Last Jedi: Things I had problems with
Dec. 28th, 2017 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackThere was nothing I *hated* but I had a number of quibbles of various sizes.
The fact that two characters jet off to another planet in an escape pod definitely made me ask, could everyone do that so easily? I'm sure you can point to a reasonable explanation why not, but "oh no, the effectiveness of hyperspace is USUALLY arbitrary, but on this occasion 'why its not a plot hole' is a clever puzzle based on heavily concealed oblique hints about what's possible" just isn't persuasive. The characters aren't all hyperspace engineers either, why aren't they asking "how come for half of us, trying to get to another planet is a major plot point, and for half of us, we just hopped in a transport and got there instantly?"
The "we can track through hyperspace" could have done with more decent build up too. I guess it was supposed to hint at a traitor or similar? But seriously, couldn't we have had a couple of hops and then "oh shit, their tracking wasn't this good before, what happened, what now, we only have one jump left?"
The whole "disable the tracker" was good in places, but "hack the shields" felt really contrived too. I'm sure you could have had the same plot (need to execute subplot to cut tracking device and get into one-on-one fight with Phasma) in a better way.
It was ok, but I felt the fight with Phasma wasn't as big a point as it could be.
The "international hacker spy" character was a bit too ridiculous. I sort of liked the concept of falling in with DJ. And of subverting the "one person who can" idea. But it felt way too pat. As soon as they reeled off his credentials, I was like "this isn't a character, it's a red herring. And Maz isn't an idiot, how come the person they randomly meet in the cells can do what she thought only one person in the galaxy could? And how come they instantly decide "trust DJ" vs "dismiss DJ". Can you AT A MINIMUM ask a few questions about how he'd go about it, and see if he seems to be blustering or not? OK, maybe Rose nor Finn had the experience to do that THEN MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE SENT SOMEBODY ELSE, EH?
OH OH OH I FORGOT TO SAY I LOVE MAZ THANK YOU FOR MORE MAZ.
Also did I mention, their whole plan at the end of the film is "abandon the ships, the humans scatter and try to reignite the resistance elsewhere". How is that different to deserting? Why didn't Leia say, "yes, everyone into the escape pods"? Or at least, some people?
Also the whole tense extended chase scene in space would have hung together a lot better if we'd some understand why the first order couldn't just lightspeed a little bit to catch up. Like, it doesn't have to be detailed, but "they're faster than us, but hey, we can go above lightspeed", mention that, no, that doesn't solve your problem.
Some of Snoke's scene when he was levitating Rey was good, but I was a bit disappointed to see him in person. I really wondered if he was a 50-ft tall alien. That would be really cool. But no, he was just a human with a swelled head (hey, stop implying ugly=bad, ok!) We didn't even SEE the 50-ft version. Couldn't we have had a "man behind the curtain" moment or similar?
We don't see much of the rest of the first order. It's certainly in character for Ren and Hux to micromanage and bitch over each others' shoulders. But if they didn't, we'd have more of an idea that there was a hierarchy and organisation here, not just two insecure guys and a handful of stormtroopers.
I forgot to say, I loved Snoke tearing Ben a new one over the helmet and him smashing it. It's really interesting, because it could just as easily go either way, like Ren could build a legend around the mask like Vader if he stuck to his guns. But Snoke is undermining Ren to control him (or giving into his own urge to torment his underlings).
I liked the idea of the cave of the dark side. The vision itself felt confusing and pointless, though. Is the vision based on anything, or just "the force"? Does it just try to scare her, not to drive her to the dark side specifically? Luke thought she was lost just by thinking about that place, but then she seemed to come out fine, was it less dangerous than he thought, or what?
I also have some quibbles about the force in general. It mostly works by accepting whatever the current film pushes as the force narrative. But, like, is "falling to the dark side" like a specific thing which is more likely for force users? Or is it just like any other sort of non-magic power? If Snoke can do... I don't know, something that makes him emperor, I can see where the corruption comes from. But Ben is just, like, really good at swordfighting and some other combat stuff, he doesn't seem to have "great power". Is Luke's "he was falling to the dark side" a poetic way of saying he became a bad person? Or was he just wrong? Or somewhere between? The films do really quite well walking this line, but it still leaves me with objections (the same applies to the original trilogy, and other works I love like LOTR).
