[Snarks]

I've said you have no proof that there is. I'm pointing out that you've made up your entire argument and that the film doesn't bear it out. That's not the same thing as making up my own side of the argument. It's nothing to do with personal beliefs and everything to do with the fact that you're arguing things not in evidence as if they were facts that should be obvious to everyone.

Did we not agree that at least 6% of the ship is taking actions that are actively detrimental to the cohesion of the unit, e.g. deserting or mutinying? You are making a value judgment when you say that 6% is insignificant. In your opinion, you believe that the number of people deserting/mutinying is not a problem. If you discount what I bring up as proof on the basis of your own evaluation and then proceeding to say I didn't bring up proof, then there's no point continuing this discussion. You are literally stipulating that your opinion and evaluations are valid whereas mine are not.

Akalabeth has basically got to the crux of my argument before I could. People have been deserting the ship. They are being followed by a ship with two mind readers on board. It would literally mean the end of the rebellion if they allow any deserters with knowledge of the plan to get captured by the First Order.

I already addressed this with my response to Akalabeth. If you're not going to address the response I made there, then I'm not going to bother reiterating it here.

I haven't said morale isn't at a low. What I'm arguing is that you don't have any proof that this lack of morale translates into a lack of faith in the leadership. Holdo is quite clearly doing something. She obviously seems to believe that her plan will work. That could easily translate into faith in her. Especially amongst the crew who know that she was Leia's pupil. The remainder of the crew have no other plans, so why would they be against the only person who seems to have a way out of the problem?

Alright. Maybe this is true, but aren't you also asserting things without proof from the film, such as Holdo being Leia's pupil? All I know about Holdo is that she lead a separate unit of the Resistance and took part in a major battle. And how do we know the remainder of the crew have no plans of their own and are just fine with following the leader? How do we know that Holdo is purposefully concealing the plan so that deserters don't get caught with the plan. If we want to dismiss anything that doesn't have direct proof from the film, then I don't think we can make any real conclusions here.

I did in fact said that Leia was partly to blame for the issue

You've missed my point again. And this time it's especially mystifying how, given that I was quite clearly talking about Poe getting his squadron killed. But to make things clear, Poe along with his entire squadron completely disregard Leia's orders and attack the dreadnought. This results in most of them being killed. Unlike Holdo, Leia does know Poe. If command is supposedly about people, surely this makes Leia a worse leader than Holdo. She has no control over the troops under her command.

But yet it's Holdo you've singled out as the example of a bad commander.

I feel like we're talking past each other at this point. You quoted me saying that Leia was partly to blame (which if it's not obvious enough, means she had a poor leadership decision there) and then proceed to say I singled out Holdo. So again for the record, Leia should have done more to Poe, but it's a shame that she got spaced out and had to be put into the infirmary.

You've missed my point again here. I'm simply challenging your assumption that Holdo is a bad leader. I never said you were on Poe's side. Look closely at my argument and you'll see that I've merely pointed out that since we're seeing things from Poe's point of view. Until Leia shoots him we're supposed to believe that he is in the right. Then we're supposed to quickly realise that wasn't the case. The film does a good job of setting up the former but doesn't do as well at the latter. You believe that Holdo was a poor leader because the film sets up that expectation by only showing you things from one point of view. We never got an objective view of what was going on.

Everything about her being a bad leader depends just as much on extrapolating and interpreting from lines given to us. As I keep pointing out, you have no proof that anyone besides Poe (and the people he convinced) had any problem with her.

I don't see how I can be against Poe's decision but also think his decision was in the right.

Am I really suppose to believe that Poe somehow only consulted the only people on-board who were dissatisfied with Holdo's command? Fine, here's my revised position using no extrapolation.

I personally think Holdo was most likely a bad leader. This is because at least 4.25% of the crew were dissatisfied with the situation on-board, willing to mutiny or desert. For some people, this figure is insignificant. But for me, this indicated poor leadership. How bad of a leader she is ultimately depends on how much higher the proportion of potential deserters and mutineers are. At best, I would say she was a mediocre leader since I guess 4.25% is on the borderline of acceptability given the circumstances.

I hope you see how this pretty quickly gets ridiculous. We have scant facts. I can just as easily argue that you have no proof that the First Order would be able to capture/detect or bother to capture any deserters rather than just blowing them up, that you're extrapolating that Holdo's decision to be secretive was a good thing. Without extrapolating, there is literally two factors to consider. A mutiny of at least 4.25% occurred, and she had a plan to hide out on a planet. And with only these two factors, I would say her leadership abilities are inconclusive, given that there are way too many other factors that cannot be evaluated with an opinion based extrapolation.

All that said, I feel like we have severely veered off into the land of nitpicking. The point of little details in a film is to convince the viewer or to put them into a certain frame of mind. You can argue that the film intentionally put us into a frame of mind that predispose us to view certain characters differently. And so yes, I can agree that the film failed to get people to side with Holdo. But I will also say it failed to get us to side with Poe. And if we take an objective measure that has no interpretations or extrapolations whatsoever, I don't think there's actuality anything to be said about Holdo.

And if this is your point, then I feel like the only actual meaningful disagreement we have in terms of actually critiquing the film is that you think they did a good job of getting the audience to side with Poe whereas I thought they just made Poe looked dumb and Holdo a mostly non-factor. So what's really going on here is that you thought the Poe/Holdo subplot was executed better than I thought it was, even though we both seem to a negative view of its execution overall. There's a fine detail here that I think is relevant, and possibly the only thing worth of value from all this typing.

