star wars 9 grim resignation thread

(oh and allowing kamikaze attacks is the least of it rly: obviously they should put hyperdrives on missiles.)

xp I mean, if “give me your fucking lunch money” is an ideology, fair enough, otherwise that might be the wrongest statement ever.

I’m sick of humorless pedants trying to make this long running multimedia series of pastiches of comic books and samurai movies be totally self-consistent in every aspect of its worldbuilding

I liked The Last Jedi, the next JJ one will probably be straight back to shooting without a script and fixing it in post but I’ll probably still find it enjoyable in the theater and it’ll probably still not withstand any kind of careful scrutiny from any angle, what is the problem if a Star Wars movie doesn’t make sense, I ask you.

yeah i do think the FO is m/l ideologically fine (parti de l'ordre) but the gap between ROTJ and TFA just isn't plausibly bridged imo. silby otm tho obv who cares. i mean i did care watching TFA. found that movie just repulsively decadent. makes scary movie 3 look like alexander nevsky.

1. one of the things that irritates me about fans who bicker about changes to canon is that the stuff they hold up as canon is stuff they would have, if it was new, denounced as heretical (and probably did, back in the day). god, how would these "just admit it's bad" people take "The Empire Strikes Back", which did just as thorough a job at fucking with fan expectations - more thorough, really, because at the time there was no precedent for it? when i hear this kind of "but CONTINUITY" bickering i just want to move on as quickly as possible to the point where we can ignore and laugh at these people, or at best treat their complaints as a wacky joke like luke snogging his sister.

there's also this assumption that characters will behave in ways that are logical to the _viewer_ rather than having their own, alien motivations. maybe there weren't kamikaze hyperspace attacks before because nobody had ever thought of one before!

2. in 2018 i don't think "why do people support the empire" is a question we need to watch a movie to answer. i really don't. in any case fandom has plenty of persuasive answers to this question - "the death star was an inside job", imperial media perpetuating the dolchstosslegende, economic essays about how building multiple death stars would wreck the galactic economy and make any post-imperial form of governance impossible.

3. the toy licensing thing is one of the biggest urban legends about star wars. after '77 when a bunch of kids got empty cardboard boxes for christmas they learned about the importance of toys to the line pretty quickly, but the notion that star wars was, from its inception, made to sell toys, or that george lucas made more from the toys than he did from the movies, has i believe been debunked.

film crit hulk tackled a lot of this issues in a recent essay, particularly this one: "there's also this assumption that characters will behave in ways that are logical to the _viewer_ rather than having their own, alien motivations. maybe there weren't kamikaze hyperspace attacks before because nobody had ever thought of one before!"

http://observer.com/2018/07/film-crit-hulk-the-beautiful-ugly-and-possessive-hearts-of-star-wars/

<3 Film Crit Hulk

yeah i actually read and enjoyed film crit hulk's essay last week (and then forgot i was repeating one of fch's points! obviously i agree). i think fch's point that people think the movie is "bad" because they don't agree with it, but it kind of goes beyond that for me, where you have people accusing characters behaving in psychologically plausible ways, not trusting their allies, etc., of being "unrealistic". the stuff backlashers are most adamant about calling "unrealistic" are things that are happening in the world right now. that's what rubs me the wrong way about the fans, it's less that they don't like the movie but they refuse to accept reality. this is why i think they are bad people.

at the same time i don't want to emphasize too hard the notion that star wars is about an alien society, because that weakens it as social/political allegory. backlashers who accuse tlj of promoting a women good/men bad agenda aren't really giving holdo proper consideration, because there's an argument to be made that she is, at the very least, a seriously flawed leader. chain of command (i can't believe these wehraboo shits don't understand basic chain of command) means that holdo didn't _have_ to explain anything to dameron, but her decision to not trust her underling, while certainly rational and well-motivated, was probably a poor one, one that revealed her inexperience. her engaging in a kamikaze attack is also not necessarily super praiseworthy. for all we know kamikaze attacks might be considered morally reprehensible in that millieu.

i am rewatching this week and i will acknowledge that it has certain flaws. particularly the casino planet sequence - while within the larger framework of the movie it's necessary, both from a pacing and from a character development point of view, it was markedly inferior to previous iterations of the sequence (any series that wishes to survive long-term has to adopt iteration). the shaggy-dog sequence really needs something like the absurd touch of the coens to work. also, the depiction of the child slaves came a couple years too soon - we would have had something better-rendered than fucking space newsies if it were done today.

there's so much else in this movie that does work, though, that it seems stupid to focus on the few substandard bits. god, at some point mark hamill actually learned how to act! that was fun to watch.

