I love that with all of his experience since their last meeting, how out of his league Maul was trying to take on an older and more seasoned Kenobi.
There's also the fact that Maul was wandering the desert for weeks because he was just working off an address of 'Tatooine', and just having the name of a planet isn't all that exact when you're not in the movies.
1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. A New Hope
3. Rogue One
4. The Rise of Skywalker
5. Return of the Jedi
6. The Last Jedi
7. The Force Awakens
8. The Phantom Menace
9. Revenge of the Sith
10. Solo
11. Attack of the Clones
I'm probably like the only person who absolutely loves Attack of the Clones.
Yes, the romance is garbage and the dialog is cringe-worthy. But that doesn't ruin the movie for me. I absolutely love the bits on Kamino and even prior to that, the whole mystery of the missing planet from the holodex. I love the grand scheme that was perfectly put into place by Palpatine, and how Kenobi, Yoda, and Windu play perfectly into his decades old plot. I love the battle on Geonosis, and that moment when Yoda rides in on a troop transport to the arena, saving our heroes in peril, that's like a top 5 Star Wars moment for me. Maybe even top 3. Also: the Yoda lightsaber battle with Dooku.
It's so easy for me to look past the romance stuff in that movie. To me it's a gem. It's honestly my 3rd favorite Star Wars film, behind ESB and Rogue One.
Lucascraft on
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Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
Not sure about the entire set of movies but my top three are:
Return of the Jedi
Rogue One
Empire Strikes Back
Honestly though, some of the best stuff has come from the side content: Clone Wars, Rebels, and Mandalorian are some of the very best Star Wars has to offer and are superior to the majority of the movies.
I’ve still only seen RoS the one time and though I enjoyed myself on the whole, I certainly recognize the many and varied “issues” it has.
Here, for posterity’s sake, is what I would have done as an episode IX sequel to TLJ and finale to the Skywalker saga with the caveat that I am in no way a film writer:
TENSION!
Under the singularly focused direction of Supreme Leader SOLO, the First Order decimates and further enslaves star systems that oppose its rule.
The spark that began with the spreading story of LUKE SKYWALKER has faded in the years following his final galaxy spanning force projection.
REY, FINN, POE, CHEWBACCA, ROSE, and LANDO pick up the pieces after the celebratory funeral for their beloved General LEIA.
The Resistance has one last chance to defeat the First Order but they have to call upon an unlikely source as an ally...
*pan down to Korriban where we see R2D2, BB-8, and C3PO strolling up to a very large, creepy looking door where an eyeball droid pops out to greet them*
*Palpatine chuckling*
*hyjinks that does not involve super weapons*
*Ben Solo fucking murders everything that reminds him of the past, including those chumps he uses to gain power in the time before the movie, but it’s one by one so we get some badass and distinct Knights of Ren action*
*Rey does some training but realizes she can’t do the bringing peace by herself and through a struggle decides to train Finn as her apprentice*
*Chewbacca and Rose run the Millennium Falcon like it’s never been done before, turns out it is a very decent smuggling ship as they shuttle important cargo including people between systems, avoiding First Order capture, they are really good at this job*
*Lando and Poe have a kinship, Lando teaches Poe how to woo a lady, or a guy, or a calamari. Poe teaches Lando probably nothing, but it’s a fun relationship they have, I promise*
*Rey turns, falling to the dark side, she is scary as fuck. Ben Solo never achieves his desire to eradicate the past because it lives in his mind. They battle, one a sith, the other a lost soul. The immense struggle destroys them both*
*FN-2187, now known as, Skywalker Finn, takes up the mantle of Resistance leader, recruiting a new order of Jedi from across the galaxy. He was once a janitor, now a Jedi Master. He trains that broom boy to go from being a janitor to a Jedi Padawan*
*It was never Palpatine, just force echoes like the story of Luke spreading*
The film finishes with C3PO having his memory wiped, credits roll, stinger at the end of credits tease Obiwan show and Rian Johnson’s new film. That means this film would have been released after another year or two of production
I really enjoy the Phantom Menace. I put it above Return of the Jedi, and think that it’s the fourth best Star Wars film. The Phantom Menace suffers from having Annie and Jar Jar, but I’ll happily take them over the Jabba’s palace and Ewoks scenes. While the climax isn’t as good as the climax of Jedi, Duel of Fates keeps it respectfully close. And TPM Palpatine is fantastic (PT Palpatine in general is great, right up there with PT Kenobi).
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
I really enjoy the Phantom Menace. I put it above Return of the Jedi, and think that it’s the fourth best Star Wars film. The Phantom Menace suffers from having Annie and Jar Jar, but I’ll happily take them over the Jabba’s palace and Ewoks scenes. While the climax isn’t as good as the climax of Jedi, Duel of Fates keeps it respectfully close. And TPM Palpatine is fantastic (PT Palpatine in general is great, right up there with PT Kenobi).
To be fair to Return of the Jedi, most of those Jabba Palace scenes that I'm pretty sure you're thinking of weren't in the original version.
It's amazing how a badly choreographed CGI musical number plopped in the middle can destroy any tension and plot progression.
+11
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SixCaches Tweets in the mainframe cyberhexRegistered Userregular
edited December 2019
Here’s probably how I’d tier the movies, and I’m going with original releases since I think every Special Edition/iteration is worse than the original releases.
Great
A New Hope
The Empire Strikes Back
Both are great movies that I don’t really have any issues with. A New Hope suffers in the Special Edition and later incarnations.
I’ll put it on from time to time
Rogue One
Return of the Jedi
Fun but flawed movies. I think Rogue One suffers from from story contrivances that bother me more than other people. Jedi probably benefits from the rose-colored glasses I view it through, as it was the most technically-mature of the OT and I just loved everything about it as a kid. The additions to Jedi, specifically in Jabba’s Palace, make it a much worse film and I’d probably knock that version down a peg.
I’ll put on specific parts from time to time
Solo
The Force Awakens
Return of the Sith
These all have their merits but also have serious flaws in different ways.
I can cling to something I like
The Last Jedi
The Phantom Menace (mostly because of nostalgia)
TLJ is a gorgeous movie with some neat ideas that has too much, “That’s now how my Star Wars works!” for me to enjoy it all the way through. That’s my challenge. TPM is a mess of a story but I’m not sure I’ve ever been more hyped for a movie to come out and I’m willing to overlook quite a bit. I generally agree with every criticism of it but enjoy it anyway.