For the first half of the execution to be effective, it is not enough that Holdo comes off as being in the wrong but that Poe has to also come off as being in the right. The subtle difference here is that I felt both Holdo and Poe were in the wrong. And in the second hald of the subplot, the film failed to convince me to think Holdo was in the right, and Poe still remains idiotic for me. Comparatively speaking, you hold the opinion that the film convinced people that Poe was right and Holdo was wrong, but then failed to make it seem that Holdo was right while making it almost ambiguous whether or not Poe was right.

[karajorma]

I hope you see how this pretty quickly gets ridiculous. We have scant facts. I can just as easily argue that you have no proof that the First Order would be able to capture/detect or bother to capture any deserters rather than just blowing them up, that you're extrapolating that Holdo's decision to be secretive was a good thing. Without extrapolating, there is literally two factors to consider. A mutiny of at least 4.25% occurred, and she had a plan to hide out on a planet. And with only these two factors, I would say her leadership abilities are inconclusive, given that there are way too many other factors that cannot be evaluated with an opinion based extrapolation.

I definitely agree with that. It's actually the point I've been making the entire last page.

Bear in mind that I'm not trying to prove Holdo is a good commander. I happen to believe that was what the film makers were going for, but that's not what I'm about. I'm trying to prove that your assertion that she is a bad leader isn't supported by the evidence in the film. That means I can extrapolate and you can't. Unfair I know, but you're the one who has claimed she's a bad leader and the film backs you up on that. I only need to show reasonable doubt.

I already addressed this with my response to Akalabeth. If you're not going to address the response I made there, then I'm not going to bother reiterating it here.

She didn't have to communicate the exact plan, but even offering the idea that there is a plan is far better for morale than her speech about having hope.

I did address that. I pointed out exactly the flaw in your argument when you said she just gave a speech about hope.

Hell, the speech almost worked! When Poe repeats the last line he does seem to agree with her. If he hadn't then noticed that the transports were being fueled he might have not gone ahead with the mutiny.

But let's address the other bit. There actually is quite a large danger in suggesting that there is a plan. If someone doesn't believe her they might still desert. If they get picked up and have their minds read, they might get the First Order wondering if there actually is any escape. From there it's just a matter of sticking a star destroyer over every liveable world and sending down some probes to totally **** up the plan. Probes are cheap, Vader sent out thousands of them, the only thing stopping Hux from doing it is the certainty that the rebels have no way out. Make a crack in that, and the whole plan could fall apart.

So while Hux may or may not be smart enough to figure all that out just from some deserter saying that Holdo said she has a plan, it makes perfect sense for Holdo to keep the fact she has a plan to herself and the officers she trusts. Even if it is damaging to morale. It's not like the people on the ship are going to do anything like mutiny (no reason to, they have no other plans as far as she's aware). But if she tells them there's a plan and it goes wrong, it's the end of the rebellion.

Alright. Maybe this is true, but aren't you also asserting things without proof from the film, such as Holdo being Leia's pupil?

To be fair, I'm probably reading too much into her comment about having learned from Leia. My bad.

And if this is your point, then I feel like the only actual meaningful disagreement we have in terms of actually critiquing the film is that you think they did a good job of getting the audience to side with Poe whereas I thought they just made Poe looked dumb and Holdo a mostly non-factor.

Let me ask you a question then. The first time you watched the film, did you think Poe's plan was going to work? Or did you believe that Holdo had something up her sleeve?

So what's really going on here is that you thought the Poe/Holdo subplot was executed better than I thought it was, even though we both seem to a negative view of its execution overall.

I don't have a negative view of the way it was executed. I liked it. I got it. But it appears a lot of people didn't and for that reason it probably could have been changed to make it more crystal clear. But the way it was in the film makes perfect sense to me, silly lines about Poe being a troublemaker and all.

For the first half of the execution to be effective, it is not enough that Holdo comes off as being in the wrong but that Poe has to also come off as being in the right. The subtle difference here is that I felt both Holdo and Poe were in the wrong. And in the second hald of the subplot, the film failed to convince me to think Holdo was in the right, and Poe still remains idiotic for me. Comparatively speaking, you hold the opinion that the film convinced people that Poe was right and Holdo was wrong, but then failed to make it seem that Holdo was right while making it almost ambiguous whether or not Poe was right.

Depends on what you mean by wrong and right. If you mean Poe's plan is the one that will save the day, yeah the film convinced me of that before pulling the rug out from under me. If you mean that his actions were the right ones for him to have taken, nope. The film didn't convince me of that because I don't think it tried to. We're still supposed to be seeing Poe as a hot-head. We're just supposed to think that for once his hot-headedness is going to save the day rather than ruining it.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Not sure how DJ is relevant. Poe transmitted information to Rebels onboard a ship at high risk of being captured. That is beyond stupid. Particularly when Poe already knows that Kylo can just mindrip **** right out of your head having suffered this in TFA.

DJ is the person who ultimately sold them out. I don't believe it's actually quite made clear how the First Order learns about the stealth transports, but it would make sense that DJ past that bit of information along when he was selling out. Plus, he is literally depicted as a sort of super hacker or code breaker. It would seem entirely in line that he hacked into the Resistance's networks and got a hold of the details regarding the stealth transports. And yeah, Poe is stupid and should have been locked up. What's your point there?

Dude you honestly need to stick to the film.  It's made explicitly clear in the film that DJ takes note of the communication from Poe.  That's all that DJ needs to sell out the transports. The bridge officer mentions something about scanning for cloaked ships and bingo that's it. Some off-screen stealth hacking did not take place.

