[Rhymes]

Yeah, Abrams is not remotely a good storyteller.  Did no one else sit through a significant chunk of Lost?

Point of order: Abrams had pretty much nothing to do with Lost after the pilot. That was all Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.

[Akalabeth Angel]

The mutiny was problematic but not for any of the reasons mentioned here. It's problematic because the girl on the bridge sided with Poe.  How is she on the bridge, working directly with Holdo, but has no clue of what's going on?  The mutiny should have been about the lower decks versus the command staff, not about Poe & his friends vs the newcomer.

Poe blabbing the plan to two rebel agents onboard the imperial flagship proves that Holdo was right to not tell him anything.  He should however have been barred from the bridge earlier.

[Snarks]

The mutiny was problematic but not for any of the reasons mentioned here. It's problematic because the girl on the bridge sided with Poe.  How is she on the bridge, working directly with Holdo, but has no clue of what's going on?  The mutiny should have been about the lower decks versus the command staff, not about Poe & his friends vs the newcomer.

Poe blabbing the plan to two rebel agents onboard the imperial flagship proves that Holdo was right to not tell him anything.  He should however have been barred from the bridge earlier.

Sure, we can chalk this one up with my ever growing list of better ways they could have handled the mutiny. Make it clear that Holdo's command was competent because it's exactly little details like this that makes me think she is being an ineffectual leader. The intent is very much clear, but the execution leaves so much room to be desired.

I feel it would be less polarizing if they didn't try to force people to side with Poe through the narrative direction and simply made it clear that Poe was completely stepping out of line instead of trying to do a big reveal where Holdo was right all along. The way it is handled makes Poe an idiot, and Holdo another idiot, adding to the overall feeling of every character being incompetent from Poe to Holdo to Hux to Ren.

One of the arguments I hear from a lot of folks is that none of the newer characters are very likable. They simply don't feel competent or have annoying personalities. You have characters like Poe who people hate because of their personalities or characters like Holdo and Hux who are supposed to be competent but don't act like it. In the case of Poe, he's both unlikable and only marginally competent because his adversaries tend to be even more inept, e.g. that silly Hux/Poe scene at the beginning of TLJ.

We can say it's a deconstruction of Star Wars and moving away from the "heroic" figures of the older movies, but in the end of the day, the audience don't feel attached enough to the characters to really want to see more.

[Scotty]

Hux isn't supposed to be competent.

[Snarks]

Hux isn't supposed to be competent.

My point wasn't that Hux was supposed to be competent, but that seemingly half if not more of the named characters tend to act rather similarly incompetently.

Is it just poor writing in the verisimilitude department, or is it intentional? If it's intentional, then what I get out of the film is that it's deconstructing the idea of competency in the Star Wars universe, emphasizing that people are inherently incompetent everywhere, that even an incompetent baffoon like Hux is able to destroy the seemingly equally incompetent New Republic.

One of the appeal of stories is being drawn to characters. This includes everything from their personality to their actions. The expectation of many Star Wars fan is the idea of extraordinary individuals. Han Solo is an incredibly skilled and charismatic. Vader is crazy ruthless. Palpatine is insidious. Luke is pure of heart. The original trilogy were built on the classic hero's journey, with honestly larger than life characters. What I get now feels more like the fool's errand. And fine, that might even be intentional, but that isn't going to make it feel strange or out of place.

For instance, I love the Venture Brothers. It is one of my all time favorite shows because it explores the theme of failure so thoroughly and so consistently in a deconstruction of the kid adventurer genre, specifically shows like Johnny Quest. But if the next Marvel movie is written like a Venture Brother episode, I'm going to start raising my eye brows because it would be jarring.

[Scotty]

Most of the people I know are pretty dumb when not doing the one thing they spent most of college specializing in.  Verisimilitude checks out on my end!

If anything, it really drives home the whole "competence with no resources is inferior to incompetence with limitless resources" that real life has going on right now.

EDIT: Also literally the entire conflict for Luke in Return of the Jedi is that he's not actually pure of heart and very nearly kills his own father in a fit of rage.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Hux isn't supposed to be competent.

Yeah, I think Vader would've retired him by now.

