i blame you, casino planet. even though you are my favorite part of the film that isn't the reylo scenes. You Cursed Us All With Your Casinos And Space Horses
I basically agree with what I think the themes of that subplot are (beware the military-industrial complex, be kind and help people even if they can't help you in your immediate goals) and I think they're worth having in the film but they are... not worked in as well as they could've been.
Also that bit is one of the subplots that I did like A LOT. And I'm happy they went this route with Poe and not fanon Poe. Granted I didn't like fanon Poe at all.
I agree with you on that, but I also think that Holdo was a pretty terrible leader. She didn't even have to tell people what the plan was - if she'd made sure people knew she had a plan at all then so much bullshit wouldn't have happened. The Resistance isn't supposed to be founded on principles of blindly following your leader even when it seems like a terrible idea. Also Poe didn't really recieve any consequences. Maybe if Holdo had lived he would have, but Leia just kind of brushed off all the shit he did. All in all it was just a really unsatisfying, forced piece of conflict, at least to me.
The fact that they demoted him but didn't keep him off the bridge was kind of broke that entire plotline for me. I mean, sure, that plotline doesn't work if they don't keep drip-feeding him upsetting information, but given that the whole point of Holdo not saying anything to the troops in the face of dying morale was opsec concerns, maybe you shouldn't let the loudmouth hothead see even bits of the thing you're trying to conceal. I just couldn't get myself to care about anything happening on that ship after the second time he stormed onto the bridge and nobody did anything to stop him. What is this, a sitcom? "Oh, don't tell the angry blabbermouth anything about our top secret plans which we have displayed on the main screen." [canned laughter]
AND ANOTHER THING this is comparatively minor but why didn't Poe know what Admiral Holdo looked like before meeting her as she took command? He was clearly a favorite of Leia's and it seemed like she was grooming him for some kind of command position even before 99% of the Resistance died, so why the hell did he not know the most basic facts about an influential member of Resistance high command? The whole thing only makes sense if Admiral Holdo was originally a double agent who defected from the First Order, or something. It would explain her assumption that she would be obeyed without question just because she was in a position of authority as well as Poe's immediate suspicion and hostility towards her even before she refused to tell him any details. I would enjoy her character so much more if that were the case (Leia's double agent GF who came to love her adopted cause so much that she was willing to sacrifice herself so it would survive! Struggling and ultimately failing to overcome the mental habits instilled in her by the authoritarian environment she was raised in!), but as far as I know there are no indications in canon.
I have very mixed feelings about Holdo on account of, she broke the setting over her knee in her last moments. But on the other hand it looked metal as fuck.
Spoiler I mean, it has been established canon for quite a long time that if you try to hyperspace jump with stuff in the way, a lot of shit blows up. The issue isn't that it happened; it's why they didn't do it sooner. Considering that you can apparently get hyperdrives onto pretty small vehicles, you get a great missile at the expense of a hyperdrive. Well, I guess you also clog up a chunk of hyperspace that can now never be used safely again, but eh.
Spoiler: Re: Spacefights Well yeah Star Wars space doctrine never made much sense. But like, if you could do this all the time, you'd think the plucky rebels would have been using it to blow up Star Destroyers more often. There's a lot of suicide rammings in the setting after all. In fact, the existence of this kind of ultimate missile concept pretty much invalidates the entire Imperial doctrine of "giant phallic object to establish superiority." Because any two-bit freighter captain can now blow up your multi-trillion credit triangle ship using a navigator droid. Thus, everyone had politely ignored that bit of canon until Rian came along and pointed it out and now it won't leave. I don't know, maybe having Interdictors helps deal with it since they can stop hyperspace travel in a large radius by faking a gravity well signature, but then you'd have to explain why the First Order didn't have one of those in their big doomfleet. Or you could have it so that it only works really far out of a gravity well, but that still makes using Star Destroyers incredibly risky and cost-ineffective, and makes Hux look like a moron for not seeing it coming (which...fair).
Spoiler maybe it's something where you don't get nearly enough destruction unless you're using a REALLY big ship? at which point you're still sacrificing a flagship-sized thing, and ships are expensive.
Spoiler Imperial "build a bigger ship" doctrine has always been pretty dumb. That's kind of what Episodes 4 and 6 were all about. Perhaps, as @KarrinBlue points out, one could argue that it's too hard to get through shields using this method unless the ship involved is really big, at which point the First Order decides that it would be too costly for the Resistance to do this with any regularity and hence don't defend against it. Perhaps one needs to be within range of normal weaponry for it to work, so the time it takes to start the hyperdrive would normally be spent getting blasted by turbolasers. I don't know. The EU did some interesting stuff with hyperdrive weaponry, like the Galaxy Gun for instance. But overall the Star Wars universe, even restricting to just the movies, is totally incoherent when it comes to weaponry.
Spoiler Yeah, I think Karrin has it. And possibly the need to be within normal range, since the ship doesn't really interact when it's fully in hyperspace, only when its coming in or out of hyperspace. The Admiral Whatever was a pretty big ship, after all, and it didn't actually destroy the Supreme. So ramming the Death Star with a Star Destroyer sized ship (maybe a bulk freighter) would have made a decent hole, but not actually crippled it. Also... Maybe the shields were off or... god knows what. I will say that it looked awesome. The streaks of white followed by massive explosion... In other news, the bombardment of the resistance base at the beggining of the movie is basically Concentrated Essence of Star Wars Firepower Weirdness. Giant dreadnaught fires a shot, blows up a hill - cut to space where there's a giant explosion visible from high orbit...
does anyone still care about Kylo Ren's character arc? i kinda care about Kylo Ren's character arc Spoiler
Saw the newest movie, someone yell about how great the ot3 was with me. /yes there were some extremely dumb plot elements but WOW LOOK AT THAT OT3
Yes!!! I was jittering in my seat the whole time, the movie is ripe with prime ot3 moments, I can't wait for the fanfics it'll inspire!
Also: Spoiler: Plot spoilers You could tell Leia was supposed to give Rey her lightsaber, not ghost luke. It was a bit anticlimactic for me :( I miss Carrie, hope she's resting peacefully. I am glad they didn't replace her though, they handled everything very respectfully imo
My spoilery review, which is mostly centered on the ot3: Spoiler: spoilers Spoilery review: So the thing I want from the new star wars trilogy, more than anything else, is for Rey/Finn/Poe content. This is an excellent movie for Rey/Finn/Poe content! Rey being Palpatine's grandkid is dumb as fuck, but fine whatever, star wars has a lot of dumb plot stuff. I'm fine with the Rey/Kylo kiss honestly, it was a dumb decision Rey made bc of adrenaline and being tortured with lighting and literally dying, she gets a get out of one dumb kissing decision free card. Also he's dead now and can't actually end up with her, so fine. She can have space wine and ice cream and talk about it with Finn and Poe later. Rose and Finn didn't kiss or have any romantic interactions! As far as I'm concerned they had an awkward conversation about their own fueled by adrenaline kiss last movie and ended up good friends but not dating. Finn is significantly less emotionally conflicted about his kiss with Rose than Rey is about hers with Kylo. The second to last scene was of the ot3 hugging, I'm gonna call it canon and JJ Abrams cannot stop me.
