I just got done watching a recently streaming mainstream movie based on a super successful video game - Uncharted.
Spoiler:
OK, not being entirely familiar with the games, I was perplexed at the movie plot: Two keys to a treasure, one for the crew, one for the captain, so neither could double-cross the other, as both keys are needed to get to the treasure. The two keys are used (somewhat haphazardly) to get to the treasure hidden in an old church beneath a city in eastern Spain. SURPRISE, the gold is not there, but there is a map with hints as to the gold's whereabouts.
PLOT HOLE: If there is a map, someone drew it, knows the real location of the gold and could steal it. And, extra surprise plot hole, the ships were sailed to this point by the crew (obviously) so every swinging, freakin' person on the ships knew where the final location was, so how did this ever stop ANYONE from the crew to the captain from going to get the treasure, telling there descendants where the treasure was, blah, blah.
Did I entirely miss something major??
Any other movies with plot holes so big you scratch your head thinking, how did someone involved with the movie not say, "Hey guys, hate to tell you, but..."
FWIW, back then it would be VERY hard to find that place again without a map. Even if you had been there yourself, its not like you could just go back. These trips were the space voyages of their time and even if you told your kids and they told their children... they're not finding it without a map. The ocean is just too big and most of its coastlines lack any real landmarks. It's remarkably easy to lose something in it all.
Pre-cogs see Tom Cruise murder a guy, but there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the plot apart from the pre-cogs seeing him do the murder that would lead him to the guy who he is supposed to murder.
I'll pick a movie that came up due to a more recent successful release:
The Predator
At some point you have to wonder if anyone on the production thought to themselves: "Should we be doing a movie about Predators coming to Earth to hunt Super-Autism?"
It's one of those things that even typing it makes it sound like I'm making it up, like it's some kind of 4Chan meme. But that's what the movie was.
Why???
Gert wrote: They are the curse laid upon this Earth by the channel called CinemaSins.
CinemaCins is a spiteful and joyless place that does nothing but nitpick without any wit or nuance.
Pre-cogs see Tom Cruise murder a guy, but there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the plot apart from the pre-cogs seeing him do the murder that would lead him to the guy who he is supposed to murder.
The whole concept of that is silly. I mean, “we’ve had foresight you’re going to do a Bad Murder”. So….lock me up for a bit so I can’t do it. Sorted.
And why go on the run? It’s been a while since I watched it, but if I’m right in thinking they normally wait until the last second to make their arrest? I mean….why?
And make a run for it in the first instance?
Stupid, stupidfilm.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also…Hollow Man
Not the premise itself as such. More how Mr Bacon’s character goes completely pants on head tonto ape bonkers mental in….about three seconds flat. A flaw in the execution rather than a flaw in the concept I suppose.
1) As example Gangs of New York had 8 or so hours cut from the original produced material. Ergo many films produce an insane amount of extra content that eventually gets cut from the final release; and that's the stuff that they recorded not the stuff that got cut elsewhere. Scenes fail because they prove technically too challenging; or they run out of time or whatever. Basically a LOT of content gets left out. This leaves the film open to setting up scenes that rely on an earlier scene to flesh them out and, for whatever reason, that earlier scene is never included.
This is why Directors Cuts can sometimes make more sense than the original (Eg Alien 3) because they put those cut scenes back. This is especially the case when its the purchasing cinema group cutting content purely to fit a time slot (Sergio Leone had huge issues with this and its one reason he didn't direct more films)
2) Too many chefs. Films aren't like books where its one person in control. Often there are loads of people pulling a film in all kinds of directions. From writers, directors, producers, investors - even high profile actors can push certain scenes to change or be adjusted. Sometimes these are things done in the heat of the moment - a scene changed for various reasons which then falls apart as other parts of the film which relied on that scene are not re-shot or adjusted to compensate for the subtle shifts in story elements.
3) Out of order. Films are often recorded totally out of order. As a result its very easy to get slip ups because they aren't producing things in a linear fashion to start with. An important earlier scene might not be set to be filmed until late in the shooting schedual; however once they get to it various reasons might result in it changing or never being produced - run out of money; change in story; feedback from investor etc....
Suffice to say that films are huge complicated things and that sometimes plot holes develop because of the nature of how they are produced and the huge number of constraints and issues that arise.
OF course a good director, writer and producer will spot these issues as they arise and work toward resolving them so that the final film DOES make sense and does have the proper flow of story etc...
Sometimes the issue is that the original writing was just too big; sometimes they run out budget; sometimes they have so many "men in suits" inputting various "target market/polled studies/test audience" inputs that it tears itself apart as the film tries to appease too many or change its fundamentals to focus on a different consumer segment or such
Pre-cogs see Tom Cruise murder a guy, but there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the plot apart from the pre-cogs seeing him do the murder that would lead him to the guy who he is supposed to murder.
The whole concept of that is silly. I mean, “we’ve had foresight you’re going to do a Bad Murder”. So….lock me up for a bit so I can’t do it. Sorted.
And why go on the run? It’s been a while since I watched it, but if I’m right in thinking they normally wait until the last second to make their arrest? I mean….why?
And make a run for it in the first instance?
Normally the pre-cogs only gave them warning with short timeframes when the murder was impulsive. Eg the start of the film the first murder is someone killing their wife when they find them in bed with someone else. It's in the moment impulsion so there was no huge build up. So everything was very last moment.
He goes on the run because his pre-cog report was, in theory, more planned and had more leading up too it and thus there was more time.
The whole premise is that the murders seen by the pre-cogs are "perfect" evidence. Therefore if you're caught you're caught and locked up instantly. He goes on the run because he's 100% sure in himself that he won't kill that person and that, as a result, the precog murder is in some way being cheated.
1) As example Gangs of New York had 8 or so hours cut from the original produced material. Ergo many films produce an insane amount of extra content that eventually gets cut from the final release; and that's the stuff that they recorded not the stuff that got cut elsewhere. Scenes fail because they prove technically too challenging; or they run out of time or whatever. Basically a LOT of content gets left out. This leaves the film open to setting up scenes that rely on an earlier scene to flesh them out and, for whatever reason, that earlier scene is never included.
This is why Directors Cuts can sometimes make more sense than the original (Eg Alien 3) because they put those cut scenes back. This is especially the case when its the purchasing cinema group cutting content purely to fit a time slot (Sergio Leone had huge issues with this and its one reason he didn't direct more films)
2) Too many chefs. Films aren't like books where its one person in control. Often there are loads of people pulling a film in all kinds of directions. From writers, directors, producers, investors - even high profile actors can push certain scenes to change or be adjusted. Sometimes these are things done in the heat of the moment - a scene changed for various reasons which then falls apart as other parts of the film which relied on that scene are not re-shot or adjusted to compensate for the subtle shifts in story elements.
3) Out of order. Films are often recorded totally out of order. As a result its very easy to get slip ups because they aren't producing things in a linear fashion to start with. An important earlier scene might not be set to be filmed until late in the shooting schedual; however once they get to it various reasons might result in it changing or never being produced - run out of money; change in story; feedback from investor etc....
Suffice to say that films are huge complicated things and that sometimes plot holes develop because of the nature of how they are produced and the huge number of constraints and issues that arise.
OF course a good director, writer and producer will spot these issues as they arise and work toward resolving them so that the final film DOES make sense and does have the proper flow of story etc...
Sometimes the issue is that the original writing was just too big; sometimes they run out budget; sometimes they have so many "men in suits" inputting various "target market/polled studies/test audience" inputs that it tears itself apart as the film tries to appease too many or change its fundamentals to focus on a different consumer segment or such
Pre-cogs see Tom Cruise murder a guy, but there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the plot apart from the pre-cogs seeing him do the murder that would lead him to the guy who he is supposed to murder.
The whole concept of that is silly. I mean, “we’ve had foresight you’re going to do a Bad Murder”. So….lock me up for a bit so I can’t do it. Sorted.
And why go on the run? It’s been a while since I watched it, but if I’m right in thinking they normally wait until the last second to make their arrest? I mean….why?
And make a run for it in the first instance?
Normally the pre-cogs only gave them warning with short timeframes when the murder was impulsive. Eg the start of the film the first murder is someone killing their wife when they find them in bed with someone else. It's in the moment impulsion so there was no huge build up. So everything was very last moment.
He goes on the run because his pre-cog report was, in theory, more planned and had more leading up too it and thus there was more time.
The whole premise is that the murders seen by the pre-cogs are "perfect" evidence. Therefore if you're caught you're caught and locked up instantly. He goes on the run because he's 100% sure in himself that he won't kill that person and that, as a result, the precog murder is in some way being cheated.
The problem still is that there is nothing in the movie that sets up how Tom Cruise is supposed ever find out about the guy who he will supposedly kill apart from the pre-cogs telling him. It's a giant gaping hole in the plot.
It's been ages since I last saw it, but wasn't that a huge part of the film - him trying to get to the pre-cog to tell him or see if there was more of the memory to give him a hint how he got there?
Human Centipede? I haven't seen it, but just the description and advertising visuals leads one to opine that some kind of self-censorship may have lead the world to being a slightly better place.
Pre-cogs see Tom Cruise murder a guy, but there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the plot apart from the pre-cogs seeing him do the murder that would lead him to the guy who he is supposed to murder.
The whole concept of that is silly. I mean, “we’ve had foresight you’re going to do a Bad Murder”. So….lock me up for a bit so I can’t do it. Sorted.
And why go on the run? It’s been a while since I watched it, but if I’m right in thinking they normally wait until the last second to make their arrest? I mean….why?
And make a run for it in the first instance?
Stupid, stupidfilm.
as others have pointed out, the pre-cogs basically pick up the moment the killed decides to commit murder. if its a long way in advance of the actual kill (ie premeditated), then they might give several days warning. For a crime of passion kill like we see in the action intro, its a much shorter window of only a few tens of minutes.
also, the system is based upon the premise that the pre-cogs are infallible in their visions, so being "seen" to murder someone is grounds, in and of itself, for conviction with the crime of murder. So, the second that ball, with cruises character's name on it, came down the line and someone else saw it, he'd be locked up, and thrown in that weird tube jail, no trial, no due process, etc. So, hes running because its not a case of "guys, you know me, i wouldn't do this, look i will sit in this chair until the timer runs out", because everyone, INCLUDING CRUISE, believes these pre-cogs are infallible.
The whole plot of the film is cruise trying to work out why he'd want to kill this guy hes never met, and discovering the titular "minority report", the ones that show that these murders are not 100% guaranteed to happen, and had been suppressed by the bosses to keep the system going.
and, as a side note, cruise walked into the fatal meeting with the intent to kill that man, believing him to be a paedophile that stole and killed his long dead son. Yes, he likely would never have found him without the pre-cog vision, but thats kind of a causality/pre-destination paradox thing, isnt it? knowing the future can lead you to actions that cause that future, even if you would never have got to that future otherwise.
anyway, for my response, i think the one that sticks in my head is star wars episode 9: dont get me wrong, 7 & 8 had problems, but they were managable, or at least tolerable. but it seems 9, what should have been the cumulation of a multi-year saga and worthy of great effort, was just.....kinda kicked out the door at breakneck pace, like it the bosses couldnt wait to be done with it. everything i have heard about its production says they were on a almost impossibly tight deadline at basically every step, with rushed, slapped together compromise on top of rushed, slapped together compromise.
Why didn't people at the top bite the bullet, push back release date 4-6 months, and give everyone the time they needed to actually do thier freaking jobs in? I honestly think it could have been salvaged, but clearly would take a more wilful director than JJ abrams to stand up for his creative work and creat a decent product.
Well the main reason is.. lots of very successful films have terrible plots. There is little to be gained by having a great plot, it doesn't correlate to movie success.
Pre-cogs see Tom Cruise murder a guy, but there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the plot apart from the pre-cogs seeing him do the murder that would lead him to the guy who he is supposed to murder.
The whole concept of that is silly. I mean, “we’ve had foresight you’re going to do a Bad Murder”. So….lock me up for a bit so I can’t do it. Sorted.
And why go on the run? It’s been a while since I watched it, but if I’m right in thinking they normally wait until the last second to make their arrest? I mean….why?
I've never seen it but Age of Adaline is borderline misogynistic. Woman granted immortality can't get over the fact that she can't find love and also in the story she has relations with a man and later his son. Ends up losing her immortality and spending her life with the son. Happily Ever After.
Because all women want is to find true love, right?
Also, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Woohoo, he ages backwards. That's it, that's the story. It's #fantasy.
Every Star Wars production since Disney took over. How can a bunch of grown men not catch small child Leia? Oh because they're intentionally walking at half speed and bumping into each other/trees for no reason. I gave up on watching anything Star Wars, the cool moments aren't worth it considering how few and far between they are, and the amount of eye-rolling moments in between makes it unbearable. I get second hand embarrassment just trying to watch most of it. I knew it was going to happen as soon as the purchase by Disney was announced, but it doesn't make it any easier to swallow.
Every Star Wars production since Disney took over. How can a bunch of grown men not catch small child Leia? Oh because they're intentionally walking at half speed and bumping into each other/trees for no reason. I gave up on watching anything Star Wars, the cool moments aren't worth it considering how few and far between they are, and the amount of eye-rolling moments in between makes it unbearable. I get second hand embarrassment just trying to watch most of it. I knew it was going to happen as soon as the purchase by Disney was announced, but it doesn't make it any easier to swallow.
Yup, this. Lord forbid you bring any attention to those issues either, apparently if those things bother you then you're automatically sexist, racist, or too nit picky.
Every Star Wars production since Disney took over. How can a bunch of grown men not catch small child Leia? Oh because they're intentionally walking at half speed and bumping into each other/trees for no reason. I gave up on watching anything Star Wars, the cool moments aren't worth it considering how few and far between they are, and the amount of eye-rolling moments in between makes it unbearable. I get second hand embarrassment just trying to watch most of it. I knew it was going to happen as soon as the purchase by Disney was announced, but it doesn't make it any easier to swallow.