[Mika]

However, Ron Howard attributed at least the right things: he is sad that the backlash of Last Jedi is affecting his movie.

you think I didn't see Solo because of The Last Jedi (which I loved), and not because I don't actually give a **** about Han Solo?

Frankly put I don't care. It's the averages I'm interested in. 75 % drop in the DVD sales compared to Force Awakens and 66% drop in attendance of the movie (Solo) are not something that happens for what you describe. These numbers are really an indication of world wide conscious decision to avoid anything Star Wars. There's no other way of putting it. They have alienated two thirds of the fan base, without gaining new grounds at all! I could have watched Solo after Last Jedi (just like I watched Rogue One after the mediocre Force Awakens), if anyone could have convinced me the movie was any good. They convinced me not to watch it.

Yes, Last Jedi certainly pushed the franchise forwards. But it's another question if the direction they are heading is any good.

Regarding stuff what not to do when you are in a position of power are the following:

Start with executive producer saying he doesn't need to cater to male fans.
Well done for not understanding your core audience. That alone itself isn't problematic though, but it is alarming.

JJ Abrams links criticism of the women characters in Last Jedi to criticism of women in general

Abrams was unfazed. “‘Star Wars’ is a big galaxy, and you can sort of find almost anything you want to in ‘Star Wars,'” he said. “If you are someone who feels threatened by women and needs to lash out against them, you can probably find an enemy in ‘Star Wars.’ You can probably look at the first movie that George [Lucas] did [‘Star Wars: A New Hope’] and say that Leia was too outspoken, or she was too tough. Anyone who wants to find a problem with anything can find the problem. The internet seems to be made for that.”

Yes, equate piss poor character development to criticism against women. It tells volumes the original Leia is much stronger as a character than Rey. Funnily enough I don't think I've ever heard anybody complain about Leia in the original trilogies. Strangely also nobody at LucasFilm ever heard of Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley or Sgt. Vasquez. It was never about the fact that they were women, it was always about the fact that these characters work and were believable.

Top that one with Rian Johnson equating people critical to Kelly Marie Tran's character to manbabies:
"What we talk about when we talk about manbabies"  Smooth move Rian, too bad the additional correction of limiting this to a fraction of fans wasn't part of the original message.

There's plenty more examples of corporate communication failures where those came from. With no likeable man in the movie, what could possibly go wrong? And this was still going on in the beginning of June.

If Hux is intentionally incompetent, that is getting close to the core reasons why this movie failed so bad as it did. You can have incompetent villains in comedies, but generally that doesn't really work if you need any actual drama. The only competent villain was Snoke. I've already stated my opinion of Kylo Ren earlier. It has not changed.

[Scotty]

Kylo Ren is not incompetent in the slightest.  He's prone to anger because he's been taught that that's a good thing and has chosen poor role models largely because Luke ****ed up.  He's enormously conflicted because we, the audience, are supposed to identify with him as a viewpoint character despite being an antagonist.  Ren himself is entirely aware that what he's doing is bad/evil, and does so because his parents either A) ran out on him when the going got tough (Hey there, Han) or B) shipped him off to boarding school while she played politician and the only other family member he even knows exists happened to be bad/evil but at least his legacy is one of strength.

I can never tell whether people who don't like Kylo Ren either don't understand what his purpose as a character is or don't understand why he is the way he is, because it's always one or the other.

[Mongoose]

I believe it was also me who first said here in January that Kennedy and Johnson both failed to uphold the value of the brand to the parent company, putting politics before happy customers. This, generally, is an idiotic business decision, and the results are in. What has also happened behind the scenes is that women will have harder time getting CEO level positions in the future thanks to Kennedy's legacy.

This is pure bull**** and you know it.

It's one thing to misunderstand their target audience, but to go on and insult them is nearly unprecedented. It's tragic that they for some reason couldn't comprehend average fan is a man, and in their 30s and 40s  To get younger audience to the theater, you'll need to convince their parents first! Lando touted being pansexual certainly helped people make their decisions about watching Solo, it certainly did in my case, so thanks for the heads up! Then again, I lost my interest to Star Wars movies already. Seen from the management point of view, this is still a gold mine!

