This beauty Kills

This may be the most beautiful shot in all of Star Wars.
But it also ruins Star Wars, both going forward and the past films. Let me explain why.

Up front, Star Wars is NOT Science Fiction. It's Fantasy. Or Space Opera. It has little or no adherence to the laws of physics or nature. I will touch on this but not overmuch because it really doesn't matter.

The only physical Law I really expect from Star Wars is to manage how power is displayed. Not for science reasons, but for storytelling one. The Death Star takes a long time to build up the capacity to destroy Alderaan. It's huge and powerful and we're lead to believe it's very draining of resources. It has a HUGE output of power but we have every indication it must get that power from somewhere. There is a COST to using that power.

Even Jedi, who have an unexplained power (Even Midiclorians don't"explain" it) seem to have to husband their use of it. We know Vader is powerful enough to kill with his mind but he also has to focus to use it. Even the powerful enforcer of the Empire uses his power sparingly.

What about engines and Hyperspace? Star Destroyers are slow, lumbering vessels. The Millennium Falcon is fast and nimble. Tie Fighters are so small they can't travel far from a larger vessel where they must dock. Even though we have no real information on the propulsion in Star Wars, the storytelling of previous films has given us certain rules. Rules that very much look like a law of physics.

Power in equals power out.

So when Vice Admiral Holdo cuts through the fleet in this admittedly beautiful shot, where was the power coming from? The engines? Anti-Matter colliding with Matter? Light-speed? How much energy do the engines on her Corvette generate that they could destroy a ship many times its size in a single suicide maneuver? Not to mention an entire fleet.

Let's talk about "Lightspeed" or Hyperspace. Different films use these in a way that seems interchangeable. However, they are NOT traveling Light Speed, EVER, in Star Wars. There are NO ships in Star Wars which travel that SLOW. (Yes, slow) At the very least, they are arriving at their destinations, in all films, hundreds or THOUSANDS of times quicker than if they had traveled the speed of light. At best, "Lightspeed" is a colloquialism used in universe to mean "Really f@cking fast!"

Not only that, they arrive without inertia. (or barely coasting) They are NOT traveling at any high speed when they go into Hyperspace. At best, we can conclude it is some kind of wormhole or other dimension where distances are far shorter. We don't know how much power it requires to open this other dimension, or wormhole, but we know it's not excessive. Ships have never had much trouble making multiple jumps. Even little tiny X-wings. (Until this movie for some reason)

We HAVE to assume it's no great trick to go to Hyperspace. Maybe the Falcon's Hyperspace engine was unreliable, but even an old junky ship can do it. Where does the energy come from? We don't know but we don't care as long as it's not too much. It doesn't impede the story.

"But what about Han's warning?" I hear you ask. "It ain't like dusting crops, boy!" Han says "we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova" But does he mean they could explode the star with their tiny ship? No. He seems to mean, they would come out of the Hyperspace "dimension" inside something that would crush them. Presumably with no damage at all to the star.

Everything we've ever seen in Star Wars leads us to believe that Holdo should have found herself in the middle of the Star Destroyer, but being significantly smaller, it almost certainly would have caused little real damage. After all, if it COULD, why would anyone use ANYTHING else in warfare?

Why would Luke fire Proton Torpedoes into the vent of the Death Star? Why not just Hyperspace through it? Kamikaze like the insurgent rebel fighter he is, and it's over. But Star Wars clearly hasn't ever worked that way before.

If it had, there would be no story to tell. This one, excessive use of power undoes everything that came before it and after. No one will ever use anything BUT the Holdo Maneuver from now on--and if they don't, they are idiots.

Not only should this NOT work (because they're not traveling at relativistic speeds, because the power consumption would be immeasurable, because this would be far too dangerous for anyone to have ever developed, because there would be no galactic commerce if this were the case, etc, etc) BUT MOSTLY because it's BAD STORYTELLING.