Kojiro wrote: ↑2018-04-24 09:04pmI disagree. It establishes nothing but her presence at a certain event. Now if she'd some out in uniform,
covered in medals or had someone refer to her as 'the hero of X and Y' you'd have a point. But we don't get that. We get 'The line of succession is clear, it's Vice Admiral Holdo.' which is
immediately commented on by Poe in what is expositional code for
'I don't know this person'. Those are choices by the director, do downplay her achievement (if any) and to make Poe, our established proxy, unfamiliar with her. Imagine if, instead of Holdo it has been announced that Akbar was now in command? Or Lando? Fuck it, even Nien Nub would have come in with more established trust than Holdo. Surely you can see how such writer/director choices are intended to deceive the audience?
The fact remains that Poe specifically referred to Holdo's combat record, and that he was disappointed by seeing her in person, which implies that he was impressed by her reputation. Its vague, yes, but that's the obvious interpretation, and those are director choices also.
And its telling that your main arguments for the scene not establishing Holdo as a capable officer are "She's not in uniform" (falling back on criticizing her appearance) and "She's not an OT character). Which, yeah, of course an OT character would have a more established rep with fans. That's kind of unavoidable.
Yes, he does. He gives her multiple chances to explain. In the end his mutiny is only staged to buy them time.
He doesn't immediately mutiny, but he expresses disappointment in her after seeing her talk for a minute, then immediately questions her leadership, and follows up by almost immediately conducting a dangerous covert op behind her back. He was already challenging her leadership right from the get-go.
1:27:00 "We had a fleet and now we're down to one ship, and you've told us nothing. Tell us you have a plan! That there's hope!" Holdo has been in command for at the least 10 hours at this point, probably closer to 16. This is where Poe finds the transports are being fuelled after Holdo gives him the bullshit about hoping through the night.
"We're abandoning ship? That's what you got? That's what you've brought us to? Those transport ships are unarmed and unshielded! We abandon this cruiser and we're done, we don't stand a chance!"
That right there is the perfect time to tell him 'Oh by the way the transports are cloaked AND WE HAVE A SECRET BASE JUST OVER THERE.' Perfect. Time. But no, she doesn't. She let's Poe, and by extension the audience, remain ignorant. Cloaks are never mentioned. Again, this is to deceive the audience.
We're still coming back to the same point: the idea (ridiculous, in my opinion) that Poe is entitled to know Holdo's battle plan, and that Holdo is at fault for not telling him. Despite him not needing to know, the plan relying on secrecy, and Poe being a recently demoted insubordinate officer.
And yeah, I'm sure most officers would have a nice, patient sit-down with a subordinate who's ranting at them in front of their bridge crew in the middle of her crisis.
As I've said before, Holdo made a mistake here, I'll acknowledge, but it wasn't failing to bend over backwards to accomadate Poe. It was not brigging the idiot.
She's a new character clashing with an established hero character the audience trusts.
If your argument is "The audience is biased in favor of Poe because they know Poe"... well, yeah. Its the same reason Leia largely gets a pass despite her plan and actions being very similar to Holdo's. But this is in no way evidence that Holdo is incompetent
in-universe. I think we need to separate these two issues. Obviously the film is exploiting the audience's biases to deceive them about Holdo, in order to set up a twist. That's not in contention. But it does not follow that Holdo actually is incompetent, once the full picture is revealed.
In universe, sure she's no obligated to brief anyone (leaving aside that Rose must know about the cloaks) but part of leadership is morale and boy, she failed spectacularly there. Poe isn't a 'single officer'. Rose and Finn are with him, as are several others and we know that a guard is needed on the escape pods. So no, she doesn't 'have' to tell anyone, let alone the trusted hero. But if you want to go that path you have to accept she's a terrible leader who can't manage her own people- evidenced by the mutiny.
I like how you keep insisting that Poe is a "trusted hero" and ignoring the fact that no less a figure than General Leia had just demoted him for being insubordinate and getting a bunch of people killed. But I guess blowing up Starkiller Base gives him carte blanche to disregard the chain of command forever?