The point is, it's ironic you're faulting Holdo for not telling Poe the plan when Poe demonstrates that he has no military acumen whatsoever, particularly when it comes to military intelligence. Regardless of how the First Order came to get that information, it is insane that Poe would transmit the Rebel plan to Rebel infiltrators onboard the enemy flagship.

People deserting and the seemingly lack of care about this happening is one reason why I believe Holdo's command was poor. She didn't have to communicate the exact plan, but even offering the idea that there is a plan is far better for morale than her speech about having hope.

The speech about hope isn't about morale, it's about ham-fistedly re-iterating the movie's theme.

How did Leia come up with this idea when she was in a coma exactly? She only woke up after the mutiny took place.  Preparations were already well under way.

She explained the plan to Poe, with seemingly no time to have learned about it after waking up. I suppose she could have woken up before, gotten briefed about the plan, and just hadn't had the chance to greet the rest of the crew. But that's a lot of blanks to assume. It seemed more to me that the intent was that Leia had it planned all along and that Poe's mutiny was him going against her wishes. Holdo was simply the trusted lieutenant to carry out her plans.

SO- instead of assuming that Leia woke up and learned about the plan. You assume that in the time between the fleet arriving behind the rebels and Ren's wingman blowing out the bridge, Leia formulated the plan and communicated to a captain onboard on the other ships? Have you heard the term Occam's Razor? Which of those two possibilities is more likely, especially in a Star Wars movie.

If there was a morale crisis, the film doesn't properly convey it except for the remark about deserters. The only thing it conveys is that Poe is repeatedly insubordinate.

Then we obviously have read the details in the movies differently. What do you want me to say at this point? The body language of the crew, such as Rose crying about the lost of her sister, likely reflecting that several people have lost loved ones, has put the crew's morale at an all time low. Slowly, one by one, the fleet went down from 3 to 1 ship. Each time a ship is left behind and blown up, the survivors are reminded of what seemed to be their pending fate. A bridge controller, someone who is in close contact with Admiral Holdo, is convinced that her own commanding officer does not have a plan that will save them and agrees to join a mutiny, a decision that no sane person would take lightly given the possible consequences of such an action. If these aren't signs that morale is low, then I don't know what you would consider them.

How realistic is it for a ship to go from disciplined to mutinous in a day? You've oft mentioned BSG, in that series one of the episodes has the Cylons jump in behind the fleet every 30 minutes after a jump or somesuch, this happens in the wake of their entire civilization being nuked out of existence, the fleet totally destroyed, millions dead. And in this pursuit no one can get any sleep, they're running on fumes and desperate but in that moment no one even considers mutiny. 

Compare this to TLJ where the Rebels just achieved a massive victory destroying the enemy super weapon, they achieved another pyrrhic victory defeating the Dreadnought and escaping yet in less than a day, the Rebel's TOP PILOTS mutiny against the ship's new commander? That's silly and ridiculous.  In 1904-1905, the Russian fleet with morale in the absolute gutters still committed to two separate battles, once in the Yellow Sea where the ships came out of Port Arthur after months of dropping morale due to a leader that was way out of his depth, and the next in the Tsushima Straights where the Russian reinforcing fleet sailed around the world to meet their doom at the hands of the Japanese.  Where were the mutinies here?

Mutiny's do not happen in a day. It's not realistic. So why are you trying to apply realistic command responsibilities to Holdo? Your commentary I think simply does not fit the subject matter.

You're also making assumptions about the film that are not explicitly shown on the film. All we see from the film is that Poe has a problem with Holdo, and that the girl on the bridge is on Poe's side.  We don't see the rest of the crew behaving erratically or mutinous.  Rose for example wasn't mutinous, she was doing her duty until for some reason she decided "hey I'm going to go AWOL to try and save the ship because some peanut lady in a hologram told me to".

Point is there is nothing realistic about the rebel military. Compared to the original trilogy, the military structure of the new films is a joke.  In TFA the rebel scouts compromised their own location. Then they decided the Starkiller attack by committee, trusting information from a traitor, trusting a major part of the plan to a guy who hasn't been around for years and that same traitor. They attacked the enemy base and their weapons weren't even good enough to take out the target.  What military would launch an all or nothing attack with so little information?

In TLJ Poe disobeys direct orders, gets a bunch of people killed, and is merely demoted. Then leads a mutiny, and is he executed? Nope. Just thrown in a transport and 10 minutes later he's leading the defense of the base.  He also allows secret information to get into Imperial hands? Any consequence? Zero.  So Poe is insubordinate, he's complicit with desertion, he's an intelligence leak, he's mutinous and after all that he's still commanding the defense and will probably lead the Rebel military in EpIX.  And in a military like that, you want to criticize Holdo's command abilities?  I dunno, it's very odd battle to fight in my opinion.

[Mika]

In this context? Safe **** would be the kind of movie that doesn't dare to imply that Luke never really overcame his issues or that he had difficulty transitioning from student to mentor.
Safe **** would be to take everything in TFA at face value and go the expected route with every mystery box JJA shat out (i.e. ignore the buffoonishness of Hux and turn him into the competent commander folks imagined him to be, give Rey some form of backstory connecting her to someone in the lore, get Luke into the fight as a new leader alongside Leia, have a bunch of cameos of existing characters like Ackbar, Wedge or Lando show up to suck fanboy dick...).
Safe **** is a studio so utterly controlled that nothing that would ever imply that the status quo may not be eternal can leak.
Safe ****, in essence, is making the movie you wanted to see, with the people and press releases you would have written. Guaranteed crowd pleaser. Also guaranteed to be vapid ****e.

