“It’s just a story for kids!”-Prequel Fans years ago trying to have it both ways…RLM again., remembering that argument
I can’t wait for TLJ Plinkett,
One of these days, I’ll figure out how to pull down previous posts into that blue box and all that. Anyway…
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I don’t think that large gun being destroyed was going to save them. It would have been a delaying tactic at best. After all, they still would have had a full squadron or so of troops, ATATs, Kylo’s ship, etc out there.
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Yes, bad decision followed bad decision, but they all had a logic in them. It wasn’t in any way the character saying ‘what would be the dumbest thing I could do right now’, and then doing it.
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Poe didn’t mutiny just because he wasn’t told of the plan. After talking with Finn, he thought he had a better plan.
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Rose didn’t doom the rest of the fleet. There was no ‘rest of the fleet’. If you mean the other skimmers, they had already turned back (yes, this whole sequence was still clumsy).
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Thus, my contention is they were acting with intelligence, but they weren’t making the right call. That happens. Even in real life.
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I don’t think Kylo created the First Order. I think it was established that Snoke was already getting his ‘fingers’ into him by the time Luke briefly thought of killing him. He was clearly put in charge of the ‘Knights of Ren’, but he didn’t create the First Order. Much like Vader didn’t create the Empire.
I love this article, and I think about it every time I see a movie. But I’ve been reminded of it SO many times when reading what people have to say about The Last Jedi in particular. Interesting that early on the article, Hulk brings up a different Rian Johnson movie.
https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2012/10/30/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs.-plot-holes-and-movie-logic
A FRIENDLY AND KIND ACQUAINTANCE OF HULK’S WAS DISCUSSING LOOPER ON TWITTER RECENTLY AND HE ASKED THE LOGICAL QUESTION: “Why doesn’t the future mob just drop their targets in the middle of the ocean?”
THE MOST SIMPLE ANSWER? BECAUSE THEN THERE WOULD BE NO MOVIE.
GLIBNESS ASIDE, IT REALLY IS THE ONLY ANSWER THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS. YOU CAN STOP VIRTUALLY ANY SINGLE MOVIE ON THE PLANET (INVENTED SCI-FI WORLD OR NOT) WITH A SIMPLE SOLUTION THAT NULLIFIES THE CORE CONFLICT. BUT WE ARE ACTUALLY THERE BECAUSE WE WANT TO WATCH A DAMN MOVIE. AND WE WATCH MOVIES TO EXPERIENCE DRAMA, LAUGHTER, DIZZYING HIGHS, SADNESS, TEARS AND SYMPATHY. AND IN ORDER TO EXPERIENCE THESE THINGS WE MUST HAVE SITUATIONS IN WHICH THE MOST LOGICAL SOLUTION ISN’T PRESENT. IN FACT, WE HAVE TO WATCH PEOPLE FUCK UP. DO THE WRONG THING. WE HAVE TO SEE THEIR WANTS AND DESIRES BECOME ENTANGLED IN A SITUATION WHERE THEY HAVE TO MAKE A BAD CHOICE… WE CALL THESE SORTS OF SITUATIONS “CONFLICT” AND THEY HAPPEN TO BE THE ENTIRE BASIS OF GOOD STORYTELLING AND DRAMA.
I think TLJ has its weaknesses, but my eyes glaze over every time someone talks about how it’s a bad movie because the characters make stupid decisions, or because they can’t believe that Holdo was the first to think of weaponized light speed, or because they find the initial terms of the chase implausible.
I don’t know man. Tell me what the plot hole or logical issue is in Star Wars. It’s a pretty airtight universe as presented in that script. In contrast, the mechanics of the chase itself in TLJ contradicts our understanding of the previously established universe. Like at any point the First Order could’ve jumped a ship ahead and trapped the Resistance, or they could’ve dropped a droid into a small hyperspace capable ship and Holdo’ed them first.
I think that a movie (especially a sci-fi or fantasy) usually requires one major suspension of disbelief. But if you have to suspend disbelief over and over again, and have characters make decisions that are out of character, that’s when it gets tiring and not enjoyable.
If Han Solo makes a dumb decision, like trying to take on two Star Destroyers by himself, you go along with it because it fits his character. When Poe tries to mutiny against his superior officer because she won’t tell him the plan, it seems out of character for someone who always seemed to have great respect for his commander.
It was just…really awkward. That whole plot line. Awkward and forced. So awkward as to dispel the suspension of disbelief, for quite a few in the audience, based on reactions afterward. Certainly for me. Add in the whole “let’s have a whole adventure to get Benicio” and the script really just is all over the place.
Add in other questionable aesthetic choices like “Blue Milk” (he could have still had Luke go from a jaded Hermit to a Hero again, without that particular bit of nonsense, easily) and you end up with a movie I didn’t like. About as much as I didn’t like the Prequels, but for different reasons. And I was only Lukewarm (get it!) on TFA anyway. But I don’t feel like my childhood was destroyed or anything. RoTJ was about as weak and derivative as TFA was. There are really only two world-shaking films in this whole franchise. The original and a fantastic sequel that est the bar for all sequels in all franchises that followed.