Wait, didn't this film come out just 7 months ago?

sure but it wasn't _filmed_ 7 months ago

the most underrated part of the casino scene is that little dude who thinks bb-8 is a slot machine

...who, apparently, was voiced by Mark Hamill

for all we know kamikaze attacks might be considered morally reprehensible in that millieu.

They certainly weren’t in the OT!

& certainly not so in Rogue One either!

the reasoning for not putting hyperdrives on cruise missiles seems obvious to me - they’re expensive and take time to spin up, during which sensors are able to detect their activation early in the process; the only reason Holdo’s maneuver succeeds is because she turns around the ship at the last second, after the FO officers have already decided to ignore it (“it’s empty”) and she’s piloting a massive vessel with incredibly powerful shield generators.

a launcher firing hyperspace-enabled drones would be a huge liability for any ship big enough to carry one. Flexible fighters that can dodge their way in close have a better return on investment. IRL, this is why we use carriers as flagships instead of big rafts covered in MLRS boxes (although yes, against adversaries with weak aerospace A2/AD, cruise missile destroyers play a very important role)

The slow bombers with weak-ass shields in the opening sequence make literally no sense to me though. Those things are trash, it really is a complete fuckup by the FO that they lost a ship to that run.

“Let’s buy a half dozen of something that’s worse than the Y-Wing in every possible category”

I feel like this scene and the salt-skiiing skimmers with their red plumes both offered that primal "HOLY SHIT AWESOME" which is one of the things I come to Star Wars for. And then you make up whatever explanation you have to make up in order to facilitate that feeling.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, December 22, 2017 12:13 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The only thing that annoyed me about that scene was that she waited so long to do it. She just stood and waited while the transporters got shot down.

― Frederik B, Friday, December 22, 2017 12:20 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

made up explanation: the transporters have to be a certain distance away or the polar-ray dynasphere effect of actuating the hyperdrive matrix will scramble their navigational circuits

― Newb Sybok (Doctor Casino), Friday, December 22, 2017 12:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

aren't the bombers just continuing the analogy to old-school aerial warfare? bombers are heavy and slow and need to be protected by lighter fighters while they execute a bombing run...?

The empire tricked out some TIE fighters as bombers as seen in ESB, when they were pounding that asteroid searching for the Millenium Falcon, not sure why the Resistance couldn’t have pulled off something similar.

oh who knows. the chronology and origins of the resistance and first order vis-a-vis the new republic remain totally obscure, so for all we know, all kinds of really great stuff got nabbed by the first order in the confusion as things split apart, or got wiped out between the movies, so what we're seeing in TLJ is sort of the last clunky scraps of the arsenal. another reason for leia and holdo to be pissed off at poe for sacrificing this gear willy-nilly!

Y'all are so great at watching movies

And you’re great at being a snob! Everyone wins

tie bombers had like three bombs in them and made the smallest dent in an unshielded asteroid, c’mon

and part of it comes down to tactics and scale. a single fighter going to hyperspace is going to make an instant impact crater on a huge ship and it’s a shit strategy, it’s a bigger missile even if the velocity is so high.
in a large scale battle between actual militaries, which is what the resistance feels like even if it’s a unsanctioned force, there’s the illusion of military rules that confer legitimacy. a terrorist rebellion sacrifices huge warships or makes weapons out of capital ships and a ruling republic doesn’t

commander dipshit thinks the first order is an insurrection against a regime and never considered he’s actually got the real upper hand that people would suicide bomb

I mean, that is what made the prequel trilogy both a tragedy of undercooked storytelling and too real (although still undercooked) when it came to intergalactic struggle — there was a republic that existed as a representative group, with independent states, impartial mediators in the form of jedi, and no standing galactic army. Someone swoops in and creates a struggle where the mediators become not-impartial warriors and they obtain an army, making the manufactured enemy seem legitimate and wrecking the balance

in the interim between movies there’s an untold half-cooked republic that doesn’t want an army, and the allure of allying with a strongman is inevitable because everyone saw what happened. So you blast the senate out of existence and suddenly it’s once again the armies-are-bad faction and the strongman who thinks any resistance is a legitimate army — and unfortunately, they mostly act that way because they want legitimacy. Until, boom, they have nothing left and they’re the rebellion again.