[Obi] Good job! [/Obi]

And it worked oh so brilliantly! There's a reason why big corporations are afraid of changes: if Last Jedi had followed the above, it would not have taken the franchise behind a barn and put a carefully aimed bullet to the back of its neck. At this point Disney would likely be very happy had the safe option been executed. Namely, the safe option would not crash and burn the entire franchise.

At worst, AT WORST, Kathleen Kennedy presided over ONE (count 'em, ONE) movie that failed to make its money back. Overall, her work provided billions of dollars in revenue to Disney.

But she insulted you personally, didn't she, and that can't stand, right?

That's not true! That's impossible! --- And it's pretty obvious why!

So let's see the money: the IP cost Disney 4.5 billion dollars.

Force Awakens: World wide gross of about 2.07 billion dollars with the estimated budget of 200 million dollars. Net: 1.87 billion
Rogue One: World wide gross of about 1.06 billion dollars with the estimated budget of 200 million dollars (this I find low given the re-shots). Net: 806 million.
Last Jedi: World wide gross of about 1.33 billion dollars, no IMDB information of the budget, let's put it to 200 millions as well. Net: 1.1 billion.
Solo: World wide gross about 370 million dollars, production cost 300 millions. Net: -70 millions. [Source: IMDB]

Disney is about 870 millions on the red based on these numbers alone. There's merchandise, but their sales have gone down about 50 %, and that's at the advent of Last Jedi. Now here comes the shocker: Of the movie gross product, about half (45 - 55%) goes to the studio, the other half is split to the theaters. More on that here. So instead of 870 million on the red, it's actually closer to 1.7 billion dollars in the red based on the movies.

On top of that, Disney has invested at least 1 billion dollars to the Star Wars theme park Galaxy's Edge that's supposed to open 2019. Of course, that's just the up-front investment. The Star Wars theme park is of course expected to generate profit while having thousands of people on the payroll, typical Disneyland costs about 3.3 million dollars per day to operate. Disney gets about 10.7 billion dollars of annual profit from operating the theme parks to give you some numbers.

The big thing here is that Kathleen Kennedy has likely driven their investment to the gutter. It's currently roughly 3 billion dollars negative, this number not withstanding the projected future profits of the theme park. Wanna play the numbers game again?

It's also generally a good idea to try to expand your audience and keep it at a healthy mixture of old and new fans, not cater to the old fans exclusively.

Yeah, "generally" being the weasel word here. What actually happened was: no new fans, and the old people turned off from the franchise, likely for good. Road to hell is paved with good intentions, and business is about taking mitigated risks. Those nearly life-sized AT-AT's in the park sound awesome, but don't matter one iota if I don't want to give money to Disney.

You really need to watch more movies. Wasn't it you, a couple years back, who was having a moment of utterly insane opinions where you couldn't believe modern SF/F novels were comparable to old ones?

I actually watch a number of movies, but not in movie theaters since the last five years have been really disappointing and I don't want to support this superhero or John Wick BS they spew out.

Why do you feel alienated by the casting of a woman in the lead role?
It's worth noting that the quote you've referenced of Kennedy is her response to fan criticism.

Except, I didn't say I felt alienated by casting women in the lead roles. It's what LucasFilm and Disney have publicly stated. It's a PR stunt that attempts to spin things around and tries to apply guilt to the people who didn't like the movie so that they would at least shut up. It's similar to what happened with Sony and the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters. They blamed the fans for the poor success of that movie, claiming fans hated women leads. Didn't work well that time, and it doesn't work for LucasFilm and Disney either. Well, Disney and LucasFilm actually went even further and claimed bots were affecting the movie reviews (seriously!!!). 

[Grizzly]

So for Kennedy, girls cannot identify with Luke Skywalker. Keeping things equal, then men should not be able to identify with Rey. Obviously that's never been the case. For some reason, men have been able to identify with Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley and all the other well-written characters. I do expect women are actually able to do the same regardless of the gender.

Does it not strike you as problematic that your go-to female characters to identify with are from movies that debuted 39 and 35 years ago?

Nah, movies from the 80s like Aliens are genuinely better because they're about stuff like motherhood with subplots re: people screwing other people for the sake of profit. None of this femimarxist nonsense.

[Scotty]

Hey Mika I'm curious to hear what your analysis is when it actually includes the things that made Star Wars ludicrously successful, like merchandising or literally anything besides the movies themselves.

And, of course, the other way to read the numbers you just mentioned: Star Wars movies have recouped over one and a half billion dollars in post-expense revenue in four years which is pretty ****ing phenomenal.

In case it's not perfectly clear, the above is posted because your idiotic crusade to prove that this is all because a woman?!?! is in charge is ****ing disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself.

[karajorma]

The possibility that Star Wars is a long-term investment which will almost certainly worth ignoring. Why would anyone pay 4 billion dollars now for something that will make them 6 or 7 over time? That's just stupid. If you buy something for billions of dollars today it must make that money back tomorrow.

[General Battuta]

You guys can, again, just safely ignore Mika.

[Black Wolf]

Please now define "safe ****" and "forward-looking" in this context. What are they supposed to mean? With the cultural background of living next to Soviet Union and my parents teaching me the necessary media reading skills, my commie-radar is tingling when I read such vague and good sounding words. For them to have any meaning to me, they need to be defined. So what's this forward-looking stuff you are talking about? It sounds eerily similar to the "progressive movement" what I heard from radios back then.

