Mourning Star Wars - Leaks Destroy Hope.

Dilandu wrote:Please explain to me how commander Holdo actions could be considered as anything but idiotic? She basically provoked a mutiny, which could be easily averted if she just explained to concerned high ranks what exactly is she have in mind. There were literally zero reasons for secrecy.

To quote myself from a post buried in the distant past of the previous page:

The E wrote:Let's imagine this whole sequence of events as if it were happening in an actual war with an actual military. You are Admiral Holdo, inheriting command of a Battlegroup under fire after the death of the previous CO. You have, under your command, a hotshot CAG who, in a previous action, sacrificed a strategic ressource (a fighter and bomber wing) for a tactical victory and who was demoted because of his demonstrated insubordination. He wasn't removed as CAG, but since his fighters have been destroyed, he is, at that point, literally nothing more than a passenger.
And yet, because he feels he is still important, he demands you explain your plan to him. When you refuse, because you have no personal reason to trust this idiot pilot who gets in your face about having no plan while your staff is already executing your plan, he goes off and starts a mutiny while you are still under fire.

You see, that whole plot wasn't about miscommunication. It was about Poe Dameron, Hotshot Warrior Pilot, needing to learn that he is a soldier in a military who needs to listen more and, at times, follow orders and trust the chain of command.
You say that whole plot could have been resolved if Holdo had just explained things to Poe, but that would've required Poe to be able to listen to someone who isn't his ego or Leia or for him to demonstrate some respect due a superior officer.

Also, when Poe figures out a part of the plan, he immediately calls his CO a coward. Not earning many points there, I think.

Or the absolute idiocy of Rose Tico action? Her insane babble about "not killing the enemy but saving who we love" is not only the social propaganda, pushed down viewer's throats with the power of hydraulic press, but also literally make no sence; Finn was doing exactly that! He was trying to save peoples he loves, even by self-sacrifice!

Oh no, a character in a Star Wars film makes a decision that prioritizes the well-being of her friends over cold hard rationality, the film is ruined!

(Also, "Woman stops the man she loves from going down in a suicidal attack with little to no chance of success", that's certainly some hardcore "social propaganda" right there...)

So please, explain to me HOW should I view this moments to not be appaled by their absolute idiocy?

I can't. The only thing I can do is explain why I do not feel that way about the film. As I have repeated many times in this thread: That you disagree with me is perfectly fine. You are absolutely free to like or dislike this film for any reason you choose. Film criticism, ultimately, isn't objective: No criticism of art can ever be.

The E wrote:And yet, because he feels he is still important, he demands you explain your plan to him. When you refuse, because you have no personal reason to trust this idiot pilot who gets in your face about having no plan while your staff is already executing your plan, he goes off and starts a mutiny while you are still under fire.

And now my explanation to this whole mess. The initial plot script most likely have an imperial spy droid onboard the "Raddus". The imperial astrodroid was quite prominent in the pre-release posters, while having literally no use in actual movie.

If Resistance fleet was tracked by the spy onboard, all Holdo action would make perfect sense: she could not actually told anyone about the whole plan, because she does not know who the spy are.

Then, for some reason, the spy idea was dropped, but the film was too far in production to remade the plotline. So, authors decide "meh, all Star Wars fans are idiots anyway" and released the plothole.

You see, that whole plot wasn't about miscommunication. It was about Poe Dameron, Hotshot Warrior Pilot, needing to learn that he is a soldier in a military who needs to listen more and, at times, follow orders and trust the chain of command.

Considering that he demonstrated zero improvement in his ability to give wrong orders in wrong time, I fail to see how this is relevant.

You say that whole plot could have been resolved if Holdo had just explained things to Poe, but that would've required Poe to be able to listen to someone who isn't his ego or Leia or for him to demonstrate some respect due a superior officer.

Oh, you know, thats staff meetings for exactly such reasons. So nobody would mess with the plan just because he does not understood it.

