FaxModem1 wrote: ↑2019-08-28 04:11amFine, can they at least park correctly? No? We know Finn isn't a pilot, but Rose can apparently pilot. Why didn't she park, at least? I assume when she learned to fly, she at least, at some point, learned to park. And like most people who are proficient in the operation of said craft, know there are designated places to park, and designated places to not park.
This would be rather like watching bank robbers having their wheelman get his car towed because he parked in a "No parking" area.
Its a clumsy mistake, sure. But its one that I can see untrained people plausibly making, especially when they're on a tight timeline. So they didn't sit down and look up and read the local traffic laws while rushing off to save their friends' lives. I can live with that.
Or was it the OT gang all getting themselves into place? As they said, Luke had a plan. As people have stated, it is a plan.
If it was, then it relied on an awful lot of luck and coincidence (or Force foresight, I suppose, but even Yoda has trouble with reliable precognition, as he told Luke in the previous film). What if Jabba had just, say, decided to kill Leia on the spot? Or not take R2 on the sail barge? Or execute Luke by firing squad?
Leia, at least, sure seemed to me like a serious rescue attempt that went wrong, thus requiring Luke to intervene directly.
Yes, and there's obviously no difference between an emotionally compromised man scrambling desperately to free someone from drowning, and someone saying, "Screw it, let's hope they don't have a No towing policy."
Of course there's a difference. Just as there's a difference between a mechanic or infantryman, and a master assassin. My point is merely to illustrate, since you used Bond as an example, that even a highly trained, experienced, and competent individual like him can fuck up things he really ought to know.
Could have saved more if they had separated the fleet and gotten gas, reinforcements, allies, shelter, etc.
Possibly. However, if Holdo did not know how the fleet was being tracked, she might have been concerned that the FO would be able to track any ships that broke off to wherever (and whoever) they were going to. In any case, it is generally considered unwise to divide your forces against a numerically-superior opponent, is it not?
It should also be noted that the Craite evacuation plan seems to have originated with Leia, before they knew they were being tracked. Leia was then seriously injured, and Holdo took command, almost immediately after arriving in the system. It may be that Holdo, on top of taking command of a decapitated fleet in the middle of a crisis and having to prove herself, didn't want to tamper with her predecessor's plan more than necessary.
I think you can make an argument for either plan, and going for one over the other is not a clear proof of gross incompetence.
Fair enough.
I mean, you expect the little green muppet to be the wisest character. That's one thing I'm glad they didn't subvert.
Which makes one wonder why this has never been done before. Still, it's a valid tactic that either makes a pioneer of said technology, or it's a very dangerous trick that you can only pull off when VERY desperate. As I've said before, when Holdo wants ships destroyed, she knows how to do it. That aside, maybe she should have done that before she let the other two ships get needlessly destroyed? Especially since she was counting on the First Order to not come back and check out the habitable planets they could spot with the naked eye after the fleet was destroyed.
It looks like the plan was to evacuate under stealth and then keep the Raadus running until its shields failed and it got blown up. Starships blowing up probably doesn't leave a lot of debris or bodies normally, so it would appear as though everyone went down with the ship. There is still the risk of Snoke or Kylo seeing through it with their Force senses, but no plan is completely fool-proof against that.
Either way, the ramming definitely goes down in the "win" column for the heroes, and a damn impressive one. In hindsight, yeah, maybe she should have rammed first, but kamikaze tactics are generally regarded as a last resort.
But by being so coy about it that they lose people they could have saved by telling them, "Hey, I'm distracting your son, the Millenium Falcon is over there, get going now." to Leia. Instead, he gives her a projection of Han's dice to troll her when they disappear.
This also relies on Luke knowing that Rey is in position with the Millenium Falcon. But considering the abilities he's displaying in this film, I'm willing to give that to him. Unless that was accidental and he was hoping the First Order would surrender? Iunno.