Yes let's have Star Wars keep catering to basement-dwelling neckbeards instead of, y'know, half of the population of the planet.

So "The Fandom Menace" is at play indeed, and Disney is about to witness the full power of a consumer boycott. It's as if millions of people had suddenly looked at each other after Last Jedi and asked "you guys see what I'm seeing?" and nodded. No further actions were planned, everybody just knew what had to be done. I'd go on and say the only way they can bring Episode 9 back is to fire Kathleen Kennedy publicly (Tip: Disney, this must be public, there's no credibility otherwise that they would have changed their ways) and bring back the original people responsible for writing and directing Episodes 4-6. Of course, nobody who is actually good in his profession would agree to work with what Ep. 8 left with, so that's pretty unlikely. So the two things above and one more episode in the trilogy might do the trick - I'm thinking somebody waking up from coma and saying "WTF was that about?"

Yes let's regress the entire franchise 40 years that is a great plan.

Seriously the overall reaction to this movie has convinced me once and for all that your average movie-goer is dumber than a sack of bricks.

[mjn.mixael]

Seriously the overall reaction to this movie has convinced me once and for all that your average movie-goer is dumber than a sack of bricks.

Transformers keeps making money....

[Mongoose]

Quite.

[Det. Bullock]

Oh this half a year has been quite interesting on what it comes to Last Jedi apparently. I'm trying so very hard not to write half of the below as direct quotes from Star Wars, but let's see how that goes.

We have now seen some results of the film being published, including the home theater releases, so the facts are in. Guess what, the DVD sales of the Last Jedi are about -75 % compared to the Force Awakens. We also see that Solo movie has lost money instead of making it. Currently estimated to be about 50-100 millions in the negative, though this is likely an optimistic estimate, given the movie has practically been re-shot. However, Ron Howard attributed at least the right things: he is sad that the backlash of Last Jedi is affecting his movie. The sales of Star Wars merchandise has gone significantly down too.

There's been a leak from Disney that is about retiring (read: firing) Kathleen Kennedy in September. Other movie projects than Episode 9 have been put on hold, and that's including Rian "Ruin" Johnson's trilogy as is the Ben Kenobi movie. Further adding pressure to Disney's executive level is that they have invested a significant amount of money to Star Wars theme parks, which now will face a problem of missing visitors due to all time low interest in Star Wars.

Now, there was some talk here that the reception of Last Jedi may become similar to the reception of Empire Strikes Back. I'd like to know now when do people say that would happen, 'cause it's been about 7 months already and the general opinion doesn't seem to change? On the contrary, it still seems to be going to the other direction... I believe it was also me who first said here in January that Kennedy and Johnson both failed to uphold the value of the brand to the parent company, putting politics before happy customers. This, generally, is an idiotic business decision, and the results are in. What has also happened behind the scenes is that women will have harder time getting CEO level positions in the future thanks to Kennedy's legacy. It's still even more baffling Disney hasn't told LucasFilm employees to STFU in Twitter, there's still a lot of fan blaming going on, and given the Disney's public relations department, I would have expected this to stop already.

So not only have Kennedy and Johnson managed to deconstruct and subvert the Star Wars franchise, they have nearly succeeded in deconstructing the fan base, the LucasFilm company and the Disney's four billion dollar investment in the truest Elopian fashion. With this background, it's astonishing the LucasFilm board of directors is still intact, i.e. has not been fired as it should have been. It's one thing to misunderstand their target audience, but to go on and insult them is nearly unprecedented. It's tragic that they for some reason couldn't comprehend average fan is a man, and in their 30s and 40s  To get younger audience to the theater, you'll need to convince their parents first! Lando touted being pansexual certainly helped people make their decisions about watching Solo, it certainly did in my case, so thanks for the heads up! Then again, I lost my interest to Star Wars movies already. Seen from the management point of view, this is still a gold mine!