This isn't exactly an objection, but Ren telling Rey about her parents, on the one hand, is an interesting parallel to Vader telling Luke about *his* parents. In fact, I'm happy with the version, that you don't need special parentage to be special, and she just happens to be special. But on the other hand, it doesn't completely work as a reveal, for the same reason as Vader's reveal, but even more so, that (a) why the fuck would he know? if she was luke's secret son, or obi wan's secret great-nephew or whatever, would ren know? And (b) he's obviously trying to hurt her, why do we think he'd not just make up whatever he felt like. He's obviously pretty screwed up, she'd probably do better than he would using the force to "sense" a relation. At least with Vader and Luke, Luke's reaction and the force sense suggest Luke at least accepts it at face value (but I've cautioned first-time viewers, it's more satisfying if you don't question if Vader tells the truth, the possibility is not really addressed, and it's confirmed later).
OK this one rant is half my post
One of my biggest worries was pink-hair admiral. I loved her character. And they seemed to be going for a Poe-doesn't-trust-her-but-learns-he-was-wrong story. Which is fairly good. But that seemed really quite undermined by what actually happened.
One is, how common are admirals dressing like her? The rest of the time, the rebels (let alone the empire or first order) seem to have fairly traditional military dress. Poe knows something of her military history. That sounded pretty watertight. Why does he throw it out as soon as he sees she dressed differently, is he just bigoted? Alternatively, if he didn't know enough to already trust her as a commander, dressing like a socialite instead of a military officer usually IS a pretty bad sign of someone who sees their job as a political stepping stone, not a responsibility to be taken seriously.
Likewise, in most organisations, when you're heavily outnumbered and running for your life, the number one rule of command is, don't let people panic. As it happens, she had quite a reasonable plan. Which she kept secret for no reason. Surely the right thing to do is, tell people you have a plan EVEN IF YOU DON'T. That's the main decision we see her make, and by the standards of most organisations that have anything approaching a chain of command, it's an ATROCIOUS one.
Are we supposed to just not notice that? Or are we supposed to think her (unspecified) reputation is enough to keep everyone in line? Or is she an experienced strategic thinker, but an inexperienced commander, and she fucked up, but redeemed herself later? Or is this a retcon: the rebels, contrary to previous worldbuilding, have conquered the tendency for military organisations to have chains of command reinforced by extremely forceful imposition in times of crisis, and use a more healthy consensus thing instead? That would be nice, but it's woefully woefully under-supported on screen.
Like, usually, when you're under fire by an enemy, the absolute number one worst thing you can possibly do is to have two senior officers fight over what to do, pull weapons on each other, and enact a half-arsed version of both plans. Surely they BOTH know that? When he challenges her, the reasonable options are (a) shout him down by force of will, then explain her perfectly sensible plan when he's submitting (b) arrest him. Or possibly, (c) give him a nudge-nudge I can't authorize this but do it anyway (if you really need to with deniability). A conversation like:
A: You're dooming us all, you're a coward, you don't know what you're doing, I'm going to do this other thing.
B: No, you're wrong, but I refuse to explain in more detail. Go away and roam around the rest of the ship undermining everyone's trust in me.
is like the worst possible thing.
The fact that two characters jet off to another planet in an escape pod definitely made me ask, could everyone do that so easily? I'm sure you can point to a reasonable explanation why not, but "oh no, the effectiveness of hyperspace is USUALLY arbitrary, but on this occasion 'why its not a plot hole' is a clever puzzle based on heavily concealed oblique hints about what's possible" just isn't persuasive. The characters aren't all hyperspace engineers either, why aren't they asking "how come for half of us, trying to get to another planet is a major plot point, and for half of us, we just hopped in a transport and got there instantly?"
The "we can track through hyperspace" could have done with more decent build up too. I guess it was supposed to hint at a traitor or similar? But seriously, couldn't we have had a couple of hops and then "oh shit, their tracking wasn't this good before, what happened, what now, we only have one jump left?"
The whole "disable the tracker" was good in places, but "hack the shields" felt really contrived too. I'm sure you could have had the same plot (need to execute subplot to cut tracking device and get into one-on-one fight with Phasma) in a better way.
It was ok, but I felt the fight with Phasma wasn't as big a point as it could be.
The "international hacker spy" character was a bit too ridiculous. I sort of liked the concept of falling in with DJ. And of subverting the "one person who can" idea. But it felt way too pat. As soon as they reeled off his credentials, I was like "this isn't a character, it's a red herring. And Maz isn't an idiot, how come the person they randomly meet in the cells can do what she thought only one person in the galaxy could? And how come they instantly decide "trust DJ" vs "dismiss DJ". Can you AT A MINIMUM ask a few questions about how he'd go about it, and see if he seems to be blustering or not? OK, maybe Rose nor Finn had the experience to do that THEN MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE SENT SOMEBODY ELSE, EH?
OH OH OH I FORGOT TO SAY I LOVE MAZ THANK YOU FOR MORE MAZ.
