I dunno dude, take the money you would invest in a fleet, use that to make a decently sized transport with a droid AI in it and you have a weapon more effective than the fleet itself would have been.
I disagree. In comparison to Poe's plan, Holdo's was more strategically sound. Even though the planet is within eyesight, we're still talking about astronomical distances here. It's like trying to see a cruise liner from the moon. They may be able to see the larger ship and the planet, but the little ships would be more difficult to spot with the naked eye at the distance they were at. They've already lead the First Order to believe they're winning a war of attrition letting their other ships get destroyed (after consolidating their crew). By the time they would discover something was amiss, the Rebels would be half-way to Crait (but Poe's failed plan hindered this success) and they could reconnoiter. Poe even says "That could work." and that other women goes "I hope this works..."
Some criticisms: Why wasn't the First Order already running the cloaking scans in case some tried to flee? Why didn't the smaller, faster Star Destroyers speed ahead of Snoke's flagship and swarm or block the Rebel fleet and destroy it? Why is Hux cartoonishy incompetent and still meant to be a serious threat?
2. We are to believe that if Finn and Rose parked well, got through Rich-Land security just fine, convinced some guy to go on a suicide mission, could get through the First Orders defenses, could get into the room with the tracking system just fine, and escape the flagship to rejoin the others before whisking away into hyperspace, the plan would have worked out fine. This is the same type of insane plan that usually works out for heroes in action/adventure films. Every obstacle is usually overcome by improvisation and the shortsightedness of the heroes is hand-waved. It had a far lower chance of success than Holdo's plan.
Some criticisms: Like you said, it just so happens that Finn --a lowly Stormtrooper who worked sanitation aboard Starkiller Base --and Rose --some Rebel engineer --are among the few people that know of hyperspace tracking. They go to Rich-Land looking for a code breaker but get arrested only to just so happen to be jailed with a code breaker (and there's no plans to expand on this character in the next film, apparently). It's a poorly thought-out plan and the Canto Bight detour goes on far too long and the "stick it to The Man"/"Now it's worth it" thing was unnecessary (Yeah, the intent was to give Rose more depth, but it oozes with cheesiness --much like Rose's entire character).
3. Rey's plan is pretty much exactly Luke's plan in Return of the Jedi, and like Luke she was allowed to land on the ship (which is why Ren meets her in the hangar bay) only she underestimates how far gone to the Dark Side Kylo Ren is. So, she failed in what she came to do, but managed to escape in Snoke's escape craft. I wouldn't exactly say her plan worked beyond expectation.
4. Again, they escaped from the First Order and Holdo's sacrifice decimated the First Order fleet. They survived the day. The ending is meant to leave audiences with a sense of hope (despite the losses) that the resistance will prevail. Finn and Rose's "victory" is, I agree, a stupid detour from the rest of the plot, but doesn't compare to that which the Resistance endured. All we can really do is wait and see how the Resistance will come back from their losses and capitalize on their survival in the next film.
I am not saying that The Last Jedi is the pinnacle of Star Wars, storytelling, or that it's without flaws; but some of the things I see getting criticized are fairly sound contextually.
Don't forget that TFA already shattered existing rules about hyperspace travel with the ridiculous 'hyperspace through the planetary shield' trick. It's their shiny new macguffin now. At this point I'm expecting episode 9 to have hyperspace bring the dead back to life Superman: The Movie-style or something equally dumb.
Let's also not forget the "big dumb hyperspace laser that is also visible from across the galaxy because apparently lightspeed is not a thing anymore" which makes me want to bash JJ Abrams over the head with a physics textbook until it's naught but pulp
christ, what a literal fucking manchild
At least starcontrol 2 fixed hyperspeed by making ships have a wormhole generator that allows them to move in another mirror dimension that is smaller in scale, meaning you move faster with the same amount of fuel. Plus, if two ships are in the same dimension, they just move at the same speed they would in our dimension.
