Why is the same shot cool in the Mandalorian, but silly in Last Jedi?

[Yora]

In The Last Jedi, there is a moment in the fight in the throne room where one of the guards is thrown into an uncovered turbine that is just right there in the floor for some reason, and gets shredded into a cloud of bloody chunks.

In The Mandalorian, there is a moment in the fight in the forge where one of the stormtroopers is thrown into the furnace and disappears in a big blue flame.

It's basically the same thing happening in both scenes.

But somehow it feels really silly, out of place, and like a dumb visual gag in The Last Jedi, but pretty cool in The Mandalorian. And I don't really understand why.

Now of course, some people will disagree and say they are both silly or both cool. But the whole fight scene in the throne room has been dissected in detail by various people as a prime example of why the whole movie is cringy, while the fight scene in the forge only got lots of praise from what I've seen.

Why does the same stunt come across as so very different in two different places? Why does it feel right in one case, but out of place in the other?

[Traab]

Context and the setting involved. Think of it like this. In My Little Pony, if they suddenly switched to a scene where two of them were beating each other to death in a boxing ring, viewers would be shocked and dismayed as wow, thats bloody and painful! On the other hand, they are standing up from their seats cheering when they see it happen in a rocky film. Its entirely likely (I havent watched either) that the mandalorian is a show where such flashy death scenes are too be expected and applauded due to its overall tone, while not so much in the film.

[Fyraltari]

The fire in the forge has been shown several times even focused on, the audience know it is there and understand its function. Meaning that when it is used offensively (which is not its intended purpose) it feels like a character cleverly using their environment. The shredding thing in the Throne Room did not have that build-up and so feels gratuitous.

[Precure]

They're both silly to me.

[Dienekes]

Fyraltari and Traab have the right of it, I think. The audience is willing to accept more and more ridiculous things, provided the creators take the time to set them up. This goes back all the way to the original Star Wars. If it had started with a scene of Darth Vader or Obi-Wan performing space magic at minute 1 I don't think it would have become a classic. It takes it's time, first it establishes a space ship about like what people had seen before in science fiction. Then an even bigger ship showing that this will be bigger and better than older scifi. Then robots, and an army of armored space marines. All of this, except for the specific designs are pretty generic scifi stuff. Then finally we get a glimpse of the giant of a man, after it's over and everything stops to let the audience see "look this guy is important and different." But it doesn't tell you how.

The actual explanation of the force and just why Luke is important doesn't come until, I think 45 minutes in to the movie. By that time the audience has bought in to the frankly ridiculous and silly concepts of space mages that wave their hands and some unexplained magic nonsense happens.

That same principle pretty much works with everything in storytelling. If you want to make your big over the top thing, event, action, or concept actually land you have to give the audience time to see and get used to it. All the way back in episode 1 we're shown the Mandalorian's underground living conditions, the importance of the matriarch, and the incredibly silly and unsafe smelting method that gets explained away by having it be a part of the Mandalorian's religion, which the show also took time to establish beforehand.

So when we do finally get the fight scene that happens in that room with that matriarch all the pieces are in place, and it's set up so that in the back of our minds if she didn't use that tub of fire on at least one of her enemy's we'd have been disappointed. It's right there, tantalizingly dangerous.

Compare and contrast with TLJ where it just happens, and I still have no idea what that thing was or why it was in Snoke's throne room.

Now mind you, stupidly dangerous things in the throne room are something of a Star Wars staple, Vader did throw the Emperor down an endless pit that led directly to the space station's core for reasons that completely escape me. But by that time, everyone was so wrapped up in the emotions of watching Vader change sides and save his tortured son, that we just didn't care. And even me, who's generally a supporter of TLJ or at least some of the concepts they were trying to pull off, can say the emotional release moment was when Ben killed Snoke. The fight scene after that was just supposed to be eye candy and it doesn't hold up.

[Mordar]

Not to belabor the point, but the reference is worth the repetition.

The throne room scene is a reprise of the "chompers" in Galaxy Quest. Like Gwen says, "What is this thing? I mean, it serves no useful purpose for there to be a bunch of chompy, crushy things in the middle of a hallway Throne Room. No, I mean we shouldn't have to do this, it makes no logical sense, why is it here?"

The forge in the sewer temple is 98% of the reason for the sewer temple as far as I can tell. The setting was built with intention, and with only a few small units of suspension of disbelief it makes sense. Tossing an enemy into this super-hot device that instantly melts the superstrong steel seems like a fitting use for it, particularly if the expectation is that the forge won't be able to be used by the cult again anyway.

