Has your TLJ opinion changed dramatically over time?

Not angry.
Just dumbfounded at the logic used.

1. If they split, they could still be tracked and picked off easier.
2. The plan was seemingly always Crait. Why else would they jump to Crait?
3. Read this again. A planet turned into a weapon, draining a star of power (while not exploding or killing the inhabitants) is more plausible than *tracking ships*. I mean, how is it more plausible other than some serious mental gymnastics.

 

This is perfectly reasonable position, but as @RoyleRancor has pointed out your understanding of the "tactics" are shaky at best.

The tactics in TLJ are pretty simple. The Resistance fleet is being tracked by the First Order. Holdo works out a way to flee to Crait to regroup which could have worked had Poe not leaked the plan to DJ.

 

1: Not sure if that would be possible - again tracking a number of vessels on seperate courses etc. The fleet separated is no way going to be picked off easier compared to being ducks in a barrel as it was presented with losing fuel one-by-one, again tactically you could have one jump to Hutt space or another similar area with high traffic in a attempt to lose yourself amongst the crowd before refuelling and meeting at a ERV. Not saying all would make it, but its a better move.
2: I can't recall them jumping to Crait, thought the plan was to sneak shuttles down as they passed by on sublight leaving the remaining fleet as a diversion. Jumping to Crait would signal the plan and wouldn't need the betrayal.
3: Ok - got me on that. Though now makes the story of Death Star on steroids just rubbish as well.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 6, 2019, Original Post Date: Jan 6, 2019 ---

I understand the tactics in TLJ, but feel they are very poor and contrived. When ambushed you don't just keep on a course being picked off one-by-one and hope to get planet-side without being noticed. You scatter and regroup.

 

This claim doesn't really fit with this:

The movie explains why the Resistance makes the choices they make. They are logical choices based on the story.

It's reasonable to argue that you just don't like the story, but they couldn't scatter and regroup. To suggest they could you have to ignore what happens in the movie.

 

1. How would it not be possible? You are inventing something that isn't against anything in the movie just to complain about it here. As @DailyPlunge said, it's fine to just not like it, but you are creating a problem that doesn't exist. A Resistance ship would stand out in virtually any other space though. And again they didn't know they were being tracked until it was too late to make another jump.

2. You don't jump right to the planet's surface. But they jumped to a system with no known enemies and an allied base (Crait). So Crait was likely always a viable spot for the Resistance to land and regroup.

3. The Death Star is rubbish PERIOD. You either accept these things exist or you don't. Jumping to lightspeed was always an escape deus ex machina. Now it isn't. If you can accept the Force, the laser swords, laser guns, mostly robotic humans after being burned alive by lava...you can accept tracking multiple ships. Do see how this doesn't track for me, logically speaking?

My example is TWBW. I don't like it. I think it is dumb and bad story telling. But there's no reason I don't think it can't exist in Star Wars, logically. I'm not gonna sit here and claim that it can't work (in the universe) for reasons that I made up.

 

I have several issues with the whole Holdo/Poe plot line. I can accept a lot in SW. I can accept Hyperspeed, DS's and SKB's, Force powers and even space trackers, heck I know cloaks exist, you can communicate with ghosts, strange religions with seemingly magical force powers, advanced medicine and prosthesis. My issue with Holdo's plan is this. If the technology in this universe is so amazingly advanced in every facet, how can Holdo's plan have any chance of working? She's being pursued, tracked and likely scanned constantly (they know she's almost out of fuel by those scans) by a fleet of superior ships (which is why they don't stand and fight.). They can't scatter because they believe the fleet will just split up and pick them all off.. fine I can accept that too. My problem is how does her plan to fly by Crait, and shuttle down have any chance with this superior technology? Wouldn't their shuttles be detected leaving the main ship? How can they not be when they're in visual range from the bridge of the enemy flag ship? They can SEE them, how can their scanners not detect them? If I've succeeded by this point to suspend my disbelief of all that fantastical stuff, how can I now accept that they can't detect with scanners what they can visually see? How can I accept that no one looks out those swooping picture windows and says "Uh, Commander, those look like shuttles flying down to that planet... should we do something?". Unless of course if this is why they played Hux like the court jester so we should assume all under his command are less qualified and as inept than he is. If that's the case, comparisons to Space Balls have merit.