Because nothing says "reaching" or "stretching" like an hour solid of nonstop critisism without a repeated point
Also that the five planets the Super Duper Deathlier Star were clearly visible from the surface of a planet during the day while the attack happened.
Or just turning your brain on to 10% and realize dumbfuck could have just told poe the plan and jail him if he didn't like it. Its obvious poe isn't a spy, and even then, said spy is probably fucking dead considering we are down to 12~ rebels.
All things considered, given that the planet of Crait was right there in plain sight and the Rebels didn't really escape in any sane or reasonable way, Finn and Rose didn't even make things significantly worse - everything was going to happen either way, Poe just got more people killed ahead of time. The bigger problem is the idea that they were gonna somehow hole up in a base with no pursuit, since even if they did have more people survive what would that have changed once the bombers (that probably couldn't fit into that dingy old hanger) landed anyway. And most of the ships would've lost fuel one way or another and been lost to the First Order fleet.
The entire overdramatic and excessively lethal storyline was basically not impacted by our cast in any large way, despite the movie pretending like Poe, Finn and Rose made things worse, until Rey saves what's left at the very end.
Fun fact, Ryan Johnson used to go to high school with my sister. He filmed Brick there.
One of the biggest things I never really understood about TLJ's writing is that absolutely no one in the galaxy comes to aid the Resistance.
Like, the First Order, in the past few weeks, just massacred several billions of civilians unprovoked and without warning. They are volatile and an active danger to any civilization that won't submit to their rule.
Only, the Resistance just took out their superweapon and also dealt a massive blow to their forces. Now is the prime time to launch a defensive strike and prevent them from continuing to gather strength and launching further attacks on entire planet.
And... no one does. No one even sends a 'sorry, wish we could help but we can't'. As far as we know, no one even gives a shit about the First Order's hostile takeover since Leia and her allies were a tiny minority acting against them in the first place.
And I just don't understand why the writers decided to do that. I mean you can come up with any number of in universe reasons for why no one seems to care and no one seems to help, but how the fuck are we the audience supposed to care about saving a galaxy when the galaxy itself ultimately throws up its hands and goes 'eh, the space fascists pay better so we're alright with them being in charge'.
The Empire was an Empire, as in it was already in control of a significant part of the galaxy, so that at least explained why most people couldn't stand up against them except the rebellion.
The First Order is just a bunch of jackasses in a fleet pointing guns at people without any actual authority like what the fuck
They were designed to be a fanatical military junta like North Korea, but more than a semi officially backed rebel force would fight North Korea if they blew up Washington DC.
btw it just occurred to me having the good guys be the plucky rebels again and having empire 2.0 as the bad guys was about the most boring and uninteresting thing they could've done with this new series. Hollywood continues its long trend of only being able to paint by numbers.
Expect nothing else from J.J. Abrams.
4 criticisms about the review, mostly pretty early stuff:
He criticizes the new trilogy for making the force "for everyone" rather than sticking with that midichlorian thing. Sure, that's technically lore-breaking, but no one liked midichlorians, especially since they themselves were shitting on the lore of the original trilogy.
He criticizes the dreadnought for not firing on the ship about to leave and instead on the deserted rebel base. 1, they don't necessarily know it's deserted, and 2, they have the ability to track the ship. Still has a point about it not going anywhere and the stuff they'd leave behind, though.
He says Poe has the right idea to blow up the dreadnought because it can kill them all, but then he says Leia had the right idea to just get out. Which is it?
Something I see a lot of people criticize, "why do they trust that random person as a code breaker? The other guy had the brooch." Maybe I'm just inserting my own canon, but I thought it was implied that DJ was the code breaker. Since the... alien techy woman said there was only one codebreaker in the galaxy other than her that was able to break into Snoke's ship. And they kept showing that DJ was someone who knew how to code break. And he did break the code they needed in Snoke's ship. And they found him in a casino, where I assume it's pretty common to bet things. I imagined DJ lost the brooch when he lost some sort of bet, and was thrown in prison because he lost mostly everything and couldn't pay it back.