As to Finn, he's not even a formal part of the Resistance at this point, knows nothing about Holdo, never meets her, and its shown again and again that his loyalty up to this point is to Rey and Poe, not the Resistance or its cause. His going against Holdo says nothing about her leadership one way or the other, though it is entirely in-keeping with his characterization.
A few other Resistance personnel go against Holdo, yes. Leia backs her up. Most aren't shown taking sides at all. This does not in my opinion prove a general opposition to Holdo's leadership, nor, for that matter, does the mere fact that a mutiny occurred prove that the commander was incapable- sometimes things break down no matter how good the commander is, if the situation is that hopeless.
We've been over this again and again.
Given a shitty, cobbled together hyperdrive (such as the one on the shuttle Finn and Rose take) can get across the galaxy in 5-6 hours it's a short time span. The directorial decision to link Ach-To, via Force projection, strongly implies a sense of linked continuity- nothing appears out of sequence at the least. But in this case it simply can't be that long unless someone is deliberately stalling, which is doubtful.
Source on the quality of the hyperdrive? Just out of curiosity.
But yeah, high hyperspace speeds are well-established. And its obviously not a very long time. It would just be nice to be able to pin it down more precisely. But as I said, I don't think it affects the point much one way or the other.
You're conflating audience credibility with in universe authority. Even if the audience believes Poe to be in the wrong, they still trust he's a good guy and was doing what he felt was best for the Resistance.
I didn't mean to conflate the two, though I think the two have gotten a bit conflated.
I'm not contesting that the audience is meant to take Poe's side until the reveal. That's obviously the film's intent. But you appear to also be arguing that Holdo is incompetent/a bad officer
in-universe, and that's what I'm addressing here.
Poe's destruction of Starkiller Base may give him credibility with the audience, but its not a reason why Holdo should trust him in-universe.
Though for that matter, the demotion by Leia, and the reasons for it, should also be fresh in the audience's minds. Though genre clichés have predisposed audiences to believe that the rogue hot head who disobeys orders will turn out to be in the right.
At the very least, in terms of caring for your troops morale, she was incompetent, and yes, mutiny is a pretty good indicator that your crew is either a) treacherous and evil or b) has their morale in the toilet, and we know it's not a).
Or perhaps just that people have their breaking point, and that situation would try anyone's resolve.
Holdo did try to do the encouraging speech thing at the start (opinions may vary on its effectiveness
). After that, she seemed to be more focused on the practical issues of getting her people out of danger on a very tight timeline. Which, hard to fault her really. We also, again, don't really see much of how she interacts with the rest of the crew, beyond Poe.
Its probably fair to say that she's not the most charismatic or inspiring officer. I just don't think that rises to the level of being generally incompetent.
This is somewhat of a problem as it seems most of the crew were ambivalent about it, with only those close enough to Poe or Holdo bothering to do much while everyone else just continued doing what they were doing. Personally I think this is unlikely, I think a crew who has been given no hope, no plan, has their trusted leaders taken and finds themselves at deaths door is far more likely to be desperate than stoically proceed to their deaths.
Well... yeah?
I mean, I'm saying, essentially "The crew's reaction suggests that not everyone necessarily shared Poe's viewpoint that Holdo was leading them to their deaths." And your response is basically "Its an unrealistic reaction for people who believe they are going hopelessly to their deaths."
So... yeah? It seems like your kind of supporting my point, which is that the crew's actions don't really tally with the claim that Poe's view was generally held by the entire crew.
There's a ton of potential ways to explain it but we don't get any of them. We don't even get to see Leia and her speak prior to Leia's return, to establish there's any friendship there at all. There are so many ways a writer/director could establish Holdo but it seems she's literally plucked out of thin air- no prior mention of her before she assumes command.
I won't deny that there are plot holes in the film. At the same time, I'm not going to come down too hard on it for not filling in every blank in detail for the audience. Its an action movie, and not getting bogged down with minor details is not a bad thing, within reason.
Its a fine balancing act. I suppose there's room to debate exactly where the line should be drawn. Personally, I think Holdo and Poe not having previously met is a pretty minor plot contrivance, and not one that needed a lot of justification.
