Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith -- The Battle of Coruscant

The Battle of Coruscant is one of the biggest battles in the entire Star Wars series of films. It depicts hundreds of massive ships firing at each other above the capital planet of the galaxy. What's not to like?

There are several things that I would like to mention that deserves a little background. George Lucas is a huge proponent of the "throwback", which is basically taking all of the best styles of imagery of previous works and distills them into one big work. Star Wars for instance has influences from westerns, world war II, samurai flicks, old space opera serials, knights in shining armor, and yes even jazz. He likes style so much that sometimes to favors that over substance.

There are some things about the Battle of Coruscant that does not fit with reality. For one thing there is sound in space as well as extensive fires from damaged spacecraft. This is somewhat justified by the fact that they are in the upper atmosphere of a planet, even though this is clearly taking place in space. Like all Star Wars space battles the fighters are aerodynamic in every way, from the way they are shaped to the way they fly. But since there is little gravity or air (this is an upper atmosphere after all) small fighters will behave a bit differently than their planet based counterparts. Perhaps a better demonstration of this is from the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series. Also, when the ships fly close together we see shots of crew manning huge laser cannons. This is of course unnecessary since in space long range engagements are the more favorable tactic. However, George Lucas is trying to invoke the style of old pirate films where that tactic is more appropriate.

Gladiator -- Battle in Germania

Taking place during emperor Marcus Aurelius' campaign against the Germanic barbarians of Europe, this battle demonstrates the look, feel and tactics of Rome in its heyday. This is not the Roman republic of Julius Ceasar but rather the Roman empire of some centuries advancement.

We can see here that the Romans have made use of many kinds of technological advancements such as ballistas and catapults as well as the more visually impressive (possibly as a result of the film taking liberties) fire arrows. They also make use of tried and true ancient battle tactics such as a form of the phalanx made famous by the Greeks. We also see the use of the very standard tactic of the pincer maneuver, which is essentially positioning one army in more than one side around the other army. This creates what is in effect a two front war.

The Battle in Germania is one of the most impressive depictions of war in cinema history. It contains many memorable one liners with heavy philosophical bent, such as this conversation: "People should know when they are conquered." "Would you Quntus? Would I?" It is a rather short battle but it is expertly paced, making each second count. It also tries to showcase as many aspects of war as possible, showing all sorts of detail such as soldiers, negotiations, technology and tactics. And to cap it all off the music by Hans Zimmer is heavily inspired by the amazing Mars: Bringer of War from Gustav Holst's The Planets Suite. It may be short but it is one amazing scene.

Introduction

Hello everyone!

This is my first blog and I am excited to start writing about a subject that I am interested in.

That interest in question is battlescenes from films. What I am interested in doing is to look at these scenes and to simply talk about them, kind of like a columnist. I suppose that's what a blog is. I want to analyze and debate them, looking at things like battle tactics, weapon efficiency, historical accuracy, usage of technology and so forth. It can be based on a historical event or even a completely fictional one.