Then again, reading the wiki halfway through editing this post, they say the code breaker and dj ARE different people. If that's true, then holy fuck the writers are stupid as shit. Fucking imbeciles. If that's true. I just can't imagine writing that dumb.
One criticism I didn't see in the review, but I see a lot, is "let's ignore our friends to help these fur horses!" IIRC, they didn't go out of their way to help the horses, they just helped them on their way out. It was more of a coincidence. Although I do fully agree that "we freed the horseys, yay, they're free now this was worth it" was stupid as fuck, because they're on an island and the casino's just going to find them again.
You could say that the rest of the... fuck, I forget it's name, the Republic? Whatever the government is called.
You could say the rest of the republic is in shambles because their government was blown up within the last day / week, so there's chaos everywhere.
And maybe the First Order took out a lot of the republic's armies in other places.
But on the other hand, there should be at least SOME places that didn't go to shit and kept order. SOME places with working military ships. SOME places that haven't been attacked by the empire er first order yet.
I looked on the wiki and it says the republic senate has so few ships because they decided to cut down the military after the civil war. Somewhat understandable. But then it says the senate doesn't see the first order as a threat, so it doesn't allow for an increase in military... but then says the same senate secretly supports the resistance, the same thing they shun as unnecessary?
What?
I took the whole "the Resistance buys weapons from these guys too" as more of a "these casino guys aren't as bad as you think, you goddamn hippie" than "the Resistance isn't great". Then again, it's been a while since I've seen the movie.
One thing I haven't seen anyone complain about that really annoyed me was Luke's "every word you just said was wrong" quote. They have him say it once when training Rey, and then have him say it again in the ending like it's supposed to be some big "OOH IT'S LUKE'S CATCH PHRASE, HOW EMOTIONAL" bullshit, when really the second time was just cringy.
If they wanted to do that, they should have instead have just had Kylo say his spiel about "the resistance will end here as will the jedi and I'll rule everything and my daddy loved me".
Then have Luke chuckle, and smugly say "That's not true. That's impossible. The resistance will live on, as will the jedi. etc"
Like come on, if you want to have him say one last emotional famous quote, it's right there. Sure, it might be cringy, but it's more faithful and less cringy than what they went with.
I always assumed the guy in the fancy suit was the real code breaker they were sent to get, and the old alien lady just didn't personally know every person in the universe so there's at least two code breakers on that level who both happen to be at the same casino at the same time and Rose and Finn ended up with the second one. Which is stupid, but without any sort of implication about the brooch changing hands like you suggest, is the best I can make out of what the movie gives me.
As for the arms dealing thing, to me that felt more like it was trying to cynically point out how apathetic the universe at large is to the main conflict. First Order, Rebellion, who cares, just sell shit to both of them and let them fight it out.
Because the protagonists can't be plucky Rebels if they've got everyone behind them.
It's like that joke in 21 Jump Street where Channing Tatum thinks he'll be cool if he beats up the gay kid, only to learn the gay kid is the most popular jock in school. If the vast majority of people are rebels, then they're not rebels anymore. They're the Man.
It didn't really make much sense that no one wanted to help the Resistance (especially since this supposedly takes place IMMEDIATELY after TFA, when the Resistance just blew up the superweapon that in turn blew up the Republic, but fuck it, we need to have our protagonists be victims, even if that means they have to consciously put themselves in bad positions due to their own stupidity.
Weird thing is, I liked The Last Jedi in the cinema (still think that Lightspeed ram scene was amazing) but after leaving the theatre my love for Star Wars just kind of ... fizzled out. And given Mark Hamill's reaction to everything, I wasn't the only one. I don't know how but they managed to do it but they sucked out all the magic in Star Wars for me with this movie that I actually … liked?