It’s almost all cringe
Attack of the Clones
Rise of Skywalker
I like AotC and RoS about the same but for different reasons. AotC has an ok story (I think, it’s been a while) but the execution is just a disaster. RoS is the opposite. Not having much distance from RoS means I may come back to it and enjoy it more over time, but there’s so much about the story. I think both have moments I enjoy but not enough of them for me to want to watch them. We’ll see how i feel when RoS is available at home.
I’d probably put The Mandalorian in that second tier—really good but flawed. If that’s the future of Star Wars, cool.
Man, every time I’ve ever ranked or discussed the relative merits of the films, it never even occurred to me to think about the special editions.
Jedi is my favorite film to watch, but the real version is the only one that ‘exists’ in my mind space. The special edition version would drop it to fourth or fifth.
+4
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
I've never really liked the idea of ranking Star Wars movies in a vacuum like that. Star Wars movies should be ranked along with other movies in the genre and era. like Logan's Run or Last Starfighter.
What I want from Rian Johnson's future Star Wars project:
Knives Out in space.
I just saw Knives Out and given the quality of that film I wonder if Johnson would've benefited from being given more time to write TLJ to clean up some of its issues.
I don't even rank star wars films. It's not like I'm going to watch the best ones out of order over and over again
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Honestly, thinking about it now, since the sequel trilogy is over I will probably want to marathon it just to catch the things I missed in the theatre, but I doubt I'm going watch any of them repeatedly otherwise. The way that I still will with the OT. Which, basically says it all about the new films for me.
I love that with all of his experience since their last meeting, how out of his league Maul was trying to take on an older and more seasoned Kenobi.
The Samurai vibes for that fight always reminded me of one of my favorite films/book duels. This is from Musashi, and aside from some kind of questionable camerawork, I think it’s a great example of how some of best the fights in Star Wars have worked:
Fight starts at around the 2:00 mark, but I think the whole thing is worth a watch. Even the writing wouldn’t be out of place in this universe (which makes a lot of sense, inspiration wise).
I like in that final Obi-Wan vs Maul duel, Obi-Wan switches from his ROTS movie stance to Qui-Gon’s stance from when Maul killed him in TPM. Then, Maul goes for the same hit-to-the-face-and-stun move that killed Qui-Gon, except it’s against a wiser and older Obi-Wan and he no-sells it.
It shows that Maul is unable to let go of his hate and anger, dooming him to being predictable because his unwillingness to evolve beyond his past. Obi-Wan however has moved beyond old angers and only gets serious once Maul correctly deduces Luke, because Obi-Wan is in the present and protecting the future, he plays Maul like a fine tuned violin.
That is how you tell story with a fight scene!
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
So I don't think TLJ was a perfect movie. It had a lot of things that didn't make sense and/or were out of bounds of established Star Wars universe rules.
-Yoda's force ghost causing a lightning strike.
-Bridging two people together with the force to the point that their physical beings can interact/transfer (the water on Kylo's glove)
-Leia using the force to Mary Poppins her way back into a spaceship after she had been exposed to open space
It also had some plot points that didn't make a lot of sense.
-Admiral Holdo's complete lack of explaining the plan to her highest ranking officers and staff
-Why Finn and Rose chose to trust a rando that they literally met in prison
-Why they didn't load all their shuttles and hyperspace in 8 directions at the start of the space chase
But, while I do consider the above list of flaws to hurt the movie and be fairly annoying on subsequent re-watches, there are things that Rian Johnson did that I honestly do not consider flaws in the movie.
Subverting expectations is okay!
-Luke's realistic outlook and pragmatism made a lot of sense. Rey's hope that he would be the fairy-tale savior that they needed was unrealistic and I honestly appreciated that Rian went the "realistic" approach and acknowledged that one guy with a laser sword was not going to win them a war. I liked that.
-I also liked the concept of the struggle between hothead heroes (Poe) and the wisdom of established leadership (Leia). That was a good plot point and was honestly a perfect Tee Up for a great character arc for Poe. In Force Awakens he was kind of a one sided character. He was a hotshot pilot and that was it. That was his entire personality. Rian Johnson actually managed to make him interesting. But sadly JJ threw that away and went back to a Poe who can do no wrong and always does amazing things with zero consequences and is a static, one sided character
-I liked that he made Rey's parents out to be nobody's because at the end of TLJ, Rey had a realization that her past does not define her. Her own choices do. And she chose to be a hero. That was good stuff.
And I feel like JJ went way out of his way to undo things that did not need to be undone. Rise would have been a much better film if they hadn't have spent the first 60 minutes undoing everything from the previous film. Honestly the stuff that they undid did not need to be undone, and the annoying plothole stuff from TLJ could have been easily ignored without a bunch of retcons.
-Admiral Holdo's complete lack of explaining the plan to her highest ranking officers and staff
-Why Finn and Rose chose to trust a rando that they literally met in prison
-Why they didn't load all their shuttles and hyperspace in 8 directions at the start of the space chase
Concerns there was a spy
Lack of options. They were on a tight clock and local security was on to them.
Short range meant theyd be easily found and wiped out one by one.
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ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
There was no fucking point to bringing back Kylo’s hat.
He randomly wore it like 2 times.
It was an important part of the themes of TLJ, and thus had to be refuted.
The thing about that, is that it's one of the less egregious parts.
If the movie hadn't been garbage it could have been important symbolically. Kylo Ren relapsing into his old ways by putting on his old mask, hastily reforged, to hide his true face, but there are cracks showing, and it wouldn't take much to break it again...
It's not a bad bit of symbolism. But that's trusting a guy with as shallow an insight as JJ to think of that. Although in fairness it's more likely the costume designer's idea. I've seen the special features for the Fifty Shades movie and the costumers even on that film take the opportunity to make every character's clothing in every scene an expression of their emotional state. But they can only go as far as they're allowed to by production design.
"Give Rey her TFA outfit back but make it all white", e.g., doesn't leave much wiggle room.
-Admiral Holdo's complete lack of explaining the plan to her highest ranking officers and staff
-Why Finn and Rose chose to trust a rando that they literally met in prison
-Why they didn't load all their shuttles and hyperspace in 8 directions at the start of the space chase
Concerns there was a spy
Lack of options. They were on a tight clock and local security was on to them.
Short range meant theyd be easily found and wiped out one by one.
By the point that Holdo took command, they were already well aware of the fact that the First Order was tracking them through hyperspace. There was no need for secrecy in the plan and a spy in their midst was not a concern. I'm not even saying she should have told everybody on board the ship what her plan was. I'm saying she should have told her highest ranking officers. That would have prevented a mutiny.