It seems their fate was sealed regardless of what they did (had there not been intervention from Rey AND Luke, and even so most still died). Now it's quite possible it was the only plan Holdo and her officers can come up with. That's okay too, sometimes there's nothing but bad options and you pick the best of the bad lot, extend your life as long as possible and hope you get lucky. However, if all your options seem to lead you to your death, why not invite war heroes to the planning room in such a dire circumstance to see if they have a better plan, heck an alternative or extra idea that could give them an extra 1% chance of survival or delay things a bit longer? Heck, just getting the war heroes on board like a LotR's scenario with Helm's Deep would be more than reason enough to tell Poe about the plan at that point. Because if they were just playing for time, and that's what it looks like to me, every little bit could help.

I don't think there's a good answer to that other than RJ and company didn't give it the necessary thought. It was a miss in the writing. This has happened in SW in the past (parsecs anyone?) but not usually on such big plot points. I'm sure fans will find a way to "fix" this like they did the parsec mistake, but the difference is that we all laugh at the parsec mistake and no one gets defensive. No one plays goalie for GL, we laugh that he didn't know at that time and figured out away to make it make sense. All good. This one, for some reason, some people do get defensive. Some people seem to have chosen this hill to die on. A lot of people who like this movie freely admit it has issues, why can't this just be one of them? Or at least extend an olive branch to those that this is an issue and say something along the lines that "Yeah, I didn't think about it that much, but now that you mention it, it doesn't quite work unless there's more to the story we didn't get in the movie. It still doesn't take away from my enjoyment of the film as I just assume there's a reason that we're not aware of in universe, or maybe we missed something in the movie.". Which seems, those last parts, to at least be partially what some people are saying.

Edit: Another conclusion viewers can draw is that Holdo thought Crait was likely going to be their tomb. She might have had some hope that Leia can contact someone and get help to Crait on time, but they likely both knew how unlikely that was. However I believe that's why Holdo did her sacrifice in the end, to buy them time, because had the flag ship been operative, they could have just used those big guns to blast them from orbit. She probably also hoped the base could have held out longer not knowing about that ground cannon. To me this is the only explanation that makes any sense. Holdo never had a master plan, she was following through Leia's plan that was a bad one but the best they can come up with in the circumstances. This however does not really explain why she didn't let Poe in on the plan, or ask for suggestions ect... beyond not liking him.

 

Don't they outright say that the FO is only monitoring the big ship? I'm pretty sure they do. If that is the case, and I don't think the distance you see on film is ever truly appreciated, there's very little chance you could actually see them with the naked eye through a window. In the Throne room they show it through some sort of magnifier. If you look around that, it's clear they wouldn't be visible. Remember, they are out of actual range when launching. So they aren't right up on them. They ran a decloaking scanner and then discovered the ships after DJ's delivery.

Why invite a guy who just got publicly demoted? Who just cost you most of the fleet? I don't know why people are hanging on this. It's a choice made for dramatic tension. He shouldn't be invited or informed of anything. I'm sorry but most of the answers to your issues are in the movie.

 

Rose & Finn's conversations imply that an "active tracking" process can only be run from one ship, but they could have had the another destroyer turn on their hyperspace tracking if the lead ship/ship doing the tracking was disabled or destroyed which is why they had to shut if off clandestinely rather than blow it up.

So yes, it's all explained.

 

Oh, it's space, so numbers tend to be astronomical. Let's say you're right, and their monitoring the ship from a distance, visually, by magnifying the visual. Wouldn't people be on that 24/7 seeing that the ship is flying close to a planet that supports life, especially in the dire circumstances that they are in? It seems only logical and prudent, not even cutting edge or genius to do so. I would think that would be standard procedure? I might be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure they see the escape ships in the movie, through these magnifications. I'd also think there would be some standard scans going on, to the limitation of their distance, again as a matter of protocol.