Yup, this. Lord forbid you bring any attention to those issues either, apparently if those things bother you then you're automatically sexist, racist, or too nit picky.
Mhm. Nothing like shoring up a franchise than attacking your fanbase to cover up your incompetence and lack of planning in writing a coherent story.
Also, yeah SW had issues with stuff like the prequel trilogy being poorly executed, but at least that actually set up worldbuilding that was legitimately interesting and opened up new avenues to explore. The sequel trilogy not only acts as a narrative dead end, but it actively damages the entirety of both past trilogies on a scale far worse than what the prequels did when they first released. The sequel trilogy has a rehash movie, tries to subvert expectations (miserably) and then doubles back to a nonsensical ending that had no build up.
trexmeyer wrote: Disney has made a lot of questionable storytelling choices for decades.
Disney had a strong opening with the first batch of a animated film's, then a few bad decades, then a few more strong films in the late 80s/early 90s, and since then they've been coasting on their prior success and leaching off Pixar's.
I'm going to bring up two older movies because I happened to watch them recently: The Poseidon Adventure and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure.
In spite of the ill fitting title, The Poseidon Adventure is a pretty straightforward disaster movie that doesn't leave much to complain about. If there's anything, it's the characters' repeated failure to learn that unlike raptors, water doesn't know how to use door handles. And then unlearning it again after they finally figured it out.
With Beyond the Poseidon Adventure someone didn't just figure that the following movie should pick up where the other one left off, only a few hours after the rescue of the survivors, but that the new characters would find the Poseidon far more stable and a lot less flooded than in the first movie in order to make their treasure hunt in the bowels of the ship happen. As far as plot setups go, that's raises pretty significant questions as to how it's supposed to make sense. But then there's also a terrorist subplot where Baldilocks the Predictable Bad Guy goes after a shipment of guns and nuclear material and just so happens to have his own salvage operation sorted out and on standby. You know, in case of an unforeseen tsunami sinking the ship with his stuff, conveniently close to where he kept his gear and guys. Then of course there are the surviving passengers that couldn't be bothered to die or get rescued in the first movie.
There's a lot of "but why" going on with that movie.
Lots of movies where you can scratch your head, "But, why?"
However, I just could not get over 'Uncharted' where the 2 key plot as it unfolded 100% made the story not make any sense and absolutely broken. No amount of explanation can defend or excuse it.
MDSW wrote: Lots of movies where you can scratch your head, "But, why?"
However, I just could not get over 'Uncharted' where the 2 key plot as it unfolded 100% made the story not make any sense and absolutely broken. No amount of explanation can defend or excuse it.
It made more sense than the flying pirate ships in the 3rd act....
Toofast wrote: "SOMEHOW Palpatine returned" (because we couldn't think of anything else, so don't think about it too hard)
While that line is certainly meme worthy, its not like his return isn't adequately explained over the course of the film. Cheap shots like that really aren't necessary when the film has substantially greater problems in its story and structure. Like that's not even in the top 10.
I will always have a soft spot for lines like that, especially if done knowingly by a film to skip a tedious scene and get right to the good stuff.
My favorite example is Godzilla Final Wars, when the good guys are pinned down by the bad guys. Suddenly, shots ring out, killing the adversaries—it’s the Secretary General of the UN…with a gun. He explains “I escaped somehow.” Then shoots some more aliens. “They called me ‘Deadeye’ in college.”
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I will always have a soft spot for lines like that, especially if done knowingly by a film to skip a tedious scene and get right to the good stuff.
Except in Episode IX we never even got close to the good stuff. :(
After the crap fest that was Episode VIII I'd declared that the only way I'd see IX was if:
1) I pirated it,
2) I saw it eventually on D+ (wich I was planning on having for the coming Marvel stuff),
3) or if someone else bought my ticket.
Well, friends insisted that I come with them when it came out.
They bought the ticket, I bought the popcorn.
(I'd have bought the popcorn no matter what we'd seen)
Honestly I was only expecting it to be a bit worse than 7, but a step up from 8.
Those hopes were dashed by the opening crawl.
And the longer it went, the worse it got....
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I will always have a soft spot for lines like that, especially if done knowingly by a film to skip a tedious scene and get right to the good stuff.
Except in Episode IX we never even got close to the good stuff. :(
Hard to get to the good stuff in the third act when the second act kills off every plot thread from the first act.
All these young adult book series that are remade into movies. The books at least has the merit of getting kids to READ; the movies lack even that much.
The Hobbit trilogy. Doing it in ONE movie might have been overly-long, but there was no need to add in tons of extraneous material and turn it into three.
The Hobbit has three directors cuts, and they make the films longer.
To be honest, I liked the Hobbit films better than the book, but the book wasn't very good and would likely be forgotten forever were it not dubiously tied to Lord of the Rings.
It strikes me as absurd how people can think that Disney ruined Star Wars. Seriously, there are only two possibilities:
1- Star Wars was ruined well before Disney made any films.
Or
2- Star Wars was always this way.
Way too many people are willing themselves to overlook the stupidness in The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, the Holiday Special, Caravan of Courage, Battle for Endor, Return of the Jedi and everything Extended Universe
odinsgrandson wrote: the book wasn't very good and would likely be forgotten forever were it not dubiously tied to Lord of the Rings.
Which is a really interesting assessment, considering most people consider The Hobbit to be better written in terms of flow of the story and pacing. Lord of the Rings is more of an epic poem/history/lore in some respects compared to The Hobbit, which was very much intended to be a story.
odinsgrandson wrote: the book wasn't very good and would likely be forgotten forever were it not dubiously tied to Lord of the Rings.
Which is a really interesting assessment, considering most people consider The Hobbit to be better written in terms of flow of the story and pacing. Lord of the Rings is more of an epic poem/history/lore in some respects compared to The Hobbit, which was very much intended to be a story.
Flow of the story and pacing? Seriously? That's one of the most absurd things I have ever heard.
The book is a jarring trip from one random encounter to the next with13 identical characters falling into one trap after another and needing to be rescued by Gandalf (whose powers are all hand waved) and later Bilbo. Every encounter along the way is incidental to the actual plot of the book (ie- none are even a little bit related to their quest to defeat Smaug) and many are absurd (like how the dwarves split into small groups so that they can feed themselves to the trolls).
The hero who kills the dragon is introduced ON THE PAGE WHERE HE KILLS THE DRAGON. And after that we have a big climactic battle that IS PRESENTED IN QUICK SUMMARY because the protagonist was unconscious for it.
On top of that, The Hobbit contains very little world building, and some of what is there is inconsistent with Middle Earth (talking animals, Troll named Robert and William, etc). And world building is why Lord of the Rings has impacted literature. Mind, Lord of the Rings has its flaws- the largest is that Tolkien was far too interested in describing the terrain.
Oh wait, do you mean that people at the time were okay with The Hobbit because fantasy fiction was meant to be kind of bad because it was all for kids?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ghaz wrote: If it weren't for the success of The Hobbit and his publisher requesting a sequel, The Lord of the Rings may have never existed.
This is something I agree with. And ultimately if Tolkien had continued to refuse to write a sequel, The Hobbit would be some quirky old fairy story for kids like so many others that were hits at the time and are not revered now.
I have no problem saying that it is good for The Hobbit to exist to pave the way for the next publication the considerable influence it exerted. Lord of the Rings revolutionized fantasy fiction in some really impressive ways. The Hobbit did not.
What I feel The Hobbit has going for it is some nice, comfortable prose and two memorable characters (Gandalf and Bilbo). Lord of the Rings gives us quite a lot more interesting characters and quite a lot more interesting situations throughout.
odinsgrandson wrote: The Hobbit has three directors cuts, and they make the films longer.
To be honest, I liked the Hobbit films better than the book, but the book wasn't very good and would likely be forgotten forever were it not dubiously tied to Lord of the Rings.
It strikes me as absurd how people can think that Disney ruined Star Wars. Seriously, there are only two possibilities:
1- Star Wars was ruined well before Disney made any films.
Or
2- Star Wars was always this way.
Way too many people are willing themselves to overlook the stupidness in The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, the Holiday Special, Caravan of Courage, Battle for Endor, Return of the Jedi and everything Extended Universe
Tell me, what in all of that equals the Holdo Maneuver? If this is even remotely possible, then the Death Star is POINTLESS. Load up a bulk freighter with useless asteroids and slam it into the planet at lightspeed, problem solved for WAY less than a superlaser. Use a probe droid to pilot it - the probe droid is not just capable of hyperspace navigation, but also is fanatical enough to self destruct under the right circumstances. Should be child's play to alter the programming into an AI kamikaze.
And before you start in on gravity wells, that already got busted in TFA, when Han flies the Falcon through hyperspace not just into Starkiller Base's gravity well, not just under it's planetary shields, but clear into it's ATMOSPHERE.
And don't give me any 'one in a million' BS either. Sure, a HUMAN might have issues with timing the jump just perfectly. A navicomp should be able to do it just fine, or failing that an astromech droid. Programming a droid brain to do it should again be child's play.
Add in the new novels making hyperspace accidents creating planetary devastation in the era of the High Republic, and all the pieces are in place for the Empire to weaponize the Holdo Maneuver as an alternative to the large, expensive, and vulnerable Death Star.
Which means the entire first movie is POINTLESS. The Death Star is never built, Leia is never on her desperate mission to get the plans to the Rebels, Luke and Ben stay on Tatooine, and Leia dies when a bulk freighter smashes into Alderaan and sterilizes the planet. Emperor wins. Or at least that's what SHOULD have happened.
So... what in the material you mentioned comes even close?
Vulcan wrote: Tell me, what in all of that equals the Holdo Maneuver? If this is even remotely possible, then the Death Star is POINTLESS. Load up a bulk freighter with useless asteroids and slam it into the planet at lightspeed, problem solved for WAY less than a superlaser. Use a probe droid to pilot it - the probe droid is not just capable of hyperspace navigation, but also is fanatical enough to self destruct under the right circumstances. Should be child's play to alter the programming into an AI kamikaze.
This argument to me is bafflingly stupid. Yes, there is this thing called "innovation" it's when people improve on existing methods or technology or develop entire new technology or method altogether. The "Holdo maneuver" is an innovation. While some might have theorized it, she was the first to apply to this scale and successfully. It seems and is even mentioned and shown very clearly in the movie that hyperspace technology has improved significantly between the 30 years that separate Luke's and Rey's adventures. Yes, the "Holdo maneuver" might dramatically change the face of Star Wars battle tactics in the future and make obsolete the Death Star or, using technology like hyperspace jammers like those developed by the Empire in Star Wars Rebels, you could make the "Holdo maneuver" impossible and useless.
The Holdo Maneuver broke the setting. So did the Solo Maneuver. Hyper-skipping or whatever broke the setting. Torturing logic to justify any of those doesn’t just break the setting but breaks the fandom. If you don’t have a problem with broken settings, just admit that it’s not a dealbreaker for you and move on rather than trying to defend the franchise’s virtue.
As for the Hobbit, it’s fine if you don’t like it. Weird, but fine. But arguing that up is down or black is white in regards to it being less readable than LoTR? That’s disturbing.
Vulcan wrote: Tell me, what in all of that equals the Holdo Maneuver? If this is even remotely possible, then the Death Star is POINTLESS. Load up a bulk freighter with useless asteroids and slam it into the planet at lightspeed, problem solved for WAY less than a superlaser. Use a probe droid to pilot it - the probe droid is not just capable of hyperspace navigation, but also is fanatical enough to self destruct under the right circumstances. Should be child's play to alter the programming into an AI kamikaze.
This argument to me is bafflingly stupid. Yes, there is this thing called "innovation" it's when people improve on existing methods or technology or develop entire new technology or method altogether. The "Holdo maneuver" is an innovation. While some might have theorized it, she was the first to apply to this scale and successfully. It seems and is even mentioned and shown very clearly in the movie that hyperspace technology has improved significantly between the 30 years that separate Luke's and Rey's adventures. Yes, the "Holdo maneuver" might dramatically change the face of Star Wars battle tactics in the future and make obsolete the Death Star or, using technology like hyperspace jammers like those developed by the Empire in Star Wars Rebels, you could make the "Holdo maneuver" impossible and useless.
Canonically, The Raddus had improved shielding, which combined with jumping to Hyperspace effectively turned the ship into a lightsaber type strike.
People really, really need to untwist their knickers over it.
epronovost wrote: This argument to me is bafflingly stupid. Yes, there is this thing called "innovation" it's when people improve on existing methods or technology or develop entire new technology or method altogether. The "Holdo maneuver" is an innovation. While some might have theorized it, she was the first to apply to this scale and successfully. It seems and is even mentioned and shown very clearly in the movie that hyperspace technology has improved significantly between the 30 years that separate Luke's and Rey's adventures. Yes, the "Holdo maneuver" might dramatically change the face of Star Wars battle tactics in the future and make obsolete the Death Star or, using technology like hyperspace jammers like those developed by the Empire in Star Wars Rebels, you could make the "Holdo maneuver" impossible and useless.
Sorry, but the "innovation" argument doesn't work, for several reasons:
1) In every setting with FTL fans inevitably look at the massive kinetic energy of relativistic objects and ask "why don't they ram stuff". If random fans can think of it there's no way a universe full of hyperspace scientists and engineers never thought about it. The only plausible answer was that it simply wasn't possible to do it, with the popular explanation being that objects in hyperspace don't interact with objects in normal space so the collision wouldn't work.
2) Holdo expects it to work. She could martyr herself by turning the ship towards the fleet and engaging to draw their fire. Even if she can't operate the guns solo she could still threaten a normal space ramming attack and force them to waste shots on her instead of the transports. But instead she goes for the hyperspace ram, knowing that if she fails she's at best stranded in the middle of nowhere in a useless ship with no fuel left.
