Our favourite space battles in Star Wars
Words by Marcus Boothby
First of all, happy May the Fourth.
I love Star Wars and have loved it since I was a kid. The first one I saw in the cinema was Attack of The Clones, followed on by Revenge of the Sith. Since then, I’ve always enjoyed consuming Star Wars media, mainly from video games and re-watching the films.
More recently, I’ve started getting into Star Wars lore and actually getting to know specs of spaceships like the Imperial Star Destroyer models, various starfighters and other vehicles. Best of all, we get to see the best of these vehicles in epic space battles.
Space scenes have been my favourite parts about Star Wars as there’s so much to see and take in, with some of the prequel ones giving me actual goosebumps while watching them. This is thanks to a combination of the on-screen visuals, sound effects and music and even the dialogue helps.
So, without further ado, I’m about to tell you about some of my favourite space battles in the current Star Wars canon lore.
Battle of Naboo
when The Phantom Menace came out in theatres in 1999, it was met with mixed opinions, similar to The Force Awakens and the other sequels. However, The Phantom Menace ushered in CGI to the Star Wars cinematic universe which allowed LucasFilm to use it like it was going out of fashion. Sure, CGI has improved vastly in the past 20 years but The Phantom Menace was the first feature length film to use it on a mass scale, and it bought us the Battle of Naboo.
The Battle of Naboo was mostly CGI, with some practical effects thrown in. However, it gave us a great space battle featuring a young Anakin Skywalker fending off hundreds of droid fighters, and then blowing a droid control ship. It felt very reminiscent of the Battle of Yavin (also on this list), but also felt fresh for the time.
Vehicle wise, the Battle of Naboo featured then new to the series starships from the Trade Federation including the Lucrehulk-class battleship (the droid control ship), Vulture droid starfighters, and from the Royal Naboo Security Forces, there was the N-1 Starfighter. Technically, if you ignore the plot, the Trade Federation should have won this battle due to sheer numbers, as the Lucrehulk battleship had the capacity to hold thousands of Vulture droids and bomber types. Either way, the Battle of Naboo and to an extent, The Phantom Menace as a whole, paved the way for the next two Star Wars installments which were a crucial part of universe building and following Anakin’s story to the dark side.
Battle of Scarif
Rouge One was the first non-Skywalker focused film to come from LucasFilm. Rouge One follows a group of rebels to track down and steal the plans to the first Death Star for the Rebel Alliance. These events of this film happen days, and later hours before the events of A New Hope so technically, it’s a prequel film.
Anyway, the Battle of Scarif is arguably the best part about Rouge One, with the space battle being the main spectacle. The whole point of the Battle of Scarif was to keep the Empire’s distracted while the heroes on the ground fought their way through the ground defences to steal the Death Star plans. Long story short, the Rebels win, but with heavy losses, more so after Darth Vader turns up.
The space battle brings us some fantastic scenes and a great mix of vehicles. The Rebel Alliance brings pretty much their entire navy with X-Wings, Y-Wings, U-Wings, GR-75 transports, Nebulon B frigates, CR90 corvettes, a VCX-100 freighter (the Ghost for you Rebels fans), Braha'tok-class gunships, Sphyrna-class corvettes (Hammerhead cruisers), and the flagship of the fleet, a MC75 star cruiser. The Empire have a much smaller fleet, but more streamlined with multiple TIE fighters and initially, two Star Destroyers.
However, towards the end of the battle, the tide of the battle is turned when Darth Vader turns up and this is when Rouge One blends in so nicely with A New Hope. Yet, the battle is truly over when the Death Star turns up and destroys the Scarif land base with a single reactor shot from the super laser.
Battle of Yavin
The Battle of Yavin is the first full scale space battle we see in Star Wars if you go by the films release date. After securing the Death Star plans from the Roque One squadron on Scarif, the Rebel Alliance calculate and plan their strike on the fully operational battle station. The Death Star has a design flaw where a few exhaust ports are not shielded because plot reasons, and the Rebels take full advantage of this flaw.
They send in Red Squadron amongst others to take down the Death Star. In all, the Rebels send in just 30 starfighters to destroy the moon-sized battle station. Long story short, the Rebels win by blowing up the Death Star thanks to Luke Skywalker firing a pair of proton torpedoes down the exposed exhaust shaft, thus blowing up the reactor, destroying the Death Star and killing about 2 million Imperial personnel and civilians onboard the battle station.
As mentioned above, the Rebels send in 30 starfighters made up of X-Wings, A-Wings and Y-Wings, with Han Solo coming in late battle in the Millennium Falcon as support. The Empire doesn’t think much of the attack and sends out a squadron of TIE fighters and Darth Vader in his TIE Advanced. Yet, the Death Star was being protected by a lone Imperial-II Star Destroyer.
Given that the scene was produced in the mid-1970s, it still holds up well to this day. However, part of me wishes for the scene to be redone with modern CGI techniques for more vehicles to be fighting against each other.
Battle of Coruscant
The Star Wars prequels gave us many wonderful and less than wonderful moments (I’m looking at you Anakin in Attack of the Clones), but one of the best moments come from Revenge of The Sith where we get to see the Battle of Coruscant. This is a pivotal moment in the Clone Wars as we see Chancellor Palpatine being “kidnapped” by General Grievous.
We see the Battle of Coruscant from the perspective of Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi mainly, but it does show us how big the battle really is. It was the biggest battle in the Clone Wars so all of the ships in the CIS and Republic navy’s were out in their thousands.
We don’t see every single ship in the film or the video game versions, but we get a solid look at what the CIS and Republic had to offer. The Republic mainly used thousands of Venator-class Star Destroyer, ETA-2-class interceptors, ARC-170 starfighters, V-Wing starfighters and some other ships we don’t see off-screen. The CIS had an equally big navy with at least 1000 Munificent-class frigates, a couple of Recusant-class destroyers, at least one Providence-class dreadnought, multiple Lucrehulk battleship and thousands of droid fights of various types.
The battle itself is worth watching but I’d rather watch Revenge of The Sith in full as it’s genuinely a brilliant film, and the Battle of Coruscant just adds to the brilliance.