Star Wars goes, for better or worse, back to the idea of whether you can have a standing military claiming to represent a multitude of states and interest fighting against that strongman

her decision to not trust her underling, while certainly rational and well-motivated, was probably a poor one

I don't think "should I loop in the guy who got our entire bomber fleet and several fighter pilots killed, earning him a demotion? Nah." is a poor decision at all. For all she knew he'd repeat the same mistake immediately. Which he almost did!!

it didn't really cost them much either other than a short 5 minute delay while he attempted a coup

Holdo was entirely in her rights. Poe is a dangerous maniac.

what upset me the most about Holdo/Leia was the way they just gave him a pass because they still like him for some unexplained reason minutes after he just nearly got them both killed and tried to mutiny.

Poe being the face of the heroes is maybe the main reason i am not looking forward to 9. i just don't like this character. if he died offscreen in the intro scroll that would be fine w me.

he was a hero pilot who saved many lives in many, many missions. he made a grievous (and fatal) error, but it's not like it erases his past heroism in their minds.

I like Oscar Isaac as an actor but there's something off in the way the Poe character is written or acted that makes him very unappealing beyond "Hey! Handsome Dude!" Like they were going for Han Mach 2 and ended up with Cocky Bro.

Cocky Brolo?

I don't think "should I loop in the guy who got our entire bomber fleet and several fighter pilots killed, earning him a demotion? Nah." is a poor decision at all. For all she knew he'd repeat the same mistake immediately. Which he almost did!!

― Eliza D.

to reiterate i agree that she had ample motivation to not loop him in, but the effect of that was that holdo, a new leader who had yet to earn the trust of those serving under her, came in and said "OK, we're continuing our death march to nowhere, respect my authority." That's not really good for morale. At the very least she could have said "I have a secret plan I can't tell you about right now". and to reiterate i don't think this is a flaw of the _movie_ but a flaw in the _character_.

i'd like poe less if he hadn't (along with everybody else in the film) received significant character development during the film. on my second watch i admit i am getting a little wore out on john boyega's constant look of surprise.

it didn't really cost them much either other than a short 5 minute delay while he attempted a coup

― fuck the NRA (Neanderthal)

rewatched this section of the film today, not really true, his idiot plan meant that her non-idiot plan got given away to the first order, resulting in the deaths of about half of the fleet. poe's dumbshit plan basically got luke skywalker killed. that's what makes his character arc so satisfying to me - he lives in a world where everybody wants to be han solo and shoot first, and his arc allows him to be something other than a dipshit han solo imitation. i guess on rewatch i am starting to see why all the dipshit han solo wannabes hate it. yeah, this trilogy, and particularly this movie, focuses on new, young characters with abilities and motivations of their own - if your idea of a sequel trilogy which consists of the old cast getting together and reminiscing about old times i guess it's not going to be the movie you wanted. personally, speaking as a lifelong fuckup, the film's message that you can be a complete fuckup and still be a hero is just the movie i wanted to see.

idk how much I'd put that squarely on Poe, I mean, the initiative for getting on the First Order ship to turn off the light speed tracker came entirely from Finn and Rose. Poe just greenlit it and contributed the idea to call Maz. and while it is largely his burden as he was a Captain and enabled it to go forward, I'm not entirely sure he wouldn't have preferred that plan to Holdo's plan if he had heard both of them side by side.

It was a bit easier for him to accept the Crait escape when he was already in an escape pod headed there, and after he'd audibly heard Rose and Finn fail over the intercom, than it probably would have been had he heard both plans in real time when they were temporarily safe from First Order attack ships.

can't remember: does it ever explain why the rebel fleet all sticks together to be destroyed, rather than fleeing in all different directions?