In this context? Safe **** would be the kind of movie that doesn't dare to imply that Luke never really overcame his issues or that he had difficulty transitioning from student to mentor.
Safe **** would be to take everything in TFA at face value and go the expected route with every mystery box JJA shat out (i.e. ignore the buffoonishness of Hux and turn him into the competent commander folks imagined him to be, give Rey some form of backstory connecting her to someone in the lore, get Luke into the fight as a new leader alongside Leia, have a bunch of cameos of existing characters like Ackbar, Wedge or Lando show up to suck fanboy dick...).
Safe **** is a studio so utterly controlled that nothing that would ever imply that the status quo may not be eternal can leak.
Safe ****, in essence, is making the movie you wanted to see, with the people and press releases you would have written. Guaranteed crowd pleaser. Also guaranteed to be vapid ****e.

I really don't understand this line of thinking in a world that includes the MCU as probably one of the most successful film franchises in history (if not the most) whether you measure by fan response, critical acclaim or ticket sales. Comparisons between Star Wars and Marvel are almost cliché at this point, but the fact remains that they are two massive pop-culture film franchises under the same umbrella corporation.

I'm curious as to what you think of Marvel's strategy to date. I can see an argument where people would claim their films are a bit samey - and for a while there, maybe they were. Certainly there haven't been any Deadpools or Logans or anything that really shook up the superhero genre. But personally, I do see them taking risks, with the kinds of films they make (GotG, Black Panther, Ant Man etc.), with the settings (Captain America in WW2, Captain Marvel in the 90s), with the characterisations of protagonists (Thor in Ragnarok). For every safe, predictable (you would no doubt say boring) movie they've made (Thor 2, Iron Man 2, Doctor Strange, Age of Ultron etc.) there's been one or two others that pushed the franchise into new areas, be they unusual genres (Cap 1, Cap 2, Ant Man), new and unconnected characters and settings (GotG 1) or films like Infinity War that simply make no effort to cater to audiences who haven't been following the franchise. And they did all that while still making nearly universally well received, commercially successful movies that both the hardcore fanbase and the general public could enjoy and, critically, while telling a larger overarching story. They paid off things set up by other filmmakers in other films, developed characters consistently from film to film while allowing them to grow and change (compare IM1 Tony Stark to Spiderman Homecoming Tony Stark) and made an effort to follow rules established previously.

Think about Last Jedi in that context. To me, and a lot of other people who didn't like it, it felt like a complete and unwelcome left turn away from the story that was being told. Imagine if the plot of Avengers Infinity War had been "Thanos arrives, is quickly beaten to death by The Hulk with no explanation as to why he was collecting the infinity stones (which were actually just worthless glass by the way) or what his plans or motivation were. Meanwhile, Hawkeye has decided that he's going to nuke the Solomon Islands, Cap and Thor are just chilling on a beach somewhere, and we spend half the movie watching Tony and Pepper desperately trying to find a heretofore unmentioned macguffin in Las Vegas, which ultimately serves no purpose. Also, Bucky dies offscreen.

Would that have been good? Because it's clearly not "safe ****". At the very least, it's not safe. Movies can be "safe" in that they tell some variation of the expected story line while still being unpredictable, exciting and worth watching (see the infinity war we actually got). Or they can be way out of left field, with totally unexpected storylines that all but  ignore that which came before, and still be poorly executed, unenjoyable, bad films (see the Episode 8 we actually got, and I realise YMMV).

Ultimately, films exist to tell stories Film trilogies or franchises (at least the good ones) exist to tell stories that can't fit into a two hour run time, and stories have a flow. The beginning introduces the setting and characters and sets up the middle, which builds on the beginning and puts the characters on the path that sets up the end. Force Awakens did it's job. It introduced new characters, reintroduced and tweaked the established setting, and set up narrative pathways for the middle to follow. TLJ ignored or shredded those pathways, and basically left the characters with nowhere to go - it didn't do it's job.

Ultimately, I'm probably not going to convince you, and you're not going to convince me. I walked out disliking the movie, and nothing I've read, heard or thought since has changed my initial impression. I know it's a bad movie. You clearly feel the opposite. But I hope that you will at least realise that following conventions does not in and of itself make a film bad, and that defying narrative convention simply for the sake of defying it is not in and of itself positive. A bad movie that subverts your expectations is still a bad movie. 

[Snarks]

Alright, so there's two big walls of text to be responding to, and I'm honestly getting a little tired of all this typing. I've made my position clear in my last post in response to karajorma, so I'll only address things that I things that will actually contribute to the discussion of the film and isn't just nitpicking.

But let's address the other bit. There actually is quite a large danger in suggesting that there is a plan. If someone doesn't believe her they might still desert. If they get picked up and have their minds read, they might get the First Order wondering if there actually is any escape. From there it's just a matter of sticking a star destroyer over every liveable world and sending down some probes to totally **** up the plan. Probes are cheap, Vader sent out thousands of them, the only thing stopping Hux from doing it is the certainty that the rebels have no way out. Make a crack in that, and the whole plan could fall apart.

So while Hux may or may not be smart enough to figure all that out just from some deserter saying that Holdo said she has a plan, it makes perfect sense for Holdo to keep the fact she has a plan to herself and the officers she trusts. Even if it is damaging to morale. It's not like the people on the ship are going to do anything like mutiny (no reason to, they have no other plans as far as she's aware). But if she tells them there's a plan and it goes wrong, it's the end of the rebellion.

Fair, but only if you allow the audience to make extrapolations. If we allow this to be the rationale for Holdo's decision, then you would have to grant my extrapolation about the morale problem.

Let me ask you a question then. The first time you watched the film, did you think Poe's plan was going to work? Or did you believe that Holdo had something up her sleeve?

Neither. I was expecting Rey to come back and fix the issue. I figured Poe was going to have to dig a way out of the mess he created in the ensuring chaos. I assumed that Holdo had somekind of a plan, but it wasn't going to be an optimal plan that would save everyone. I wouldn't guess at what her actual plan would have been since there really wasn't enough time for me to speculate on that, only that I doubted she would have just been fine with outright suicide.