Also, when Poe figures out a part of the plan, he immediately calls his CO a coward. Not earning many points there, I think.

At this point, sensible CO would clearly understood that the whole situation is damaging the crew morale.

Oh no, a character in a Star Wars film makes a decision that prioritizes the well-being of her friends over cold hard rationality, the film is ruined!

Sigh. The pointvis not what she done: the point is the idiotic explantion, which basically contradic itself. If she just said "because I love you" or "becuse I could not let you die", it would not be a problem. But instead she started an idiotic speech about "saving who we love".

Seriously, I half-expect that Finn would yell "but I was doing exactly that - saving all who I love!" and punch Tyco in her face.

(Also, "Woman stops the man she loves from going down in a suicidal attack with little to no chance of success", that's certainly some hardcore "social propaganda" right there...)

Considering that everyone woukd sort of die if the cnnonnis not dusabled, I literally see no reason to NOT attempt such attack. Only idiot like Poe could call off the desperate last-chance attack at last moment.

I can't. The only thing I can do is explain why I do not feel that way about the film. As I have repeated many times in this thread: That you disagree with me is perfectly fine. You are absolutely free to like or dislike this film for any reason you choose. Film criticism, ultimately, isn't objective: No criticism of art can ever be.

Sorry, the E, but you are trying to protect the film self-contradictions & nonsencial actions by claiming the classic post-modernist mantra about "author obviously explained everything, it is just you, uneducated masses, who did not understood his bold ideas". Not gonna work.

Basically, you logic is "there must be an explantion, because author could not just mess it up". But considering that movie have a troubled production, that author was replaced immediately after, that production company is now trying to retcon most nonsencial parts of the movie - Occam's Razor strongly suggest NOT to create additional speculations, and just assume that author messed up badly.

Dilandu wrote:Oh, you know, thats staff meetings for exactly such reasons. So nobody would mess with the plan just because he does not understood it.

Staff meetings that clearly have happened, seeing how Holdo's bridge crew and the freighter captains are following her plan.

As I said above, at that point in time, Poe was nothing more than a passenger, since his spacecraft have been destroyed. What reason is there to include him in the staff meetings, when he does not have any force to command?

In other words, is it necessary for the CO to explain his entire plan to every crewmember and get personal approval from everyone?

At this point, sensible CO would clearly understood that the whole situation is damaging the crew morale.

The only morale that seems damaged to the point of mutiny is ... Poe Dameron's.

Considering that everyone woukd sort of die if the cnnonnis not dusabled, I literally see no reason to NOT attempt such attack. Only idiot like Poe could call off the desperate last-chance attack at last moment.

They did attempt it. And then it turned out that the decrepit craft they had available stood little chance against the massed defensive fire the First Order was able to produce. Maybe I'm a bit weird a<bout this, but to me, a suicide attack that ends up heavy on the suicide and does not inflict any damage on the enemy is pointless.

Sorry, the E, but you are trying to protect the film self-contradictions & nonsencial actions by claiming the classic post-modernist mantra about "author obviously explained everything, it is just you, uneducated masses, who did not understood his bold ideas". Not gonna work.

Why are you so insistent that your criticisms of the film are completely objective and obviously correct?

Basically, you logic is "there must be an explantion, because author could not just mess it up". But considering that movie have a troubled production, that author was replaced immediately after, that production company is now trying to retcon most nonsencial parts of the movie - Occam's Razor strongly suggest NOT to create additional speculations, and just assume that author messed up badly.

And?

What's your argument here: That I am wrong for liking a film that I felt had interesting things to say about the Force as a thing in the SW universe and about Star Wars the pop-cultural icon that it is?

It doesn't matter to me how troubled the production was. It doesn't matter to me what Disney thinks about it (Although, seeing how Rian Johnson is set to direct or produce the next 3 SW films, your assessment that Disney is busy walking back what he did in TLJ is a bit ... weird). All that matters to me is what I feel about the film when I watched and rewatched it.