3) The other characters immediately recognize what she's doing. Poe knows she's going for martyrdom, not cowardice, and appears to expect her to succeed in her sacrifice. And even if he theoretically knew something about new technology the first order officer who had a nice brown pants moment didn't. But as soon as her hyperspace vector starts to align with the fleet he immediately recognizes that not only is she attempting to ram them, they're all about to die.
4) The "innovation" is promptly forgotten. Our heroes are facing a massive enemy fleet plus a surprise bonus enemy fleet and what do they do? Grab some freighters and start sending ramming missiles at the target? Hyperspace ram the planet with the sith temple? Nah, load up the space horses and make a god damn cavalry charge against a star destroyer.
There's no way around this, it's a beautiful shot but it's stupid on every possible level.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Canonically, The Raddus had improved shielding, which combined with jumping to Hyperspace effectively turned the ship into a lightsaber type strike.
So how did the first order officer know it was going to work?
Aecus Decimus wrote: 1) In every setting with FTL fans inevitably look at the massive kinetic energy of relativistic objects and ask "why don't they ram stuff". If random fans can think of it there's no way a universe full of hyperspace scientists and engineers never thought about it. The only plausible answer was that it simply wasn't possible to do it, with the popular explanation being that objects in hyperspace don't interact with objects in normal space so the collision wouldn't work.
Which is the case in Star Wars where you later see the Falcon going through a planet while going hyperspace which leads us to think that ship that goes hyperspace can pass through things (though some phenomenon might still affect it), but can still hit things at tremendous speed while accelerating toward hyperspace which is exactly what the Holdo maneuvre is. Hitting the bad guy by going hyperspace very close to the enemy and hit them during the top of the acceleration period right before the ship leaves realspace. The maneuvre itself is probably impractical in most setting since if your enemy is a little too far away you simply pass through him harmlessly, too close and its basically just ramming. You got to be positioned perfectly. The Holdo maneuvre is an innovation and a very niche tactic that works specifically in that situation but is unlikely to succeed in most others. You got to have the perfect mixture of distance, fuel and gravitational strength to make it work. That's why everybody recognise what Holdo is about to do and how it's likely to succeed because they all recognize that she's in the perfect spot for hyperspace ramming and the First Order officer realize too late that he basically moved his ship right into that trap that he didn't thought about probably because the maneuvre itself is so niche. Why don't they use it all the time? Because it was very niche in its application and that was the time where it specifically worked.
Are you actually suggesting that measuring distance and doing math around velocity and acceleration is an almost impossibly hard problem to overcome in a setting with thousands of years of commercial space travel?
Episode 9 was so difficult to watch. I really had to try and not laugh in the cinema (which I failed at multiple times) on a Christmas eve family outing, which then started a cascade of arguments that ruined Christmas that year.
Rise of Skywalker literally ruined Christmas for me in 2019.
Vulcan wrote: Tell me, what in all of that equals the Holdo Maneuver? If this is even remotely possible, then the Death Star is POINTLESS. Load up a bulk freighter with useless asteroids and slam it into the planet at lightspeed, problem solved for WAY less than a superlaser. Use a probe droid to pilot it - the probe droid is not just capable of hyperspace navigation, but also is fanatical enough to self destruct under the right circumstances. Should be child's play to alter the programming into an AI kamikaze.
This argument to me is bafflingly stupid. Yes, there is this thing called "innovation" it's when people improve on existing methods or technology or develop entire new technology or method altogether. The "Holdo maneuver" is an innovation. While some might have theorized it, she was the first to apply to this scale and successfully. It seems and is even mentioned and shown very clearly in the movie that hyperspace technology has improved significantly between the 30 years that separate Luke's and Rey's adventures. Yes, the "Holdo maneuver" might dramatically change the face of Star Wars battle tactics in the future and make obsolete the Death Star or, using technology like hyperspace jammers like those developed by the Empire in Star Wars Rebels, you could make the "Holdo maneuver" impossible and useless.
Canonically, The Raddus had improved shielding, which combined with jumping to Hyperspace effectively turned the ship into a lightsaber type strike.
People really, really need to untwist their knickers over it.
It’s not stated in the movie, and printed canon isn’t worth squat these days.
Perhaps you should stop worrying about the mite in other people’s knickers when there’s a beam in your own.
It’s not stated in the movie, and printed canon isn’t worth squat these days.
Perhaps you should stop worrying about the mite in other people’s knickers when there’s a beam in your own.
Er, wait. Forget that last bit.
This stuff is almost never stated in the movies. Star Wars has always been a series of incredibly light sci-fi elements that people go out of their minds trying to harden after the fact with material that gets created later.
Most modern american movies aren't actually movies, they're collages of algorithm generated scenes held together by the bare minimum of plot required to set a chronological order, sometimes not even that. Cause-effect is not even a consideration.
odinsgrandson wrote: the book wasn't very good and would likely be forgotten forever were it not dubiously tied to Lord of the Rings.
Which is a really interesting assessment, considering most people consider The Hobbit to be better written in terms of flow of the story and pacing. Lord of the Rings is more of an epic poem/history/lore in some respects compared to The Hobbit, which was very much intended to be a story.
Flow of the story and pacing? Seriously? That's one of the most absurd things I have ever heard.
The book is a jarring trip from one random encounter to the next with13 identical characters falling into one trap after another and needing to be rescued by Gandalf (whose powers are all hand waved) and later Bilbo. Every encounter along the way is incidental to the actual plot of the book (ie- none are even a little bit related to their quest to defeat Smaug) and many are absurd (like how the dwarves split into small groups so that they can feed themselves to the trolls).
The hero who kills the dragon is introduced ON THE PAGE WHERE HE KILLS THE DRAGON. And after that we have a big climactic battle that IS PRESENTED IN QUICK SUMMARY because the protagonist was unconscious for it.
On top of that, The Hobbit contains very little world building, and some of what is there is inconsistent with Middle Earth (talking animals, Troll named Robert and William, etc). And world building is why Lord of the Rings has impacted literature. Mind, Lord of the Rings has its flaws- the largest is that Tolkien was far too interested in describing the terrain.
Oh wait, do you mean that people at the time were okay with The Hobbit because fantasy fiction was meant to be kind of bad because it was all for kids?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ghaz wrote: If it weren't for the success of The Hobbit and his publisher requesting a sequel, The Lord of the Rings may have never existed.
This is something I agree with. And ultimately if Tolkien had continued to refuse to write a sequel, The Hobbit would be some quirky old fairy story for kids like so many others that were hits at the time and are not revered now.
I have no problem saying that it is good for The Hobbit to exist to pave the way for the next publication the considerable influence it exerted. Lord of the Rings revolutionized fantasy fiction in some really impressive ways. The Hobbit did not.
What I feel The Hobbit has going for it is some nice, comfortable prose and two memorable characters (Gandalf and Bilbo). Lord of the Rings gives us quite a lot more interesting characters and quite a lot more interesting situations throughout.
I'm reading through the books with my daughter right now and the funny thing is most criticisms of the Hobbit apply almost exactly to Fellowship. It's a very similar string of fairly inconsequential encounters all the way to Bree. The two are a lot more similar than I remember from last time I read them and ultimately I do think I prefer the Hobbit over Book 1 of Fellowship. Most of the random encounters in the Hobbit have a bit of a pebble rolling downhill effect to them and I kind of like that Smaug isn't really the end (though I do wish Bilbo had an encounter with Bard prior to feed into that aspect of the finale). There's even more ties to the Hobbit than I remember, though I think they're easy to handwave because Fellowship is so bloated with names of places and people that get handwaved along with it. It's just kind of the nature of the story.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
lord_blackfang wrote: Most modern american movies aren't actually movies, they're collages of algorithm generated scenes held together by the bare minimum of plot required to set a chronological order, sometimes not even that. Cause-effect is not even a consideration.
This isn't limited to modern movies, or american movies, or even movies for that matter. Very few stories have well thought out histories for its world and characters. That's what makes the ones that do exceptional.
Geifer wrote: Are you actually suggesting that measuring distance and doing math around velocity and acceleration is an almost impossibly hard problem to overcome in a setting with thousands of years of commercial space travel?
Absolutely not, but since it's simple, so can the enemy and not give you the opportunity to make such a maneuvre effectively. The counter is easy, just keep the distance between you and a still mobile ship greater or shorter than the very short distance where hyperspeed ramming is possible. If they see you prepping for the maneuvre they can accelerate towards you and just get rammed in a more traditional way or move backward and keep their distance to avoid being hit by it. The only reason the Holdo maneuvre worked so well was because Snoke's ship was basically moving towards Holdo's ship thinking it was either going to run off or basically surrender. They realised their mistake too late and Snoke's ship was too big to get out of the way in time. A predictable ''finicky'' move with little margin for success is usable only in a very limited way which is useful as a desperate ''dirty trick'', but not useful at all as a basic strategy or even something upon which to build an entire combat doctrine. It's basically the ''viffing'' of space warfare (viffing is a desperate maneuvre some aircrafts like the Harrier could use to stall and dodge to force an enemy fighter to overshoot, but it's very risky and doesn't work all that well).
I find the idea exceptionally humorous that a capital ship could possibly hope to maneuver to block more numerous and massively cheaper, expendable small vessels aiming their hyperspace ram at critical parts like the reactor to inflict catastrophic damage. Not to mention that space stations and planets don't dodge oncoming ships so well. But hey. Agree to disagree, I guess.
Geifer wrote: I find the idea exceptionally humorous that a capital ship could possibly hope to maneuver to block more numerous and massively cheaper, expendable small vessels aiming their hyperspace ram at critical parts like the reactor to inflict catastrophic damage. Not to mention that space stations and planets don't dodge oncoming ships so well. But hey. Agree to disagree, I guess.
I agree.
The recent Sta Wars movies have done more to damage the IP and it’s canon lore for me than bring cool stuff. For every cool Darth Vader trying to get to the stolen plans scenes we have far too non-sensical former child soldier Stormtrooper deserters doing cavalry chargers, Holdo/Solo maneuvers, hyperspace trackers, ever increasing planetary destruction methods, children escaping Imperial installations hidden under a coat, broken Jedi master blue milk drinking self loathing… on and on ad nauseum.
This whole discussion about the Holdo maneuver sums up one of the core problems. Many people want something that looks cool and do not care about any kind of bigger lore considerations that may impact world building and suspension of disbelief… because for them it does not damage their suspension of disbelief.
And you know, at my age the thing is I can relate to the Luke (and to a lesser degree Obi-Wan) we were given lately because he reminds me of who I am… but I would rather see who I want to be on the screen rather than who I feel like all too often these days, a bitter, cynical man who has given up on the galaxy. I think that is why I had watery eyes when I saw the Luke of my youth in the Mandalorian.
LunarSol wrote: This stuff is almost never stated in the movies. Star Wars has always been a series of incredibly light sci-fi elements that people go out of their minds trying to harden after the fact with material that gets created later.
In previous movies it didn't matter because you didn't have plot elements defined by the technobabble nonsense. Who cares why an x-wing banks into a turn like a WWII fighter, there's never a point in the movie where you ask "WTF, why didn't they just turn flat and auto-win". Hyperspace ramming is stupid because its existence immediately requires you to answer the question of why it isn't used all the time, including in later movies where all the characters are aware of how to do it. You have an awkward contradiction between the existence of a trivially easy way of obliterating entire fleets with a (relatively) cheap ramming ship and the following movie ending with a desperate losing battle against an overwhelming enemy fleet where the heroes get on their space horses and execute a cavalry charge against a star destroyer rather than ram a freighter through the star destroyer fleet and call it a day.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
epronovost wrote: The counter is easy, just keep the distance between you and a still mobile ship greater or shorter than the very short distance where hyperspeed ramming is possible.
Except we see in the following movie that you can enter hyperspace within seconds as Poe does his stupid "hyperspace through all the obstacles" thing far faster than a capital ship could react. All you'd have to do is keep the ram ships out of gun range and wait for the enemy fleet to try to close into range, at which point you press the "kill fleet" button.
Vulcan wrote: Tell me, what in all of that equals the Holdo Maneuver? If this is even remotely possible, then the Death Star is POINTLESS.
- Don't you remember how Vader told us that the Death Star was pointless in the OG? "The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force." Right after he blew the galactic defense budget on a machine that blows up planets.
What are you hiding, Vader?
-The equivalent would be Ani quickly slicing off both of Dooku's hands because for that single brief moment, one Jedi noticed that all of these lightsaber flourishes were totally pointless and that his opponent didn't have a hand guard.
-Or Grand Moff Tarkin waiting until the Death Star moved around the planet's orbit in order to destroy Yavin 4 rather than just shooting the planet. Or even moving the Death Star around the planet with its faster than light capability.
-Or maybe the fact that following the second Death Star's destruction, the Imperial fleet that still had the Rebels outnumbered and outclassed chose to surrender.
-Or the way that Darth Maul survived being cut in half, falling into a seemingly bottomless pit and transported through outer space to a planet that acts as a dedicated landfill- seemingly because he was angry at the time.
-Why did the Naboo palace have a bottomless pit with precarious catwalks and randomly activating shields in its basement anyway? What was that built for?
-Or maybe the way that the Empire shielded the Death Star from the moon of Endor rather than affixing the shield generator to the Death Star (ie, where it could shield itself). The shield was impenetrable, they could have just left it up and won every fight forever.
-Why has no one started harvesting medichlorians until The Mandolorian?
-And if Force Sensitivity is genetic, and force sensitive children are identified in infancy, how can forbidding Jedi from having families make any sense? They should have died out centuries ago like other religions that forbid having children for all adherents.
