Saw it on Saturday. I have middling interest in the continuity and character development issues; perhaps I’ll dive into that debate later. But there’s one point that I haven’t seen anyone else make.
Space opera needs to have space aliens and robots. I hold this truth to be self-evident. What’s the point of space opera without fun characters that look different from what you see in any other type of movie? The original trilogy got this. There were lots of alient characters that were perfectly designed for their role in the story: Chewbacca, Yoda, Jabba the Hutt, etc… And there were two droids as major characters.
The Force Awakens,Rogue One, and The Last Jedi have introduced a total of zero major alien characters, and I don’t understand why this is. It seems like something that they would obviously want to plan for when they started storyboarding the new movies. Aliens are relegated to the background. Meanwhile BB-8 is more like a prop than a character. K-2SO in Rogue One is good, but he’s the only one.
Overall, I was disappointed. I found the whole movie to be too long and too crammed with stuff: montages, flashbacks, telepathic conversations, nuns who look like frogs, Luke milking what appears to be a crossbreed of a walrus and an elephant. It does not flow continuously as entertainment like the original trilogy does.
I guess so. I pretty clearly remember her giving him an ass-chewing, mentioning his demotion, mentioning all his character flaws, mentioning how he got people killed. When she finally acknowledged him, it was chilly as hell: I very much got the impression that it was personal. (Her later line, where she said, “I like him,” was what I found to be out of character, given her previous antipathy to him).
I would be interested in knowing the answer to these questions myself. Implicit in them is one of the reasons for my skepticism that the First Order could re-establish dominance over the entire galaxy so soon after the fall of the Empire.
A fairly clever detail, I thought, in the early going of the original “Star Wars” movie was that the Senate had not at that point yet been dissolved because the Empire was still was relying on the bureaucracy left over from the Republic to actually administrate things. Tarkin explains that with the Death Star, they won’t need that bureaucracy any more because they can rule by fear.
By the same token, then, we should be skeptical of the First Order’s ability to control that many planets and star systems without a threat on that level. And that actually applies to ESB, come to think of it; but it’s a greater problem in the newer movies because they are shown to be doing so before getting a new planetkiller, as well as continuing to do in this new movie after its destruction in TFA.
I had held Rian Johnson in high esteem, which raised my hopes for TLJ; but that was mostly because of an episode of Breaking Bad he directed that is widely considered the single greatest episode of TV ever made. That, however, was not written by him; TLJ was. I hadn’t realized until now that he wrote Looper, a movie that also had cool aspects but ultimately didn’t make a lick of sense.
How about not transmitting the super secret plans to ANYONE on the enemy ship? You know, like normal people.
It’s fine to be a Poe apologist, but I’m wondering why someone who hated the film so much is willing to defend Poe to such a degree and insist that other characters were the stupid ones. Why no Poe Hate?
No, I agree, Poe was an idiot. But they KNEW he was a hot-head and then put him in a position where he was likely to do something hot-headed. When you have someone like that, you have to manage them, not ignore them. That was what a real, competent leader would do. The thing is, I have no expectations for Poe; he’s a fucking X-Wing pilot. Leia is the leader of the Resistance and Holdo is a Vice Admiral. They’re supposed to be experienced, competent leaders.
I don’t hate the movie, I hate the fact that it had the capacity to be so much better—it teased us with a much better movie. The scenes with Rey, Luke and Kylo Ren were excellent. Then it all fell apart any time Finn, Rose and Poe were on the screen.
Especially not during engagements. You do expect people not to be idiots to the point of disobeying direct orders in battle, or beaming critical plans over to operatives on the enemy flagship. Who has no need of them. Which is really so far beyond normal OPSEC that I have no words. The fact that they are there because Poe again disobeyed a direct order to put them there is just icing on the cake.
People like that do not get Managed. Its not like a business or government bureaucracy. In the military, managing these people means demoting them and keeping critical information away from them. Which is exactly what happened.
To me, it seems clear that Poes combination of personal popularity and cockpit skills got him promoted way, way beyond his competence.
Well, it is partially a fanwank. The bit about Holdo being career military operating in a resistance made up of zealots and individualists. It just makes everything make much more sense when viewed through that lens. And the spy possibility is extrapolation.
However, what is fact is that Poe turned out to be the worst possible person in the resistance to have access to sensitive information. The FO didn’t actually need a spy, Poe was on the case.
Also that Poe just got demoted for disobeying a direct order in battle leading to a catastrophic loss. And he got in her face demanding to know secret plans while trying to take advantage of the massacre of the bridge crew to get out of the demotion.
Really, he did at no point impress her as a trustworthy person.
Or, he could be a misogynist who was promoted by male supervisors in whom he put his trust, but feels free to flout the orders of females. He clearly had no respect for what Leia or Holdo told him, nor trust in their thought processes.
I can understand Leia’s leniency though. She had Luke for a brother and was married to Han ferchrissakes. Her tolerance for maverick behavior must be off the map.
That is true. She also had a history of experiencing low-probability maverick gambles paying off, which may have skewered her judgement. Poe may have risen trough the ranks under Leia, and had no idea what it was like to be expected to be a professional and not a substitute Han.
Apparently we have different experiences in the military. There are plenty of idiots out there and some of them are soldiers, and as an officer, even a junior one, you have to be prepared to manage them.
I admit I’m not totally sure I recall this correctly, but didn’t Poe’s earlier defiance of authority end up effectively saving the rebellion, or at least the Raddus with apparently all the big shots on it? Wasn’t the First Order’s dreadnought just lining up its big guns to take out the Raddus as it was destroyed by the bomber? Although thinking about it, maybe they’d long since jumped to hyperspace if Poe hadn’t refused to call off the attack…