You're right. They were in a crunch, they were locked away, and they didn't have a lot of options. That still doesn't justify the decision to trust a guy with the fate of their entire faction when they have literally no idea who he is, why he was in prison, if he has the skills necessary to do what needed to be done, or any other intelligent considerations. He lock picked their door and that was somehow good enough for them to trust him to hack into a spaceship that Maz specifically told them only a very specialized codebreaker could do. Now, I don't claim to be an expert in Star Wars codebreakers. Maybe a person can be a highly specialized codebreaker with very little effort and a huge percentage of the population had the necessary skill and training to do the job that needed to be done. But from the context we were given by Maz, that did not sound to be the case. And it's highly contrived / coincidental that two such codebreakers just happened to be on the same planet at the same time, and one of them was in prison with them. The whole thing is just lazy and sloppy writing.
Short range? Those ships all had hyperspace capability. If a ship as small as an XWing and YWing personal fighter can have a hyperdrive, those transport shuttles would have had them for sure. They were being tracked by the gizmo on the capital ship, Snoke's command ship. That's where the hyperspace tracker was. If the fleet would have split up and gone in 8 directions at once, they could have preserved a lot of lives. The capital ship could have only tracked one of them at a time. And obviously they did have the fuel/resources to hyperspace out of there, because that's exactly what Finn and Rose did when they went to Canto Bight.
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
-Admiral Holdo's complete lack of explaining the plan to her highest ranking officers and staff
-Why Finn and Rose chose to trust a rando that they literally met in prison
-Why they didn't load all their shuttles and hyperspace in 8 directions at the start of the space chase
Concerns there was a spy
Lack of options. They were on a tight clock and local security was on to them.
Short range meant theyd be easily found and wiped out one by one.
Honestly I am 100% certain that the initial draft (and shoot) for TLJ had the Hyperspace Tracking storyline actually be concern about a spy on board, which makes Poe & Holdo's storyline actually make a hell of a lot more sense
By the point that Holdo took command, they were already well aware of the fact that the First Order was tracking them through hyperspace. There was no need for secrecy in the plan and a spy in their midst was not a concern. I'm not even saying she should have told everybody on board the ship what her plan was. I'm saying she should have told her highest ranking officers. That would have prevented a mutiny.
She did tell the highest ranking officers. Poe had just been busted down a rank and all the people he recruits for the mutiny are lower ranking people.
-Admiral Holdo's complete lack of explaining the plan to her highest ranking officers and staff
-Why Finn and Rose chose to trust a rando that they literally met in prison
-Why they didn't load all their shuttles and hyperspace in 8 directions at the start of the space chase
Concerns there was a spy
Lack of options. They were on a tight clock and local security was on to them.
Short range meant theyd be easily found and wiped out one by one.
By the point that Holdo took command, they were already well aware of the fact that the First Order was tracking them through hyperspace. There was no need for secrecy in the plan and a spy in their midst was not a concern. I'm not even saying she should have told everybody on board the ship what her plan was. I'm saying she should have told her highest ranking officers. That would have prevented a mutiny.
You're right. They were in a crunch, they were locked away, and they didn't have a lot of options. That still doesn't justify the decision to trust a guy with the fate of their entire faction when they have literally no idea who he is, why he was in prison, if he has the skills necessary to do what needed to be done, or any other intelligent considerations. He lock picked their door and that was somehow good enough for them to trust him to hack into a spaceship that Maz specifically told them only a very specialized codebreaker could do. Now, I don't claim to be an expert in Star Wars codebreakers. Maybe a person can be a highly specialized codebreaker with very little effort and a huge percentage of the population had the necessary skill and training to do the job that needed to be done. But from the context we were given by Maz, that did not sound to be the case. And it's highly contrived / coincidental that two such codebreakers just happened to be on the same planet at the same time, and one of them was in prison with them. The whole thing is just lazy and sloppy writing.
Short range? Those ships all had hyperspace capability. If a ship as small as an XWing and YWing personal fighter can have a hyperdrive, those transport shuttles would have had them for sure. They were being tracked by the gizmo on the capital ship, Snoke's command ship. That's where the hyperspace tracker was. If the fleet would have split up and gone in 8 directions at once, they could have preserved a lot of lives. The capital ship could have only tracked one of them at a time. And obviously they did have the fuel/resources to hyperspace out of there, because that's exactly what Finn and Rose did when they went to Canto Bight.
They did tell the highest ranking officers. Poe just isn't one of them.
They trust the codebreaker because they have no other choice and because he is seemingly at least on their side for now.
They didn't have the transports with hyperspace available to get everyone away. Hence using the non-hyperspace capable craft they had to hide everyone away.
By the point that Holdo took command, they were already well aware of the fact that the First Order was tracking them through hyperspace. There was no need for secrecy in the plan and a spy in their midst was not a concern. I'm not even saying she should have told everybody on board the ship what her plan was. I'm saying she should have told her highest ranking officers. That would have prevented a mutiny.
She did tell the highest ranking officers. Poe had just been busted down a rank and all the people he recruits for the mutiny are lower ranking people.
There is literally no indication that anyone other than Holdo and Leia knew the plan, and Leia was unconscious.
But anyway, my point wasn't to argue those plot points. My point was to say that those plot points are fairly surface level grievances and could easily be ignored by a sequel.
There was no fucking point to bringing back Kylo’s hat.
He randomly wore it like 2 times.
It was an important part of the themes of TLJ, and thus had to be refuted.
The extent to which the first like 5 minutes of the movie are a rushjob to try and negate basically the entirety of the last movie is sad and hilarious.
So I don't think TLJ was a perfect movie. It had a lot of things that didn't make sense and/or were out of bounds of established Star Wars universe rules.
-Yoda's force ghost causing a lightning strike.
-Bridging two people together with the force to the point that their physical beings can interact/transfer (the water on Kylo's glove)
-Leia using the force to Mary Poppins her way back into a spaceship after she had been exposed to open space
It also had some plot points that didn't make a lot of sense.
-Admiral Holdo's complete lack of explaining the plan to her highest ranking officers and staff
-Why Finn and Rose chose to trust a rando that they literally met in prison
-Why they didn't load all their shuttles and hyperspace in 8 directions at the start of the space chase
Remember that the force isn't a set of powers that people have. Its an outlook on the universe that makes things happen. While the physical interaction was a bit off it wasn't by far. Bridging time and space to talk isn't much different than a bit of water. The force ghost causing lighting wasn't off in the slightest. (Force lightning is a well established power)
Force Pull is a well established force power.
Poe was not a part of her highest ranking officiers and staff and had indeed just been demoted out of that position
By the point that Holdo took command, they were already well aware of the fact that the First Order was tracking them through hyperspace. There was no need for secrecy in the plan and a spy in their midst was not a concern. I'm not even saying she should have told everybody on board the ship what her plan was. I'm saying she should have told her highest ranking officers. That would have prevented a mutiny.