-The fact that there are shape shifters in the setting has implications thst are ignored. It is kind of silly that shape shifters aren't running the galaxy.
The only one we see waa Jango Fett's subcontractor. Presumably Jango expected his assassin to shape-shift into someone close to Padme and was rightfully upset with the whole poisonous bug approach. But then he stuck around for what now?
-And not to mention that A New Hope is one of those plots that is ruined by cell phones. The setting has faster than light communication that can contain detailed images. All it would take is some basic encryption to get the plans from Leia to Alderaan and Yavin.
-If Luke is the great hope, why doesn't his lack of participation in the Battle of Endor make a difference? (Han's team takes down the shields, Lando's team blows up the Death Star with Palpatine inside- Luke isn't required).
Fans have come up with loads of headcanon to explain all of this in convoluted ways that are mot present in the films themselves. A few of those fans have gotten official seals to put their headcanon into EU books or newer materials (like the explanation about the Holdo Maneuver).
As fans, we choose which stupid things we accept and love and which stupid things we become enthusiastically angry about.
LunarSol wrote: The Executor was also brought down by the impact of an A-Wing to the bridge, so.... yeah...
One major difference there: the Executor was damaged by the a-wing, it was only destroyed because it was in close proximity to the death star and a momentary loss of control was enough to put it on a collision course it couldn't turn away from in time. In a deep space battle with no convenient obstacles around the a-wing would have done superficial damage and merely taken the ship out of the fight for a short time while officers elsewhere in the ship regained control. Holdo doesn't just inflict a temporary loss of control with a lucky hit on a vital system, she cuts the flagship in half and obliterates all of the ships behind it.
Sorry, but most of these have very straightforward answers without resorting to fanfiction or EU material.
odinsgrandson wrote: - Don't you remember how Vader told us that the Death Star was pointless in the OG? "The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force." Right after he blew the galactic defense budget on a machine that blows up planets.
"Guns are pointless, what we need is more Jesus, without faith in Jesus our country will be destroyed."
It's very obvious that Vader is hyping up his religion here, not making a literal statement that the death star has no value. He's putting Tarkin back in his place and reminding him that the priests run the Empire and he needs to spend more time praying and making donations to the church instead of feeding his own ego.
-The equivalent would be Ani quickly slicing off both of Dooku's hands because for thst single brief moment, one Jedi noticed that all of these lightsaber flourishes were totally pointless and that his opponent didn't have a hand guard.
There are real-world weapons that don't have hand guards and yet "attack the hands" is not a magic auto-win strategy.
-Or Grand Moff Tarkin waiting until the Death Star moved around the planet's orbit in order to destroy Yavin 4 rather than just shooting the planet.
You mean the planet that did not have the rebel base on it? And that's assuming the death star has unlimited firepower and can destroy a huge gas giant just as easily as it destroys a tiny rocky planet.
-Or maybe the way that Luke's torpedoes curved down into the "exhaust."
I'm not sure why "guided weapons can turn to follow a target" is supposed to be some kind of plot hole?
-Or maybe the fact that following the second Death Star's destruction, the Imperial fleet that still had the Rebels outnumbered and outclassed chose to surrender.
I'm not sure why "they didn't fight to the death after their leader was killed aboard his god-level fortress" is supposed to be some kind of plot hole? Forces surrender all the time in real life when they feel that fighting has no further purpose.
-Or the way that Darth Maul survived being cut in half, falling into a seemingly bottomless pit and transported through outer space to a planet that acts as a dedicated landfill- seemingly because he was angry at the time.
He didn't survive. He died, and only in EU material did they bring him back.
-Why did the Naboo palace have a bottomless pit with precarious catwalks and randomly activating shields in its basement anyway?
Valid point. But we all know the prequels are stupid.
-Or maybe the way that the Empire shielded the Death Star from the moon of Endor rather than affixing the shield generator to the Death Star (ie, where it could shield itself).
Remember that the death star was still under construction? It needed an external shield generator because they had to protect it until it could bring its own shields (and weapons) online to protect itself. Maybe that could have been done by the time the rebel fleet attacked but at some point the death star was just a skeleton framework with stuff being attached and it still needed defenses.
-Why has no one started harvesting medichlorians until The Mandolorian?
Prequels are stupid.
-And if Force Sensitivity is genetic, abd force sensitive children are identified in infancy, how can forbidding Jedi from having families make any sense? They should have died out centuries ago like other religions that forbid having children for all adherents.
Prequels are stupid.
-The fact that there are shape shifters in the setting has implications thst are ignored. It is kind of silly that shape shifters aren't running the galaxy.
Prequels are stupid.
-And not to mention that A New Hope is one of those plots that is ruined by cell phones. The setting has faster than light communication that can contain detailed images. All it would take is some basic encryption to get the plans from Leia to Alderaan and Yavin.
You're confusing "plot hole" with "failure to foresee the technology of 20-30 years in the future". At the time ANH was written there was no issue here.
-If Luke is the great hope, why doesn't his lack of participation in the Battle of Endor make a difference? (Han's team takes down the shields, Lando's team blows up the Death Star with Palpatine inside- Luke isn't required).
Because he's the great hope in the religious war between jedi and sith. And he fills that role perfectly. He kills the sith lord and redeems his apprentice, ending the sith line and securing victory for the jedi.
(like the explanation in Rise of Skywalker about how the Holdo Maneuver was a desperate one in a million bet that would not work again)
It's a stupid explanation though. They say "it's one in a million" but at the time she does it everyone expects it to succeed. Holdo expects it to work, has the "well, this is it for me" look as she pulls the suicide lever, and is willing to spend the ship on the ramming attack instead of making a more conventional distraction attack. Poe's "no she's not" clearly recognizes that she's about to sacrifice herself to destroy the enemy fleet even though he, of all people, would be expected to have a "WTF is that idiot doing" reaction about an officer he thinks is hopelessly incompetent. The first order officer's "OH GOD NO" is a clear recognition that they're all about to die. Even the designated "angry idiot officer" character recognizes the threat and attempts to stop it. None of them treat it as a one in a million gamble, or even suggest that it might have any real chance of failure.
I love how your answers show how you self select into loving the original trilogy and hating the prequels and everything that follows. I don't blame you and your explanations work well enough for fanon anyway.
Just two points of clarification,
- Darth Maul comes back to life in the Clone Wars series, which was the last show that Lucasfilm contributed before selling to Disney, so it falls into pre-Disney stupidity.
This is a big deal for people who want to cut Star Wars off at the Disney purchase rather than at the prequel releases.
- I didn't fully articulate my point about lightsaber combat, but basically sword fighting should be essentially different if you can cut through anything with minimal force. That moment where Ani dismembers Dooku is one of very few moments where that happens, but the criticism stands for the entire series up to that point and beyond.
And while some weapons do not need hand guards, I am not convinced that is true for Lightsabers.
+But you want to get more into the OG, so we should keep the flaws away from things like "Why does Obi-Wan wear his Jedi uniform all the time" or "Why doesn't Yoda help anything ever," or "Why does the anit-slavery Republic decide to trust and employ an army of mind-controlled clone slaves without properly investigating who commissioned them, when, why and why the guy they were cloned was working in confederate army closely with Dooku?"
So here are a few more OG things to think about:
- How does a Sarlaac Pit Monster evolve?
This is a giant creature that lives in the sand with its mouth open to the sky all the time and waits for some little desert creatures to randomly fall into its mouth. It doesn't even seem to have anything to entice creatures into its maw like a Venus Fly Trap. But it is a giant animal that would need to eat WAY more than fly traps (which subsist primarily on photosynthesis from all of their leaves rather than protein from the bugs they catch).
- And while we're at it, what about that giant sand-worm-like monster that lived on an asteroid? It just waits there in deep space waiting for a passing space ship to enter the asteroid field and fly into its mouth? How has this species not starved to death centuries before it could evolve?
There’s a difference between “This minor detail doesn’t make sense” and “This major plot point retroactively makes a ton of earlier material no longer make sense”.
- What was Palpatine's plan in the throne room? He keeps telling Luke that he's going to turn Luke to the Dark Side and therefore Luke will join Palpatine. So let's say it goes that way, Luke kills Vader (just like Yoda told him to) then why would he join Palpatine again? Like he'd say "Hey Emps, doing that just turned my alignment evil, so I guess we're good buddies now."
This is a point that is made more glaring by the way that it is not echoed in the prequel trilogy. We see Palpatine grooming Ani from age 10 and slowly putting seeds into his mind about how he should agree with Sith ideology- ultimately turning him by convincing Ani that he is an ally and worth saving.
Ah, that's enough for now. I think the people I have the most trouble with aren't the ones who can't see the problems of the OT but the ones who claim that Disney ruined a Star Wars franchise that was perfect then they got it (ie- after the prequels and the retcon of Darth Maul).
But ultimately I think that it is okay to choose which Star Wars to love and which to hate.
Don't forget the Emperor did not expect to lose the fight in space, let alone in the throne room. So his expectation was that the Rebels would have the core of their leaders and military power destroyed. Meanwhile Luke would kill Vader.
However in doing so Luke would start to become broken inside, having killed his father and then seen his entire world destroyed (again) as all his friends are killed.
Emperor likely didn't mean that Luke would join him right there and then, but that Luke would start his fall there. A festering wound of pure anger and hatred. Something the Emperor could start to mould and influence over likely years after that event.
Geifer wrote: I find the idea exceptionally humorous that a capital ship could possibly hope to maneuver to block more numerous and massively cheaper, expendable small vessels aiming their hyperspace ram at critical parts like the reactor to inflict catastrophic damage. Not to mention that space stations and planets don't dodge oncoming ships so well. But hey. Agree to disagree, I guess.
Indeed a lone capital ship is very vulnerable to a lot of thing, just like capital ships are vulnerable to a whole lot of thing without proper escort and protection today. In the same movie we see that a single fighter piloted by an ace can basically make a capital ship near defenseless by exploiting the vulnerability of said capital ship to small, fast and high power enemy vessels. Capital ships need a screen of fighters or smaller ships to protect it to even be remotely effective and the same is true today and since the invention of the fist effective torpedo in the late 19th century. Yes, a lone capital ship would be vulnerable to a multitude of smaller vessels using that method of attack, but so would it be against standards methods of attacks as it was shown multiple time. The same is true for a space station of course. Then again, if the ship is small like fighter or corvette size, it might not be able to do any damage should the capital ship have good shielding and if larger, they are not very maneuverable and much easier to be targeted by a capital ship largest and most powerful weapons (it also becomes more expansive than just building a ship that can be used more than once too). The Executor was destroyed when it's bridge was destroyed by a fighter crashing into it after its shields were knocked down not before and even then, it was not destroyed by that, it simply went out of control and crashed against the Death Star.
Also note that planets are a lot larger too and their gravitational field used to make hyperspace jumping in proximity of them impossible until the developments seen in between episode 8 and 9 on that level. Considering the distance between ships for a hyperspeed ram, it seems to me that you would need to in atmosphere to execute this which would certainly make the entire thing even more complicated. Then again, at that point, planet destroying weapons that were multi-use and a lot more effective at it were already available and had been so for decades.
Overread wrote: Don't forget the Emperor did not expect to lose the fight in space, let alone in the throne room. So his expectation was that the Rebels would have the core of their leaders and military power destroyed. Meanwhile Luke would kill Vader.
However in doing so Luke would start to become broken inside, having killed his father and then seen his entire world destroyed (again) as all his friends are killed.
Emperor likely didn't mean that Luke would join him right there and then, but that Luke would start his fall there. A festering wound of pure anger and hatred. Something the Emperor could start to mould and influence over likely years after that event.
The logic presented in the film is literally. "if Luke hates me enough then he'll naturally kill my apprentice and join up as my new apprentice because that's what hating me naturally makes people do." I mean, maybe that will turn him to the Dark Side, but why would he join Palpatine? It really sounds like being evil in the Star Wars universe forces you to become allies with everyone else who is evil.
I'm pretty sure that's how motivation works in Knights of the Old Republic- where a Sith tortures a Jedi until the Jedi becomes evil and joins as his apprentice. Because that makes sense.
- Part of the problem is the complete lack of echo in the prequels. Jedi gave us the impression that Ani was once in the same position as Luke- that Luke's story could be the same as Ani's if he chose differently. And of course, we get the opposite- Palpatine says "trust me" a lot instead of "hate me." He says "no really, the Sith are the good guys and we can stop people from dying" rather than "let your hate flow through you," "every moment you make yourself more mine" and "you, like your father, are now MINE!"
I mean, in the OT, he represents a sort of mythological devil figure- one who doesn't care who wins the war so long as the minds of those killing one another are turned to hatred and anger. I feel like it all breaks down when you try to view him as a full character with a mortal body and human ambitions.
odinsgrandson wrote: I love how your answers show how you self select into loving the original trilogy and hating the prequels and everything that follows.
Shrug. What do you want me to say? You posted valid criticism of the prequels, I don't dispute that they have major flaws.
- I didn't fully articulate my point about lightsaber combat, but basically sword fighting should be essentially different if you can cut through anything with minimal force. That moment where Ani dismembers Dooku is one of very few moments where that happens, but the criticism stands for the entire series up to that point and beyond.
Ok, I'm not a sword fighting expert so I'll grant that there might be some style issues here. But that's not really in the same category of hyperspace ramming. There's no blindingly obvious situation where you ask "why didn't they just do X" and even a casual viewer will notice the problem. Maybe someone whose hobby is sword fighting can criticize the technique (and the technique in every other case of stage combat TBH) but it at least holds up well enough for suspension of disbelief to apply. With hyperspace ramming even a viewer with no exceptional expertise in a relevant field is going to ask "WTF why didn't they just hyperspace ram the fleet to death".