- M

Galaxy Quest answers many questions. Everyone should watch it.

[Tyndmyr]

Why does the same stunt come across as so very different in two different places? Why does it feel right in one case, but out of place in the other?

Things make sense based on setup. There's a similar bit on Firefly where Mal kicks a dude into an engine. It makes sense, because you are completely aware of the engine being there. Shocking, but not unbelievable.

The forge fire is there every time we visit that room, which makes sense, because it's a forge room for forging weapons. It's a reasonable, realistic obstacle for a fight. An engine turbine in the floor of a throne room makes far less sense. It's not a turbine that has ever been seen before, I think(I don't actually remember that fight very well), and it isn't anything like a logical place to expect a turbine. Things suddenly appearing for no reason feels random and silly, and not very well thought out.

Now, some movies can get away with a bit of such convenience. This is particularly true if the audience is focused somewhere else. However, if things KEEP happening that are ridiculous, inexplicable, etc, well, then you've got a film that's a bit silly. This is fine if you are making Sharknado 27: The Shark Jumping The Other Shark On The Back of A Third Shark, but if you want to be taken seriously, that just won't do.

[Yora]

I think independent from the setup for the stunt, the tonal context of the scene also matters.

Now The Last Jedi is supposed to be a bit dark and the fight in the throne room is supposed to be action packed, but at the same time the whole situation feels like a teenage love story and it's a movie rated for young teens.
At that point of The Mandalorian, it had seven episodes to establish a tone of grounded violence and things getting increasingly grim for the heroes. The whole thing doesn't have the hopeful playfulness that the movies have.

When Rey and Kylo are fighting the guards, you know it's meant to be a big spectacular setpiece in which the heroes show their amazing superior lightsaber skills, and you know they will defeat all the guards effortlessly.
When the Armorer get bullied by the stormtoopers, the situation is very different. The heroes have already been doing quite badly and are under great pressure, and she's not one of the heroes. Stormtroopers apparently have killed all the other Mandalorians in the base already, and she's the last one who is stripping the fallen of their armor, which has more significance to their culture than their bodies. She has zero character shield in that scene and seems to have even worse odds to win than the other Mandalorians who have already died. Outnumbered, surrounded, and without weapons. There is a considerable expectation that she will die.

When the Armorer does attack, it's quick, dirty, and aggressive; which clearly is the only shot she has to win. It's over very quickly and she makes use of everything within reach.
Rey and Kylo are taking their merry time to show of their lightsaber dancing, I think with cool slow motion shots of throwing their lightsabers and killing guards without even looking in their direction. When they throw one of their enemies into a blender, it doesn't feel like a last resort out of desperation. It's completely needless and doesn't fit the playful tone of the movie, which I think is what makes it feel gratuitous and out of place.

Maybe you could say that in The Mandalorian, it happens for the benefit of the character. In The Last Jedi, it happens entirely for the benefit of the audience.

[Dargaron]

(Having not seen the Mandalorian, I'll give my best explanation based on context)

Mordar has the right of it: locale matters. Ren and Rey are fighting in Snoke's throne room on what is apparently his regular flagship: why would there be lethal industrial machinery in an area meant for public display and/or personal comfort? There aren't many crushers or flame jets in the Oval Office or the Senate Chambers, nor would you expect there to be.

On the other hand, a forge is...well, a forge. It's a potentially hazardous workplace, and someone getting injured/killed by environmental factors during a fight is a reasonable outcome.

Now, you could raise the same complaint against Palpatine's Throne Room in ROTJ (and the random bottomless pits are very silly), but that doesn't really excuse TLJ.

[Droid Tony]

As people have said above, it's context. I'll also add Tone. The Mandalorian is ''dark and gritty", as a more adult viewpoint and the main character as well as the other characters are tough...but that that tough. As they are well written characters they have limits.

The Last Jedi...is flashy and made for Kids. Lots of lights and action and very little substance. And Ren and Rey are both all powerful demigods. A Ren Ray fight is dull and boring....they can't loose.

The setting is also important.

In the Last Jedi you sit through...well all the stuff that is just so bad. Then you get the ''big" fight and it's just ''yawn, did they win yet?".

The Mandalorian is much gritter. A much more ''normal" person, a tough one...but not a demigod. So the fight is more a clever...and desperate person using their environment.