Anyways, to each their own. I think RJ tried to contrive this scenario (that's not an attack on him, all of this is contrived, it's not actual history, so every plot point in every movie could be seen as contrived) to push forward the plot. It didn't work for me because in my opinion he failed to properly address some issues with his plot and it pulled me out of the movie, sometimes unconsciously as I was trying to understand the scenario he was trying to depict. That's the trick, these stories are by definition contrived but the magic is hiding it, or have a certain logical sense that the contrivances are hidden and undetectable or dismissed and accepted as a natural progression. The groundwork should be laid out in such a way that we have quick answers to these type of questions so that we can ask the proper questions within context of the story.

The bombers for example there could have been a throw away line that they were converted medical aid ships that drop payloads of food and medicine in times of crisis. This would explain why they aren't very rugged and the fleet falls apart at the slightest resistance, as one example. Think Riekan and Leia in ESB and their throw away lines about meteors and grounding ships. It's not that difficult to do, and it greatly helps the viewer not concern themselves with working out the reasoning of certain things that are not that important to the movie. However, if not included, the viewer can't help but question it because those alternative actions now seem murky at best, totally illogical at worse.

 

How did the Falcon escape the Star Destroyers in Empire? By this logic, shouldn't they have someone monitoring that? Sure Boba Fett was but your implications are the Empire should have people just watching, to be on the safe side.
I think you are just over thinking it here tbh.

 

I don't know... what Han did seemed unpredictable and illogical from an observers standpoint. What the Resistance fleet was doing not so much. Leaving a ship targeted to be destroyed, running out of fuel and incapable of escape, to a nearby habitable planet I would think the strategic minds of the FO, even if mediocre, should have been able to anticipate. You'll notice I don't take issue with Holdo attacking the fleet as that was unpredictable (even if I take some issue with using hyperdrives that way since it seems to fly in the face of previous battles, but that's a different argument made on different precepts).

As for Han's maneuver, there have been explanations since to fill in the holes, because there were holes that needed filling. The speed and close proximity of the MF threw off the scans, as did the MF configuration as it wasn't sleek, it seemed similar structurally to the SD's (same thing came up with the tracker on the MF in ANH, due to it not being sleek, the tracker was not detectable since the ships scans couldn't get around all the nooks and crannies. Small differences could be particulates or mynocks space debree ect... Ideally this is done in movie with a throw away line, when it's not it's helpful to add it in later.) as well as shared the same stark white coloring/shading. Han being a former imperial officer also had inside knowledge of standard procedure and so on. This was referenced to in the EU now legends because it did seem rather inept on the side of the Empire (someone screwed up along the way) and if memory serves, Vader punishes that ineptness on screen to punctuate the crews error. I would assume those explanations, much like others for other issues in the OT, hold in Disney SW.

 

How did the Empire with all their Star Destroyers still allow the Alliance to escape Hoth? They only disabled one per ion cannon shot.
Boba Fett is a Gary Sue, obviously.

I've always been confused over relative speed in the GFFA (not really, I could care less). He made it seem like Star Destroyers were so fast that they could catch soo many other ships but.....I dunno...they seemed stationary after the first act of ANH, and in Solo and Filoni's Rebels.

 

But it was though.
Entering small unprotected vessels to sneak down to a more or less unknown location is very unpredictable because it would be seen as suicide, which if Poe wasn't such a dunderhead, would have worked to perfection.

Sure that's all fine, but shouldn't you in turn be giving the new films that sort of leeway as well and just accepting there will be answers later? Isn't it hypocritical to hold a ridiculous standard of every answer being in the film when it works perfectly for the narrative in a fantasy movie?

 

I literally just explained why in my original message. read before replying

 

No, you explained that you like Star Wars. But not why you would actively engage so much with something you seem to truly hate.
So again, why would you spend that much time and money on TLJ? You can still like Star Wars and not invest that sort of effort into a part of it you actively hate

 

I think you misunderstand my criticism. All I'm saying is that it is there and should/could be later addressed. Instead what I'm getting is that it doesn't exist, which I find ridiculous because I can see it plainly (which is likely a good reason why "haters" are resisting the movie more, because it's frustrating that everything is taken as an attack instead of logical criticism lol). Sure they can go back and "fix" it later and all is good (much like they did in the OT). Much of the criticism I think that people are giving to the ST and TLJ is magnified by deniers instead of admitting that RJ may have gone in light with the details and exposition they deny its very existence. Things may not make sense depending on what that exposition is. At the very least it could greatly change our understanding of those events, as sometimes the devil is in the details. I'm sure RJ had some understanding of what, why and how things were transpiring, but his understanding and ours could be very different and I don't believe he fully explained that in TLJ.