"Why does Obi-Wan wear his Jedi uniform all the time"
Because it wasn't the jedi uniform, it was just typical desert robes. Retconning it into a jedi uniform in the prequels was a pretty silly decision.
"Why doesn't Yoda help anything ever,"
Because he's hiding from the Empire and making any overt move could get him killed. I thought that was made pretty clear in ESB?
"Why does the anit-slavery Republic decide to trust and employ an army of mind-controlled clone slaves without properly investigating who commissioned them, when, why and why the guy they were cloned was working in confederate army closely with Dooku?"
Prequels are stupid.
(Also, because the guy in charge of the Republic was running both sides of the war. I'm sure he "investigated" the issue and found nothing suspicious about it.)
- How does a Sarlaac Pit Monster evolve?
Who cares? The issue is not that we don't have an explanation for every single detail, it's that there are inconsistencies between details/events in different places. There's no situation where the precise details of how a sarlaac evolves could ever be relevant to the plot, it's just a weird monster that never comes up again. It's not like you have a plot point in ANH that, say, Obi Wan remains hidden in the desert because everyone knows no life can survive that far out and then it's revealed in ROTJ that no, actually his house is right next to the sarlaac pit. But that's exactly what you have with hyperspace ramming. You have an event where the existence of it directly contradicts other events, character actions/beliefs, etc. There's no issue with deciding that Star Wars FTL allows hyperspace ramming, but if you do that then you can't turn around and have everyone promptly forget about it in the next movie even when hyperspace ramming would be the obvious war-winning strategy to use.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
odinsgrandson wrote: The logic presented in the film is literally. "if Luke hates me enough then he'll naturally kill my apprentice and join up as my new apprentice because that's what hating me naturally makes people do." I mean, maybe that will turn him to the Dark Side, but why would he join Palpatine? It really sounds like being evil in the Star Wars universe forces you to become allies with everyone else who is evil.
He'd join because he's a weak apprentice and Palpatine is an experienced master with many dark side secrets for Luke to learn and a galaxy-spanning Empire at his command. If he immediately kills Palpatine he turns to evil but will never be more than a fumbling amateur. If he joins Palpatine with the intent to learn everything he can and then kill him he wins in the long run.
And of course, we get the opposite- Palpatine says "trust me" a lot instead of "hate me." He says "no really, the Sith are the good guys and we can stop people from dying" rather than "let your hate flow through you," "every moment you make yourself more mine" and "you, like your father, are now MINE!"
Sure, but he also has the advantage there that nobody knows he's evil yet. He's working from a position of trust where he can say "we can do good together", and he has years with Anakin to manipulate him towards the eventual goal. By the time of the OT everyone knows who he is. Nobody who isn't already evil is going to believe him about anything, and he has only a short time to convert Luke or kill him. And so he has to fall back on baiting Luke into taking those first steps across the line and convincing him that once he does there is no redemption.
On Uncharted, Tom Holland was totally miscast for the role.
On Star Wars, 7 was ok reintroduction of the SW universe,got that and than it got worse.
Same with the series, mandalorian was great and then it slowly got worse.
Vespa scooter gang right
Obi wan series, some major head scratching when i saw that.
I really liked Rogue one and solo, those were better IMHO.
Lot of 80's action movies had major plot holes but they took themselves not serious.
Vulcan wrote: Tell me, what in all of that equals the Holdo Maneuver? If this is even remotely possible, then the Death Star is POINTLESS. Load up a bulk freighter with useless asteroids and slam it into the planet at lightspeed, problem solved for WAY less than a superlaser. Use a probe droid to pilot it - the probe droid is not just capable of hyperspace navigation, but also is fanatical enough to self destruct under the right circumstances. Should be child's play to alter the programming into an AI kamikaze.
This argument to me is bafflingly stupid. Yes, there is this thing called "innovation" it's when people improve on existing methods or technology or develop entire new technology or method altogether. The "Holdo maneuver" is an innovation. While some might have theorized it, she was the first to apply to this scale and successfully. It seems and is even mentioned and shown very clearly in the movie that hyperspace technology has improved significantly between the 30 years that separate Luke's and Rey's adventures. Yes, the "Holdo maneuver" might dramatically change the face of Star Wars battle tactics in the future and make obsolete the Death Star or, using technology like hyperspace jammers like those developed by the Empire in Star Wars Rebels, you could make the "Holdo maneuver" impossible and useless.
You do know you're talking about a galaxy where hyperdrive has been in use for thousands of years, yes? And never ONCE over those thousands of years has anyone considered the implications of E+Mc squared?
If the Holdo maneuver is impossible for whatever reason, it makes sense. And without it, Star Wars: A New Hope makes sense.
If it's possible, someone would have weaponized it. And as I said, in the newer novels there was a planetary disaster caused by a hyperdrive accident resulting in debris striking the planet during the Old Republic era. In light of that disaster I submit the Empire would have spent a year or two developing THAT technology, instead of 20 years developing a 'super laser'.
Now, tell me about those advances in hyperdrive technology in the new trilogy. Bear in mind the Millennium Falcon is NOT an example of this, as there's no indication it's been refitted with any new technology.
Aecus Decimus wrote: 1) In every setting with FTL fans inevitably look at the massive kinetic energy of relativistic objects and ask "why don't they ram stuff". If random fans can think of it there's no way a universe full of hyperspace scientists and engineers never thought about it. The only plausible answer was that it simply wasn't possible to do it, with the popular explanation being that objects in hyperspace don't interact with objects in normal space so the collision wouldn't work.
Which is the case in Star Wars where you later see the Falcon going through a planet while going hyperspace which leads us to think that ship that goes hyperspace can pass through things (though some phenomenon might still affect it), but can still hit things at tremendous speed while accelerating toward hyperspace which is exactly what the Holdo maneuvre is. Hitting the bad guy by going hyperspace very close to the enemy and hit them during the top of the acceleration period right before the ship leaves realspace. The maneuvre itself is probably impractical in most setting since if your enemy is a little too far away you simply pass through him harmlessly, too close and its basically just ramming. You got to be positioned perfectly. The Holdo maneuvre is an innovation and a very niche tactic that works specifically in that situation but is unlikely to succeed in most others. You got to have the perfect mixture of distance, fuel and gravitational strength to make it work. That's why everybody recognise what Holdo is about to do and how it's likely to succeed because they all recognize that she's in the perfect spot for hyperspace ramming and the First Order officer realize too late that he basically moved his ship right into that trap that he didn't thought about probably because the maneuvre itself is so niche. Why don't they use it all the time? Because it was very niche in its application and that was the time where it specifically worked.
Yes.... against other SHIPS.
How hard would it be to arrange to be at that specific distance to a PLANET? Given even a planet in a very tight orbit isn't moving all THAT fast compared to a starship, I'd say 'not terribly hard at all'.
That's why it breaks Star Wars. It makes the Death Star irrelevant. Just load up a cheap bulk freighter with useless rock and a probe droid motivator, and BOOM!
Planet may not be blown up, but you've certainly sterilized the surface and killed EVERYONE there. Bonus points because it works with any largish ship you don't mind expending, making it nearly impossible to defend against, You just don't know it's coming until it's too late.
Geifer wrote: Are you actually suggesting that measuring distance and doing math around velocity and acceleration is an almost impossibly hard problem to overcome in a setting with thousands of years of commercial space travel?
Absolutely not, but since it's simple, so can the enemy and not give you the opportunity to make such a maneuvre effectively. The counter is easy, just keep the distance between you and a still mobile ship greater or shorter than the very short distance where hyperspeed ramming is possible. If they see you prepping for the maneuvre they can accelerate towards you and just get rammed in a more traditional way or move backward and keep their distance to avoid being hit by it. The only reason the Holdo maneuvre worked so well was because Snoke's ship was basically moving towards Holdo's ship thinking it was either going to run off or basically surrender. They realised their mistake too late and Snoke's ship was too big to get out of the way in time. A predictable ''finicky'' move with little margin for success is usable only in a very limited way which is useful as a desperate ''dirty trick'', but not useful at all as a basic strategy or even something upon which to build an entire combat doctrine. It's basically the ''viffing'' of space warfare (viffing is a desperate maneuvre some aircrafts like the Harrier could use to stall and dodge to force an enemy fighter to overshoot, but it's very risky and doesn't work all that well).
As I said, against other ships you'd be 100% right.
Planets, on the other hand, do not accelerate or dodge at all well...
Geifer wrote: Are you actually suggesting that measuring distance and doing math around velocity and acceleration is an almost impossibly hard problem to overcome in a setting with thousands of years of commercial space travel?
Absolutely not, but since it's simple, so can the enemy and not give you the opportunity to make such a maneuvre effectively. The counter is easy, just keep the distance between you and a still mobile ship greater or shorter than the very short distance where hyperspeed ramming is possible. If they see you prepping for the maneuvre they can accelerate towards you and just get rammed in a more traditional way or move backward and keep their distance to avoid being hit by it. The only reason the Holdo maneuvre worked so well was because Snoke's ship was basically moving towards Holdo's ship thinking it was either going to run off or basically surrender. They realised their mistake too late and Snoke's ship was too big to get out of the way in time. A predictable ''finicky'' move with little margin for success is usable only in a very limited way which is useful as a desperate ''dirty trick'', but not useful at all as a basic strategy or even something upon which to build an entire combat doctrine. It's basically the ''viffing'' of space warfare (viffing is a desperate maneuvre some aircrafts like the Harrier could use to stall and dodge to force an enemy fighter to overshoot, but it's very risky and doesn't work all that well).
As I said, against other ships you'd be 100% right.
Planets, on the other hand, do not accelerate or dodge at all well...
Even then, the relative cost of a dozen or so hyperdrive-equipped hulls deployed at varying distances and angles against a capital ship would render capital ships worthless. Sure, you might be able to manoeuvre to prevent one ship being able to Holdo you, but even 5 or 6 would be almost impossible to defend against. What makes the Holdo manoeuvre even worse is it takes place in a setting where building impractically large spaceships is kind of the MO of the antagonists.
epronovost wrote: Also note that planets are a lot larger too and their gravitational field used to make hyperspace jumping in proximity of them impossible until the developments seen in between episode 8 and 9 on that level. Considering the distance between ships for a hyperspeed ram, it seems to me that you would need to in atmosphere to execute this which would certainly make the entire thing even more complicated. Then again, at that point, planet destroying weapons that were multi-use and a lot more effective at it were already available and had been so for decades.
The problem is, IF that is a new(ish) technology, it was installed onto the Millennium Falcon before it was left on Jakku, because there was no time for such a major retrofit between Rey and Finn stealing it, and Han taking it not just into the gravity well, not just under the planetary shield, but clear into the LOWER ATMOSPHERE of Starkiller Base.
The movie explains it as 'only Han Solo is simultaneously crazy enough to try, and good enough to even have a chance to pull it off'. And... given Han's history of insane piloting stunts on screen, it works. No need to invent new technology that wasn't ever mentioned on screen.
Now. Where is Admiral Holdo's piloting skill while implementing an insane stunt established on screen? Where is the new technology allowing hyperspace rams mentioned on screen?
Yes, there are holes in various place in Star Wars. (Incidentally, lightsabers not having handguards is not one of them. What do you make the handguard out of, to stop a blade that cuts through everything? And if you can, why not build the whole thing out of that material? Why not wear armor made out of it? Why not armor spaceships out of that material and render most weapons useless?) Very few of them render the entire plot of the original movie pointless.
Big difference in minor plot/story points where something does not make sense and the ENTIRE movie plot has no feet, leaving you so frustrated that the entire movie, not just small instances, simply does not work.
Sure, SW has a bunch of things where you go, "Wait a minute, that is stupid, does not follow," but I do not think it renders the entire movie impossible.
MDSW wrote: Big difference in minor plot/story points where something does not make sense and the ENTIRE movie plot has no feet, leaving you so frustrated that the entire movie, not just small instances, simply does not work.
Sure, SW has a bunch of things where you go, "Wait a minute, that is stupid, does not follow," but I do not think it renders the entire movie impossible.
It is a very personal decision on what breaks immersion for you. For me, I can deal with spaceships doing WW2 style dogfights and a Death Star that can destroy a planet but Starkiller base is just a step too far. Some things jar with me at first but later I am ok with once the logic behind it is explained, like the B/SF-17 bombers. So I do not think it is a case of just rejecting new ideas.
You do know you're talking about a galaxy where hyperdrive has been in use for thousands of years, yes? And never ONCE over those thousands of years has anyone considered the implications of E+Mc squared?
Yes, that is the universe as it exists.
Ultimately, space combat is presented in very stupid ways compared to how it ought to look. Ships moving through space are traveling at crazy speeds relative to one another such that projectile weapons would rip them to shreds and ramming one another would create massive devastation, and they should be firing upon one another from crazy long range such that they can't see one another out the window.
But Star Wars space combat has never been good science fiction. So yes, the Star Wars universe is one in which no one for thousands of years has ever considered the implications of light speed travel.
It is a little bit like how heroes and villains only use their powers when it is dramatically appropriate (ie- Jedi can run at super speed to get away from battle droids but can't when Obi-Wan needs to catch up to Qui-Gon and Maul, or how blocking force lightning is a skill both of Luke's teachers have mastered and can even be done without a lightsaber except when Luke needs to be hopelessly outmatched by Palpatine).
This is all really a case of "the writer didn't think of it, and so no one in the universe thought of it." And yeah, that's really dumb.
- The problem I have with Poe's quick jumps thing isn't that they say it is dangerous and all, but that he does it from planet surface and then he's on another planet surface right after. Like, if he's going through hyperspace without using the computer to calculate his route, then he should be ending up at somewhat random places in the universe, and if there is SO MUCH MORE SPACE IN SPACE THAN PLANETS!
How hard would it be to arrange to be at that specific distance to a PLANET? Given even a planet in a very tight orbit isn't moving all THAT fast compared to a starship, I'd say 'not terribly hard at all'.