[Yora]

The throne room scene is a reprise of the "chompers" in Galaxy Quest. Like Gwen says, "What is this thing? I mean, it serves no useful purpose for there to be a bunch of chompy, crushy things in the middle of a hallway Throne Room. No, I mean we shouldn't have to do this, it makes no logical sense, why is it here?"

That actually reminded me of the CGI things on Han Solo's ship. They say it's his cargo, but that doesn't make it any better.

[Tvtyrant]

That actually reminded me of the CGI things on Han Solo's ship. They say it's his cargo, but that doesn't make it any better.

I actually liked those. It is like the Rangor, their universe has millions of plants so there are monsters for sale. It is like if he had a ship full of tigers being shipped to a movie filming; it is silly but believable that someone somewhere wants illegal exotic monsters.

The fight in the Mandalorian vs Last Jedi is about power scale as much as anything. In the main movies NPCs are just there to die to PCs; Kylo and Rey could kill the entire First Order and it would not be out of setting expectations. In the Mandalorian NPCs are the primary threat, and while he is stronger than them in every scene they are always treated as a legitimate threat.

[Ramza00]

I want to argue against people here not because they are wrong but because it is a balancing act.

Watch this video about what makes a Good Star Wars game from Polygon.



As point 4 of the video illustrates location is everything in Star Wars for it creates an atmosphere of tension. The type of environments with Star Wars makes people feel small, in danger, and thus unsafe. This feeling of danger creates tension. Tension causes you to accept things at face value and the eye does not try to explore and take more information in, instead focusing on some goal or preserving safety.

In a Star Wars game you have control of the focus, the camera, and what you look at. Thus there must be missions and danger to preserve this tension or your attention will start to mock how silly the environment is. No one would naturally create this environment, it is inherently unsafe like the chomper’s room of Galaxy Quest.

———

So that is one goal to create tension and it must be balanced with other goals. Did the shredder add to the fight scene? Did it create tension or release it. If it released tension was it in an absurd way or a way that naturally follows and makes sense to the eye? If it does not make sense to the eye tracking, or even if it does we may ask what is the purpose of this thing in an environment? We must battle the uncanny valley that is suspension of belief vs disbelief. We must be fed something to keep our attention going to enjoy that scene.

Remember Star Wars wants to create an alien, foreboding environment that seems strange and uncanny. Yet not an irrational environment that seems anti-human due to how we feel no human would build this for it is too irrational.

The purpose of the shredder was to break the attentional flow of the fight for it was too long and fights need to break the attention and rejoin the attention like music has flow and then a counter melody to provide opposing flow. The purpose of Kylo Ren killing someone and the shredder was to remind people the environment also has animating agency it is not just a conflict between the forceful flow of Ren and Rey vs the fighting skills and will of the guards. It was a choice that made sense to break the flow of the fight for a few seconds but to quickly reestablish the fight for brief moment of breakage can provide cathartic relief but also introduce new tensions and thus new excitement to the 2 minute fight (this break and return to the fight happened in the midpoint of the conflict.)

—————

The problem was not the instincts and reasons to make these choices but it got the balance of things wrong and thus felt unnatural. It is like Indiana Jones 4, whatever it was called again, the crystal skull or something. We had a mid movie fight scene in the jungle 8 minutes long with car chases, guns, sword fighting and everything. There are mistakes in the fight that feels unnatural but it becomes silly when Jr 2.0 starts swinging like Tarzan and this was so fast he recatches up with the cars recovering the distance with how fast he is. It does not feel believable, it feels convenient to the plot, it feels unearned and thus it breaks up the conflict entirely.

The problem with Star Wars shredder scene is we as humans see the strings of author insert for the strings of the puppets (the human actors doing what human directors and writers told them) became too obvious. Sith Praetorian Guard got shredded for the audience need a break in tension. We as the audience noticed this and we feel it to be sloppy and silly.

[Yora]

Shredding a person to release tension sounds very wrong. Probably one reason why it seems out of place.
The scene already did not have sufficient tension to begin with, because we knew there was no threat. Releasing the already lacking tension is doubly out of place.

[Dargaron]

Watch this video about what makes a Good Star Wars game from Polygon.



As point 4 of the video illustrates location is everything in Star Wars for it creates an atmosphere of tension. The type of environments with Star Wars makes people feel small, in danger, and thus unsafe. This feeling of danger creates tension. Tension causes you to accept things at face value and the eye does not try to explore and take more information in, instead focusing on some goal or preserving safety.