The E wrote:
In other words, is it necessary for the CO to explain his entire plan to every crewmember and get personal approval from everyone?

Since it would be perfectly sensible to boost the crew morale in very dire situation - yes, it would for a smart CO. Holdo, obviously, is not that one.

The only morale that seems damaged to the point of mutiny is ... Poe Dameron's.

Yeah, and he was supported because?...

They did attempt it. And then it turned out that the decrepit craft they had available stood little chance against the massed defensive fire the First Order was able to produce. Maybe I'm a bit weird a<bout this, but to me, a suicide attack that ends up heavy on the suicide and does not inflict any damage on the enemy is pointless.

Since there is no positive difference for them between failing the attack & aborting the attack, there was no point to abort it. They are doomed anyway. Pressing the attack gave at least a slim chance of changing the situation, while aborting the attack only led to the troops engaged being massacred during retreat.

That's why you should never allow postmodernist to do anything with the "war" in name.

Why are you so insistent that your criticisms of the film are completely objective and obviously correct?

Because my criticism is A - logical from external, B - logical from internal, C - consistent with facts, D - did not require any additional assumptions to be brought in. Therefore I gave a good reasons to suggest that I'm right.

What's your argument here: That I am wrong for liking a film that I felt had interesting things to say about the Force as a thing in the SW universe and about Star Wars the pop-cultural icon that it is?

If you just declare "yes, movie is heavily flawed but I like it", nobody would argue with you about your right to like it.

We are arguing against your attempts to claim that you liked it because it is objectively good.

Dilandu wrote:If you just declare "yes, movie is heavily flawed but I like it", nobody would argue with you about your right to like it.

Which is, almost word for word, something I said:

The beauty of film is that it is, ultimately, very subjective. Now, don't get me wrong: I am not claiming that TLJ was a perfect movie. It had flaws, in its script and elsewhere. But overall, in terms of the intent behind it, in terms of the messages behind it, as a giant piece of commentary on Star Wars as a media phenomenon and meditation on the Star Wars mythos, I thought it was great.

We are arguing against your attempts to claim that you liked it because it is objectively good.

Where did I claim objectivity? What I did claim was that some of the arguments brought forth to prove that TLJ is bad are badly formulated or not fully thought through.

You really don’t have the first clue what scriptwriting means, nor do you understand when it is explained to you.

A movie must maintain a certain degree of internal logic and consistency. If it is a sequel, it must also be logically consistent with all previous movies. That is the scriptwriter’s JOB. If the scriptwriters fail at that job, they should be SACKED and replaced with competent writers. That is the producer’s job. In this case, they all shot themselves repeatedly in both feet, and fell down.

Logic and consistency means there can’t be an Evil Empire successfully conquering the galaxy when the officers in its military are, without exception, stupid, ignorant, incompetent, untrained and inexperienced. Evil Stupid does not battles win.

They can’t show an entire class of ships that was designed, built and deployed without anybody noticing that they were tactically worthless.

They can’t show a battle using those ships in which not one single person on the ships about to be destroyed managed to think of the most simple, obvious tactic to use against them. I thought of it before the last surviving crew member found that idiotic remote bomb control.

Were the scriptwriters too stupid to think of any of those things, or did they just assume everybody would be too stupid to notice? Either way, they should have been sacked long before their Abysmal Hollywood Stupid made it to the movie screens.
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Not everybody should go to college. Some folks, you send 'em to college and you just wind up with an educated idiot.

Imaginos1892 wrote:A movie must maintain a certain degree of internal logic and consistency.
If it is a sequel, it must also be logically consistent with all previous movies. That is the scriptwriter’s JOB.

And in my eyes at least, TLJ does that. It is both internally consistent as well as consistent with its immediate predecessor. I get that you disagree, and that's fine. Noone is forced to like a movie.

If the scriptwriters fail at that job, they should be SACKED and replaced with competent writers. That is the producer’s job. In this case, they all shot themselves repeatedly in both feet, and fell down.

... in your opinion.