Should Holdo have been previously established? Yes, if the audience was meant to sympathize with her from the get-go. But they weren't. Again, I think that we have to separate two issues that have become someone conflated. The audience was certainly meant to suspect Holdo and side with Poe prior to the reveal. This is a separate issue from weather, with the benefit of hindsight, Holdo is a poor commander in-universe.
The problem here seems to be, in part, that the misdirection was so effective that a lot of the audience refused to accept the subsequent reveal and insists on treating the misdirection as though it were canon.
What? This is the perfect time to give over control to a droid! Or just the autopilot. Or just to leave the controls entirely. Holdo was able to come down to the hangar and say her goodbyes to Leia- who was piloting then? Either way, 'cultural reluctance' would have to be epic in order for someone to let themselves or others die for it and I really don't think SW is there.
I'm not saying it would necessarily be a bad idea to put the ship on autopilot (although there is still the possibility of a scenario where the autopilot fails and someone needs to take manual control). Though leaving a droid is arguably just leaving someone to die again, if you define Star Wars droids as sentient (that's a whole other debate, of course). But the fact remains that droid-controlled ships are something that is just generally not done in Star Wars, from what we've seen. Admittedly TLJ was an atypical situation, but I don't think Holdo's actions were out of line with the standard practices of the setting.
The question of who was on the bridge while Holdo was saying goodbye to Leia is a valid one, yes. Its the sort of detail most audience members probably wouldn't notice unless they were examining the film very critically, in my opinion, but having noticed it, it does raise a difficult question. So I'll acknowledge that this is a genuine plot hole.
Yeah sure, but that's fucking retarded. Do they not have a fuel gauge? Why the fuck have they waited until the last possible moment to evacuate? We're immediately told after it's destruction that fuel reserves are at 6 hours- meaning this is roughly 12 hours into the chase, which is ample time to clear out its crew of 170.
No one is suggesting that they waited until the last moment to begin evacuating. I'm simply saying that evacuations take time, and the battle takes place over a fairly short timespan.
That I raise the fact that the may simply have run out of time to evacuate, and you immediately jump to "they're stupid for waiting to the last moment to evacuate" is another example of what I mean by people immediately latching on to the most negative possibly interpretation of any evidence.
A better question is why they had such small fuel reserves to begin with. This I would probably explain by saying that they were forced to abandon their fuel reserves during the rushed evacuation from their prior base at the start of the film. But again, no such explanation is given on-screen, and I will acknowledge that this is probably a fault on the part of the filmmakers.
I also feel that I should point out that, while I'm aware that its a common insult on this board and I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, "retarded" is considered by many to be a slur these days.
Sure, but as I said, 12 hours to evacuate. Get the crew off then let a droid take over- that ship has it's own freaking droid bay even so they're definitely present. By all means, be the last one off but get off.
Which, again, presumes that they had time to evacuate. I don't recall twelve hours before the Ninka's destruction being specified, but even if that is correct, how many personnel are on-board? What about vital equipment? How many available small craft do they have to transport people to the Raddus (especially with the Raddu's fighter bay blown up)? Did the Ninka suffer battle damage that would hinder evacuation efforts? Do they have to transport wounded? Some personnel will have to remain at their posts to keep the ship operational (and man the guns, since they could come under fighter attack again) until the last moment. Etc.
Once the evacuation was finished, of course the captain should leave if possible. At the point, there's not really reason to even leave a droid.
And you're yet to provide one of these reasons why simultaneously claiming she's trying to save lives. No, a distrust of droids is not sufficient.
I have in fact provided a series of reasons:
-Cultural distrust of droids.
-The need to have someone on-hand to assume manual control if necessary.
-The possibility (for all the reasons listed above) why they might have run out of time to evacuate (which you then absurdly interpreted as "they're too stupid to evacuate until the last minute").
Almost like she knew they'd be betrayed and require some special, never before seen move that would just coincidentally happen to perfectly work! Or she was an idiot who chose to deprive the Resistance of a valuable officer because she couldn't trust the autopilot or BB-8 to keep the ship flying in a straight line like it already was.