She did tell the highest ranking officers. Poe had just been busted down a rank and all the people he recruits for the mutiny are lower ranking people.
There is literally no indication that anyone other than Holdo and Leia knew the plan, and Leia was unconscious.
But anyway, my point wasn't to argue those plot points. My point was to say that those plot points are fairly surface level grievances and could easily be ignored by a sequel.
It looks like all of the bridge officers knew the plan including the woman who enacted Leia's succession
I really enjoy the Phantom Menace. I put it above Return of the Jedi, and think that it’s the fourth best Star Wars film. The Phantom Menace suffers from having Annie and Jar Jar, but I’ll happily take them over the Jabba’s palace and Ewoks scenes. While the climax isn’t as good as the climax of Jedi, Duel of Fates keeps it respectfully close. And TPM Palpatine is fantastic (PT Palpatine in general is great, right up there with PT Kenobi).
To be fair to Return of the Jedi, most of those Jabba Palace scenes that I'm pretty sure you're thinking of weren't in the original version.
It's amazing how a badly choreographed CGI musical number plopped in the middle can destroy any tension and plot progression.
No, it really is most of the palace scene, even the stuff from before the Special Edition. If it had Jabba, the Rancor, or the Sarlacc pit, it didn't really work for me in ROTJ. I feel like it's a massive speed bump that didn't really belong in the movie. I would have preferred if they intercepted Han in transit somewhere in space - like Jabba has a ship and is passing by an Imperial base/shipyard. The rebels raid the base and Luke/Leia/Lando take advantage of the confusion to slip in and get to rescue Han, and maybe set up how they find the Death Star location.
It ties into the overall war, and doesn't just show three high ranking members of the rebels going off and doing their own thing on the eve of the most important battle for the galaxy to that point. You could split the party and show Luke acting like Obi-Wan in ANH to sneak into the Imperial base to get intel leading to the location of the Death Star, and you have Leia and Lando rescuing Han. You can do it without putting Leia in a golden bikini. You have X-Wings and relatively small rebel ships flying around outside and creating a distraction. And then you have Palpatine revealing that he arranged for the Death Star's coordinates to be where Jabba was passing through (or vice-versa), to ensure that Luke and company took the bait.
Something like that.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
-Admiral Holdo's complete lack of explaining the plan to her highest ranking officers and staff
-Why Finn and Rose chose to trust a rando that they literally met in prison
-Why they didn't load all their shuttles and hyperspace in 8 directions at the start of the space chase
Concerns there was a spy
Lack of options. They were on a tight clock and local security was on to them.
Short range meant theyd be easily found and wiped out one by one.
By the point that Holdo took command, they were already well aware of the fact that the First Order was tracking them through hyperspace. There was no need for secrecy in the plan and a spy in their midst was not a concern. I'm not even saying she should have told everybody on board the ship what her plan was. I'm saying she should have told her highest ranking officers. That would have prevented a mutiny.
You're right. They were in a crunch, they were locked away, and they didn't have a lot of options. That still doesn't justify the decision to trust a guy with the fate of their entire faction when they have literally no idea who he is, why he was in prison, if he has the skills necessary to do what needed to be done, or any other intelligent considerations. He lock picked their door and that was somehow good enough for them to trust him to hack into a spaceship that Maz specifically told them only a very specialized codebreaker could do. Now, I don't claim to be an expert in Star Wars codebreakers. Maybe a person can be a highly specialized codebreaker with very little effort and a huge percentage of the population had the necessary skill and training to do the job that needed to be done. But from the context we were given by Maz, that did not sound to be the case. And it's highly contrived / coincidental that two such codebreakers just happened to be on the same planet at the same time, and one of them was in prison with them. The whole thing is just lazy and sloppy writing.
Short range? Those ships all had hyperspace capability. If a ship as small as an XWing and YWing personal fighter can have a hyperdrive, those transport shuttles would have had them for sure. They were being tracked by the gizmo on the capital ship, Snoke's command ship. That's where the hyperspace tracker was. If the fleet would have split up and gone in 8 directions at once, they could have preserved a lot of lives. The capital ship could have only tracked one of them at a time. And obviously they did have the fuel/resources to hyperspace out of there, because that's exactly what Finn and Rose did when they went to Canto Bight.
They did tell the highest ranking officers. Poe just isn't one of them.
They trust the codebreaker because they have no other choice and because he is seemingly at least on their side for now.
They didn't have the transports with hyperspace available to get everyone away. Hence using the non-hyperspace capable craft they had to hide everyone away.
If she did tell her highest ranking officers, which there's no indication that she did, she could have solved all of her problems with one simple sentence. "The people who need to know the plan do know the plan, and yes there is a plan." That's literally all she had to say. I don't like the entire Admiral Holdo plot in TLJ because the whole thing feels like totally contrived drama. It is drama that doesn't make any sense and the people who are a part of that drama do not behave anything at all like logical military officers would behave like. The whole thing just feels so shallow.
Here's another choice: "Hey, thanks for opening that prison door for us. We need to get back inside the casino and talk to the man with the flower on his lapel. Can you please help us with that?"
That is not even remotely the problem with that scene. The problems are compounded though.
A) She's in outer space. Humans can't survive in outer space without pressurized suits. She would have been crushed. Her eyeballs likely would have been sucked out of their sockets. Yes, I'm talking about real life physics here, but there's no reason to believe that Star Wars physics wouldn't be the same with regards to humans in outer space. There's no established precedent for this, and the way they handled it was so unbelievable that as I watched that scene for the first time in the theaters I literally said out loud "no way" We had no indication that Leia even knew how to use the force before that, and to pull off such an amazing feat like that out of the blue is equally eye roll worthy. They needed to give us even something small that she does with the force as a hint that she knows how to use it. Foreshadowing if you will.
C) The scene just looks ridiculous. The memes where they photoshopped an umbrella into her hand are fitting because the scene just was conveyed so terribly.
-Admiral Holdo's complete lack of explaining the plan to her highest ranking officers and staff
-Why Finn and Rose chose to trust a rando that they literally met in prison
-Why they didn't load all their shuttles and hyperspace in 8 directions at the start of the space chase
Concerns there was a spy
Lack of options. They were on a tight clock and local security was on to them.
Short range meant theyd be easily found and wiped out one by one.