Also did I mention, their whole plan at the end of the film is "abandon the ships, the humans scatter and try to reignite the resistance elsewhere". How is that different to deserting? Why didn't Leia say, "yes, everyone into the escape pods"? Or at least, some people?
Also the whole tense extended chase scene in space would have hung together a lot better if we'd some understand why the first order couldn't just lightspeed a little bit to catch up. Like, it doesn't have to be detailed, but "they're faster than us, but hey, we can go above lightspeed", mention that, no, that doesn't solve your problem.
Some of Snoke's scene when he was levitating Rey was good, but I was a bit disappointed to see him in person. I really wondered if he was a 50-ft tall alien. That would be really cool. But no, he was just a human with a swelled head (hey, stop implying ugly=bad, ok!) We didn't even SEE the 50-ft version. Couldn't we have had a "man behind the curtain" moment or similar?
We don't see much of the rest of the first order. It's certainly in character for Ren and Hux to micromanage and bitch over each others' shoulders. But if they didn't, we'd have more of an idea that there was a hierarchy and organisation here, not just two insecure guys and a handful of stormtroopers.
I forgot to say, I loved Snoke tearing Ben a new one over the helmet and him smashing it. It's really interesting, because it could just as easily go either way, like Ren could build a legend around the mask like Vader if he stuck to his guns. But Snoke is undermining Ren to control him (or giving into his own urge to torment his underlings).
I liked the idea of the cave of the dark side. The vision itself felt confusing and pointless, though. Is the vision based on anything, or just "the force"? Does it just try to scare her, not to drive her to the dark side specifically? Luke thought she was lost just by thinking about that place, but then she seemed to come out fine, was it less dangerous than he thought, or what?
I also have some quibbles about the force in general. It mostly works by accepting whatever the current film pushes as the force narrative. But, like, is "falling to the dark side" like a specific thing which is more likely for force users? Or is it just like any other sort of non-magic power? If Snoke can do... I don't know, something that makes him emperor, I can see where the corruption comes from. But Ben is just, like, really good at swordfighting and some other combat stuff, he doesn't seem to have "great power". Is Luke's "he was falling to the dark side" a poetic way of saying he became a bad person? Or was he just wrong? Or somewhere between? The films do really quite well walking this line, but it still leaves me with objections (the same applies to the original trilogy, and other works I love like LOTR).
This isn't exactly an objection, but Ren telling Rey about her parents, on the one hand, is an interesting parallel to Vader telling Luke about *his* parents. In fact, I'm happy with the version, that you don't need special parentage to be special, and she just happens to be special. But on the other hand, it doesn't completely work as a reveal, for the same reason as Vader's reveal, but even more so, that (a) why the fuck would he know? if she was luke's secret son, or obi wan's secret great-nephew or whatever, would ren know? And (b) he's obviously trying to hurt her, why do we think he'd not just make up whatever he felt like. He's obviously pretty screwed up, she'd probably do better than he would using the force to "sense" a relation. At least with Vader and Luke, Luke's reaction and the force sense suggest Luke at least accepts it at face value (but I've cautioned first-time viewers, it's more satisfying if you don't question if Vader tells the truth, the possibility is not really addressed, and it's confirmed later).
OK this one rant is half my post
One of my biggest worries was pink-hair admiral. I loved her character. And they seemed to be going for a Poe-doesn't-trust-her-but-learns-he-was-wrong story. Which is fairly good. But that seemed really quite undermined by what actually happened.
One is, how common are admirals dressing like her? The rest of the time, the rebels (let alone the empire or first order) seem to have fairly traditional military dress. Poe knows something of her military history. That sounded pretty watertight. Why does he throw it out as soon as he sees she dressed differently, is he just bigoted? Alternatively, if he didn't know enough to already trust her as a commander, dressing like a socialite instead of a military officer usually IS a pretty bad sign of someone who sees their job as a political stepping stone, not a responsibility to be taken seriously.
Likewise, in most organisations, when you're heavily outnumbered and running for your life, the number one rule of command is, don't let people panic. As it happens, she had quite a reasonable plan. Which she kept secret for no reason. Surely the right thing to do is, tell people you have a plan EVEN IF YOU DON'T. That's the main decision we see her make, and by the standards of most organisations that have anything approaching a chain of command, it's an ATROCIOUS one.
Are we supposed to just not notice that? Or are we supposed to think her (unspecified) reputation is enough to keep everyone in line? Or is she an experienced strategic thinker, but an inexperienced commander, and she fucked up, but redeemed herself later? Or is this a retcon: the rebels, contrary to previous worldbuilding, have conquered the tendency for military organisations to have chains of command reinforced by extremely forceful imposition in times of crisis, and use a more healthy consensus thing instead? That would be nice, but it's woefully woefully under-supported on screen.