An example would be if GL doubled down that parsecs was a measure of time, denying that it's a measure of distance. It would mean that parsecs in the SW universe means something entirely different than it does in our world. Writer can then apply that to future stories keeping the SW definition of parsecs. Instead, fans, writers and such recognized the mistake and manipulated events to make it make sense, so that parsecs definition doesn't deviate from our world to that of the SW universe. In turn, that helps us maintain our suspension of disbelief. To some fans it didn't matter at all, to other it does though and if not addressed could have been a nagging detail that annoys some moving forward.

All this to say that writers in the future we will likely have to touch on how sensors works, how the military operates and what standard practices are when pursuing a ship. Do the commanders look ahead and try to anticipate their adversaries next move, or do they just go following, ignoring or not even bothering to peruse information that could be easily "discovered"? When I watch this taking place, I try to understand their rationale, and if it doesn't compute, it bothers me on some subconscious level (until analyzed later) which limits my enjoyment of the film until I can either understand the reasoning, or I can conclude that this is just "SW" logic which I either accept and enjoy it as a popcorn film or find it annoying in the same way if GL would have doubled down on parsecs being a measure of time.

All this to say that I think some people are just pointing out that some of this stuff wasn't very detailed in TLJ. No one is denying that it can't be addressed later, what we're saying is that it was not addressed in the movie. That the details once you dig into it lose some coherence. An argument could be made that it simply wasn't essential enough to the story, but that is debatable as everyone thinks somewhat differently, value stories differently. If one line could fix it, like again going to parsecs, if a spacer would have said to Han and Ben "you must have really skimmed those black holes to make it in that short a distance!", then it we would have gathered that GL understood what parsecs meant. Instead, the response to that criticism is that it is in the movie, stop overthinking. Then things get circular. Is it vitally important to the plot? Yes and no, it's certainly important to the debate of whether Holdo was a competent leader. Was Holdo's leadership important to the plot? I think it was made so because of the twist at the end. Had they not played off Poe as right for most of the movie, or Holdo as right at the end of the movie, I think this debate would have been entirely avoided. However, because RJ chose to subvert our expectations, it now is a debate on a tertiary level. When discussing Holdo, these minute details start to matter. I just find the more I dig and try to understand, the more for me that plot line unravels. For me it requires a fix like parsecs needed a fix for me to appreciate that part of the plot.

I can understand how someone can accept it on a superficial level, assume there's sound reasoning behind it and leave it at that. I can't, maybe it's my brain, but parsecs would have bothered me if it hadn't been addressed. In the same way, that whole Holdo plot needs some more detail because as it is, it only works in a superficial way and doesn't stand up to scrutiny, imo.

 

I'm a big star wars fan. I love star wars. So I saw the movie. I didn't like it much so I saw it again in hopes it would change my mind. It didn't. I hated it. I own every star wars movie so when it came out I bought it to add to my collection. Do you understand?

MOD EDIT

 

I understand you've spent at least 5 hours and probably close to 60 bucks on something you hated.
Seems like the smart thing to do would have been not paying for it again and just moving on.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 8, 2019, Original Post Date: Jan 8, 2019 ---

I think there's a fundamental difference in what we just accept as detailed enough for a fantasy movie.
You either accept this stuff or you don't. I don't see it as a flaw in Star Wars the same way I don't see the eagle not just flying Frodo to Mordor as a flaw in Lord of The Rings. You either accept there are these flawed conceits in fantasy story telling or you don't. And I'm sorry but it does feel like *most* of the time with TLJ right now, a lot of criticisms are of the imagination or based on personal desires rather than the story presented on screen, so apologies if I approach yours in that way. It's sort of a default setting now.

MOD EDIT

 

@Snoke33, @RoyleRancor: you guys are done. please move on now. : D

 

See, I agree with this. Even though I'm critical. I loved them too.

Does that make sense? I think so.