This is a awesome, horrible thing that they do, and should at least be considered in silence by pious people, who wonder if their God(s) approve or not, on what they have done.

If God matters, then a massive destruction should be contemplated as eating ortolans -- under a cloth, so the sin and the pleasure cannot be seen.

It would be different, anyway, than people cheering as if a touchdown occurred.

pink_clerical_collar

SEE! the explosive carnage for yourself!

Zantor

STARGATE: "Give my regards to King Tut, asshole"...KA-BOOM!

THE GREEN SLIME: "How's the Space Station, Vince"... KA-BOOM!

MOONTRAP: (Walter Koenig saves the world from the evil robo-pods by doing their spaceship with with an atomic bomb hidden inside a Grumman Lunar Module)... 3-2-1, (pause) "God damn government contractors" KA-BOOM!

DEEP IMPACT: Bobby Duval brings a tear to your eye...KA-BOOM!

My all-time favorite: The flyimg saucer from "PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE". "Eros honey, look out!...Screeeeeam!!!!...KA-BOOM!

Hummmm, this gives me an idea. A list of the best lines you say before you blow something up. Has it been done? If not, let's start one.

Watch the skies!

Zantor

Wrathwilde

fuzzy_lumps

+ Watch video

Bowley

Tony C

They could have fscked the 3 Cylonships up big time with it, and instead decide to make a Kami-frakin-kaze.

Klappstuhl

BubbaNW

Kevin Kelly

Remember that the Executor-class Star Dreadnought was 19,000 meters long. So it was over 20 km away from the Death Star went it went down, which is fairly far away, especially considering turbolaser batteries had a range of a couple of kilometers. So really, it was trying to keep the rebel fleet from escaping.

Syroch

Not a movie, but the Halo book The Fall of Reach has a brilliant scene where an orbital repair ship (basically a big flat barge) sacrifices itself in order to absorb the initial Covenant plasma barage and allow the human fleet to reload their cannons for a second volley. The way Nylund writes it is very heart touching, I really felt for the crew of that ship.

Chiper

EnsGabe

OtakuboyT

bkpurchase

Lost_Thought

I actually have a hard time watching Star Wars because all the Rebels just seem so completely oblivious about the sheer mayhem and loss of life involved with the Death Star's destruction.

Discrete-Daniel

Ridley Scott's attention to detail is great

Front_Towards_Enemy

the bit where bob Balaban has to explain to Hal that he's going to be destroyed always puts a lump in my throat.

CharlesRockyPamplin

Man it sure looks/sounds like him.. "Too late!"

Can't find any evidence in my quick google searches...

Anyone here know?

DocGratis

Now I'm going to have to bring up that part to watch.
Yes I mean right now.

Thanks io9! :D

strider_mt2k

E0157H7

E0157H7

Kevin Kelly

Bruce Dern hijacks a giant space ship with bio-domes full of the world's last forest species that he's trying to save, and to cover the tracks of the last one he destroys the ship with a case full of nuclear detonators. There's a very poignant final scene when he's setting the charges, and the only one left to talk to is a crippled robot, and he relates a story when he was a young boy before throwing the switch. Great stuff.

Burncrafter

Sharpless

"...immediate DE-RESOLUTION. that is all."

DSTRYA

PS i think the phrase "minimum safe distance" produces a complex signal in a film that deals with claustrophobia, unwanted penetration/ pregnancy anxiety, and bodily invasion in general. the whole problem is that we can never maintain a "minimum safe distance" from that alien & its persistent desire to penetrate into or explode out of bodies.

delicious again, i09!

DSTRYA

Marpin

I still fear that one day they'll try to remake that movie. And after the self destruct button gets pressed, The Commander, Altaira and Robby have one of those "space car chase scenes" running from the flaming jets of the self-destructing planet and it boils down to big, noisy explosion porn like any summer movie.

dshramek

Oh man, I love the Last Starfighter Death Blossom! Its the only moment when that film acknowledges that in space, battles are fought in three dimensions. (Seriously, the concept of "the frontier" drove me nuts.)

To this day, I cannot watch either the death of Spock or the destruction of the Enterprise without weeping.

laughingacademy

While I doubt that there are many deleted scenes that haven't been added in special super tiger-dragon editions of these movies, we may assume that the fleet was called to a defensive posture when the shield went down. This was presumably ordered by the fleet commanders as the Emperor was too busy converting some boy to his ancient cult than to worry about following through on his plan to end the rebellion once and for all.

dshramek

Lars

> Why were they that close

Because Lando had ordered all rebel ships to move as close to the death star as possible. Naturally, the empire fleet followed.

Lars

Khyron hurling his cruiser on the grounded SDF-1 in the finale of the Macross arc of Robotech, which leads to the death of the single coolest Russian/Soviet spaceship captain of all time: Henry Gloval

Guizzy

Talyn's sacrifice got me all misty-eyed.

Jeff-Minor, I liked the spiders. The rest of the movie -- eh, literally the only reason I didn't walk out was that I was on a 747 over the north Atlantic.

Evil Tortie's Mom

EBone

@dshramek:
Say the Executor wasn't all that close to DS2 either. One moment it's far away and the next, it's crashed right into DS2. That amount of mass would have done some serious damage too, but science wasn't really Lucas' strong suit anyway. Mitochlorydians forever!

ManchuCandidate

The real question is, why does destroying the bridge of the thing destroy it's stabilizers so bad. I mean, was there some poor black helmeted helmsman who had to keep pressing the "up" button just to keep the ship from being pulled nose-first into the Death Star's gravity well? Why were they that close if their job was to prevent the Rebel fleet from escaping the main gun of the "fully operational" Death Star?

I shouldn't know this much about these movies, but all the damage Lucas has done to them hasn't erased the encyclopedic knowledge I sucked out of them as a small boy.

dshramek

Benjo

Bad guy EA ship: "(blah blah) Do not force us to engage."

Delenn: "Why not? Only one human has defeated a Minbari cruiser. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else."

Pwnd.

Marcus

@braak: I'm guessing Kirk's blowing things up probably created the needing a second officer. Kind of like Brannigan's Law.

Git Em SteveDave is starlost

Hey, Dark Vader of the startrack Enterprise - nanu nanu!

gybryant

Yeah, but Delenn busting in at the end calls for a fist-pumping "fuckyeah!"

gybryant

mr_fett01

Cin

I second the Battle of the Line and throw in a shoutout to when the Churchill rams the Roanoke in Severed Dreams. That one chokes me up bad.

Marcus

Gann

Ripley. Ridley was the director, who, as far as I can tell, never fled in a shuttle...

GenXCub

CaptainStern

Oh, and I think the Battle of the Line should be mentioned. C'mon, large scale shipicide against impossible odds to buy time for the evacuation of Earth! I still get a little choked up when the President of the Earth Alliance makes the final call for all able pilots to "hold the line against the night." Good stuff, that.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you don't know sci-fi.

gybryant

Garrison Dean, Mr. Privilege

CaptainStern

mightybooth

Jeff-Minor

Kevin Kelly

Plague

Falconfire

As an aside, who names a ship that big after the administrator of someone's will? No wonder the Empire lost.

finite_elephant

SeeingI

bryantpaul

braak

I love how you can see the outline of the A-Wing for a moment inside the Star Destroyer - and how Ackbar looks kind of sad and exhausted observing the crash. Great puppet / mask character. Why weren't his people in the prequels?

SeeingI

Kevin Kelly

Jeff-Minor

superbryant

NefariousNewt