In a Star Wars game you have control of the focus, the camera, and what you look at. Thus there must be missions and danger to preserve this tension or your attention will start to mock how silly the environment is. No one would naturally create this environment, it is inherently unsafe like the chomper’s room of Galaxy Quest.

-Much Stuff Follows-

Counterpoint, and as much as I love Pat Gil, I'm going to have to disagree with his specific assessment of what makes a locale Star Wars. One thing to keep in mind is that all the places where the heroes encounter deadly environmental hazards are areas that are either explicitly Industrial (Cloud City's Carbonite Bay, the Droid Factory on Geonosis) Military (The Death Star in ANH) or based on real-life hazards (the hovercar chase in AOTC). Places where regular, civilian humans live and go about their daily business (like Theed in Phantom Menace, Mos Esley in A New Hope and Jabba's Palace in ROTJ) are notably devoid of mechanical hazards to life and limb. Coruscant is perhaps the exception, but it's no more dangerous than, say, an Interstate Highway: you're not supposed to be a pedestrian on the Autobahn or the New York Subway!

Take Jabba's palace/Sand Barge, the *other* in-universe example of a home for a wealthy yet unscrupulous individual: the only environmental hazards there are power doors that might close on you (a common sci-fi feature), the fact the barge is high up (but there's guard rails) and one hidden trapdoor (built on purpose as a means of feeding undesirables to the Rancor).

The one exception is Palpatine's throne room in ROTJ (I almost wrote "ROTK," but that's the WRONG FRANCHISE), and people have been mocking the "random bottomless pit" since that movie came out. Just because it appeared in a good movie doesn't mean the Random Bottomless Pit (RBP) is a good feature: sometimes value-neutral or even detrimental features are acceptable to the audience because they're surrounded by tightly-written dialogue, engaging plot or stunning visuals. If I'm going to see a sequel to a work, I expect that work to have learned from the previous entries in the series what sparks joy and what does not. In other words, I expect improvement, not stagnation, otherwise, why is it even a sequel and not an independent IP?

[Asmotherion]

In The Last Jedi, there is a moment in the fight in the throne room where one of the guards is thrown into an uncovered turbine that is just right there in the floor for some reason, and gets shredded into a cloud of bloody chunks.

In The Mandalorian, there is a moment in the fight in the forge where one of the stormtroopers is thrown into the furnace and disappears in a big blue flame.

It's basically the same thing happening in both scenes.

But somehow it feels really silly, out of place, and like a dumb visual gag in The Last Jedi, but pretty cool in The Mandalorian. And I don't really understand why.

Now of course, some people will disagree and say they are both silly or both cool. But the whole fight scene in the throne room has been dissected in detail by various people as a prime example of why the whole movie is cringy, while the fight scene in the forge only got lots of praise from what I've seen.

Why does the same stunt come across as so very different in two different places? Why does it feel right in one case, but out of place in the other?

The last Jedi is a really aweful production. It alters unexpectedly from serious moments that should give you a feeling of awe, to 2nd grade slapstic humor. It gives you an awekward feeling of a laughtape in moments you're supposed to feel "this is epic" or sad. It tryes to have the cake and eat it too, by negating every remotelly serious moment's impact with a reminder "this is a kid's movie, don't take it seriously". Anything that should be otherwise cool, and/or taken seriously is brought down in importance, and the whole production is trying to gaslight you into accepting the protagonists as "cool and smart" by turning everyone dump and naive in compareson. The outcome is the characters don't feel believable or relatable.

In the end, the mentioned scene suffers from the same. It leaves you with a confusing feeling of "is this supposed to be funny, tragic, or a narration tool?".

[Rakaydos]

The power expectations of the Mandalorian is wonderfully managed. There's an entire episode where the we are terrified of a single Chicken Walker. The final episode had a gripping, danger frought fight with a SINGLE TIE Fighter.

[Aeson]

Now, you could raise the same complaint against Palpatine's Throne Room in ROTJ (and the random bottomless pits are very silly), but that doesn't really excuse TLJ.

For Palpatine's throne room, there's also the potentially-mitigating factor that the Death Star II is visibly incomplete, and there's some stuff - the consoles and the overhead catwalk, at least - that suggest that the specific chamber that the Emperor was using as a throne room might not have been intended for that purpose. Snoke's throne room doesn't have that sort of implied justification for why it contains something unbefitting for a throne room.