Logic and consistency means there can’t be an Evil Empire successfully conquering the galaxy when the officers in its military are, without exception, stupid, ignorant, incompetent, untrained and inexperienced. Evil Stupid does not battles win.

Quantity has a quality all of its own, as many a stupid general has thought. The First Order has the ur-fascist will to power, they have the starships and the legions of useful idiots that execute orders and don't care for what happens afterwards. You don't need to be smart when you can blow up planets with a buttonpush, really.

I would posit that the ineptitude displayed by the First Order is a good narrative throughline. Kylo Ren is no Darth Vader, Snoke no Emperor Palpatine, Hux no Needa, the First Order not the Empire.
They are all pretenders, they're all small and scared but unwilling to ackknowledge it: They build warmachines to puff themselves up, they scheme and plot as their predecessors did, they're dangerous, but in a more desperate, less primal way than the Empire was. They all have a deep-seated need to be ackknowledged as relevant, as dangerous, because if they aren't, if they had to look into the mirror and deal with who they really are, they would not survive.

They can’t show an entire class of ships that was designed, built and deployed without anybody noticing that they were tactically worthless.

If you're arguing from an in-universe perspective, you do not have enough information to make that statement, as you haven't been party to the procurement process that led to these ships being adopted.
If you're arguing from a moviemaking perspective: Would that scene really have been improved that much if the bombers had instead been Y-Wings? The narrative would have stayed exactly the same, only instead of the cinematic allusion being to a doomed bombing run on a heavily fortified position, it would have been a doomed torpedo strike on a Battleship (Let me be clear here: That's a change I would have made in a heartbeat; it's the narrative that ultimately counts rather than the specific piece of WW2 that's being used as inspiration. It's one of the things that I actually find fault with in the film)

They can’t show a battle using those ships in which not one single person on the ships about to be destroyed managed to think of the most simple, obvious tactic to use against them. I thought of it before the last surviving crew member found that idiotic remote bomb control.

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Uhh

they did.

That's why they had Poe and his fighters to run interference.

The best tactic for the Starfortresses would have been as minelayers, creating an improvised explosive barrier with their bomblets and forcing the pursuing ships to either slow down to spread out the explosions weakening their shields (and cut down the chances of taking actual physical damage) or change their vectors, thus allowing the Resistance to get more of a lead and be able to do their planned "bail out and leave the big ship as a distraction" move.

Trying to push the super-slow flying bombs-pretending-to-be-combat-vessels in for a close-ranged bombing run was... ill-advised.

The E wrote:Would that scene really have been improved that much if the bombers had instead been Y-Wings?

The only way that scene could have been improved is by leaving it out of the movie. The very concept of ‘bombers’ IN A SPACE BATTLE is full drooling head-up-ass Hollywood Stupid.

Those ships DROPPED FREE-FALLING BOMBS, IN OUTER SPACE!! The ONLY way that can work is if the ‘bomber’ and the ship it’s ‘bombing’ both have gravity fields that extend outside their hulls, AND are oriented in the same direction. If the ship under attack simply reversed its gravity field, the bombs would fall away from the ship. The crew might fall to the ceilings, a few might be hurt or killed, but when the alternative is the whole ship getting blown to bits, that’s not even a decision.

Some Idiot: “But- but- they can’t do that because handwavium!!”

Bullshit! They generate artificial gravity fields, therefore they can control artificial gravity. In a logical, consistent universe they can’t have the one without the other.

Obviously, Rian Johnson has discovered a new element: Dumbassium. That movie is full of it.
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Ma Lemming: “If all your friends jumped off a cliff into the sea would you…oh…um…nevermind.”

If you could point to the section in the operator's manual of the standard First Order gravity generator that lays out the procedure for reversing gravity, that would be great.

You assume, based on nothing whatsoever, that something is possible. When the film tells you that it isn't, or just has the audacity to imply that that might be the case, you're getting angry at the film.
I think the film isn't the actual problem here.