So "The Fandom Menace" is at play indeed, and Disney is about to witness the full power of a consumer boycott. It's as if millions of people had suddenly looked at each other after Last Jedi and asked "you guys see what I'm seeing?" and nodded. No further actions were planned, everybody just knew what had to be done. I'd go on and say the only way they can bring Episode 9 back is to fire Kathleen Kennedy publicly (Tip: Disney, this must be public, there's no credibility otherwise that they would have changed their ways) and bring back the original people responsible for writing and directing Episodes 4-6. Of course, nobody who is actually good in his profession would agree to work with what Ep. 8 left with, so that's pretty unlikely. So the two things above and one more episode in the trilogy might do the trick - I'm thinking somebody waking up from coma and saying "WTF was that about?"

JJ Abrams is now destined to become the fall guy. If I were him I'd actually bail out of Ep. 9 by any means necessary.

Also, twenty years ago or so I was a 12 years old snotty kid who wouldn't shut up about Star Wars, I'm a fan since before the goddamn special editions and I don't understand this sense of entitlement.

Edit: Just use the video ID with the YT tags! -- Mongoose

[karajorma]

Adama was an extraordinary leader because he understood people and was willing to bend the rules when it was needed, thereby preventing a lot of terrible outcomes from happening.

Adama also had a mutiny on his ship in case you're forgetting. So apparently even competent leaders who understand people can have a mutiny. And Adama had a lot more reason to expect a mutiny than Holdo did.

Holdo might have been a capable tactician (assuming things like the hyperspace ram was a novel idea), but she was not the leader given the desperate situation at hand.

We're seeing the plotline from Poe's point of view. From Holdo's point of view, things become a hell of a lot more reasonable.

Even later on in the film, once his plan is in action, Poe has come in shouting and screaming about what a dreadful job she's doing but doesn't actually tell her he has anything better in mind. Remember, Poe deliberately doesn't tell Holdo his plan. And there is no reason for Holdo to believe that anyone would come up with it, let alone actually put it into action without telling her. You are blaming Holdo for the unforgivable mistake of failing to take into account the plotting of an underling that she doesn't know about! We understand Poe's reasons for the mutiny, but put yourself in her place. With no actual plan on how to save the ship, what possible reason would Poe have to mutiny? So that he could do the exact same thing he thinks she is doing? She doesn't see the mutiny coming because, from her point of view, there is no sensible reason to mutiny.

From the time Holdo finds out that Poe does have a plan until the mutiny a grand total of about 30 seconds elapses. Really? That's a massive failure of command on Holdo's part? Not seeing that the officer who has already done something mind-blowingly stupid and reckless is going to do something even more moronic? Bear in mind that a competent leader would be going over the plan in her head at the same time and trying to figure out where Poe's stupidity might **** up their plan. She really doesn't have much time to consider what idiocy is coming next.

The failing of the film with respect to Poe/Holdo is that it gives the viewer too much credit. It assumes that once it's explained that Holdo was in the right, people will see it. That they'll put themselves in Holdo's shoes and realise that she wasn't what we thought she was. A lot of us do. Which is why arguments that Holdo is a bad leader get such a strong pushback. She wasn't incompetent. She wasn't even in the wrong. Once we get told about Crait we can see we've been played by the film. Holdo did have a plan, she did have logical reasons for keeping it to herself and her senior officers, and she's had to deal with a petulant officer who is demanding access to top-secret mission plans which he has no need to know. We've been completely in the wrong to support Poe.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't get it. Leia's comment about how "She was more interested in protecting the light than seeming like a hero" was meant to impart that but it's obvious from this thread that it's not enough. I've got no idea how you could point that out without grinding the film to a halt though, so I can understand why they went this way and put their faith in the fans to do what Star Wars fans always do and explain things to those who thought it an important but minor issue. I guess they never expected the internet to be so violently against Holdo that they refused to accept that they'd been tricked.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Start with executive producer saying he doesn't need to cater to male fans.
Well done for not understanding your core audience. That alone itself isn't problematic though, but it is alarming.

So your criticizing the producer based on a quote she gave on the eve of the best of the new movies?


I'm sorry but catering to old fans is a flawed strategy. Why? Because people die. They die, they move on, they get busy, or worst of all, they have less money to spend on star wars merchandise.  To be successful you need to cater to a new audience and bring in new fans, and if the movie is good enough to retain the old fans, bonus. If not- could be worse.

If I'm not mistaken, the 30s something has the most disposable income. So why appeal to a 50-yo fan?

