Rules within the SW universe.

It's not my habit to ask that kind of questions in Star Wars : I don't really want to ask them, but the last time I saw the movie I was confused and it threw me out of the experience during those pursuit scenes. I wish the movie was clearer on theses points, so I wouldn't have to ask this question. It's not a nitpick for me, it's a genuinely confusing thing.

Usually I never ask scientific questions about Star Wars, but then usually nothing bothers me. There was a small thing in The Force Awakens : when Finn says that Starkiller base use the power of the sun, and then the sun is gone. Then all life would cease on Starkiller base's planet. And how a planet could empty an entire star, which is MUCH, MUCH bigger than a planet? Etc, etc. Better not to think about it too much, I know.

 

The lowest point for me in TFA was when the planets in the Hosnian system exploded and they could see them from Takodana and in real time...

 

I noticed something interesting about that kind of thing, with my friends. It's not the same elements that bother the same people. For some reason, the 5 planets exploding in real time doesn't bother me. It seems intuitive : you can see something that explode in the sky, but of course if you think "these planets are light years away, they couldn't see the explosion in real time", it's a problem. Star Wars physics are the intuitive physics of a child.

One of my friend said : there is artificial gravity in the ships, BB-8 shouldn't bounce around while the Falcon is flying. It bothered him so much he hated the movie for that reason! And it seemed absurd to me. It never bothered me, Threepio fell in a hole in the Falcon at the end of Empire, it seemed consistent with the rule of the Star Wars universe. (Also some people have complained that the bombs should not fall of the bombers at the beggining of TLJ. For me it was consistent with the Tie Bombers from empire, so : no problem.)

But for some reason, I felt that a ship that runs out of fuel in space shouldn't stop. It's more something that you feel, something that throw you out of your "intuitive" grasp of how the universe should function. We have to know and think that there is no sound in space, because we never experienced it, so it doesn't intuitively bother us when we see explosions in space at first, especially as kids. I suppose my knowledge of physics in space interfered with the simple "earth" perception that, of course, objects that needs fuel for propulsion would stop if they ran out of fuel. It works better if I remind myself that they are basically boats in a space ocean.

Maybe that's why it bothered me : usually the space battles in Star Wars are like aircraft battles, really fast and furious, while Star Trek battles are much slower, closer to marine battles. In the Last Jedi, it's closer to a marine battle. That's not a bad thing, it just "feels" different from all other Star Wars space battles (Death Star, Scarif, Endor).

 

You are totally right, I think the main problem with the fleet chase is that it lasts for more than half the movie, it's easier to overlook inconsistencies if they are brief.

 

Like a Death Star always parking just enough out of range to be destroyed except for when it doesn't...

 

True! You have the time to ask yourself, "ok, what is really going on here?"

 

Every SW movie has plot inconsistencies.

Don't people overlook Anakin having a padawan despite saying padawan never once being referenced to in ROTS? Or is that because Lucas came up with that?

 

Huh, I never noticed that before with TLJ, but you're right.

There is definitely a much larger focus on the capital ship battle than on the fighter's. In Star Wars, the action is almost always on the fighters, and while the capital ships definitely slog away at each other (though, in the OT, they often seem to be more like support ships) the action is almost always on the fighters. Even when we do see capital ships attacking, the action is usually between them and fighters. In fact, that's one of the more jarring and cool things about the opening of ROTS- actually seeing Republic and CIS ships attacking each other on a larger scale.

In this, though... well, even Poe is stuck on the Raddus for the vast majority of the film (which, to me, doesn't really play to his strengths at all, though it does have me excited for him to finally get back to a cockpit in IX). It would be like if Luke, Han, and Wedge all stayed back on Yavin in ANH, and ordered people around as surface to air missiles fired from the Massassi ruins onto the Death Star.

I think the visual representation of a small fighter group going against a hulking technological terror is a big part of what Star Wars is- using visual clues in an action scene, it very effectively portrays the struggle well as a microcosm of the war itself, in that it's very clear that the Rebellion is horrendously outnumbered by the Empire.

Even when TLJ attempted to do this, they forgot one thing- "Small fighter group"... By having Poe pretty much attack the dreadnought alone, we get less of a visual representation of a desperate militia of freedom fighters, and instead an overconfident Achilles type.

Which, I mean, it's different at least. TLJ is still a movie that I really like, and I'm sure that at least most of these decisions were intentional. I just think that maybe when people say that they're unable to verbalize their feelings but it "doesn't feel like a Star Wars movie", maybe this is what they mean.