[Ramza00]

Shredding a person to release tension sounds very wrong. Probably one reason why it seems out of place.
The scene already did not have sufficient tension to begin with, because we knew there was no threat. Releasing the already lacking tension is doubly out of place.

Agreed the whole Rey+Ren vs the Sith Guards had no narrative threat where you doubt the heroes and also villain was going to make it. The worse case scenario from a tension standpoint was someone gaining a robotic limb in the future after losing a hand or leg ... or perhaps gaining a scar.

*Laughs* ...I am thinking this just now... and it would not work for it would be too meta ... BUT ....

Just imagine if Kylo fell in that shredder and thus he becomes his idol Darth Vader for he was sloppy and bad at his job. "The Circle is now Complete"

[Precure]

I just rewatched the scene. I think whole think is just a freak accident. Kylo Ren killed someone and throwed them into some narrow hole-looking thing. Then there was some sparkles, whole thing short circuited and exploded, and the parts of guard's uniform is burst into air. It's just a throw away gag.

[Sapphire Guard]

The weirdest hazard is probably the door of that bar in the Mandalorian. Why would a random bar have a door that can bisect people? That's kind of a hazard for drunk people on their way home.

[Ramza00]

and the parts of guard's uniform is burst into air. It's just a throw away gag.

That is the point, it is a throw away gag to release tension only to rebuild tension once again only to re-establish it.

1) Rey almost died, having difficulty with a guard. She defeat him though and that person's death caused his weapon to break and the momentum of Rey's lightsaber threw the weapon at the red fabric and the throne room starts to burn. [Tension Release]
2) [Tension Restored] Rey fights a new opponent who uses two daggers, he shows off, Rey counter shows off, their blades clash and ZOOM switch to Kylo [aka no drop in Tension but new information]
3) Kylo is also having difficulties for he is having 3 vs 1. He defeats 1 and the throw away gag [Tension Release]
4) [Tension Restored]The two remaining people are surrounding Kylo putting him in a no win scenario.
5) [Tension Escalated] In our corner of our eye we see Rey is in trouble for the two dagger guy is putting Rey at a disadvantage
6) [Tension Constant]But Kylo is not able to help Rey for he is surrounded from behind and in front by his two opponents. The opponent behind him also has a reach advantage for it switched its sword to a whip. Kylo has to act reckless to keep distance against both his in front and behind opponents in order to not be double teamed at once.
7) [Tension Escalated] A 3rd person is now attacking Kylo.
8) [Tension at critical] We see Rey losing and being tired
9) Kylo due to being reckless, and the fire fabric, was able to separate his opponents and he is dominating his opponent when it is 1 on 1. He gains a 2nd weapon defeats an opponent and loses both weapons. He is then pinned by his opponent that remains
10) Rey defeats her opponent but she too almost gets pin but she switches her weapon from one hand to another hand to do this.
11) Rey throws her lightsaber at Kylo and he uses it to defeat his opponent.
[All Enemies defeated]

Kylo and Rey switch to talking and then have the lightsaber telekinesis pull conflict.

----

That is not the entire fight sequence, but I listed 12 different Scenes that together make up a larger Sequence, a larger Fight is the Sequence but there are several scenes in that sequence, and in individual scenes there are several sensory details, several "key important beats" that are important in the flow of the fight but happen so fast it is hard to remember them all unless you write them down in a 2 minute fight. Each individual beat is meant to create a flow and counter flow, and through that flow there is gaining and release of tensions.

The shredder gag is meant to be a release of tension. Reminding us these enemies can be defeated and how they can be defeated can be funny (not just tragic), providing a cathartic release of tension via bathos. When you think of Bathos think a failed elegance, a failed attempt of the sublime that lowers the moment, it is anticlimatic. Most action movies now a days uses the MCU "quipping" to do Bathos. Here the Bathos was a shredder gag and it just feels off.

But we needed a moment of a release of tension for the fight was already 65 seconds long and that is lot of attention to keep captured. This Anti-Climatic Bathos establishes the midpoint of the fight.

The 2nd part of the fight is Rey feels in danger and Kylo can't help. You started this conflict prior to the tension release when Kylo was fighting 3 on 1, and him removing an obstacle gives the audience hope he can help Rey, but he can't do that for it is still 2 on 1 and his opponents are fighting smart by surrounding him. Then you raise the tension again and again to not have a resolution of Rey's safety till 60 seconds later after the 65 second part.