I don't think they actually lose anyone after Luke shows up.
Anyway, out of universe, its obviously to preserve the surprise reg. Luke's illusion trick. In-universe... well, its head canon, but plausible, but I think Leia knew from the moment Luke walked into that room that he wasn't really there. She's Force sensitive too, remember? Do you think she couldn't sense that her twin wasn't actually in the room? If I were to speculate a bit further, I'd say that Luke might not have wanted the others to realize until he had Kylo good and distracted, in case Kylo was taking a look inside any of their minds.
Ultimately, though, I feel like this is somewhat nitpicky.
Yes, they do that, somehow. That does make me wonder how they pulled that off. Who talked? Or was it the hyperspace tracking technology acting already? The Empire had to scour the galaxy to find the Rebel base on Hoth, I guess probe droids are obsolete now.
I was referring to them tracking the Raadus, but as to them finding the base...
Well, there's a lot of ways it could happen, I don't really need it explained, but I do think the film's plot would have been stronger if they had explicitly discussed the possibility of a mole in the Resistance, on this and other counts.
Snoke baits Rey into a trap. I believe that Kylo was unaware of this until the throne room scene. That said, good on him, he's just a shade more competent than the guy with the shock stick who fought Finn in TFA.
Also, to quote a superior film:
Dark Helmet wrote:Now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.
Snark aside, Rey is trusting. I don't really have a problem with her actions in the film aside from lack of definition of who she is. It's Luke's journey as a character that I have a problem with. Rise of Skywalker seems to be focusing on Rey, I think. In the meantime, kudos Snoke, whoever you are. Aside from the fact that he did misread the situation so badly that he got killed for it. So, yeah, whoops.
Eh, in that respect he's no worse than Emperor "I'm going to turn my back on the man I just blatantly tried to replace while I torture his son in front of him" Palpatine.
Kylo knew they were drawing Rey in- he just didn't know that Snoke was facilitating the bond between them. Or at least that's the impression I got.
Yes, he did do that. Kudos.
So chalk another one up for the villain wins.
Yes, they caught the people who don't know how to park, and were riding on the seat of their pants. The cops eventually caught the Griswalds when they broke into Wallyworld too.
Passing himself off as a First Order trooper is actually something Finn knows how to do. Granted, they caught him with DJ's help, but still, I'm going to count this one as an FO win.
So, the seedy, untrustworthy guy that Finn and Rose wee sharing a cell with turned out to be seedy and untrustworthy? K.
Nice downplaying of the fact that he not only betrayed them, but managed to actually negotiate a deal with the First Order and apparently escape with his money and zero consequences whatsoever.
That's definitely a bad guy win. Many a big bad has dreamed in vain of achieving as much.
Yes, and thanks to Luke's trickery, it made him look like a fool. Kudos Luke. To be fair to Kylo, superior firepower has always seemed to work before, as shown in the PT with the Jedi running from things like Droidekas and being massacred in the Geonosis coliseum. Luke just outfoxed him there.
Which makes this the best example in the film of the characters actually being smart and competent. Both Kylo and Luke act intelligently, given the circumstances. Luke just plays the game a bit better.
Geez dude, no. If we're really doing this, I'll bring up your stance on things that needs to be corrected.
I'll make note that Holdo is incompetent at leading people, briefing others, dealing with subordinates, listening to other options, dealing with morale, and too casually okay at signing off on the deaths of people like the captain of one of her ships for no reason whatsoever. We've discussed this a lot, and you still don't recognize that being in charge means being responsible for stuff like that. You think people should fall into lockstep when they think they're in danger, even if they think their leader is going to get them all killed, even when evidence is shown that such things are happening and lives are being lost.
Now who's bringing in stuff from other threads?
