correct in this observation.
@@egoalter1276 Any imperial restoration wouldnt have been any better. Its not like the new republic member worlds would have just shrugged and accpeted the imperial flag even if Thrawn had won at Bilbringi. The imperial warlord also wouldnt just kneel before Thrawn, so im all likelyhood hed have been smashed by imperials on one side, and the newly reminted rebellion on the other. Mix in Vong agents and a mad dark jedi with an army of clones thrawn gave him, and things get ugly fast. Thrawn may win evey bsttle he personally tskes part in, but the galaxys a big place and he cant micro manage every imperial operstion.
@@ianmckee4726After Bilbringi the imperials would’ve just set up rule on all of them, as he has the means to clone unlimited fighters
Thrawn was a military genius. I would always listen to him. Especially in the sense that I would have funded his TIE Defender program over Death Stars. If the TIE Defender had become the Empires primary fighter, the Rebels would have been doomed.
I think in this case, both of them were right. Thrawn's idea was to protect the DS2 and do so in the most effective way, which would have worked without question. Palpatine wanted to finally end the Rebellion in an overwhelming victory. They both had solid plans and reasons behind those plans. The issue was dealing with the return of the first newly trained Jedi, and the turn of Darth Vader back to the light side, which neither of them predicted, and were ultimately the reason for why the Rebellion succeeded, plus the unpredictability of the "primitives."
Luckily for the rebellion that Thrawn wasn’t in charge of more forces
What Palpatine really dismissed was a simple use of the Force could change the mind of others without mindcontrolling them directly. The guy so versed into the Dark Side of the Force simply lacked the vision of the Force being used more softly to achieve the same results.
Being so into the Dark Side made him as arrogant as the Jedi were with their dogmatic view of the Light Side.
True, though even with the Ewoks, it would’ve made more sense if an entire legion of Palpatines best troops could’ve maintained enough dominance of the battle to hold off any threats to the generator until the fleet destroyed the rebel fleet.
i mean, if you are building a Planetkiller, a few cute maneating Teddybears are more a Statistic Sidenote than a true shocker
I think the idea of luring the Rebels in a trap was not good. If the Empire had kept the location of the second Death Star hidden until it’s completion, they could have attacked important rebel planets. Also, the risk of losing the Death Star, which cost a lot of ressources, is not worth it. If the second Death Star was complete, there would be no exhaust port that the rebels could use. The Empire should have waited and destroyed the Rebels later.
If Palps really cated abou5 any of that, sure. But the whole point of Endor, and maybe even the second desth star as a whole was the scene in the throne room with Luke and Vader. Also the prequels and the force unleased tells us Palpatine had a grest love of compmicated schemes deaigned to wipe out whole swaths of his opposition ay once. Schemes like that may have been the only things that got old palps out of bed in the morning.
I think I would listen to the military genius.
We need a “What if Trilogy of Thrawn in charge instead of Palpatine.
the empire would have propered with almost no rebels ..... the end
Sidious plan is very cunning and sound plan at the outset with regards to its overall goals of luring the rebels and their main fleet into a trap from which there would be no escape. However said plan is undone by ewoks helping in destroying the shield gate, underestimating ability of rebel fighters to break imperial lines and inflict significant damage on capital ships, something that mass deployment of tie defenders would have prevented and rebel fleet mixing it up and engaging in close quarters fighting to great affect. While big strokes of luck like take down of the executor by awing and destruction of the death star made sure that the trap would backfire on empire and lead to over 50%+ losses amongst baulk up death squadron and command structure allowing for the birth of nerw republic to follow very soon after.
i suppose he could have left the forest there to be tempting..but buried mines everywhere to suddenly create a dead zone when needed, but...either rebel spies or the ewoks might spread that news..if interrogated by the rebels :-). so that might not work..but he could have had a secret precalculated firing pattern given to the ships around the death star to destroy the lanscape around the shield generator. hopefully star destroyer orders would be a better kept secret and chance the ground battle quickly..don't know if ship weapons could hit the shield producing moon quickly or if they'd have to ponderously go over to the moon.. and i guess if they found out luke was on the ground attack the bad sith might not want to take everyone out there..oh..or was he captive before any ground attack could have started...
Rebel spies wouldn’t have known about the mines. It was only Palpatine himself that allowed them to even know the generators location
To be fair he may have intended the ewoks retreat from the fires deeper into the woods but I doubt he would have felt too bad for the one's who didn't make it
Well, my friend, its sometimes best to listen to a genius. However, Palpatine was so overconfident, he dismissed Thrawn & it led to his fall.
Everything bad that Palpatine says about the Jedi, while true, can also be applied to the Sith, especially Palpatine's way of the Sith.
Much as I enjoyed the Thrawn Trilogy, Zahn's fondness for trying to make his original characters upstage the previously-established ones (especially in his later books) is why he definitely is not my favorite Star Wars EU author. There was literally no reason at all that Choices of One needed to have a scene with characters discussing the Endor trap, but he put one in anyway, seemingly just so he could show off how Thrawn is so much smarter than Palpatine, and make it look like he'd have crushed the rebels if he'd just been in charge. I mean, yeah, there were a lot of things wrong with the Endor plan (and all of the villainous plans in the OT). But if you as an author are being allowed to write a spin-off to somebody else's story, to have your own villainous side-character come up to the series' Big Bad and poke a bunch of holes in his machinations just to make your OC look better, that's in bad taste.