Depends on what you mean by wrong and right. If you mean Poe's plan is the one that will save the day, yeah the film convinced me of that before pulling the rug out from under me. If you mean that his actions were the right ones for him to have taken, nope. The film didn't convince me of that because I don't think it tried to. We're still supposed to be seeing Poe as a hot-head. We're just supposed to think that for once his hot-headedness is going to save the day rather than ruining it.

So following from my point above, I think this explains a significant difference in how we viewed the film. Also, thank you for making it clear here what you mean by saying "siding with Poe" because there's a lot of subtle nuances that that statement needs to take into account.

Dude you honestly need to stick to the film.  It's made explicitly clear in the film that DJ takes note of the communication from Poe.  That's all that DJ needs to sell out the transports. The bridge officer mentions something about scanning for cloaked ships and bingo that's it. Some off-screen stealth hacking did not take place.

The point is, it's ironic you're faulting Holdo for not telling Poe the plan when Poe demonstrates that he has no military acumen whatsoever, particularly when it comes to military intelligence. Regardless of how the First Order came to get that information, it is insane that Poe would transmit the Rebel plan to Rebel infiltrators onboard the enemy flagship.

Regardless of how exactly the information was leaked, the detail of note there is that DJ leaked it.

There's nothing that directly suggests that Poe was a potential information leak prior to him acting on his plan. Overly aggressive commander? Sure. But the military intelligence bit is only something you can conclude after the fact. Unless we're willing to grant Holdo had some special information over the audience, I don't see why she would expect Poe to be an information hazard. And again, the very same argument that holds that Holdo doesn't think there will be a mutiny is the same rationale that can be used to assume that Poe wouldn't be communicating to the enemy flagship.

SO- instead of assuming that Leia woke up and learned about the plan. You assume that in the time between the fleet arriving behind the rebels and Ren's wingman blowing out the bridge, Leia formulated the plan and communicated to a captain onboard on the other ships? Have you heard the term Occam's Razor? Which of those two possibilities is more likely, especially in a Star Wars movie.

I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect that Leia had a contingency plan instead of jumping out. She was the one who told them to not jump out afterall. This is a moot point anyways. I already conceded that Holdo formed this plan in my response to karajorma.

How realistic is it for a ship to go from disciplined to mutinous in a day? You've oft mentioned BSG, in that series one of the episodes has the Cylons jump in behind the fleet every 30 minutes after a jump or somesuch, this happens in the wake of their entire civilization being nuked out of existence, the fleet totally destroyed, millions dead. And in this pursuit no one can get any sleep, they're running on fumes and desperate but in that moment no one even considers mutiny. 

The episode 33 happened after Adama gave the speech about the exodus to Earth. Without that plan, there's reason to believe there would have been far more dissenters.

You're also making assumptions about the film that are not explicitly shown on the film. All we see from the film is that Poe has a problem with Holdo, and that the girl on the bridge is on Poe's side.  We don't see the rest of the crew behaving erratically or mutinous.  Rose for example wasn't mutinous, she was doing her duty until for some reason she decided "hey I'm going to go AWOL to try and save the ship because some peanut lady in a hologram told me to".

Again refer to my response to karajorma. This ultimately depends on whether or not we allow for extrapolation. But the fact that you're bringing up "for some reason" suggests somekind of dissonance between the film's intentions.

In TLJ Poe disobeys direct orders, gets a bunch of people killed, and is merely demoted. Then leads a mutiny, and is he executed? Nope. Just thrown in a transport and 10 minutes later he's leading the defense of the base.  He also allows secret information to get into Imperial hands? Any consequence? Zero.  So Poe is insubordinate, he's complicit with desertion, he's an intelligence leak, he's mutinous and after all that he's still commanding the defense and will probably lead the Rebel military in EpIX.  And in a military like that, you want to criticize Holdo's command abilities?  I dunno, it's very odd battle to fight in my opinion.

Yes, it is a hard pill to just accept that this is just how the Resistance as an organization works. But to be fair, with the number of people they had left in the end, it wouldn't make sense to not put Poe on the frontlines. He's flawed, but he's still supposed to be competent at some things.

I don't see why I'm not allowed to criticize Holdo in this regards. I criticize Leia for creating this hairball of a paramilitary group (but I guess we can say that's partly the fault of JJ Abrams really). I've already established that one of my gripes about the film is that there are a lot of seemingly incompetent people around, and it's hard for me to be attached to the characters as a result.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Yes, it is a hard pill to just accept that this is just how the Resistance as an organization works. But to be fair, with the number of people they had left in the end, it wouldn't make sense to not put Poe on the frontlines. He's flawed, but he's still supposed to be competent at some things.

I don't see why I'm not allowed to criticize Holdo in this regards. I criticize Leia for creating this hairball of a paramilitary group (but I guess we can say that's partly the fault of JJ Abrams really). I've already established that one of my gripes about the film is that there are a lot of seemingly incompetent people around, and it's hard for me to be attached to the characters as a result.

I just think it's a misapplication of knowledge. It's like having an art history degree and critiquing a child's finger painting (hyperbole). TLJ isn't a mil-sim, it's a space adventure. We can look at every military aspect of the film and probably find tremendous fault with pretty much everything.