By the point that Holdo took command, they were already well aware of the fact that the First Order was tracking them through hyperspace. There was no need for secrecy in the plan and a spy in their midst was not a concern. I'm not even saying she should have told everybody on board the ship what her plan was. I'm saying she should have told her highest ranking officers. That would have prevented a mutiny.
You're right. They were in a crunch, they were locked away, and they didn't have a lot of options. That still doesn't justify the decision to trust a guy with the fate of their entire faction when they have literally no idea who he is, why he was in prison, if he has the skills necessary to do what needed to be done, or any other intelligent considerations. He lock picked their door and that was somehow good enough for them to trust him to hack into a spaceship that Maz specifically told them only a very specialized codebreaker could do. Now, I don't claim to be an expert in Star Wars codebreakers. Maybe a person can be a highly specialized codebreaker with very little effort and a huge percentage of the population had the necessary skill and training to do the job that needed to be done. But from the context we were given by Maz, that did not sound to be the case. And it's highly contrived / coincidental that two such codebreakers just happened to be on the same planet at the same time, and one of them was in prison with them. The whole thing is just lazy and sloppy writing.
Short range? Those ships all had hyperspace capability. If a ship as small as an XWing and YWing personal fighter can have a hyperdrive, those transport shuttles would have had them for sure. They were being tracked by the gizmo on the capital ship, Snoke's command ship. That's where the hyperspace tracker was. If the fleet would have split up and gone in 8 directions at once, they could have preserved a lot of lives. The capital ship could have only tracked one of them at a time. And obviously they did have the fuel/resources to hyperspace out of there, because that's exactly what Finn and Rose did when they went to Canto Bight.
They did tell the highest ranking officers. Poe just isn't one of them.
They trust the codebreaker because they have no other choice and because he is seemingly at least on their side for now.
They didn't have the transports with hyperspace available to get everyone away. Hence using the non-hyperspace capable craft they had to hide everyone away.
If she did tell her highest ranking officers, which there's no indication that she did, she could have solved all of her problems with one simple sentence. "The people who need to know the plan do know the plan, and yes there is a plan." That's literally all she had to say. I don't like the entire Admiral Holdo plot in TLJ because the whole thing feels like totally contrived drama. It is drama that doesn't make any sense and the people who are a part of that drama do not behave anything at all like logical military officers would behave like. The whole thing just feels so shallow.
Here's another choice: "Hey, thanks for opening that prison door for us. We need to get back inside the casino and talk to the man with the flower on his lapel. Can you please help us with that?"
There's every indication all the people at the command level know what is going on because they are all doing their jobs and following the plan. Or, in the case of the lower level people, following orders. It's only Poe, a recently demoted lower-level officer and his pilot buddies, who are out of the loop and that's because there's literally no reason they need to know. And she does tell him exactly what you suggested in as many words. She tells him she's in charge, she's got this, he doesn't need to know.
As always with this argument, the problem is your own bad assumptions, which are the same ones Poe makes: that by virtue of being the protagonist, he should know. Even though there's literally no reason he should because he's not high ranked enough, any more if ever.
Admiral Holdo is some very poor "tell, not show" storytelling which is completely ignorant of the cultural context into which it's being written: we're introduced to someone who doesn't look military, and told to trust them, and told they're supposed to be competent, but never shown they're competent in any way as the audience. In our culture that's code for "maybe this person just politicked there way there" and similar: and she's played exactly like any number of other on-screen commanders who fail to deal with a crisis (i.e. consider the original Easy company lieutentant in Band of Brothers - and that was based on true stories).
If you're going to tell mutiny story, then either the mutineers are right (and the commander is never shown to be competent) or the mutineers have a good point but are taking a risk that they might be wrong - in which case you early need to tell the audience that the person they're trying to mutiny against is competent, because the conflict comes over the difference in two groups trying to do the right thing with a different interpretation of the motivations. Crimson Tide is a good example of this with the Poe role reversed: the commander is not wrong but he's definitely being hot-headed, but importantly the mutineer early on is also shown to be a capable officer: the conflict is over ideology, but it's clear both parties are capable of command.
The perfect time in TLJ to handle this would've been while Leia is spaced: show Holdo taking command and, instead of weird Mary Poppins scene, have here coordinate the rescue of Leia and the forcing back of the First Order, show her giving the orders to go to full-sublight (even have someone point out that they're going to run out of fuel fast in that situation) - show us that she must be doing some tactical analysis of the problem, and *is* a capable commander.
Because then the conflict with Poe has some actual stakes grounded in these characters approaches to the same problem, centered on the same concern for the same person - Leia. It means Poe has an actual lesson to learn from the plot about seeing the bigger picture, and it means we have some thematic overlap when the suicide run happens because it would be Holdo and Poe swapping roles and thus acts as a reconciliation of their conflict because Poe is forced into the defensive role while Holdo acknowledges but clarifies the lesson Poe is supposed to learn about "when" to go on the attack.
Every other military leader in Star Wars showed up and it was basically ‘hey trust this person’ and one of them was an ambulatory fish man, I don’t think it’s Rian Johnson’s fault that people couldn’t get past her hair and non-traditional military garb.
Everyone else was talking about how great a leader she was which is actually -more- than Admiral Ackbar got, I don’t really buy that any more needed to happen.
Admiral Holdo is some very poor "tell, not show" storytelling which is completely ignorant of the cultural context into which it's being written: we're introduced to someone who doesn't look military, and told to trust them, and told they're supposed to be competent, but never shown they're competent in any way as the audience. In our culture that's code for "maybe this person just politicked there way there" and similar: and she's played exactly like any number of other on-screen commanders who fail to deal with a crisis (i.e. consider the original Easy company lieutentant in Band of Brothers - and that was based on true stories).
If you're going to tell mutiny story, then either the mutineers are right (and the commander is never shown to be competent) or the mutineers have a good point but are taking a risk that they might be wrong - in which case you early need to tell the audience that the person they're trying to mutiny against is competent, because the conflict comes over the difference in two groups trying to do the right thing with a different interpretation of the motivations. Crimson Tide is a good example of this with the Poe role reversed: the commander is not wrong but he's definitely being hot-headed, but importantly the mutineer early on is also shown to be a capable officer: the conflict is over ideology, but it's clear both parties are capable of command.
The perfect time in TLJ to handle this would've been while Leia is spaced: show Holdo taking command and, instead of weird Mary Poppins scene, have here coordinate the rescue of Leia and the forcing back of the First Order, show her giving the orders to go to full-sublight (even have someone point out that they're going to run out of fuel fast in that situation) - show us that she must be doing some tactical analysis of the problem, and *is* a capable commander.