See, this is what I mean about you making shit up, and ignoring evidence. Holdo did not "sign off on" the captain's death. There is zero indication that him dying was an intended part of the plan, vs. him simply not having time to evacuate (although the captain going down with the ship is an old, if stupid, tradition as well). You flat-out speculate and then treat it as canon fact in order to make Holdo into a cold-blooded killer, when her only given motive throughout the film is to keep her people alive, even at the cost of her ships (which probably factors heavily into her anger at the hotshot who just got a bunch of them killed).
Nor do I think that people should always follow the leader. If I thought that I'd be shouting MAGA in real life. But given that the chaos of a mutiny will actually make it much harder to deal with the crisis, they should think real hard before taking that step. "I'm not impressed with this person after one speech" is not grounds for a mutiny. Neither is "she won't tell me a plan I have no need to know, after I just got demoted and then misrepresented my rank". And that is really the totality of Poe's grievances against her. It wasn't the plan- he accepted the same damn plan when he knew Leia was behind it. It was a knee-jerk personality conflict. When Holdo did try to fill Poe in, he started ranting about her being a traitor on the middle of the bridge. His actions were not those of a rational man. He had reasons to be irrational, its in character under the circumstances, but it doesn't change the fact that he
was irrational.
We also never really see how Holdo interacted with subordinates other than Poe. The film deliberately gives us a circumscribed perspective of events prior to the mutiny as part of its misdirection. Any judgement of Holdo's performance should take that into account.
And we have indeed been over all of these points, many times. You know all my responses. You know that my position is not "You should always blindly follow the leader." I must conclude, therefore, that you are deliberately misrepresenting me.
Poe is a hothead who needs to learn to trust his superiors, learn proper Commsec, learn to question authority correctly and/or learn to observe what's happening right in front of him(such as fueling transports), and not getting people needlessly killed because he wants to prove that he can fight the bad guys. He does the last one eventually, yay for all the people in the Falcon who survived.
Finn and Rose need to learn to not park in non-parking areas, as that alerts the fuzz, and to not trust the guy sharing your cell.
Rey needs to learn that cute guys can be jerks who murder their fathers, but that's okay, she's going somewhere on her own. Where, I haven't the faintest, but we'll see. I really do have no problem with her character aside from not us really know what's going on inside her, but hopefully ROS will fix that.
I know exactly what's going on inside Rey: she grew up as an abandoned, abused child who doesn't know her family, has deep doubts about her self-worth and place in the universe, and is desperately looking to fill that void with any sense of belonging or purpose- which makes her impulsive, and prime recruitment material for manipulative scumbags. Its a character flaw, but its treated as such, and its an entirely plausible one. I didn't much like the Rey/Kylo stuff, but I've come around to accepting that it fits the characters well enough- and it culminates in Rey realizing that she can't save Kylo no matter how much she wants to, and walking away. Which is a message that I think needs to be repeated often, considering how many women and girls there are entering, or refusing to leave, abusive relationships.
Finn and Rose is covered above, for the most part, though I'll note that they didn't exactly have an abundance of options when they chose to trust DJ. But basically: two people with no training and minimal experience in espionage suck at espionage. Who'd have thought it?
Poe: Yeah, he's a dip shit. I accept it as plausibly in-character given the circumstances, and he does eventually learn the lesson.
Are there points I would have written differently? Yeah. Should the possibility of a mole in the fleet have been raised? Yeah, probably. Does Yoda's intervention raise some difficult questions about why it couldn't be done sooner (as does Holdo's ramming)? Yeah. Does the film overuse misdirection to the point where it inhibits clarity? Arguably. Is the plot an air-tight, perfect masterpiece? No.
But the notion that the characters are generally cartoonishly or implausibly incompetent, or that the choices made were simply a result of laziness by the writer/director, is in my view unfair, and I have cited numerous examples as to why I think its unfair, some of which you have conceded as valid. And I think that a lot of this stuff wouldn't get nitpicked as harshly if it wasn't a Star Wars sequel, because let's face it, most action movies (and most movies of any kind) don't have air-tight plots.