Or like she didn't know what was going to happen, but knew that there was a possibility that something might go wrong and that the longer the Raddus was acting as a distraction, the better chance the transports would have of slipping away unnoticed, and acted accordingly.
We're not really shown how it all works, but she was a Vice Admiral as the commanding officer (captain) of the Ninka. Presumably her XO was made acting captain in her absence but either way she retains authority.
Well, of course the ultimate authority is her's. But its my understanding that an admiral's flagship will usually have a captain commanding the ship under the admiral. Of course, that makes sense when the admiral is responsible for a fleet. Not sure how it works when the admiral is commanding just one ship.
In any case, its fairly tangential to the rest of the discussion. Just a technicality that I wanted to clarify.
The action itself- stay on board a doomed ship when alternatives exist- is dumb. Showing multiple people doing it renders it no less stupid.
If that was what happened, yes, that would be very stupid. What is under contention is that their
were superior, viable alternatives. The film is admittedly somewhat vague on this point, so its likely that neither of us will be able to definitively prove our entire argument, barring the EU clarifying these points.
To me it appears he's trying to trick the audience into thinking there's no better option than dying on the doomed ship. In the moment of the film, where the audience has no idea there's a plan, this seems like there's nothing Holdo could do. It's only in retrospect, when you realise she had a plan all along, that you have to question why she let him die. I don't think Johnson is trying to make the audience think she's horrible- I believe it's an unintended consequence of her letting someone die without adequately explaining why he had to die screaming in a fireball.
I feel like we've got all turned around here. I thought the issue here was that the film was trying to fool us into believing that Holdo was a bad commander to set up the twist later on, and that that gave the impression that Holdo was incompetent/corrupt. But now you seem to be arguing that the film was trying to fool us into believing Holdo was doing the only thing possible, only for it to turn out in the end that she was actually a horrible officer.
I mean, I get what you're saying: that if Holdo let someone die when she could have saved him, she's a terrible person and a terrible commander. What I don't get is how Holdo's plan as revealed later in the film would avert the need for that sacrifice.
See above. 12 hours is a long time.
I'd appreciate it if you would cite where they said twelve hours before the Ninka died, but even assuming that that is correct, we have no way of really knowing how long the evacuation would take under those circumstances. The obvious intent of the film was that they simply ran out of time to evacuate, unless my recollections of it are completely off-base.
That said, you can certainly interpret the failure to evacuate in time as evidence of incompetence. I just don't think its as clear-cut as you're making it out to be.
That's screen manufactured desperation. They had plenty of time and it's onerous on the heels of 'Bad Poe! You got people killed!"
Again, I don't think that there's a way to definitively establish how long the evacuation would have taken, so I go with the obvious intent of the filmmakers, which is that they were doing their best in a bad situation and simply ran out of time.
See above. 12 hours.
I'm afraid I'm still not sure how this relates to Holdo's plan with the transports, or how that plan invalidated the need for the captain of the Ninka to sacrifice himself.
I suppose they could have used the transports on the Raddus to speed up the evacuation of the Ninka, maybe, though that would have risked tipping their hand to the First Order. Is that what you're getting at?
I think you'll find people entrenched on both sides. But how would you take it if someone implied you were only interested in defending it for dubious reasons? That's a rhetorical question, mind you.
No doubt people get entrenched in their positions. I'm sure I'm more defensive of the film than I otherwise would be because I feel that it is being unfairly attacked. But I don't think I've seen this degree of fan backlash to a film since... well, since
Phantom Menace.
That said, I made no speculation as to your motives, and I'm sorry if it came off that way.
I would perhaps be more inclined to extend it that benefit if it weren't a writer/director combo. What we see on screen is going to be 'truer' than a mixed comb where a director puts their own slant on things.
I suppose having a different writer/director makes it more difficult to determine the intent behind the film, but what we see on-screen is still what we see on-screen, and I tend to take it at face value unless I have a good reason to do otherwise. Though there are, of course, other approaches one can take.
Granted, TLJ is probably the most difficult Star Wars film to analyze, because it relies so heavily on misdirection, and there are a lot of subtle things that I missed the first time around.