Without this moment of Bathos the fight would have been too long. The Bathos is meant to cause the audience to breathe / laugh and so on.





Yet the scene still feels off for it was too over the top and too much of a gag when there is 4 enemies still (we can't count the enemies for the fight is purposefully chaotic to keep us on our toes but if you count them, there are 4 enemies left.) Getting the right form of Bathos is extremely hard to do for when you do anti-climax you can also trigger feelings of immaturity, wrong type of tone for a serious moment, excessiveness, deficiency, hyperbole, etc.




In sum it is hard to make a movie. The director and fight coordinators had the right instincts, but they did not stick the landing. **Shrug** ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But since the landing we are referring to is the midpoint of a fight most people will not remember a single beat that was a few seconds long in a 2 minute 20 second fight unless you care way too much for a property. Most people will not remember a single beat feels off, but to some people it will just stick in one's craw, tearring our stomach up for we feel something is off but we can't identify it.

[Yora]

That whole episode is weird in that regard. The blue alien feels out of place. Why does the Mandalorian have an industrial carbon freezer on his ship? He doesn't have to transport captured Jedi that have to stay alive at any cost.

[Peelee]

That whole episode is weird in that regard. The blue alien feels out of place. Why does the Mandalorian have an industrial carbon freezer on his ship? He doesn't have to transport captured Jedi that have to stay alive at any cost.

Captured Jedi aren't the only ones who can fight back or sabotage things. He had five bounties he was turning in at the same time, having a portable carbon freezer seems to help him efficiently and safely transport his quarry. I hate when they bring out carbon freezing in timelines before ESB, but after isn't too bad. After all, nobody really knows about Vader using it for a Jedi, but Jabba having one of his more notable bounties delivered that way probably had word get around.

[Caledonian]

The bottomless pit in the throne room makes a sort of aesthetic sense, though. Palpatine was both crazy and utterly, over-the-top evil. If we want to be completely reasonable, we might ask why there's a throne room at all. Traditionally they were used to meet with guests and petitioners, as a way of establishing the importance and power of a ruler. Does the Emperor really need that? No, he's so scary people will work themselves to death simply to avoid him. But if he had a comfortably-furnished den with a soft chair and an entertainment system, that just wouldn't work in the movie or story.

Given that Palpatine liked symbolic display, his throne room atop a scary abyss is aesthetically appropriate. Engine turbines... don't fit the aesthetic, and don't seem to have any practical purpose at all.

[Traab]

The bottomless pit in the throne room makes a sort of aesthetic sense, though. Palpatine was both crazy and utterly, over-the-top evil. If we want to be completely reasonable, we might ask why there's a throne room at all. Traditionally they were used to meet with guests and petitioners, as a way of establishing the importance and power of a ruler. Does the Emperor really need that? No, he's so scary people will work themselves to death simply to avoid him. But if he had a comfortably-furnished den with a soft chair and an entertainment system, that just wouldn't work in the movie or story.

Given that Palpatine liked symbolic display, his throne room atop a scary abyss is aesthetically appropriate. Engine turbines... don't fit the aesthetic, and don't seem to have any practical purpose at all.

That is a fair point, this is the death star, the weapon used to bring entire planets tot heir knees. He needs a big fancy throne room setup to grind the leader of the rebelling planets weakness into them before he accepts their surrender or makes them watch as their planet dies. I was honestly wondering why the death star would have that at all until I stopped to really think about it. I mean, why would palpatine ever want to go near the front lines of a battle, "unstoppable" battle station or not? Especially after the first one was, you know, blown up by a fighter jet. But yeah, the chance to gloat in person would probably be a tempting one.

[Caledonian]

Now I'm having images of the Emperor at home, sitting in a whirlpool bath, announcing to Vader in a raspy voice that "the bubbles tickle my toes!" then laughing maniacally. Followed by puttering to the kitchen in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers to make a sandwich.

I would point out that even the Death Star itself is a monument to impracticality; as some of the EU materials establish, the superlaser and a generator capable of powering it is much easier to build that the entirety of a somewhat hollow moon-sized globe, and far cheaper to move around. It's all about going completely over-the-top to inspire shock, awe, and horror.

[Peelee]

I mean, why would palpatine ever want to go near the front lines of a battle, "unstoppable" battle station or not? Especially after the first one was, you know, blown up by a fighter jet.

Hubris.

After all, this is the same Palpatine who set a trap for the Rebels by giving them the actual plans to blow him up.