Quote Originally Posted by Nerd-o-rama View Post
Honestly unjustifiably large explosions have been Star Wars's key selling point back to the original film.
You do kind of want the visuals to match the narrative importance too. The original Death Star could have had its reactor so slagged by the torpedo that they'd need to build another one but produced only a smoky fart as external evidence of that. It wouldn't match all the hootin' and hollerin' over the victory, so that'd be incongruous to the audience.