Seriously the overall reaction to this movie has convinced me once and for all that your average movie-goer is dumber than a sack of bricks.

I don't think people are dumb, in general, but I do think I'm out of sync with popular opinion. Everyone for example seemed to love Wonder Woman, I thought it was pretty meh.  But I enjoy Suicide Squad and Batman V Superman so figure

[Snarks]

Adama also had a mutiny on his ship in case you're forgetting. So apparently even competent leaders who understand people can have a mutiny. And Adama had a lot more reason to expect a mutiny than Holdo did.

Arguably the mutiny on board the Galactica was a long brewing situation, birthed out of a necessity to ally with the Cylons. The colonial fleet had literally endured years of hardship at this point, including finding out the Adama's original promise was a lie. There was reason to doubt Adama by that point, and the decisions had ensured the survival of the human race in the end. There was no solution that could have satisfied everyone. Adama made several hard calls and wasn't beyond admitting when he was in the wrong.

Holdo isn't given the same treatment by the writers. If she had taken more proactive steps, then I would have been sympathetic to her situation. When it seems like death is inevitable, morale will be at an all time low. I'll draw comparison between how Adama handled the situation after the fall of the colonies with Holdo's command after the fall of the New Republic and the Resistance base. Adama told a lie to his crew. He could have just told everyone to have hope, but instead purposefully fabricated something with no basis whatsoever because it inspired hope. By contrast, Holdo told the survivors to think of what General Leia would have said, to have hope. The difference here is that Adama took an active role by lying to his crew whereas Holdo gave no tangible solution for the problem at hand and even exasperated the situation by referring to Leia, further distancing herself and reminding the crew that their beloved leader is incapacitated.

Even later on in the film, once his plan is in action, Poe has come in shouting and screaming about what a dreadful job she's doing but doesn't actually tell her he has anything better in mind. Remember, Poe deliberately doesn't tell Holdo his plan. And there is no reason for Holdo to believe that anyone would come up with it, let alone actually put it into action without telling her. You are blaming Holdo for the unforgivable mistake of failing to take into account the plotting of an underling that she doesn't know about! We understand Poe's reasons for the mutiny, but put yourself in her place. With no actual plan on how to save the ship, what possible reason would Poe have to mutiny? So that he could do the exact same thing he thinks she is doing? She doesn't see the mutiny coming because, from her point of view, there is no sensible reason to mutiny.

From the time Holdo finds out that Poe does have a plan until the mutiny a grand total of about 30 seconds elapses. Really? That's a massive failure of command on Holdo's part? Not seeing that the officer who has already done something mind-blowingly stupid and reckless is going to do something even more moronic? Bear in mind that a competent leader would be going over the plan in her head at the same time and trying to figure out where Poe's stupidity might **** up their plan. She really doesn't have much time to consider what idiocy is coming next.

Being on a ship that is seemingly destined to be blown up within a few hours seems like a good enough reason to suspect that morale would be low. The situation here is very similar to the situation the Galactica and colonial fleet was in after the fall of the colonies. Absolutely hopeless. if Holdo failed to pick up on this point because she is too busy going over the plan, then it's a failure in command. And here I refer back above to how Adama and Holdo handled the situation differently.

I have more reason to dislike Poe than I do to dislike Holdo, just on the basis of the amount of screen time he's had. That aside, I don't envy the situation Holdo is in. It's tough, definitely, but it doesn't change the lack of action on her part to address morale. She's very mechanical in this regards, focusing too much on the plan and not enough on the people, which returns to my thesis that Holdo isn't a capable leader because she can't read her subordinates, that they are in a situation that seems absolutely hopeless. Keep in mind this is more than just a Poe problem. You cannot have a mutiny without a significant portion of the crew. So if we are supposed to be condemning Poe for his actions, then why aren't we condemning everyone else who agreed to mutiny? There is leeway in saying that a particularly stubborn individual defies all expectations, but when it's a group of people conducting an act of mutiny, then you cannot say there is not a morale problem. We are even told by Rose that people have attempted to desert following the scene where Finn is attempting to leave. The chief failure in Holdo's command was that she did not recognize that morale had gotten so bad that several of the crew were willing to mutiny.