Because then the conflict with Poe has some actual stakes grounded in these characters approaches to the same problem, centered on the same concern for the same person - Leia. It means Poe has an actual lesson to learn from the plot about seeing the bigger picture, and it means we have some thematic overlap when the suicide run happens because it would be Holdo and Poe swapping roles and thus acts as a reconciliation of their conflict because Poe is forced into the defensive role while Holdo acknowledges but clarifies the lesson Poe is supposed to learn about "when" to go on the attack.
But your lack of trust in her at first glance is exactly the point. That's what the film is trying to achieve. It's exploiting the fact that your first instinct is to side with the protagonist and your assumptions about storytelling conventions to make you not think harder about what is going on with the story. It then surprises you by offering a different take on the situation.
The problem is when the twist happens, instead of admitting your assumptions were wrong, some peopel decide no, the movie was wrong. Even though the situation as presented supports the actual story as told. Nothing about the story doesn't make sense, it just (deliberately) clashes with most viewers first instincts when it comes to anticipating plot developments.
The difference between Holda and Ackbar is that Holda is played antagonistic with Poe who is a main character. Ackbar just does Ackbar stuff, he’s not relevant to characterization in any way, he just spouts exposition and barely needs to be a character.
Holda needs better set up and TLJ makes the mistake of telling us how awesome is instead of showing an act of her awesomeness. Yes, she does something pretty badass at the end, but by that point Poe’s issue is already resolved because Leia explains everything to him. Meaning what she did didn’t change Poe because he had already had his “arc” by the time she did.
I also find it pretty hard to swallow that Holda is this amazing leader Poe has never seen before of when there’s about a few hundred, maybe a thousand at best, Resistance fighters.
Poe and Holda could’ve been done better and I’m dissatisfied with how it occurred on screen.
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2. A New Hope
3. Rogue One
4. The Rise of Skywalker
5. Return of the Jedi
6. The Last Jedi
7. The Force Awakens
8. The Phantom Menace
9. Revenge of the Sith
10. Solo
11. Attack of the Clones
I'm probably like the only person who absolutely loves Attack of the Clones.
Yes, the romance is garbage and the dialog is cringe-worthy. But that doesn't ruin the movie for me. I absolutely love the bits on Kamino and even prior to that, the whole mystery of the missing planet from the holodex. I love the grand scheme that was perfectly put into place by Palpatine, and how Kenobi, Yoda, and Windu play perfectly into his decades old plot. I love the battle on Geonosis, and that moment when Yoda rides in on a troop transport to the arena, saving our heroes in peril, that's like a top 5 Star Wars moment for me. Maybe even top 3. Also: the Yoda lightsaber battle with Dooku.
It's so easy for me to look past the romance stuff in that movie. To me it's a gem. It's honestly my 3rd favorite Star Wars film, behind ESB and Rogue One.
Return of the Jedi
Rogue One
Empire Strikes Back
Honestly though, some of the best stuff has come from the side content: Clone Wars, Rebels, and Mandalorian are some of the very best Star Wars has to offer and are superior to the majority of the movies.
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Here, for posterity’s sake, is what I would have done as an episode IX sequel to TLJ and finale to the Skywalker saga with the caveat that I am in no way a film writer:
Under the singularly focused direction of Supreme Leader SOLO, the First Order decimates and further enslaves star systems that oppose its rule.
The spark that began with the spreading story of LUKE SKYWALKER has faded in the years following his final galaxy spanning force projection.
REY, FINN, POE, CHEWBACCA, ROSE, and LANDO pick up the pieces after the celebratory funeral for their beloved General LEIA.
The Resistance has one last chance to defeat the First Order but they have to call upon an unlikely source as an ally...
*pan down to Korriban where we see R2D2, BB-8, and C3PO strolling up to a very large, creepy looking door where an eyeball droid pops out to greet them*
*Palpatine chuckling*
*hyjinks that does not involve super weapons*
*Ben Solo fucking murders everything that reminds him of the past, including those chumps he uses to gain power in the time before the movie, but it’s one by one so we get some badass and distinct Knights of Ren action*
*Rey does some training but realizes she can’t do the bringing peace by herself and through a struggle decides to train Finn as her apprentice*
*Chewbacca and Rose run the Millennium Falcon like it’s never been done before, turns out it is a very decent smuggling ship as they shuttle important cargo including people between systems, avoiding First Order capture, they are really good at this job*
*Lando and Poe have a kinship, Lando teaches Poe how to woo a lady, or a guy, or a calamari. Poe teaches Lando probably nothing, but it’s a fun relationship they have, I promise*
*Rey turns, falling to the dark side, she is scary as fuck. Ben Solo never achieves his desire to eradicate the past because it lives in his mind. They battle, one a sith, the other a lost soul. The immense struggle destroys them both*
*FN-2187, now known as, Skywalker Finn, takes up the mantle of Resistance leader, recruiting a new order of Jedi from across the galaxy. He was once a janitor, now a Jedi Master. He trains that broom boy to go from being a janitor to a Jedi Padawan*
*It was never Palpatine, just force echoes like the story of Luke spreading*
The film finishes with C3PO having his memory wiped, credits roll, stinger at the end of credits tease Obiwan show and Rian Johnson’s new film. That means this film would have been released after another year or two of production
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I really enjoy the Phantom Menace. I put it above Return of the Jedi, and think that it’s the fourth best Star Wars film. The Phantom Menace suffers from having Annie and Jar Jar, but I’ll happily take them over the Jabba’s palace and Ewoks scenes. While the climax isn’t as good as the climax of Jedi, Duel of Fates keeps it respectfully close. And TPM Palpatine is fantastic (PT Palpatine in general is great, right up there with PT Kenobi).
To be fair to Return of the Jedi, most of those Jabba Palace scenes that I'm pretty sure you're thinking of weren't in the original version.
It's amazing how a badly choreographed CGI musical number plopped in the middle can destroy any tension and plot progression.
Great
A New Hope
The Empire Strikes Back
Both are great movies that I don’t really have any issues with. A New Hope suffers in the Special Edition and later incarnations.
I’ll put it on from time to time
Rogue One
Return of the Jedi
Fun but flawed movies. I think Rogue One suffers from from story contrivances that bother me more than other people. Jedi probably benefits from the rose-colored glasses I view it through, as it was the most technically-mature of the OT and I just loved everything about it as a kid. The additions to Jedi, specifically in Jabba’s Palace, make it a much worse film and I’d probably knock that version down a peg.
I’ll put on specific parts from time to time
Solo
The Force Awakens
Return of the Sith
These all have their merits but also have serious flaws in different ways.