That's why it breaks Star Wars. It makes the Death Star irrelevant. Just load up a cheap bulk freighter with useless rock and a probe droid motivator, and BOOM!
Planet may not be blown up, but you've certainly sterilized the surface and killed EVERYONE there. Bonus points because it works with any largish ship you don't mind expending, making it nearly impossible to defend against, You just don't know it's coming until it's too late.
You could make the exact same argument with an asteroid. Why don't they just put an hyperspace drive on a giant asteroid and teleport it straight on a planet they want to destroy? It doesn't do a better job than the Death Star. It might be cheaper and more simple, but money was no object for the Empire. It's not reusable for once and it doesn't have other secondary functions. The Death Star is also a giant military base to repair and supply ships, base tens of thousands of stormtrooper and equipment, etc. It can target ships effectively in addition to planets during the same engagement. It's not as easy to destroy (well the Death Star was easy to destroy, but mostly because it was sabotaged in the design phase) compared to a ship. It also has a intimidation factor which was supposed to be it's entire raison d'être. The simple fact you could ''parc'' the Death Star to intimidate or send a regular army to quell a rebellion in less drastic measures. The Death Star doesn't have an easy counter too. A simple Interdictor prevents any sort of Holdo maneuvre, but no shield is strong enough to resist a blast from the Death Star or the even more powerful Starkiller base which can shoot several planets at the same time without even needing to be close to it. Yes, 30 years or so after a New Hope, the Death Star was completely obsolete.
Star Wars blasters have always been inferior to what we have today. People talk like the Ewok's having such a low tech level, but we have measured arrows from bows and they travel faster than blaster shots from Storm Trooper rifles.
Blaster Speed Calculations- quick summary, they travel at about a fifth the speed of arrows shot from longbows (which are the slower arrow calculations I could find).
odinsgrandson wrote: Star Wars blasters have always been inferior to what we have today. People talk like the Ewok's having such a low tech level, but we have measured arrows from bows and they travel faster than blaster shots from Storm Trooper rifles.
Blaster Speed Calculations- quick summary, they travel at about a fifth the speed of arrows shot from longbows (which are the slower arrow calculations I could find).
So who really had worse weapon technology?
Star Wars blasters are the equivalent of all the 'laser' weapons found in cartoons such as G.I. Joe and answers to the lasers vs. guns debate in movies and television can be found all over the 'net (for example):
It’s not purely genetic. At all. Never has been. Yes having a Force Sensitive parent increases the likelihood, but it seems to be a fluke genetic quirk.
And the Jedi Order was never of a particularly set number, because it’s not a military. At least, it was never intended to be. As such, they have no particular need to have breeding programmes for new recruits. Those that occur naturally out in the Galaxy are enough. And one could argue that the true purpose of the Jedi Order is to ensure the powers and abilities of Force Sensitives is channelled in a positive way for the wider Galaxy.
And not to mention that A New Hope is one of those plots that is ruined by cell phones. The setting has faster than light communication that can contain detailed images. All it would take is some basic encryption to get the plans from Leia to Alderaan and Yavin.
This one is easy to explain. The Imperial Holonet is just that. Imperial. Given how paranoid The ISB could be, I can easily see them monitoring communication as much as possible. Add an identifier type encryption for something as top secret as the Death Star plans, and have your systems constantly checking for it. Follow it from source to destination, and boom, you’ve found your Rebel base, ready for a strike. So Leia simply couldn’t risk it. Hence she stuck to a hard copy inside R2.
It’s not purely genetic. At all. Never has been. Yes having a Force Sensitive parent increases the likelihood, but it seems to be a fluke genetic quirk.
Like a mutation that happens randomly but somehow happens the same way across the galaxy?
I disagree- I think that the films treat force sensitivity as genetic. It started with Luke and Leia's parentage- they're children of the powerful Sith so they both have abilities. Then Qi Gon asks about Ani's father because he knows that having a powerful dad makes you force sensitive (and Ani is powerful because his dad is medichlorians or the Force or a Sith Power or something). Then Kylo is super powered because his mom and grandpa were force powerful and Rey has super powers because her grandad is a big bad Sith lord.
It’s not purely genetic. At all. Never has been. Yes having a Force Sensitive parent increases the likelihood, but it seems to be a fluke genetic quirk.
Like a mutation that happens randomly but somehow happens the same way across the galaxy?
I disagree- I think that the films treat force sensitivity as genetic. It started with Luke and Leia's parentage- they're children of the powerful Sith so they both have abilities. Then Qi Gon asks about Ani's father because he knows that having a powerful dad makes you force sensitive (and Ani is powerful because his dad is medichlorians or the Force or a Sith Power or something). Then Kylo is super powered because his mom and grandpa were force powerful and Rey has super powers because her grandad is a big bad Sith lord.
And Obi-Wan Kenobi was as powerful as Anakin yet was not born in a force sensitive dynasty and his younger brother is nobody... as of now. Yes, there is a genetic component to it, but that's mostly perceived as such because Star Wars has a strong family theme interwoven in it.
Yet Jedi don’t tend to knock boots and produce sprogs, yet there are Younglings. Well. There were Younglings
So yes, a Force sensitive parent is likely to produce Force sensitive offspring, but it’s clear that’s not a prerequisite.
It could be a recessive gene, where it needn’t be active in the parents to be active in the child. In fact, I’m relatively sure Palpatine’s son (who was a clone of some kind? I’ll have to read up again) wasn’t himself Force sensitive. Seems he didn’t have a strong connection to The Force.
But as I said, there’s clearly no requirement for the Jedi Order to have a particular head count, because they’re a religious order and not a military. Indeed getting them to be Generals in the Republic Army was a deliberate choice by Palpatine to speed their fall. Not only would a number of them be killed during the war, thinning their ranks, but it changed public perception from Peace Keepers and Negotiators to War Leaders.
Plus a given Jedi, whether Knight or Master, could only have a single Padawan at a time. If we look to Kenobi and Qui-Gon, that training period lasts a long, long time, as Kenobi was 25 in The Phantom Menace.
If we assume most Jedi had something like the average human life span, a Knight or Master might only be able to train one or two Padawans in their life (again using Obi-Wan as a frame of reference. Pass out at 25, take a Padawan, have them trained by 35-40, then the next and so on. Actually that makes it 3, maybe 4. I forgot to account Padawans aren’t assigned until their teens, with Ahsoka being 14 when she became Anakin’s Padawan.
So that puts an inherent limit on how many Jedi the order can train up in a given period.
Of course that means Luke and Rey both had super short training periods. Like….Dougie Howser short.
odinsgrandson wrote: Ultimately, space combat is presented in very stupid ways compared to how it ought to look. Ships moving through space are traveling at crazy speeds relative to one another such that projectile weapons would rip them to shreds and ramming one another would create massive devastation, and they should be firing upon one another from crazy long range such that they can't see one another out the window.
Should they be firing at such long ranges? A bullet/laser/etc may still do damage at a million miles away but can you hit anything? Is fine control of those giant armored gun turrets precise enough to pivot them tiny fractions of a degree to hit at ranges where even a 0.000001 degree error means you miss by a mile? And if you can do that what reason is there to go out to long range? If you're facing accurate fire either way you might as well blob up right on top of the objective.
But, again, the issue here is consistency, not what technobabble explanation someone came up with in the EU to justify it. You can complain all you like about short combat ranges but at least Star Wars is consistent about it. Ranges are always short, you don't have weird outlier events of ships fighting at million-mile ranges and then characters saying "we can't hit anything 50 miles away" in the following movie.
or how blocking force lightning is a skill both of Luke's teachers have mastered and can even be done without a lightsaber except when Luke needs to be hopelessly outmatched by Palpatine
I'm not sure why you think it's a plot hole that Luke, a fumbling amateur who ran away from his training after a few days, didn't learn every single force skill that jedi with decades of formal training had mastered.
I mean, that particular complaint is akin to a Boomer mithering that a Milennial doesn’t know how to change a plug. Of course they don’t. It’s not inherent knowledge. It’s something the Boomer was taught by A.N.Other, not to mention most plugs these days, if not all plug, are moulded to the cable, completely removing not only the need, but the option, to replace the plug. Or criticising someone for not knowing how to do different wood joints when carpentry was never part of their formal education.
We also only ever see Yoda block Force Lightning without a Light Saber. Even Mace Window (lol. Window.) blocked/redirected/reflected Force Lightning using his Light Saber. An item Luke pointedly threw away just before the sparks flew.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
BobtheInquisitor wrote:
It’s not stated in the movie, and printed canon isn’t worth squat these days.
Perhaps you should stop worrying about the mite in other people’s knickers when there’s a beam in your own.
Er, wait. Forget that last bit.
Remember folks. Not finding the answer to a given question unsatisfying, does not in fact render the question in, erm, question, unanswered.
There’s a “great” tv interview between Eamonn Holmes and Jeremy Corbyn which exemplifies this. The Bloody Awful Eamonn Holmes claims victory, as apparently Corbyn refused to answer an insipid attempt at a Gotcha Question (if memory serves he asked Corbyn to denounce the IRA). Except….he absolutely, 100% did answer the question. Multiple times. Holmes in his egotistical, god awful manner simply didn’t get the answer he wanted.
Why yes I do have an exceptionally low opinion of Eamonn Sodding Holmes.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Or maybe the fact that following the second Death Star's destruction, the Imperial fleet that still had the Rebels outnumbered and outclassed chose to surrender.
The Rebel fleet moved away from The Death Star. Then a bloody big explosion happened. Right next to The Imperial Fleet. The Fleet that had just lost its chain of command (Battle Station, Flagship, Emperor).
This is the trouble with Totalitarian approaches. No clear line of succession. Many higher ups became higher ups because they were loyal to The Emperor, rather than because they were necessarily competent.
Plus there was nothing stopping the Rebel Fleet jumping away should an attack be pressed there and then. And we can conclude from the celebrations shown it was a keystone removal, with whole planets and systems turning on The Empire.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
If Luke is the great hope, why doesn't his lack of participation in the Battle of Endor make a difference? (Han's team takes down the shields, Lando's team blows up the Death Star with Palpatine inside- Luke isn't required).
You may have noticed Luke kept Palpatine and Vader well occupied during the assault. Had Vader been on Endor, or taking part in a fighter? Potentially very, very different outcome. Hell, just position him in the Shield Generator and any Rebels breaching it are very, very dead.
Remember, The Chosen One wasn’t a prophecy on the end of The Empire. They were just meant to bring Balance To The Force. The trouble with that prophecy of course is it doesn’t exactly define what Balance meant…
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Why did the Naboo palace have a bottomless pit with precarious catwalks and randomly activating shields in its basement anyway? What was that built for?
Heat dissipation seems a distinct possibility. Literally chimneys to help keep the gubbins as cool as possible. Shield things? Because the plot required it, it looks cool, and they likely served some purpose we can only guess at, because Star Wars isn’t High Sci Fi.
Or maybe the way that the Empire shielded the Death Star from the moon of Endor rather than affixing the shield generator to the Death Star (ie, where it could shield itself). The shield was impenetrable, they could have just left it up and won every fight forever
As Admiral Gil Ackbar said? It’s a trap.
Much of the Rebellon’s successes were down to it being a nimble foe, with no single base to go knacker. Palpatine provided a target far too tempting, with the sort of exploitable weaknesses The Rebellon had become adept at taking advantage of. But, a target of such size and complexity (get a ground team in, take down the shield, fleet required to run distraction and escort for the Fighters) it needed a substantial force.
Spring the trap, shatter the backbone of The Rebellion, and allow Fear, Fear Of This Battle Station to keep the systems in line. That was the whole point of Endor. Get the buggers in one place at one time and kick the ever loving crap out of them.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Suppose I should stress I’m not having a pop here. Just offering my knowledge as counter points. None of my posts here have a hidden “duh” intended.
odinsgrandson wrote: Ultimately, space combat is presented in very stupid ways compared to how it ought to look. Ships moving through space are traveling at crazy speeds relative to one another such that projectile weapons would rip them to shreds and ramming one another would create massive devastation, and they should be firing upon one another from crazy long range such that they can't see one another out the window.
Should they be firing at such long ranges? A bullet/laser/etc may still do damage at a million miles away but can you hit anything? Is fine control of those giant armored gun turrets precise enough to pivot them tiny fractions of a degree to hit at ranges where even a 0.000001 degree error means you miss by a mile? And if you can do that what reason is there to go out to long range? If you're facing accurate fire either way you might as well blob up right on top of the objective.
A laser is a terrible weapon for space combat because laser energy decreases significantly with distance: so it isn't good at extreme range. Really you should be relying on advanced targeting computers for all of your attacks.
The reason to go out at long range is because there is such an extreme amount of space. I mean, Star Wars shows "blockades" around planets where they feature just a few ships. Even if these ships are staggeringly massive like the size of cities, it would be pudding to launch a ship into space at a distance far enough that you wouldn't even see another ship as a speck in the distance.
or how blocking force lightning is a skill both of Luke's teachers have mastered and can even be done without a lightsaber except when Luke needs to be hopelessly outmatched by Palpatine
I'm not sure why you think it's a plot hole that Luke, a fumbling amateur who ran away from his training after a few days, didn't learn every single force skill that jedi with decades of formal training had mastered.
Well, we see four Jedi encounter force lightning in the prequels and every one of them can counter it with ease (despite not having encountered a Sith for like a century or something) and that includes both of Luke's teachers who also both knew that Palpatine uses Force Lightning as a standard combat tactic.
So that does seem inconsistent to me. I mean, it isn't the most inconsistent thing in Star Wars by any stretch.
But I think you calling Luke a fumbling amateur hits on one of the grand inconsistencies of the greater Star Wars narrative. Luke has to be the most powerful being in the universe or some kid who barely graduated from Jedi school after missing his first twenty years of classes now.