Agreed. I also like the Thrawn Trilogy, but some of Thrawn's deductions require such huge leaps in logic that it beggars belief that he's able to reach such a conclusion in the first place. For instance, how the hell does he know how an enemy space fleet is going to react based on centuries-old art? Not only do social and cultural norms change over time (not to mention how individuals within a culture do not all think the same way), but military tactics and technology as well. It would be the real world equivalent of claiming that you know how to beat a modern country's military by studying its art from the Renaissance era.
@@sentrysapper45 its really even worse than that as he's basing his opinion on entire 'species' that way. It would be more like claiming you know how to beat a modern european country's military by studying *aztec* art, because its the same species so clearly it corresponds one to one...
Not impossible. Maybe human art has some commonalities across cultures that we as humans are blind to
OMG, Thrawn suggesting to burn away the Ewoks
Thrawn Rules!
like any of the empires ideas the use of a second death star as a trap is great in theory but was executed very poorly0
Could we get a vid on the evolution of thrawn character and how he changed throughout legends as the yrs went on and zahn wrote morw?
A secondary upside is that the stormtrooper garrison will have an entire decade of Ewok steak supplies.
Burning the whole Moon would be ideal, and no doubt that the Imperial Navy should have been prepared with enough firepower to destroy the Rebellion once and for all.
No amount of lore explanations and will ever be enough to justify how the big bad empire was beaten by a bunch of teddy bears.
Long Story Short; Ewoks are Friends with The Side that Owns The Shiniest Robot.
I think this mischaracterizes Thrawn. He knows that the Ewoks have a society, so he would take the time to find and study their artwork. It would not be long before he found out that they had a religion with what appears to be a gold metal deity, and he would realize that the Ewoks could become a useful resource if he just sent a droid or even just a stormtrooper painted gold down there to play god and tell them to kill any invaders on sight. This isn't that far off from how Thrawn utilized the Noghri in his original appearance.
Is it really surprising that a commander in a "modern" military would brush off primitives as basically less than "human"? Real world history has countless examples of military leaders who were heralded as heroes but who did things far worse than burning some forests and nor bothering to warn the locals.
I'm not saying that it's okay, just that it's not surprising in the least. Even looking at it in-universe, he's a Chiss and most portrayals of them show them seeing humans as beneath them, and Ewoks would be seen as even beneath humans in Thrawn's eyes.
Lure in the rebels not for a pitched battle where the empire wins but to turn Luke, no?
No not burn em all, his plan did not mean the complete annihilation of the Ewok species. Any Ewoks caught in the 100 km of the shields would be taken out & it is highly likely they would also retreat to escape the fire
I really hate clips but I am so happy for you and Eck that its making your money right now because of youtube things
With what do you animate the maps?
How could someone with so much love for art want to just burn half of Californias forest preserve? I know that "sactuary moon" is remnant of it's location over Had Abbadon, but they still use it in the movie, suggesting it's high cultural value.
Burn away the Ewoks? Good. They deserve it.
To be fair Ewoks weren't more than rats or roaches to Thrawn.
What planet exactly was Endor orbiting?
Endor is the planet's name, the thing people typically refer to as Endor is technically "the forest moon of Endor," but the whole system is still the Endor system
@@CoreysDatapad Okay, life will go on haha.
Enjoyed the vid.
Things like this convince me that the folks who wrote the Star Wars movies, books and games don't understand the metric system
I would burn the forest when Rebal ships had arrived with death of so many sentients, Luke would be pushed beyond his point and join the Emperor.
palpatine made a big deal about his plan and he had foreseen it but what was his plan, what had he foreseen?
isnt it kinda crazy that if thrawn was in the movie, then they wouldve won, by iq default, (Meaning the rebels wouldnt of won just for the plot.
I love legends Thrawn though much prefer how cannon Thrawn isn’t a genocidal sociopath!
Yes, but also understand that Ewoks were based on the Vietcong, and is it really wrong to kill commies and their proxies?
Palpatine should have killed all the Ewoks. He's evil, and evil acts fuel him, so it would have been a win/win for him.
He probably would of if he had even thought to consider them as a threat. I think it’s more the fact that he thought it was a waste of time.
Should of listen to Thrawn. Pride and Ego should take a backstep to common sense in Military and Political matters. This is where Palpatine fails.
So much for him having the moral high ground... but then again, his idea can make diehard Ewok haters giddy.
"With the *now* Canon Thrawn"
You forget, that Thrawn was a Black-Female Humanoid & all rights belong to Disney, now.
Bigot.
Damn, what did those space whales do to him.
Don't normally watch videos under 30 minutes, as I find people just don't put in substantial effort. This video was poorly produced.
Making videos under one minute will grantee my avoidance of this channel.