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.