The failing of the film with respect to Poe/Holdo is that it gives the viewer too much credit. It assumes that once it's explained that Holdo was in the right, people will see it. That they'll put themselves in Holdo's shoes and realise that she wasn't what we thought she was. A lot of us do. Which is why arguments that Holdo is a bad leader get such a strong pushback. She wasn't incompetent. She wasn't even in the wrong. Once we get told about Crait we can see we've been played by the film. Holdo did have a plan, she did have logical reasons for keeping it to herself and her senior officers, and she's had to deal with a petulant officer who is demanding access to top-secret mission plans which he has no need to know. We've been completely in the wrong to support Poe.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't get it. Leia's comment about how "She was more interested in protecting the light than seeming like a hero" was meant to impart that but it's obvious from this thread that it's not enough. I've got no idea how you could point that out without grinding the film to a halt though, so I can understand why they went this way and put their faith in the fans to do what Star Wars fans always do and explain things to those who thought it an important but minor issue. I guess they never expected the internet to be so violently against Holdo that they refused to accept that they'd been tricked.

I'm not going to speak for what the general audience thinks, but the film's intentions about Poe's arc is clear enough. Star Wars isn't very subtle about what it's trying to do. But intentions don't translate to expectations and emotions without a good execution. I've already listed a bunch of ways they could have done this without making me feel like Holdo isn't trying very hard. Having the whole casino subplot undoubtedly restricted the amount of attention they could have given to Poe/Holdo.

A big criticism of Star Wars and is that they have a tendency to stick too much in too little time. This happened with the prequels, and it undoubtedly happened in TLJ. I don't see why I should forgive Star Wars for this failing of scope, when pacing and narrative is part of the art of cinema and story telling in general. Star Wars doesn't get a free pass just because it's Star Wars. If the plots are too bloated and crowd each other out, then that's a bad thing.

[karajorma]

Holdo isn't given the same treatment by the writers. If she had taken more proactive steps, then I would have been sympathetic to her situation. When it seems like death is inevitable, morale will be at an all time low. I'll draw comparison between how Adama handled the situation after the fall of the colonies with Holdo's command after the fall of the New Republic and the Resistance base. Adama told a lie to his crew. He could have just told everyone to have hope, but instead purposefully fabricated something with no basis whatsoever because it inspired hope. By contrast, Holdo told the survivors to think of what General Leia would have said, to have hope. The difference here is that Adama took an active role by lying to his crew whereas Holdo gave no tangible solution for the problem at hand and even exasperated the situation by referring to Leia, further distancing herself and reminding the crew that their beloved leader is incapacitated.

Poe's decision to ignore the chain of command happened well before this. He was already massively disaffected at that point. She does what any sensible leader does, remove the problem from her bridge and carry on with the plan. You have surprisingly little proof that the rest of the crew were unhappy with her.

You cannot have a mutiny without a significant portion of the crew.

So if we are supposed to be condemning Poe for his actions, then why aren't we condemning everyone else who agreed to mutiny? There is leeway in saying that a particularly stubborn individual defies all expectations, but when it's a group of people conducting an act of mutiny, then you cannot say there is not a morale problem.

Watch the film again. Exactly how many people are involved in this mutiny? We see less than ten people with guns, all the main characters appear to be members of Poe's squadron who trust him. All of whom know that Poe does have another plan and aren't aware of Holdo's. Everyone else just carries on fueling the transports and preparing the evacuation as if nothing is happening. Holdo shoots exactly one of them, a battle takes place that can't last more than a minute or two since at that point things are going on in real time and then, Leia walks onto the bridge ending the mutiny. And I'm expected to believe that is a significant portion of the crew? There are thousands on that ship! There's no proof that a significant portion of the crew backed the mutiny. You can argue that no one shoots Poe's friends in the back to save her and I can argue that a real mutiny takes longer than 2 minutes to resolve. This narrative you're trying to construct where a large percentage of the crew didn't trust Holdo isn't borne out by the facts. There's no proof either way.

if Holdo failed to pick up on this point because she is too busy going over the plan, then it's a failure in command.