Why is the DN not covered by the other cruisers?
Why is there no Imperial CAP around the DN?
Why are the bombers slower than space debris?
Why in space do they need to be over the target to release their bombs?
Why are the rebels launching an attack during an evacuation?
Why does Poe's squadron land instead of using their hyperdrive?
If the fighters have hyperdrive, why does the Rebel fleet stick around and endanger themselves to the DN's guns?
Why does the Mon Cal not have a CAP when Kylo attacks and destroys the bridge?
Why does the Rebel fleet not outrun the Imperials in normal space if they have faster ships?
Why is the Rebel fleet not fueled?
Why does the Imperial fleet not hyper some ships ahead of the rebels and close in from multiple sides?
Why does the Imperial fleet not launch 1000 fighters to destroy the Rebel fleet?
Why does the Mon Cal not have any sort of Marines or MPs to enforce order and prevent desertion or mutiny?
Why does the Mon Cal not have security cameras alerting Holdo to Rose and Finn's desertion? Or at least sensors/engineer checks of the pod's launch and roll call to see who's missing.
Why does the Mon Cal not pick up the outgoing transmission from Poe to the peanut lady, or from Poe to Finn & Rose onboard the Imperial flagship?
If the Rebel fleet is only tracked by one Imperial ship, why does the Rebel fleet not split up so at least two of the ships can escape?

etcetera.

[karajorma]

Fair, but only if you allow the audience to make extrapolations. If we allow this to be the rationale for Holdo's decision, then you would have to grant my extrapolation about the morale problem.

I've never said your point of view isn't possible, just that it isn't conclusive. You can claim that Holdo is a bad leader and I can claim she's good and there isn't enough evidence to prove either of us correct. You claim that there is a significant morale problem caused by Holdo which leads to people being against her. I can just as easily argue that isn't true.

[The E]

Ultimately, I'm probably not going to convince you, and you're not going to convince me. I walked out disliking the movie, and nothing I've read, heard or thought since has changed my initial impression. I know it's a bad movie. You clearly feel the opposite. But I hope that you will at least realise that following conventions does not in and of itself make a film bad, and that defying narrative convention simply for the sake of defying it is not in and of itself positive. A bad movie that subverts your expectations is still a bad movie. 

I wrote a longer response, but this is what it comes down to, isn't it.

I am not sure how you came to the conclusion that I am a habitual iconoclast for whom not following conventions is an overriding good; suffice it to say that that's not even close to true. It was certainly not something I ever consciously argued for (if my posts created that impression, I am sorry for failing to communicate my position adequately). It is obviously true that the decision when to follow expectations and when to subvert them is one that has to be taken with care; in TLJ's case, I find that the vision of Star Wars as presented by Rian Johnson was more appealing to me than Lucas' or Abrams' attempts, and that the expected outcome of the various story seeds Abrams laid down in TFA was less exciting than what we actually got in the end.

[Snarks]

TLJ isn't a mil-sim, it's a space adventure.

I did mention on like page 2 that I thought the film was enjoyable overall, if you just brush a lot of things underneath a rug and don't think too hard about it. Just personally, I prefer my films to be really tight about logic and plot elements. My ability to suspend disbelief has a strong correlation with the amount of carefully placed details in a film.

I've never said your point of view isn't possible, just that it isn't conclusive. You can claim that Holdo is a bad leader and I can claim she's good and there isn't enough evidence to prove either of us correct. You claim that there is a significant morale problem caused by Holdo which leads to people being against her. I can just as easily argue that isn't true.

I thought we moved pass this point. I've basically agreed to you when I said that if we don't allow the audience to extrapolate, then we can't say Holdo is a good or bad leader. I just think it's a weird argument to make since films are such short mediums that film makers often expect their audience to extrapolate to fill in the blanks. And it doesn't help that TLJ and Star Wars in general try to pack in so much stuff in each movie.

[karajorma]

I've given you a counterpoint to pretty much every argument you've made. I've explained in a perfectly consistent manner exactly why it would be a very sensible idea to avoid telling the rest of the crew that she has a plan, yet you still keep insisting you're right. If we're going to argue about what film makers expect, it's usually having the same view of their characters that they do. Holdo was obviously not meant to be a bad leader, so given that you haven't got proof she is, why are you insisting on interpreting things that way?

[Snarks]

I've given you a counterpoint to pretty much every argument you've made. I've explained in a perfectly consistent manner exactly why it would be a very sensible idea to avoid telling the rest of the crew that she has a plan, yet you still keep insisting you're right. If we're going to argue about what film makers expect, it's usually having the same view of their characters that they do. Holdo was obviously not meant to be a bad leader, so given that you haven't got proof she is, why are you insisting on interpreting things that way?

Let's back up a second because I think we were on to something, and now we're losing it.

I've agreed that under the framework in which we do not extrapolate beyond what is shown on screen, then Holdo being a good/bad leader is inconclusive.

If we do allow for the audience to extrapolate, then there are arguments on both sides on why she is a good/bad/neutral leader, and the verdict there is determined by what the viewer himself values or thinks is important.

If we're arguing about filmmaker's intent, there's another nuance that's important. If we want to treat the film maker's intent as the truth, then yeah we both agree that the film wants us to think Holdo was right. Now I haven't heard anything from RJ and company that explicitly specified that that was their intent, so in theory someone else can argue that they didn't intend for the audience to conclude Holdo was right.

Now if we're arguing about how well the film conveyed its intent (this is the important nuanced bit), then I would say it didn't convince me that either Poe or Holdo had the "correct" course of action at any point. I'm going to quote the bit where you mentioned this difference so we're on the same page.

Depends on what you mean by wrong and right. If you mean Poe's plan is the one that will save the day, yeah the film convinced me of that before pulling the rug out from under me. If you mean that his actions were the right ones for him to have taken, nope. The film didn't convince me of that because I don't think it tried to. We're still supposed to be seeing Poe as a hot-head. We're just supposed to think that for once his hot-headedness is going to save the day rather than ruining it.