The problem is really that the Prequels WORSHIPPED the original series and sought to elevate the importance of those events well beyond the scope they reached originally.
- In the OG trilogy, you have a Jedi apprentice who fell to the Dark Side, caused a bunch of problems and his son who was also force sensitive came back for him. Back then, Vader was special because he was among the very last of the nigh extinct group force users and Palpatine was legitimately more powerful than him.
- Then the Prequels told us that Vader was the Messiah. His whole existence is the center of the Star Wars universe now. He's the "chosen one" from a vague ill defined prophesy with an even more poorly defined origin and because of this Vader and Luke are required to be the most powerful beings in the universe.
And now the plot of every story in the setting must bow to the superior importance of Luke and Vader's drama (and often go out of their way to undercut the importance of their own original stories).
So I kind of think that "Luke was a fumbling amateur" no longer matches what nearly every new Star Wars work is constantly telling me about Luke. But it made sense at the time.
odinsgrandson wrote: The reason to go out at long range is because there is such an extreme amount of space. I mean, Star Wars shows "blockades" around planets where they feature just a few ships. Even if these ships are staggeringly massive like the size of cities, it would be pudding to launch a ship into space at a distance far enough that you wouldn't even see another ship as a speck in the distance.
We've seen that Star Wars ships have the speed and acceleration to circle a planet within minutes to pursue a target so even a fairly loose blockade will catch a ship. Han's "fastest ship in the galaxy" almost gets run down and blown away by capital ships coming over the horizon as he tries to leave Tatooine so it's pretty clear that initial starting positions don't matter a lot. And if you're trying to destroy the death star you might as well jump in next to it, if weapons are effective out to absurd range you're not gaining anything by staying at long range.
But, again, the issue is not technobabble EU explanations, it's consistency. Star Wars combat is arguably unrealistically short-ranged but it's consistently short-ranged. The movie tells us "this is how it works" and then it works like that every time. In the case of hyperspace ramming the movies tell us completely different and contradictory things because nobody bothered to think beyond what would look cool in one scene.
Well, we see four Jedi encounter force lightning in the prequels and every one of them can counter it with ease (despite not having encountered a Sith for like a century or something) and that includes both of Luke's teachers who also both knew that Palpatine uses Force Lightning as a standard combat tactic.
Again, Luke had days of training while everyone those other jedi had years to decades. He has a few minutes/hours with Obi Wan in ANH, some vague ghost noises about "trust the force", and a short enough training session with Yoda that Han and Leia don't even bother changing clothes before he's running away to go save them. It's hardly a reach to assume that when we see Yoda still struggling to get Luke to understand Jedi 101 he may not have covered all of the advanced fighting techniques, especially given Yoda's explicit statements that he did not intend for Luke to go fight anyone and Luke is being a reckless moron by running off without finishing his training.
But I think you calling Luke a fumbling amateur hits on one of the grand inconsistencies of the greater Star Wars narrative. Luke has to be the most powerful being in the universe or some kid who barely graduated from Jedi school after missing his first twenty years of classes now.
Why does Luke have to be the most powerful being in the universe? Luke is the most religiously significant character in the setting, that doesn't mean he has to be the most powerful in combat. Or do you complain that the bible is inconsistent because the story of Jesus is about mere sacrifice and forgiveness instead of Jesus kicking ass in combat? Is it unrealistic that the bible doesn't establish Jesus' skills with an AR15? I mean, if Jesus isn't the greatest marksman in the world how is he going to defend America from the zombie apocalypse?
Let's remember here that Luke doesn't win by being a god of slaughter and beating Palpatine in a duel. He wins because of his faith in the light side of the force, his devout belief that his father can be redeemed no matter what anyone else says, and his father's love for his son. None of that has anything to do with Luke knowing a particular jedi combat technique.
I agree that consistency is king in this regard of suspension of disbelief. That is how I came around to those Resistance bombers, they were consistent to the “WW2 aerial combat in space” feel of Star Wars combat.
And it is also the lack of consistency in the evidence of the “Stormtroopers always miss” trope that irks me.
Grumpy Gnome wrote: I agree that consistency is king in this regard of suspension of disbelief. That is how I came around to those Resistance bombers, they were consistent to the “WW2 aerial combat in space” feel of Star Wars combat.
And it is also the lack of consistency in the evidence of the “Stormtroopers always miss” trope that irks me.
SW space battles never bothered me because it's clear until the point Disney took the helm that Lucas kept looking back to movies like Tora, tora, tora, or Midway while creating the setting. In that spirit Holdo could have gotten the same effect with a (e.g.) conventional ram between ships by using some kind of power shunt to the engines that gave the ship the speed of a fighter without breaking canon, and less belly aching among fans.
Grumpy Gnome wrote: I agree that consistency is king in this regard of suspension of disbelief. That is how I came around to those Resistance bombers, they were consistent to the “WW2 aerial combat in space” feel of Star Wars combat.
And it is also the lack of consistency in the evidence of the “Stormtroopers always miss” trope that irks me.
SW space battles never bothered me because it's clear until the point Disney took the helm that Lucas kept looking back to movies like Tora, tora, tora, or Midway while creating the setting. In that spirit Holdo could have gotten the same effect with a (e.g.) conventional ram between ships by using some kind of power shunt to the engines that gave the ship the speed of a fighter without breaking canon, and less belly aching among fans.
M.
I quite agree.
If you have not seen them, there are a number of videos comparing the original Star Wars space combat with the Dam Busters and 633 Squadron.
I will say, watching those clips again… it reminds me just how much I love the original Star Wars (even the space combat in the Expanse is a bit more “realistic”) and just how much of an impact the soundtrack has.
Grumpy Gnome wrote: I agree that consistency is king in this regard of suspension of disbelief. That is how I came around to those Resistance bombers, they were consistent to the “WW2 aerial combat in space” feel of Star Wars combat.
And it is also the lack of consistency in the evidence of the “Stormtroopers always miss” trope that irks me.
SW space battles never bothered me because it's clear until the point Disney took the helm that Lucas kept looking back to movies like Tora, tora, tora, or Midway while creating the setting. In that spirit Holdo could have gotten the same effect with a (e.g.) conventional ram between ships by using some kind of power shunt to the engines that gave the ship the speed of a fighter without breaking canon, and less belly aching among fans.
M.
We might have had bellyaching from fans who wondered why she didn't use the hyperdrive. Because canonically you can use hypserspace speeds and run into things- that's been canonical from the very start (Han mentions it in the OG, and it comes up in Rebels).
What fans are asking for is that this bit of canon be ignored so that they can pretend that there's some nebulous explanation as to why it doesn't happen rather than accept the canonical nebulous explanation as to why it doesn't happen.
How hard would it be to arrange to be at that specific distance to a PLANET? Given even a planet in a very tight orbit isn't moving all THAT fast compared to a starship, I'd say 'not terribly hard at all'.
That's why it breaks Star Wars. It makes the Death Star irrelevant. Just load up a cheap bulk freighter with useless rock and a probe droid motivator, and BOOM!
Planet may not be blown up, but you've certainly sterilized the surface and killed EVERYONE there. Bonus points because it works with any largish ship you don't mind expending, making it nearly impossible to defend against, You just don't know it's coming until it's too late.
You could make the exact same argument with an asteroid. Why don't they just put an hyperspace drive on a giant asteroid and teleport it straight on a planet they want to destroy? It doesn't do a better job than the Death Star. It might be cheaper and more simple, but money was no object for the Empire. It's not reusable for once and it doesn't have other secondary functions. The Death Star is also a giant military base to repair and supply ships, base tens of thousands of stormtrooper and equipment, etc. It can target ships effectively in addition to planets during the same engagement. It's not as easy to destroy (well the Death Star was easy to destroy, but mostly because it was sabotaged in the design phase) compared to a ship. It also has a intimidation factor which was supposed to be it's entire raison d'être. The simple fact you could ''parc'' the Death Star to intimidate or send a regular army to quell a rebellion in less drastic measures. The Death Star doesn't have an easy counter too. A simple Interdictor prevents any sort of Holdo maneuvre, but no shield is strong enough to resist a blast from the Death Star or the even more powerful Starkiller base which can shoot several planets at the same time without even needing to be close to it. Yes, 30 years or so after a New Hope, the Death Star was completely obsolete.
Except Han Solo proved that you CAN jump in gravity wells, and for whatever reason most people just don't. So the Interdictors might be useful for more routine stuff and non-suicidal pilots; probably not going to deter a kamikaze droid brain linked to a hyperdrive.
The rest of the Death Star functions? That can be done by an ISD, or multiple ISDs. Heck, we see them DO IT on Hoth. And if push comes to shove, it wouldn't be too hard for that ISD to carry that bulk freighter - or a mid-size asteroid with a hyperdrive - in the ventral docking bay for just such emergencies.
Even more to the point, you'll never know WHICH ISD has just such a party favor onboard... or can nip over to the nearest asteroid belt and get one.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Remember, The Chosen One wasn’t a prophecy on the end of The Empire. They were just meant to bring Balance To The Force. The trouble with that prophecy of course is it doesn’t exactly define what Balance meant…
And he did. Where before there were thousands of Jedi and only two Sith, when he was done there were two Jedi (Yoda and Obi-Wan) and two Sith (Siddious and Vader). Balance.
My understanding has always been that the nav computer doesn't allow hyper space jumps when it detects a gravitational field and that Han rigged the Falcon to bypass it somehow. I suspect it's been done before but without survivors but Han gets to be Han. It vaguely reminds me of the trick Luke pulled in the Thrawn trilogy to escape a tractor beam in his X-Wing.
I think it’s more Unexpected/Uncharted Gravity Wells.
I mean, gravity is everywhere constantly, even in deep space, albeit weaker and weaker the further you get from planetary bodies.
The Interdictor Cruiser just puts them where your Navicomp didn’t expect/predict them. And whilst I’d again need to read up, it may be more Emergency Cutouts kicking in which snap the ship out of it.
In some science fiction settings, the area near large gravity bodies like stars creates a singularity that makes Relativity act the way it does, and if you fly past that, you can go faster than light.
Of course, that's not Star Wars. In A New Hope, the Millennium Falcon doesn't seem to move all that far from Tattoine before making the "jump to light speed" (which is definitely a lot faster than light speed).
And he did. Where before there were thousands of Jedi and only two Sith, when he was done there were two Jedi (Yoda and Obi-Wan) and two Sith (Siddious and Vader). Balance.
I liked that interpretation (even though George kept insisting that "bring balance" means "all Sith are dead and Jedi are still alive"). I let it go when it became clear that the films weren't going to do anything at all with that idea.
But this and the Rule of Two gets less and less true every time anything new is released. In Rebels there were four Jedi, five Sith and three force wielders who insist that they're neither Jedi or Sith.
Hmmm. Inquisitors weren’t Sith. Potential apprentices, sure. But with Palpatine in charge, only he could anoint a Pupil. And the Inquisitors wee far more disposable than a Pupil.
And anyway, it just goes to show Anakin never was The Chosen One. At all.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Though I again belatedly hasten to point out I’m not having a pop at Odinsgrandson.
Indeed I find his comments on the OT useful, because they show what happens to the OT if people apply the ludicrous level of nitpicky criticism applied to the Sequels.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Remember, The Chosen One wasn’t a prophecy on the end of The Empire. They were just meant to bring Balance To The Force. The trouble with that prophecy of course is it doesn’t exactly define what Balance meant…
And he did. Where before there were thousands of Jedi and only two Sith, when he was done there were two Jedi (Yoda and Obi-Wan) and two Sith (Siddious and Vader). Balance.
Yeah, you'd think when Qui-Con brought Ani back & presented him as the chosen one that [i]someone[i] sitting on the council would've been like "No thanks, we quite like the balance as is. Now put him back where you found him. Please."
I mean, at that point they thought there were no Sith left. So if Anikan is supposed to bring Balance? Things are going to go REAL bad.
There's either going to be a whole lot less Jedi, or a whole bunch more Sith. Maybe both.
In any event: :(
odinsgrandson wrote: Because canonically you can use hypserspace speeds and run into things- that's been canonical from the very start (Han mentions it in the OG, and it comes up in Rebels).
It's canon that you can hit something in hyperspace. It's much less clear that you can do any damage to the thing you hit. There are various speculative theories about why, but the obvious way to rationalize the lack of hyperspace ramming with Han's statement is that a ship in hyperspace that hits an object in normal space (or its gravity shadow projected into hyperspace) is destroyed but it doesn't hit the object hard enough to do anything. For example, if the gravity well of a planet or star distorts hyperspace in a way that is fatal for a ship trying to pass through it the ship might be destroyed without even making physical contact with the object in normal space, hyperspace itself destroys it. Or if part of avoiding the whole infinite fuel requirement for near-c travel is that the hyperdrive greatly reduces the mass of the ship then the energy of the collision might only be comparable to an ordinary plane crash: fatal for the ship and everyone on it, a minor local issue for whoever's house is hit.
What fans are asking for is that this bit of canon be ignored so that they can pretend that there's some nebulous explanation as to why it doesn't happen rather than accept the canonical nebulous explanation as to why it doesn't happen.
What canonical explanation is ever given, aside from handwaving it as "one in a million" despite every character in the scene clearly believing that it isn't? Imagine if they'd bothered to think through the consequences of their story choices instead of doing whatever looks cool in the moment and given us a scene like this instead:
Holdo begins to turn towards the enemy fleet. Rebel: "she's running away!"
Poe: "no she's not, she's dumb enough to think that hyperspace ramming works. Leia, why did you give this clown a ship?"
Imperial officer: "sir, the rebel ship is attempting to hyperspace ram us."
Hux: "lol, what a moron, everyone knows that's a one in a million shot. Keep killing those transports."