Bad officer is a broad term and I really only apply it to her managing of personnel and morale. I do not, for example, nor have I mentioned her hair or outfit (other than to say above that a military uniform with awards would help establish her, which I think is pretty obvious).
I'm curious as to how you view her as a tactician in combat. Fax_Modem has raised some criticism of her overall battle plan, but I can't recall, off-hand, what if anything you've said on the subject.
I would agree that inspiring the morale of her crew is probably not her strongest suit, but I also think the criticisms are somewhat exaggerated, particularly given the severity of the situation she was dealing with, and the limited on-screen evidence we have to work with.
I emphatically disagree that she needed to say a damn thing to Poe beyond "Enjoy your stay in the brig."
My issue with the film is how she's used as a tool, her function in the plot because throughout the whole film, my SoD was absolutely shot. I only see her as the tool of plot she is and the contradictions that seems to raise. I would, however, love to hear your complaints regarding her.
Off the top of my head:
I would say that the strongest arguments against her leadership in-universe are:
1. The fact that most of the crew appears to have stood by rather than actively assisting her in putting down the mutiny. This is not as damning as if they had all supported the mutiny, but still could reflect poorly on their confidence in her.
2. That she waited until a large number of transports were destroyed before ramming the FO fleet. Hesitancy to engage in a kamikaze attack is understandable, and generally commendable, but if she felt that that was the only option, then she should have committed to it before her hesitancy cost further lives.
3. As mentioned above, not brigging Poe. I also think that while its understandable, and she owed him no explanations, she was needlessly argumentative in her dealings with him. Understandable, but either ignoring him or locking him up would likely have been better.
In terms of the writing of the character:
1. Her initial exchange with Poe, when she derisively calls him a "flyboy" IIRC. And Poe saying she's not what he expected or some such almost the moment he sees her. Maybe its just me, but I felt like they way they talked to each other had undertones of a gender conflict (this is true with both characters). It probably played into how politicized the arguments over Holdo sometimes become, because the film (intentionally or otherwise) set it up as a gender conflict between a female leader and a male subordinate, as well as a personal conflict and a differing approach to leadership. Those issues of gender conflict are worth discussing, but if you're going to go there... don't half-ass it.
2. The film could perhaps have done more to establish Holdo's actual capabilities as a leader post-reveal. In particular, by showing more of the crew siding with her rather than Poe.
In terms of the film being "dishonest": Not so much with Holdo's plot, but there was a lot of bait and switch over weather Rose and Luke would survive at the end, and it tried my patience.
All of these points, while certainly arguable, have more basis than the notion that she pointlessly let the Ninka's captain die, and are in my opinion not so clearly at odds with the intent of the filmmakers.
Is that so hard to understand? What prevented her from saving him?
This question seems to hinge primarily on weather they had sufficient time to evacuate. We can assume one of two things based on the available evidence:
1. They deliberately squandered their time, delayed evacuating to the last moment, and threw away a man's life (despite the whole focus of Holdo's plan, and a theme of the film, being that they are trying to preserve the lives of the Resistance personnel).
2. For whatever reason, the evacuation took that much time, and they simply ran out of fuel/time, so the captain died at his post.
I choose to assume the latter, as it is closer to the seeming intent of the filmmakers and does not require assuming either gross incompetence or deliberate malice on the part of Holdo or other Resistance figures.
Irrelevant. Bring him over with the rest of the crew until you are ready.
It all comes back to the same point- was there time to evacuate? This is impossible to answer with certainty based on on-screen evidence, but I prefer to favor the interpretation which does not require Holdo to be completely incompetent, a traitor, or a sociopath, and which does not contradict the obvious intent of the filmmakers and the themes of the film.
In any case, the subsequent revelation of Holdo's plan has no bearing on weather the captain of the Ninka's death was unavoidable. Either there was time to evacuate him to the Raddus or there wasn't. The subsequent revelation of Holdo's plan with the transports is, as you say, irrelevant.
Again, 12 hours in at this point. You're not wrong that the evacuation was just completed but this is another contrivance.