I guess the morale of the story is, don't randomly change directors without agreeing on a vision for the trilogy.
Making the plot of this trilogy based around this nebulous "Resistance" is arguably the most baffling decision made thus far.
The Big Evil moment of the First Order in TFA was using Starkiller Base to destroy a Republic that we never saw, knew nothing about, had no sense of its size or scope and seemed completely incapable anyway because they apparently were unconcerned with the fact that the First Order was building a giant superweapon that they immediately used to destroy the Republic capital.
As far as I can tell, the New Republic seems about as ineffectual as the Old Republic. Why should I even care that it got destroyed in the first place? The Resistance is fighting an enemy on behalf of a state that seems completely oblivious to the threat at hand.
Yeah I guess one big problem of the new trilogy is just the fact that they managed to make everything before it seem … trivial. Oh, look, Palpatine is destroyed? The Republic is restored?
Oh well, turns out they sideline Leia for being a warmongerer, Luke utterly fails at rebuilding the Jedi and becomes a bitter old man and Han goes back to smuggling. Oh and the New Republic is an ineffective, complacent union of no consequence that gets wiped out by Space North Korea.
I mean I like the new characters they introduced, but geez, why do they have to make all the good guys so bad at their jobs?
I'm guessing that they were afraid of getting too bogged down in the details that they'd end up like the prequels, with plots focusing on the taxation of trade routes and the Senate and seccessionism and all that jazz, but they missed the forest for the trees by assuming that it was the world-building that hurt the prequels. The original trilogy didn't need to get into the gritty details of Imperial politics to establish the Empire as an entity, they did it by showing the power they wielded and the reach their military had. Tatooine, Yavin, Hoth, Bespin, the Empire manages to show up basically wherever the protagonists go.
By comparison, the New Republic is quite literally a non-entity. The only reason we know about it is because characters mention it and because we get a shot of the Republic capital being blown up. We're told that they have/had a fleet, but we never see/saw it. We're told that the First Order is some sort of insurgency fighting against the New Republic, but going on what they've shown us the First Order seems to have far more capability than the New Republic ever had. Why are they even wasting their time blowing up planets and shit? They seem perfectly capable of conquering the New Republic outright.
of course people don't care about star wars after TLJ
the people making star wars don't care about star wars, why would the audience
why get invested in any of these characters if you know they're going behave completely differently after the next round of director hot potato
why pay attention to what's happening if you know no one involved with the production has any kind of plan whatsoever
Aaaaaand then they'd be stuck on the planet, though? Do you know what would have happened if the Falcon hadn't arrived? Every single one of them would've died. I don't see a situation wherein the plan of simply splitting up the rebel forces (the First order apparently can only track with their flagship) wouldn't make more sense. Even if the distances are "astronomical", this is Star Wars not Local Neighbourhood Within Biking Distance Wars. The rebels could obviously get to the planet within a few hours, and why wouldn't the First Order expect them to at try to survive?
The reason I say that "We are to believe that it actually would've succeeded" is because, uhm, well, they actually overcame all of the obstacles despite being bumbling idiots. They go to Rich Land just fine, they find a code breaker, they somehow make it into the middle of the big ship, and turn of the tracking device. The only reason why the First Order ends up knowing about them is because the codebreaker snitched, otherwise it seems like everything actually went according to plan (through sheer dumb luck). Even then, if they hadn't told this obviously chaotic neutral character about the "escape to Crait"-plan (think Poe told them over the radio), the worst possible scenario was Rose and Finn not making it out alive. Acceptable, given that this plan actually had a chance of saving the entire rebel fleet.
Wouldn't say it worked beyond expectation? She killed Snoke and made it out alive.
Let me point out that I'm not against unlikely plans working out. That is literally what Star Wars is. Problem is that this movie wants it both ways - we are to call characters insubordinate idiots for trying out plans that, in the context of the Star Wars universe, have proven to work out great most of the time. At the time other idiots try equally stupid plans, yet they succeed.
