Question: I'm surprised no one has asked this question. The whole tense moment during the final battle is someone making it safely down the trench to shoot the exhaust holes and destroy the death star. Besides dramatic effect why would they all start from so far away?
Captain Defenestrator
7th Oct 2014
Star Wars (1977)
Chosen answer: The trench near the exhaust port is protected by laser cannon batteries. To come in below them, the trench run has to be started from a long distance away.
13th Jan 2010
Star Wars (1977)
Question: Two questions: In the bar, Obi Wan's lightsaber is purple, not blue. Is there any particular reason for this? Also, the trivia section for this movie mentions a scene with Han Solo and Jabba the Hut that I have never seen before in the movie. Can somebody explain where the scene is and what happens in it?
Answer: The different color is likely due to the lighting of the cantina. The scene with Jabba is in the remastered version of the film and takes place as Han and Chewie are preparing the Falcon for takeoff. Han tells Jabba that he'll have the money to repay him as soon as he gets back from the job of taking Luke and Obi-Wan to Alderaan and Jabba tells him that if he doesn't, he's going to have to send Boba Fett after him.
Lucas filmed the scene during the production of Star Wars but dropped it because he didn't have the technology at the time to replace the stand-in with Jabba the way he wanted. Later during the remaster, now equipped with the right technology, they added Jabba and included the scene in the film.
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Answer: It's explicitly stated that the targeting computers will have difficulty targeting the small exhaust port. The long approach was to give the computers time to make their calculations as accurate as possible.