Arguably, but I don't personally that think its a huge contrivance, given the circumstances. I can easily come up with reasons why the evacuation might have taken a long time. I would say that I was able to suspend disbelief for this scene, but I can't even really say that, because I honestly don't think it even occurred to me, watching the film for the first time, that this was something I needed to suspend disbelief
for.
Oh come on, this is poor. We know they have autopilots, we know they have an astromech (if not more). We know that Holdo can be down in the hangar while the ship flies just fine. Are you seriously asserting that having a giant ship continue forward with its momentum is a task requiring a living person present?
No, of course I'm not arguing that, and to be honest, I feel that you are engaging in a straw man here.
What I am suggesting, as I've stated numerous times, is that there are legitimate reasons to have a person on-board to assume manual control if necessary. I'm also suggesting that the longer the Raddus is operational, the better the chance the transports have. Holdo might not have known that she would end up ramming the FO fleet, but a forward-thinking commander could anticipate scenarios in which having the Raddus capable of taking action might increase the chances of success, and plan accordingly.
I've already acknowledged that Holdo talking to Leia in the hanger is a plot hole, if in my opinion a fairly minor one. It doesn't change the fact that there is a good reason to have the bridge manned at all times.
I'm going to skip a bit here, because it all comes down to excuses why Holdo had to be on the bridge. Now to me, and I'm sure others, none of this cuts it. We don't even know why you can't just let it keep flying, let alone why the autopilot couldn't be trusted, why a remote couldn't be rigged up (hey they had time to rig up dozens of cloaks!) or why any droid, if not not an astromech, couldn't have done the job. Autopilots and astromechs are routinely trusted with flying ships- it's their fucking purpose- and to imply they're suddenly untrustworthy to the point of suicide is stretching it.
I've gone over most of this again and again. If you simply refuse to acknowledge the point, I can't help that.
I will simply point out that astromechs are routinely trusted with
assisting in flying ships- not with flying them without the supervision of a living pilot, and that equating the two is like equating a car with an on-board computer and GPS to a genuine self-driving car.
The only new point is the suggestion that they could have rigged up a remote control. Its an interesting thought, but again, not something that we often, if ever, see being done with Star Wars ships. I have no idea why remote-controlled drone ships are not a more common feature of the setting in-universe (out-of-universe, I expect its because of genre conventions and the fact that they want to have human actors in the fights for the audience to identify with). If I have to speculate, I would suggest that the risk of someone either hijacking the drone, or jamming the signal from the remote control, is deemed to be too great (we know battlefield jamming is a thing in Star Wars).
When Holdo is down in the shuttle bay and everyone leaves (1:37:00 or so).
You are correct. And I acknowledge that this is a plot hole, even if its not an SoD-breaking one for me.
I think we're honestly analysing it differently, with me coming from a more writing/constructing type angle while you seem more intent on enjoying the flow. I'll state I'd prefer to be looking at it from your side, but with SoD broken that's not really an option. Too many things pulled me out of it (and perhaps too many discussions afterwards about it) but I just can't see anything but badly constructed narrative any more. Holdo to me, is a bad plot device to forward a bad story, nothing more.
That's about right, but not entirely. We
should be able to analyze the writing of the film, and I enjoy a good analysis of a story. But part of that is taking into account the intent of the filmmakers, and in any case, I think that we should give the film the benefit of the doubt, and ask if there are non-stupid explanations for something, before concluding that it is simply badly written or that the characters are evil or stupid.
But yes, I do tend to be generous to new films, unless they are truly detestable. Particularly new Star Wars films, both because I'm a fan and because they tend to receive a particularly harsh backlash.
I also think that TLJ opens itself up to this kind of criticism by being a film that is so reliant on misdirection, by being deliberately ambiguous, and by attempting to be simultaneously an homage to and a deconstruction/reconstruction of the franchise. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad film, but its an approach that invites controversy, and will inevitably off-put many audience members. It took me two viewings to decide weather I liked or hated this film, and looking back on my thoughts before I saw the film, the things I wanted to see and the things I was afraid they'd fuck up, I'm still impressed by how many boxes TLJ managed to check on
both lists.