Why didn't they show the rebels reacting to the Death Star on Yavin?
 

Here's a question I was thinking about on the way to work today...

When the Millennium Falcon lands on Yavin, do all the people there know that the Death Star is headed towards them? And if they DO know, then why wouldn't the MF have picked up on that.

Now, if they DON'T realize it, why do they never show them saying "holy shit! the Death Star is approaching us!" It just struck me as odd (20 years later ;) ) that no one bothered to react to the fact that the x-wings take off and alluvasudden it's in their face.

Yeah, I thought they should have just bailed out of there rather than make a stand and risk the base.

But you know star wars and logic.

The whole point of intercepting the Death Star's plans was to find a weakness and infiltrate it. The base was now exposed and they'd have to evacuate anyway (to Hoth) -- but why not give it a shot first?

they had found a weakness and it was a now or never thing. if they didn't take it out it'd hyperspace to a system without fighters and blow it up. but if they took it out then they saved the galaxy from a weapon of total destruction

No...i understand that they were planning an assault on it. Fine. But didn't anyone notice that the fucking thing was right outside their windows when they were going to attack it? Why wasn't anyone suprised and essentially saying "shit! they found us!" Or at least "The princess was right! They did track them!" They had no concrete evidence. And how did they know where to find it?

Didn't Leia state that to Han in ep4 after her rescue that the MF was being tracked. If so, why would they go to Yavin, they should of transmitted the plans instead.......yep I know it's just a movie.

Logically, because Leia knew they were being tracked, they should've never gone directly to the hidden base, but to another world where Leia could charter another ship to then take R2D2 to the rebel base.

And given that they did go directly to the rebel base, they then should've started an evacuation of the base once the X-wing/Y-wing fighters all took off to face the Death Star. Because, otherwise, if the fighters failed, then there goes the entire rebellion.

Of course, that's all "logically speaking" when in fact, the fighters weren't going to fail because it wasn't in the script! :)