Like, usually, when you're under fire by an enemy, the absolute number one worst thing you can possibly do is to have two senior officers fight over what to do, pull weapons on each other, and enact a half-arsed version of both plans. Surely they BOTH know that? When he challenges her, the reasonable options are (a) shout him down by force of will, then explain her perfectly sensible plan when he's submitting (b) arrest him. Or possibly, (c) give him a nudge-nudge I can't authorize this but do it anyway (if you really need to with deniability). A conversation like:
A: You're dooming us all, you're a coward, you don't know what you're doing, I'm going to do this other thing.
B: No, you're wrong, but I refuse to explain in more detail. Go away and roam around the rest of the ship undermining everyone's trust in me.
is like the worst possible thing.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-29 11:00 am (UTC)Hmmm, several of your quibbles bothered me less than they did you. (Though I've also seen the film more than once with helped with picking up a few of the explanation-bits that I missed first time round.)
I agree about Holdo not telling people anything being a crappy way to command. Poe (right at the beginning) is all "that's *the* Admiral Holdo? Of [some battle]?" so she clearly does have a reputation and one that impresses him. I'm going to choose to believe that she's good at command but not when she's just had a huge reshuffle of all her personnel and that's why she's crap at it in this film ... good point about her clothing, I hadn't thought about that. That's particularly odd as she's clearly been in the military for a while.
I was also a little unimpressed with the macguffin-ness of red-flower-lapel master codebreaker dude. However, I note that Maz says "there's only one person I *trust* to do that", not "there's only one person who *can* do that" which seems a much more reasonable statement (but I only noticed that second time round).
Tracking through hyperspace was apparently referenced in Rogue One as a hint that it would be coming in the future (but I've heard this from others, I didn't remember it myself).
The whole plan was "there's this heavily fortified abandoned rebel base on a planet that we believe isn't on their maps; it should also have enough power for us to be able to get comms out to our allies; let's try to get all of us there without drawing the First Order's attention to it" which is rather less bad than "let's scatter and try to reignite the resistance somewhere, anywhere"!
I liked the vision in the cave; the idea that sometimes you may feel like something is *totally* leading somewhere and you will *find the answer* and then ... oh. You don't.
Definitely agree about "er, can't the First Order just jump around in lightspeed a bit and get a ship on the other side of them?" - that's the weakest point in my opinion.
They do dismiss DJ, several times, until he lets them out of the cells, and then they ignore him again, and only go with him at the point where it's "be picked up by Canto Bight security (knowing your shuttle has been destroyed and you have no way to get off planet), or go with this random dude who looks like he'll take you off planet if nothing else".
Extra quibble: I didn't like that Rose was totally OK with the behind-Holdo's-back plan even though it's explicitly pointed out right in front of her that Holdo will never go for it. One of the things I like about Rose is that she seems to take duty seriously in her opening scenes, even when faced with a charming hero. That felt to me like a nasty fudge to make the plot work; I think the character they painted Rose with would actually have gone and told Holdo. I think this would have been stronger if Finn/Poe had deceived Rose into thinking that it was sanctioned somehow (at least until she was too far in to have a realistic prospect of turning back).
Extra silly quibble: Snoke is basically wearing a golden bathrobe. I find this slightly hilarious. (There are robes that say "gravitas", and to me, that one ... doesn't.)
no subject
Date: 2017-12-29 01:31 pm (UTC)I'm low on brain power so just one comment:
The whole thing with DJ could so easily have been fixed by him turning out to have lost the distinguishing-brooch-thing while gambling. If they'd done that I'd have been much happier. A rogue and unscrupulous international hacker spy down on his luck, that could have worked.
OK, one more comment:
Admiral Pink Hair (is she Holdo? I so need to watch this again) perplexed me a bit. Everything that you said makes sense to me, but at the time I couldn't put my finger on what made me uneasy about her. I suppose I had an instinctive reaction to trust Poe over her, and I didn't like that that was my instinctive reaction? The way it played out felt wrong too. But when it got to the bit where she spoke directly to Leia and volunteered to stay behind, Imy way of accepting the whole plot was to think 'Oh, OK, Leia is empowering women to be honorable commanders *and* dye their hair pink, I might like this after all!' (But this doesn't solve the planning problem)
no subject
Date: 2017-12-29 03:06 pm (UTC)That wasn't the original plan though - the original plan was "everyone sneak off, cloaked, and go to an old rebel base".
no subject
Date: 2018-01-02 09:52 am (UTC)[This film is far too long already — Ed]
no subject
Date: 2018-01-02 10:15 am (UTC)