Reread what I said. Holdo failed to pick up that there might be a mutiny in the 30 seconds between her being told that Poe had a different plan (and an actual reason to mutiny) and him actually carrying out the mutiny. It is absolutely ridiculous to claim that is some kind of failure in command. And there was absolutely no reason for her to believe that there might be a mutiny until a minute before it happened regardless of how low morale was. What the **** were they going to do after the mutiny except the exact same thing she was doing? A mutiny requires people to have a plan to do something different from the current commander afterwards. If you're going to do the exact same thing, you don't mutiny!

That aside, I don't envy the situation Holdo is in. It's tough, definitely, but it doesn't change the lack of action on her part to address morale. She's very mechanical in this regards, focusing too much on the plan and not enough on the people, which returns to my thesis that Holdo isn't a capable leader because she can't read her subordinates

She can't read one subordinate who is acting in an irrational manner. And who is doing so because he has another plan he hasn't told her about!. Imagine what would have happened had Rose and Finn not come up with the plan to disable the tracker? Do you honestly think Poe would have mutinied? Poe would probably still have shouted at Holdo a bit but apart from that nothing would have happened. Once everyone evacuated safely to Crait, Holdo would have looked like a genius. The entire reason you believe that she was a bad leader rests entirely on the mutiny which I keep pointing out she had no way to foresee coming! Had anyone other than Poe come up with his plan they would have gone straight to Holdo and said it. At which point she'd have had time to consider it and would probably have replied that it was too risky and she had a better plan. Once again, we're seeing things from Poe's point of view. Poe's own actions are what lead to him being disaffected. You don't have proof that anyone else was suffering from low morale or that Holdo didn't do a good job of keeping everyone else's morale up.

Star Wars isn't very subtle about what it's trying to do.

That's the entire problem this film has, it was subtle. They set up this whole expectation that Holdo is a bad leader and people are still believing it!

But intentions don't translate to expectations and emotions without a good execution. I've already listed a bunch of ways they could have done this without making me feel like Holdo isn't trying very hard. Having the whole casino subplot undoubtedly restricted the amount of attention they could have given to Poe/Holdo.

A big criticism of Star Wars and is that they have a tendency to stick too much in too little time. This happened with the prequels, and it undoubtedly happened in TLJ. I don't see why I should forgive Star Wars for this failing of scope, when pacing and narrative is part of the art of cinema and story telling in general. Star Wars doesn't get a free pass just because it's Star Wars. If the plots are too bloated and crowd each other out, then that's a bad thing.

Could the film have done things better so that it was made absolutely clear that Holdo was as good a leader as you would want? Absolutely. I've pointed out that having people still believe that Holdo isn't a good leader despite the fact that she clearly does know what she's doing, is a failure of the film. But my issue is that you are making claims about what the film actually did which aren't supported by the film itself. If you didn't realise it at the time, that's a failure on the film's part. But if you insist that she's bad afterwards when you have time to examine things and realise she isn't, then you can't only blame the film.

You keep mentioning Adama and I don't particularly want to get into a comparison because those things always get sidetracked. But he's massively flawed as a leader. That was absolutely the intention of the show. I honestly don't think you're being at all fair. You're waving away complaints about Adama but using them to fuel your argument for Holdo. If I did the same thing with him you're doing to Holdo I could claim he's also a poor leader. Look at what's usually held up as an example of great leadership, the Battle of New Caprica. You're complaining that Holdo's inability to read Poe's intentions (a man she just met) makes her a bad leader, but Adama's inability to read his own son leads to the loss of the Pegasus! I guess he must be a really **** leader then!

[X3N0-Life-Form]

To be honest, I think the whole not-jedi parts of the plot were rather poorly thought out and messily put together, though I would need to rewatch the movie to pin down exactly why I feel so. Especially when compared to the Rey-Luke-Ren part of the plot, which is so much stronger.

Personally I would have chopped down the Holdo/Poe conflict by having him go with Finn & Rose on the B-plot, fail miserably (though maybe not as utterly as in the film proper) then come back to the Resistance flagship with their tails between their legs & just have Holdo do a confused "WTF guys ? We told you we had a plan. If you had stick around, you'd have all the details by now.". I'm kinda confused as to why Poe & Finn weren't paired up more, I thought the duo really worked out in the few scenes they had together back in episode 7.