By the way, I hope this conversation isn’t causing anyone undue stress. I enjoy talking about movies, and I enjoy the discussion, but I don’t want anyone else to get annoyed about arguments that we may be rehashing.
I am just saying some of those choices weren’t that bizarre if you kind of look at it as it was meant to be. However, just because it worked for me does not mean it has to work with you. They could have conveyed the same information in a number of ways. I just think it’s not fair to say well it was just like a parking ticket and leave out the context of part of what they were also conveying. That whole Finn and Rose thing, was a little odd at times, but I din’t mind it. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t think of other or better ways for them to do it. It just didn’t detract from my enjoyment.
You’d think that right, except even in today’s political environment people talk about nuking entire countries as if that’s not the worst thing ever. I think it was not their best choice to blow up that many planets too, but we’re also talking about a series that blew up a planet but spent more time consoling Luke for losing his family than ever really conveying the horror of blowing up a planet. It’s not out of sync with what Star Wars does… they’ve never been good at this.
Every SW has stupid plot points. The Universe is fundamentally stupid. There are Space Wizards waving laser swords around. Space battles are WW2 naval battles with a kind of find and replace.
The problem with TLJ isn’t that the stupid stuff made the movie disliked for some people. It’s that the movie being disliked made the stupid stuff stupid, if I can make myself understood.
The difference is consistency. Space wizards, laser swords, and naval battles in space are fundamentally goofy, but if you establish them as the reality in a movie, then it’s acceptable if you maintain that logic. Things fall apart when you disregard the rules of your own movie.
But I can’t give them points for intent, especially since the poor execution obscured the very point they were trying to make. And again, it’s just one of many things where I feel like the movie missteps.
Also, I don’t understand why everyone loves the Porgs, when it seems like they have the same problems the Ewoks had in the other Jedi movie.
Brace yourself. I liked the Ewoks.
I’m not asking you to give them points, just don’t argue as if you don’t know what their intention was. If tgheir method didn’t work for you, fine, it didn’t work for you. If you didn’t like the approach to the mundane, rest of the galaxy doesn’t care, well you can say you didn’t want to see that at all. By saying gosh they used a parking ticket, that’s terrible, you’re not really saying if you didn’t like their attempt or their method. It’s just, why did they ruin my Star Wars with a parking ticket without ever really acknowledging what the actual problem is.
We can argue about plotholes in every movie, but some people can gloss over them if the characters or mood of the movie worked for them. If that was not the case, the holes just exacerbate everything. Thus the true problem is the characters and emotions.
For me the prequel trilogy was pretty bad, but the only character I had a connection with from the OT was Obi-Wan and the trilogy didn’t mess up my understanding of that character too much, so the dissapointment of the bad films didn’t impact my enjoyment of the OT too much.
The problem with the new movies and especially TLJ, was that they took the warm and fuzzy feelings I had for the OT heroes and basically pissed all over them. Thats why TLJ is more damaging than Eps1-3, because it broke something I cared about. Since I didn’t care too much about Vader, Anakins tantrums didn’t impact my enjoyment of the OT.
I hate TLJ and I fail to see where it disregards the rules of SW that I wouldn’t be able to wave away breezily if I liked the movie.
Julian has a plan for sorting out the universe:
Po keeps talking about how he wants to light up his matches:
Perhaps Po believes in ‘Foppery and Whim’:
This is a perspective that I just fundamentally don’t understand. Like the folks who hate Alien 3 because it killed Newt and Hicks at the beginning, and this obviated their entire struggle in Aliens. I don’t see how the one later story has anything to do with the earlier one, they’re telling you different stories. And just because someone dies doesn’t mean their life was a waste of time, otherwise we’re all fucked. I kind of like that Luke, Leia and Han didn’t get a happily ever after ending. Just because Luke was a great jedi doesn’t mean he was a great teacher. In fact, makes sense that he wouldn’t be, what was his reference point? A few weeks with Yoda in the swamp? It would have been weird if he had turned out to be some kind of master teacher. I view the Leia and Han stories similarly, I could see how they might have drifted apart once life got to be more routine. Anyway, I’d say showing that our heroes from the original trilogy had feet of clay was one of the story points the new movies have gotten right.
In principle I guess you have a point, in reality the 3 probably wouldn’t have been perfect people living happily ever after. But perhaps I don’t want to watch a fantasy action adventure movie, to have it reflect “life really sucks”?
Its great that you can wave away inconsistencies. I pointed out a couple that I can’t. C’est la vie!
So the weird thing about this is I had a similar reaction to XCOM2. I worked hard to beat the game in 1, looked forward to taking it to them or whatever and then XCOM2 comes out and says doesn’t matter, they took over anyway. And I think some of the same people arguing that it really matters here said it really didn’t matter there.
I think the difference is I saw the originally movies as pretty damn flawed, already. They were not perfect. The characters weren’t so masterfully crafted that there weren’t things I would change… so I didn’t approach anything after it as if they were, flawed is okay, imperfect with the movies before them as imperfect as they were, well okay.
That’s a fair perspective, that these movies are kind of fairy tales, but I appreciated the little dose of reality.