I can cling to something I like
The Last Jedi
The Phantom Menace (mostly because of nostalgia)
TLJ is a gorgeous movie with some neat ideas that has too much, “That’s now how my Star Wars works!” for me to enjoy it all the way through. That’s my challenge. TPM is a mess of a story but I’m not sure I’ve ever been more hyped for a movie to come out and I’m willing to overlook quite a bit. I generally agree with every criticism of it but enjoy it anyway.
It’s almost all cringe
Attack of the Clones
Rise of Skywalker
I like AotC and RoS about the same but for different reasons. AotC has an ok story (I think, it’s been a while) but the execution is just a disaster. RoS is the opposite. Not having much distance from RoS means I may come back to it and enjoy it more over time, but there’s so much about the story. I think both have moments I enjoy but not enough of them for me to want to watch them. We’ll see how i feel when RoS is available at home.
I’d probably put The Mandalorian in that second tier—really good but flawed. If that’s the future of Star Wars, cool.
Jedi is my favorite film to watch, but the real version is the only one that ‘exists’ in my mind space. The special edition version would drop it to fourth or fifth.
I just saw Knives Out and given the quality of that film I wonder if Johnson would've benefited from being given more time to write TLJ to clean up some of its issues.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Eh, I'd watch ESB randomly sometimes. Or ANH. But otherwise yeah. If I'm doing a marathon it's in chronological order.
The Samurai vibes for that fight always reminded me of one of my favorite films/book duels. This is from Musashi, and aside from some kind of questionable camerawork, I think it’s a great example of how some of best the fights in Star Wars have worked:
Fight starts at around the 2:00 mark, but I think the whole thing is worth a watch. Even the writing wouldn’t be out of place in this universe (which makes a lot of sense, inspiration wise).
He randomly wore it like 2 times.
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It shows that Maul is unable to let go of his hate and anger, dooming him to being predictable because his unwillingness to evolve beyond his past. Obi-Wan however has moved beyond old angers and only gets serious once Maul correctly deduces Luke, because Obi-Wan is in the present and protecting the future, he plays Maul like a fine tuned violin.
That is how you tell story with a fight scene!
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Which, you are effectively paraphrasing a literal conversation at the start of the movie.
-Yoda's force ghost causing a lightning strike.
-Bridging two people together with the force to the point that their physical beings can interact/transfer (the water on Kylo's glove)
-Leia using the force to Mary Poppins her way back into a spaceship after she had been exposed to open space
It also had some plot points that didn't make a lot of sense.
-Admiral Holdo's complete lack of explaining the plan to her highest ranking officers and staff
-Why Finn and Rose chose to trust a rando that they literally met in prison
-Why they didn't load all their shuttles and hyperspace in 8 directions at the start of the space chase
But, while I do consider the above list of flaws to hurt the movie and be fairly annoying on subsequent re-watches, there are things that Rian Johnson did that I honestly do not consider flaws in the movie.
Subverting expectations is okay!
-Luke's realistic outlook and pragmatism made a lot of sense. Rey's hope that he would be the fairy-tale savior that they needed was unrealistic and I honestly appreciated that Rian went the "realistic" approach and acknowledged that one guy with a laser sword was not going to win them a war. I liked that.
-I also liked the concept of the struggle between hothead heroes (Poe) and the wisdom of established leadership (Leia). That was a good plot point and was honestly a perfect Tee Up for a great character arc for Poe. In Force Awakens he was kind of a one sided character. He was a hotshot pilot and that was it. That was his entire personality. Rian Johnson actually managed to make him interesting. But sadly JJ threw that away and went back to a Poe who can do no wrong and always does amazing things with zero consequences and is a static, one sided character
-I liked that he made Rey's parents out to be nobody's because at the end of TLJ, Rey had a realization that her past does not define her. Her own choices do. And she chose to be a hero. That was good stuff.
And I feel like JJ went way out of his way to undo things that did not need to be undone. Rise would have been a much better film if they hadn't have spent the first 60 minutes undoing everything from the previous film. Honestly the stuff that they undid did not need to be undone, and the annoying plothole stuff from TLJ could have been easily ignored without a bunch of retcons.
Concerns there was a spy
Lack of options. They were on a tight clock and local security was on to them.
Short range meant theyd be easily found and wiped out one by one.
The thing about that, is that it's one of the less egregious parts.
It's not a bad bit of symbolism. But that's trusting a guy with as shallow an insight as JJ to think of that. Although in fairness it's more likely the costume designer's idea. I've seen the special features for the Fifty Shades movie and the costumers even on that film take the opportunity to make every character's clothing in every scene an expression of their emotional state. But they can only go as far as they're allowed to by production design.
"Give Rey her TFA outfit back but make it all white", e.g., doesn't leave much wiggle room.
By the point that Holdo took command, they were already well aware of the fact that the First Order was tracking them through hyperspace. There was no need for secrecy in the plan and a spy in their midst was not a concern. I'm not even saying she should have told everybody on board the ship what her plan was. I'm saying she should have told her highest ranking officers. That would have prevented a mutiny.
You're right. They were in a crunch, they were locked away, and they didn't have a lot of options. That still doesn't justify the decision to trust a guy with the fate of their entire faction when they have literally no idea who he is, why he was in prison, if he has the skills necessary to do what needed to be done, or any other intelligent considerations. He lock picked their door and that was somehow good enough for them to trust him to hack into a spaceship that Maz specifically told them only a very specialized codebreaker could do. Now, I don't claim to be an expert in Star Wars codebreakers. Maybe a person can be a highly specialized codebreaker with very little effort and a huge percentage of the population had the necessary skill and training to do the job that needed to be done. But from the context we were given by Maz, that did not sound to be the case. And it's highly contrived / coincidental that two such codebreakers just happened to be on the same planet at the same time, and one of them was in prison with them. The whole thing is just lazy and sloppy writing.
Short range? Those ships all had hyperspace capability. If a ship as small as an XWing and YWing personal fighter can have a hyperdrive, those transport shuttles would have had them for sure. They were being tracked by the gizmo on the capital ship, Snoke's command ship. That's where the hyperspace tracker was. If the fleet would have split up and gone in 8 directions at once, they could have preserved a lot of lives. The capital ship could have only tracked one of them at a time. And obviously they did have the fuel/resources to hyperspace out of there, because that's exactly what Finn and Rose did when they went to Canto Bight.
Honestly I am 100% certain that the initial draft (and shoot) for TLJ had the Hyperspace Tracking storyline actually be concern about a spy on board, which makes Poe & Holdo's storyline actually make a hell of a lot more sense
They did tell the highest ranking officers. Poe just isn't one of them.