[karajorma]

While that would have been hilarious I get the feeling that the same people who complained about the casino bits would have complained even harder about that since ultimately it goes nowhere.

[Snarks]

Alright, so let's do some counting.

First off, there's 400 people on the ship, not thousands or even a thousand. From Holdo herself:

There are four hundred of us...
on three ships.
We're the very last of the Resistance

We also know that there are many injured from the preceding battles who are part of the headcount but obviously can't do anything.

Poe, Rose, Finn, and the bridge controller are part of the mutiny. That is augmented by members of Poe's fighter squadron, which we can just assume to be 10 as you had proposed.

Now we also know there have been at least 3 deserters. From Rose:

You know...
Just this morning, I had to stun...
three people who were trying to jump ship.
In this escape pod.

I would say it's fair to assume that deserters are not going to be just granted the freedom to try to desert again. It's likely this number is even higher given the way Rose phrased that statement.

Counting up the deserters and mutineers, that's at least 17 people who are clearly suffering from morale issues. That's a little over 4% of the remaining survivors, likely coming up to 6% if we discount the injured and incapacitated and grant that were probably a couple more deserters.

Given the objective of the mutiny was to seize control of the bridge, it wouldn't make sense to make it a widespread mutiny.

You keep bringing up the point about the 30 seconds before the mutiny started. I'm not arguing that was when she failed. Holdo failed several hours before when she had the time to reassure the remaining survivors after Leia was incapacitated.

You keep mentioning Adama and I don't particularly want to get into a comparison because those things always get sidetracked. But he's massively flawed as a leader. That was absolutely the intention of the show. I honestly don't think you're being at all fair. You're waving away complaints about Adama but using them to fuel your argument for Holdo.

If Holdo had a line where she said something along the lines of, "I should have kept a tougher lease on Poe" instead of that silly "He's a troublemaker. I like him" line, I probably also would have been more favorable towards Holdo. Admitting fault is another characteristic that for me anyways defines good leadership.

And I keep bringing up Adama because whenever I watch BSG, it feels believable compared to when I watch pretty much anything Star Wars. Adama as a character sold me on the idea that he's a good leader, whereas Holdo just doesn't unless I'm willing to abstract away a lot of things and just roll with what the film wants me to think.

But I digress at this point. You and I both know the intent of the subplot was for Poe to learn his lesson. We simply have different thresholds for what we consider good leadership, which in itself ultimately just boils down to how well the details were presented to produce the intended narrative because it's pretty clear that Holdo was intended to be right all along. It just doesn't feel that way for me, which is why I'm so peeved about it.

I consider the narrative subtle when the intent isn't thrown directly at me from the get-go. At the very start of the film, Poe disobeys a direct order from Leia. At that point, it's pretty much established that there is going to be a subplot about Poe learning to be more cooperative and less impulsive. Part of the problem might be that it's handled so bluntly, or the fact that Poe is just so unlikable to begin with. I'm actually curious. Who here actually likes Poe as a character? Agreeing with Poe's decision doesn't mean you have to like him either.

I can never tell whether people who don't like Kylo Ren either don't understand what his purpose as a character is or don't understand why he is the way he is, because it's always one or the other.

Why does it have to be either one of these circumstances? It's not like they're hiding the notion that Ren is struggling with the dark side, or that he had a ****ty childhood.

I sympathize with Ren to a degree, but I don't condone his actions. The bigger issue is that I feel like I'm watching this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaOSCASqLsE

I am 99% certain that I'm not supposed to be laughing at Ren outside of the SNL skit. You can write a character that's struggling with a crisis, even one that's sympathetic, but it doesn't mean the audience has to like them. And really that's the issue I had the film. I mentioned this way back earlier on this thread that the pacing was all over the place. The only time I actually feel sympathetic to Kylo Ren is when I abstract him away from the film, which is also the same way I feel about Anakin. Conceptually, they are characters I should be caring about, but when I watch the movies, I don't feel it. And that's the problem.

So to be specific, I like Kylo Ren conceptually, but I dislike Kylo Ren when I see him in the film. Maybe I'd like TLJ more if I was reading it as a novel.