The difference here how the film treated or handled our experiences. The film sold you that Poe's plan was the one that was going to save the day whereas I was expecting Rey to come back and salvage the situation. So if the film maker's intent was to set me up into thinking Poe was in the right (regardless of how I felt about it) and then in the wrong by pulling the rug out with its "ah hah" moment, it missed its mark.

And on this point, I think it's important to consider the role of the film maker. It is the task of the film maker to make his audience experience/feel what his intents are. It's not enough for the film maker to just throw high level concepts at the audience and expects them to buy it. What I'm arguing is that part of the film maker's toolset is to rely on the audience's ability to extrapolate. If you don't allow the audience to extrapolate, then you cannot come to any conclusions that can be concretely said to be true unless the film sticks in an omnipotent narrator that tells us that Holdo was right and that Poe was wrong. In the case of TLJ, the details shown to me lead to me to different conclusions and expectations than what we think the film maker's actual intents were.

Just as a small note: I don't watch films and start conjecturing what the film's intents are. Maybe a film student might do such a thing, but that's not something I think about until after the film is done because I want the film to carry my expectations and build the experience. With that said, I am human afterall, so sometimes I do break that rule. The Leia/Poe alerted me to the idea that there was going to be a Poe arc.

[Luis Dias]

My two cents is that the movie is all about misunderstandings and how nobody's really perfect, everyone shat the bed (some more than others) and everyone makes amends at the end, except for Ben, who still has a grudge at that point.

My only big no no is how Holdo dismisses all the mutiny with Leia with a snarky "it's Poe, he's alright" or something. Felt off. She should still be pissed.

I have a few of these "hmmms" all over the movie, but at the end I loved it.

[Grizzly]

You guys can, again, just safely ignore Mika.

But then we can't talk about the gender politics of the original trilogy!

My two cents is that the movie is all about misunderstandings and how nobody's really perfect, everyone shat the bed (some more than others) and everyone makes amends at the end, except for Ben, who still has a grudge at that point.

My only big no no is how Holdo dismisses all the mutiny with Leia with a snarky "it's Poe, he's alright" or something. Felt off. She should still be pissed.

I have a few of these "hmmms" all over the movie, but at the end I loved it.

I'm still surpised Poe gets away with a lot of what he did despite his plan getting near-everybody killed.

My big issue with the film is more the role of Rose. As much as I like the character, I felt the film spend too little time developing her and Finn, despite her obviously being a rather big deal now.

[Mika]

Hey Mika I'm curious to hear what your analysis is when it actually includes the things that made Star Wars ludicrously successful, like merchandising or literally anything besides the movies themselves.

And, of course, the other way to read the numbers you just mentioned: Star Wars movies have recouped over one and a half billion dollars in post-expense revenue in four years which is pretty ****ing phenomenal.

The possibility that Star Wars is a long-term investment which will almost certainly worth ignoring. Why would anyone pay 4 billion dollars now for something that will make them 6 or 7 over time? That's just stupid. If you buy something for billions of dollars today it must make that money back tomorrow.

Both you and Karajorma are getting there. Understand this: selling Lucasfilm to Disney deal includes everything, including the IP and the merchandise rights. It was valued at that 4.5 billion dollars by the markets - 4.5 billion dollars was OK for Lucas, and it was OK for Disney. That was the worth of the Star Wars at that point of time. No matter how big it was before, that was the price currently. Admittedly, it does look like a steal, but only if you think you'll be able to do better than Lucasfilm did. Disney obviously did, hence the deal.

From the management point of view everything seemed quite good and going according to the return of investment plan until Solo. However, the warning signs were there before as the sales of merchandise dropped like a rock at the advent of Last Jedi but I guess this was flagged as seasonal or as a one off case. The top brass is looking at the trends and customer satisfaction, and only now have realized the customer satisfaction of Last Jedi is low. This is now apparent with lackluster sales in home theater releases and also associated merchandise. Netflix reviews are not particularly good either.

What they see is a trend line pointing downwards and steeply; and it is a very worrifying for the top brass. Revenues have been on a steady decline from the Force Awakens, ending with Solo in the negative, the first Star Wars movie ever having done so. Couple that with the fact people are starting to leave Star Wars altogether casts a very heavy shadow to the investments in theme parks and in merchandise business. Who wants to take his children to Disney's Pansexual Land? Essentially, this is a book case of a management level failure. Not only was Last Jedi a poorly reviewed movie, but it also managed to damage the brand itself. And yes, I've been vocal about other management failures such as Nokia's Elop, but that didn't belong to Hard Light Productions context at all, so you never saw it.

In case it's not perfectly clear, the above is posted because your idiotic crusade to prove that this is all because a woman?!?! is in charge is ****ing disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself.

Yeah, right. Understand now that you've now done the same as what Lucasfilm and Disney did. The problem is, of course, that I haven't said that. I've essentially said that Lucasfilm is currently steered by a bunch of idiots, and particularly a CEO who has made bad business decisions after bad business decisions and allowed the brand to be damaged, possibly by ideological grounds. She has also allowed some identity politics to be inserted to the movies, culminating to a pansexual Lando and a droid-rights activist, which go against the family oriented mindset of Disney. It's likely the corporate culture of Lucasfilm has also suffered during this time. If you look somewhere around pg. 20 of this thread, you can see me questioning Johnson's and Kennedy's decisions already then in January, stating that what they are doing can quite easily turn in to a career-breaking mistake.

[Turambar]

We can all be safe, since Mika is on the front lines, fighting the culture war for us.