They trust the codebreaker because they have no other choice and because he is seemingly at least on their side for now.
They didn't have the transports with hyperspace available to get everyone away. Hence using the non-hyperspace capable craft they had to hide everyone away.
There is literally no indication that anyone other than Holdo and Leia knew the plan, and Leia was unconscious.
But anyway, my point wasn't to argue those plot points. My point was to say that those plot points are fairly surface level grievances and could easily be ignored by a sequel.
The extent to which the first like 5 minutes of the movie are a rushjob to try and negate basically the entirety of the last movie is sad and hilarious.
Remember that the force isn't a set of powers that people have. Its an outlook on the universe that makes things happen. While the physical interaction was a bit off it wasn't by far. Bridging time and space to talk isn't much different than a bit of water. The force ghost causing lighting wasn't off in the slightest. (Force lightning is a well established power)
Force Pull is a well established force power.
Poe was not a part of her highest ranking officiers and staff and had indeed just been demoted out of that position
It looks like all of the bridge officers knew the plan including the woman who enacted Leia's succession
No, it really is most of the palace scene, even the stuff from before the Special Edition. If it had Jabba, the Rancor, or the Sarlacc pit, it didn't really work for me in ROTJ. I feel like it's a massive speed bump that didn't really belong in the movie. I would have preferred if they intercepted Han in transit somewhere in space - like Jabba has a ship and is passing by an Imperial base/shipyard. The rebels raid the base and Luke/Leia/Lando take advantage of the confusion to slip in and get to rescue Han, and maybe set up how they find the Death Star location.
It ties into the overall war, and doesn't just show three high ranking members of the rebels going off and doing their own thing on the eve of the most important battle for the galaxy to that point. You could split the party and show Luke acting like Obi-Wan in ANH to sneak into the Imperial base to get intel leading to the location of the Death Star, and you have Leia and Lando rescuing Han. You can do it without putting Leia in a golden bikini. You have X-Wings and relatively small rebel ships flying around outside and creating a distraction. And then you have Palpatine revealing that he arranged for the Death Star's coordinates to be where Jabba was passing through (or vice-versa), to ensure that Luke and company took the bait.
Something like that.
If she did tell her highest ranking officers, which there's no indication that she did, she could have solved all of her problems with one simple sentence. "The people who need to know the plan do know the plan, and yes there is a plan." That's literally all she had to say. I don't like the entire Admiral Holdo plot in TLJ because the whole thing feels like totally contrived drama. It is drama that doesn't make any sense and the people who are a part of that drama do not behave anything at all like logical military officers would behave like. The whole thing just feels so shallow.
Here's another choice: "Hey, thanks for opening that prison door for us. We need to get back inside the casino and talk to the man with the flower on his lapel. Can you please help us with that?"
That is not even remotely the problem with that scene. The problems are compounded though.
A) She's in outer space. Humans can't survive in outer space without pressurized suits. She would have been crushed. Her eyeballs likely would have been sucked out of their sockets. Yes, I'm talking about real life physics here, but there's no reason to believe that Star Wars physics wouldn't be the same with regards to humans in outer space. There's no established precedent for this, and the way they handled it was so unbelievable that as I watched that scene for the first time in the theaters I literally said out loud "no way"
C) The scene just looks ridiculous. The memes where they photoshopped an umbrella into her hand are fitting because the scene just was conveyed so terribly.
If a normal ass human can last 15 seconds, a cool action hero jedi can probably manage a little bit more while pulling themselves back.
There's every indication all the people at the command level know what is going on because they are all doing their jobs and following the plan. Or, in the case of the lower level people, following orders. It's only Poe, a recently demoted lower-level officer and his pilot buddies, who are out of the loop and that's because there's literally no reason they need to know. And she does tell him exactly what you suggested in as many words. She tells him she's in charge, she's got this, he doesn't need to know.
As always with this argument, the problem is your own bad assumptions, which are the same ones Poe makes: that by virtue of being the protagonist, he should know. Even though there's literally no reason he should because he's not high ranked enough, any more if ever.
If you're going to tell mutiny story, then either the mutineers are right (and the commander is never shown to be competent) or the mutineers have a good point but are taking a risk that they might be wrong - in which case you early need to tell the audience that the person they're trying to mutiny against is competent, because the conflict comes over the difference in two groups trying to do the right thing with a different interpretation of the motivations. Crimson Tide is a good example of this with the Poe role reversed: the commander is not wrong but he's definitely being hot-headed, but importantly the mutineer early on is also shown to be a capable officer: the conflict is over ideology, but it's clear both parties are capable of command.
The perfect time in TLJ to handle this would've been while Leia is spaced: show Holdo taking command and, instead of weird Mary Poppins scene, have here coordinate the rescue of Leia and the forcing back of the First Order, show her giving the orders to go to full-sublight (even have someone point out that they're going to run out of fuel fast in that situation) - show us that she must be doing some tactical analysis of the problem, and *is* a capable commander.
Because then the conflict with Poe has some actual stakes grounded in these characters approaches to the same problem, centered on the same concern for the same person - Leia. It means Poe has an actual lesson to learn from the plot about seeing the bigger picture, and it means we have some thematic overlap when the suicide run happens because it would be Holdo and Poe swapping roles and thus acts as a reconciliation of their conflict because Poe is forced into the defensive role while Holdo acknowledges but clarifies the lesson Poe is supposed to learn about "when" to go on the attack.
Everyone else was talking about how great a leader she was which is actually -more- than Admiral Ackbar got, I don’t really buy that any more needed to happen.
But your lack of trust in her at first glance is exactly the point. That's what the film is trying to achieve. It's exploiting the fact that your first instinct is to side with the protagonist and your assumptions about storytelling conventions to make you not think harder about what is going on with the story. It then surprises you by offering a different take on the situation.
The problem is when the twist happens, instead of admitting your assumptions were wrong, some peopel decide no, the movie was wrong. Even though the situation as presented supports the actual story as told. Nothing about the story doesn't make sense, it just (deliberately) clashes with most viewers first instincts when it comes to anticipating plot developments.
Holda needs better set up and TLJ makes the mistake of telling us how awesome is instead of showing an act of her awesomeness. Yes, she does something pretty badass at the end, but by that point Poe’s issue is already resolved because Leia explains everything to him. Meaning what she did didn’t change Poe because he had already had his “arc” by the time she did.
I also find it pretty hard to swallow that Holda is this amazing leader Poe has never seen before of when there’s about a few hundred, maybe a thousand at best, Resistance fighters.
Poe and Holda could’ve been done better and I’m dissatisfied with how it occurred on screen.
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