The ending is tone deaf. The situation should be one of morning, but with hope in that some survived. Instead people seem to take incredible joy in almost having the entire resistance wiped out - literally being saved by Luke's hologram going psst nothing personnel... kid.
Why Luke didn't tell them about the secret exit (I assume that's why he chose to buy them about a minute of time in exchange for his own life), I don't know, and I don't know how he knew about the secret exit either. But his actions don't make sense without it.
Maybe no one came to help the resistance because the radio equipment is actually broken and they are just that incompetent, or maybe the whole resistance consisted of all the incompetent people in the republic so no one really bothered to save them while they are busy coming up with the actual plan of taking down the first order.
That was something that bugged me too now that I think about it. The whole plan relies on the fact that, should they survive, somebody will show up to pick them all up. Were their communcations being jammed, or were they just assuming that somebody would send an Uber for 'em once the First Order flew by? How did they even know that there would be communications equipment on Crait to use?
As opposed to Poe's plan where if the team fails, they're back to square one and they're dead in the water (Poe doesn't know about the old rebel base on Crait, mind you). At least on Crait they can buy themselves time and fortify their position. Nor do I think they could have anticipated that no one would come to their aid. At this point Holdo's plan is to ensure the survival of as many as possible and buy them time. Not put all her faith in a Hail Mary from someone who would rather die in a blaze of glory (after all, even when Poe discovered her plan, he saw it as an act of cowardice). Leia literally tells Poe, when he wakes up aboard the escape pod, how and why it would work (again, why they would not be scanning for lifeboats to begin with is a legitimate question; at the same time, Hux has been shown to be an incompetent twit of a villain).
That's the point the film is trying to make to a heroic character like Poe, though. You cannot always rely on dumb luck to succeed when so many lives depend on you (this is in direct response to what Star Wars has always done and what Han and Finn did in The Force Awakens on Starkiller Base where everything usually works out in the hero's favor no matter how bonkers the plan). Again, the difference in their plans is that Holdo's had a greater chance of success than Poe's that relied on Jack Sparrowing.
Kylo Ren --a mentally unhinged and powerful force user, grandson to the Chosen One and once and future Darth Vader with an inferiority complex --dethroned Snoke and now has the First Order fully at his disposal. That's not much of a win in the grand scheme of things. Especially when her plan was to sway Ben back to the light, kill Snoke, and survive.
I agree to the extent that I would have done the ending scene differently and be more foreboding (just like with Luke chucking his lightsaber in the beginning, I would have done the scene in a more dramatic way like him letting it roll out of his fingers and fall or something), but its clear that with Leia saying "we have everything we need right here" and showing the child force janitor, that the ending is meant to be hopeful (this may also be a consequence of having Disney at the reigns and they'd be unwilling to end the film with a more depressing tone) and the Resistance (and by extension some form of Jedi --not necessarily as we have come to know Jedi) will live on and prevail. It's like how A New Hope ends on an award ceremony and not a funeral for all those lost in the Battle of the Death Star.
This last one I'm kind of on the fence about, admittedly. On the one hand I could say its solely for the sake of building tension; we don't know how they're going to get out or if there even is a way out (at least from the writer/director's perspective, this is ideally what they would want the audience to be feeling by this point, I think). On the other hand, I could contrive a Force Kick explanation wherein Luke, in his infinite wisdom and Force powers, knew of Rey on the other side of the cavern and that there is a back entrance (even if it was caved in at the time, but good things the Rey can use the Force). The fact of the matter is Luke faced off Ren to further distract him from the Rebels and allowed them to escape (by whatever means they could afford). This may also veer into the point of the Shup Up About Plot Holes video.
To me the biggest problem with this movie is it fails to carry any emotional weight because it constantly throws surprises at you with no build up. You never know what to expect so you expect nothing.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