No directions in space

imo the funniest part is when Poe finally learns more about the plan and he then immediately radios over to his friends ON A FIRST ORDER SHIP on an open channel and tells them what is up

like, jesus, no wonder no one wants to tell this guy anything

I take that back, they were heading to a first order ship, stranger in tow, where they could be captured

while i have some passing familiarity with military concepts like "chain of command" i'm not overall interested in shit like order of battle and i didn't go in to star wars looking to see a good war movie

this is why i don't believe in the notion of a "workmanlike" blockbuster - i think people have many different notions of what makes for a "good movie" and a successful blockbuster film needs to satisfy most or all of them

i think the backlash against tlj shows the impossibility of this. the things the backlashers expect to see out of a "star wars" film go beyond presumption - they run completely contrary to the requirements of a successful blockbuster film. this isn't limited to the right wing - the demands that the "doctor strange" film include a tibetan character and actor in a film that needed to make money from the chinese market were to some extent along the same lines - but this demand, while impractical, was not _unreasonable_. tlj backlashers are both - and the tlj backlash is by far more hateful and virulent than critics of "doctor strange".

a lot of these fans are still operating on the level of insinuation and suggestion, so let's bring it out into the open a little bit. there are a lot of fans who are mad about the consistently respectful and non-sexualized treatment of female characters in the film. they wanted to see daisy ridley in a harem girl outfit and chains and instead they got sexy shirtless hunk adam driver. i'm sorry, i know it looks like i'm strawmanning here because it's so ridiculous, but i'm not, this is what a significant subset of these fans actually want, and they're furious that they're not getting it. it goes beyond the level of "actually, a parsec is a measurement of distance" to an insult they cannot possibly accept the existence and legitimacy of.

yeah, i absolutely do believe the fight over star wars is symptomatic of the breakdown of a belief in the "common good", the breakdown of our common ability to recognize each other as, for lack of a better word, human, similar to the complete breakdown and subsequent realignment of every american institution along political lines in the 1850s.

...what?

I think you will find that if you turn off your Blackberry and cast your eyes into the broader world beyond, the TLJ backlash magically disappears. Like, I'm only aware that anyone even cares about the movie one way or the other because of ILX threads.

But yes, it's possible to find insane people with insane nitpicks regarding anything under the sun if you dig deeply enough into the fetid loam of the intranetz.

i absolutely do believe the fight over star wars is symptomatic of the breakdown of a belief in the "common good"

this is absurd.

it's a hugely popular movie series and people always complained about it. people gave them so much shit for ROTJ, Ewoks, Death Star 2, etc. ditto with prequels. the series began as a take on b-movies, which were always known for being these silly movies you pick apart. nobody cares if you question to logic of a Roger Corman movie.

it has been a hugely popular movie series all over the world for decades. hundreds of millions of people will not agree on something 100%. they never had and they never will.

add in the current media infrastructure that profits from highlighting deplorables and turning every single facet of life into a culture war.

i wish i could concur with y'all's positioning of the internet as a fundamentally imaginary space with no relevance to the wider world

btw adam your last sentence comes across as being fairly redolent of lugenpresse, i recommend you check yourself

It's not imaginary or irrelevant but it is largely ignorable and avoidable if you're inclined in that direction. Like, it certainly has a tangible impact on people's beliefs and behaviors but your proximity to the fringes might determine your perception of how extensive that impact really is.

If, for instance, I read a lot of far-right twitter reactions to TLJ, I might fail to realize that 999 out of 1000 people are completely unaware that far-right twitter reactions to TLJ even exist.

i spent most of 2016 ignoring maga chuds

it's true that i am a lifelong fringe-dwelling geek and that these things are probably more relevant to me than they are to anybody who isn't a fringe-dwelling geek

the normal people I know who don't read speculation about star wars movies on the internet got, at most, a viewing of the actual movie followed up by maybe seeing a couple "Fans angry about movie characters" headlines they browsed past but didn't read

this would include a few coworkers who have younger kids that are sitting around streaming the movie on netflix a bunch this week

https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-episode-ix-cast-announced

Luke da Ghost

Finding a truly satisfying conclusion to the Skywalker saga without her eluded us. We were never going to recast, or use a CG character. With the support and blessing from her daughter, Billie, we have found a way to honor Carrie’s legacy and role as Leia in Episode IX by using unseen footage we shot together in Episode VII.

Meh.