Holdo: "JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL"
Boom.
There, now you make it clear that hyperspace ramming only worked because the force guided Holdo's aim. Nobody bothers to try it in other situations because they know it's virtually impossible to hit the target and you can't guarantee a force miracle on demand.
odinsgrandson wrote: Because canonically you can use hypserspace speeds and run into things- that's been canonical from the very start (Han mentions it in the OG, and it comes up in Rebels).
It's canon that you can hit something in hyperspace. It's much less clear that you can do any damage to the thing you hit. There are various speculative theories about why, but the obvious way to rationalize the lack of hyperspace ramming with Han's statement is that a ship in hyperspace that hits an object in normal space (or its gravity shadow projected into hyperspace) is destroyed but it doesn't hit the object hard enough to do anything. For example, if the gravity well of a planet or star distorts hyperspace in a way that is fatal for a ship trying to pass through it the ship might be destroyed without even making physical contact with the object in normal space, hyperspace itself destroys it. Or if part of avoiding the whole infinite fuel requirement for near-c travel is that the hyperdrive greatly reduces the mass of the ship then the energy of the collision might only be comparable to an ordinary plane crash: fatal for the ship and everyone on it, a minor local issue for whoever's house is hit.
What fans are asking for is that this bit of canon be ignored so that they can pretend that there's some nebulous explanation as to why it doesn't happen rather than accept the canonical nebulous explanation as to why it doesn't happen.
What canonical explanation is ever given, aside from handwaving it as "one in a million" despite every character in the scene clearly believing that it isn't? Imagine if they'd bothered to think through the consequences of their story choices instead of doing whatever looks cool in the moment and given us a scene like this instead:
Holdo begins to turn towards the enemy fleet. Rebel: "she's running away!"
Poe: "no she's not, she's dumb enough to think that hyperspace ramming works. Leia, why did you give this clown a ship?"
Imperial officer: "sir, the rebel ship is attempting to hyperspace ram us."
Hux: "lol, what a moron, everyone knows that's a one in a million shot. Keep killing those transports."
Holdo: "JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL"
Boom.
There, now you make it clear that hyperspace ramming only worked because the force guided Holdo's aim. Nobody bothers to try it in other situations because they know it's virtually impossible to hit the target and you can't guarantee a force miracle on demand.
Yep. That would have done it. Establishes up front that this is a stupid idea and it 'never' works and nobody expects it to work.
But let's face it. Holdo's entire character is dumb. She's written in for the express purpose of cutting Poe Dameron down. Leia's also way out of character too. She slaps Poe in the face after he does EXACTLY the same thing she gave Luke Skywalker a A MEDAL, A HUG, AND A KISS ON THE CHEEK for.
We came up with a far better use for Holdo just piddling around on the internet that explains everything. Holdo isn't badly-written; she was a First Order SPY. Now her disrupting the chain of command makes sense. Now you don't need a hyperspace tracker to explain why the First Order can find them. Heck, it even explains the Resistance being out of fuel; make Holdo the senoir logistics officer!
She's given up on the Resistance with the fall of the New Republic, and doesn't want to see more people get killed (which explains her genuine anger with Poe). The First Order has promised to capture the Resistance and treat them gently, IF Holdo can get them out in the open where it can be done easily - thus, the 'evacuate on transports, I'll lure them off' plan. And when the First Order just starts blowing the transports out of space ("You're far too trusting, my dear"), Holdo can EARN her redemption with a self-sacrifice.
WAY more interesting that what we got in the move, yes?
(The Critical Drinker on YouTube mentioned the possibility that Holdo is Ryan Johnson... shall we say, subtly critiquing Kathleen Kennedy's micromanagement style and sneaking it in under her radar. If that's the case, then mission accomplished, RJ! That and that alone would redeem this film in my eyes.)
Easy E wrote: Hey, last I checked, there were other movies than Star Wars movies out there......
Some of the even have plot holes.
Pretty sure, we have a Star Wars thread all ready around here too.
I mean, yes, but Star Wars is incredibly ripe Fruit for this thread. I immediately thought of Star Wars after I read the title, I expect a lot of people did. The fact that it's such a massive franchise does it no favours either.
Eh, Star Wars is just too much of a low hanging fruit for this kind of topic. It really is one big example of things just happening for the sake of onscreen spectacle.
The first couple, maybe even the first four are fun enough. Definitely creepy and at least inventive in terms of effects and atmosphere building.
But then…..someone wanted To Let Me Explain. And it all went horribly wrong, because Let Me Explain became its whole thing, rather than focusing on being effective scarefests.
About the only long running horror series I can think of which avoided that is Hellraiser. Sure the direct to video efforts aren’t great, but they’re at least new ways to look at the mythos, rather than trying to add new stuff. With the exception of 8, Hellworld which despite Lance Henriksen is pretty awful.
I had a whole thing ready to write about Cats - but I went back to OP and remembered we were talking about 'Plot' problems, and that isn't really the issue that Cats has, is it?
Another time, I guess.
That said, have you noticed how people try to argue a movie has plot holes when what they mean to say is they simply don't like certain aspects of the story? I've seen people pin the blame for this on Cinema Sins, sparking some kind of neurotic need in people to argue a movie they don't like is 'objectively' bad.
I watched someone argue the flashback scenes in The Last Jedi are a plot hole because they're not consistent with each other, dude doubled and trippled down that flashbacks relaying false information is 'objectively' bad and Rashomon was therefore bad because Last Jedi referenced it.
Staying with Kurosawa I've seen people argue that in Seven Samurai...
Spoiler:
The old peasant who kept crying and cowering throughout the movie flipping out on his daughter and kicking her out of the house was somehow a plot hole, because he spent the whole movie cringing and cowering at everyone it didn't make sense that he would do that - but the whole point of that scene is the shock the audience and pull the nostalgic veneer off the fuedal era class system by showing how it makes people suffer and inflict suffering on others.
Signs is one I see get brought up a lot...
Spoiler:
But strictly speaking the aliens and water thing doesn't add up to a plot hole either - people go on and on about how baffling it is for them to come to a planet covered in deadly dihydrogen monoxide to do... whatever it is they're here to do, but because the movie doesn't explain the aliens at all beyond wild speculations of the characters and audience, we don't know if their choice to do so ultimately made sense or not.
And even if we had all the information and it still didn't quite add up, they have this built-in excuse for it, since the actual twist of Signs isn't that aliens are weak to water, it's that God exists and is nudging events in humanity's (or at least, Mel Gibson's) favour.
Well…if by that you’re acknowledging that Cats does not, in fact, have a plot. And has its origins as a deeply pretentious staging of a bunch of poems.
But strictly speaking the aliens and water thing doesn't add up to a plot hole either - people go on and on about how baffling it is for them to come to a planet covered in deadly dihydrogen monoxide to do... whatever it is they're here to do, but because the movie doesn't explain the aliens at all beyond wild speculations of the characters and audience, we don't know if their choice to do so ultimately made sense or not.
And even if we had all the information and it still didn't quite add up, they have this built-in excuse for it, since the actual twist of Signs isn't that aliens are weak to water, it's that God exists and is nudging events in humanity's (or at least, Mel Gibson's) favour.
The water problem isn't that they're weak to water and go to a water planet. It's that at least one of them survived for months in a cornfield with no protection. The corn in no way grew that tall without some water falling from the sky.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Well…if by that you’re acknowledging that Cats does not, in fact, have a plot. And has its origins as a deeply pretentious staging of a bunch of poems.
Not at all - in fact Cats has a very simple plot:
Spoiler:
A bunch of cats (all the cats in town? all the cats everywhere?) get together once a year to discuss who among them gets the honour of being reincarnated and given a new life, the top contenders get musical where they get to explain how great they are. Grizabella shows up and everybody hates her because she used to be right nasty to all of them when she was young and pretty but she's sad and lonely now. There's a brief sideline when Macavity interrupts proceedings by kidnapping the important dude but it's resolved by way of the single gayest song on Broadway; the cats decide it's time to resolve the whole reincarnation thing and a kitten who saw Grizabella sing her heart out convinces the rest to take pity on her and send her off to a better life, the end.
Super simple, and that's all it needs to be, as you pointed out it's a framework narrative to hang up songs based on cat poems - and that doesn't make it bad, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
No, the problem with Cats (the movie) is that Cats (the play) is built around the performances - the plot gives them slots for song and dance numbers that can be added or removed, but gives the cast and crew the maximum amount of freedom when doing those song and dance numbers. So when its done right Cats resembles a Cirque show, with tumbling and pyrotechnics and involved dance solos - the best the cast thinks they can manage how many times a night for however many nights in a row they're doing it.
Since a movie has all the benefits of editing and special effects, you can't win over audiences this same way, you need to go further, pull out all the stops and use those tools to maximum effect (Little Shop of Horrors is a great example of how to do that right!) to go above and beyond what can be done safely live. Cats (the movie) doesn't do that. It doesn't even try to do that - the dance numbers are garbage and would have been garbage if done live on stage, without the awful CGI. Hollywood has this meme about musical theatre being the lowest form of entertainment but the creators of that movie were living that contempt with every decision they made: for God's sake they had the actors do their numbers at whatever pace they felt like and forced the poor musicians working on the score to adjust tempo to make the notes line up with the words. They had no idea what they were doing and they were smug about it!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LunarSol wrote: The water problem isn't that they're weak to water and go to a water planet. It's that at least one of them survived for months in a cornfield with no protection. The corn in no way grew that tall without some water falling from the sky.
Spoiler:
I assumed he had a ship? The ones that take formation over all the major cities are completely invisible in daylight, and we see dead birds on the farm after they mention news footage of that happening too.
Maybe? The point is they come across ridiculously unprepared for something so incredibly common and harmful. Like the humidity in the air alone should be enough for them to be in agony just trying to walk around given how little it takes to kill them.
So there's the metaphysical question right there- can you have plot problems without first having a plot to speak of?
But the plot of Cats DOES EXIST. It was just so incoherent that your mind blotted it from your memory. But the flaws are probably just too glaring to start nit-picking.
See, the cats all come together once a year and beg for death, and the Elder Cat gets to choose which one dies. It seems that whoever tells the saddest story gets to die- which is a reward since that cat no longer has to live in the existential horror setting Cats takes place in.
The oldest cat gets to decide who gets to die, and there's an evil cat who kidnaps him- presumably to torture and threaten the elder cat into letting him die. But then the magic cat brings him back by using powers no one has before manifested.
Then the old cat picks a cat that dies and it is the old 'glamor' cat who for extra-textual reasons some people think is a hooker.
But strictly speaking the aliens and water thing doesn't add up to a plot hole either - people go on and on about how baffling it is for them to come to a planet covered in deadly dihydrogen monoxide to do... whatever it is they're here to do, but because the movie doesn't explain the aliens at all beyond wild speculations of the characters and audience, we don't know if their choice to do so ultimately made sense or not.
And even if we had all the information and it still didn't quite add up, they have this built-in excuse for it, since the actual twist of Signs isn't that aliens are weak to water, it's that God exists and is nudging events in humanity's (or at least, Mel Gibson's) favour.
The water problem isn't that they're weak to water and go to a water planet. It's that at least one of them survived for months in a cornfield with no protection. The corn in no way grew that tall without some water falling from the sky.
Heck, if you've ever actually been in the midwest in the summer, you'd know that corn gets absolutely COVERED in condensation in the wee hours of the morning.
There's no plausible way a creature who dissolves at the slightest touch of water could survive in a cornfield overnight, rain or no, unless it's wearing the equivalent of a spacesuit.
LunarSol wrote: The water problem isn't that they're weak to water and go to a water planet. It's that at least one of them survived for months in a cornfield with no protection. The corn in no way grew that tall without some water falling from the sky.
Spoiler:
I assumed he had a ship? The ones that take formation over all the major cities are completely invisible in daylight, and we see dead birds on the farm after they mention news footage of that happening too.
It does seem odd that it is running through all of the corn that has clearly been watered, and even if not there would be dew all over the place. This isn't a dry place.
If you want to headcanon it, then the little kid has to be right- it isn't water itself, it is some nebulous something that's in the water (ie- the reason she won't drink any of those cups she leaves all over). At this point we've officially put more thought into it than the creators.
Mind, War of the Worlds stories have a tradition of kind of lame endings, so this fits in (not necessarily a good thing).
I always thought it wasn't the water as much as something to do with the salivary microbiome. Every time a cup was left out Bo had taken a sip from it, so whatever microbes were in her mouth that got transferred to the glass had tons of time to reproduce.
The movie at least made me appreciate the talent and craft that went into the stage performances.
The only actor who came out of Cata without embarrassing himself was Ian McKellan.
Also, it’s weird that the film has all the characters essentially nude and yet feels disturbingly neutered compared to the stage play. The cats’ lack of sensual contact t makes certain lines nonsensical, such as Grizabella begging “touch me” from Memory.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The movie at least made me appreciate the talent and craft that went into the stage performances.
The only actor who came out of Cata without embarrassing himself was Ian McKellan.
I think Steven McRae deserves some credit - I get the impression they didn't know he had a musical background (in tap dancing!) and subsequently his number is the only one that maintains a consistent tempo- turning a random song in the middle of the show (that is one of the first ones cut for time) into the best number in the whole movie, despite the editing and cinematography trying their hardest to ruin it.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Also, it’s weird that the film has all the characters essentially nude and yet feels disturbingly neutered compared to the stage play. The cats’ lack of sensual contact t makes certain lines nonsensical, such as Grizabella begging “touch me” from Memory.
I especially love the way they butchered Mr. Mistoffelees - in the show it's all about the normally aloof Tugger gushing on and on about how cool and awesome Mistoffelees is for 6 continuous minutes but the studio is worried it might be construed as too gay (then why are you adapting Cats?!) so it had to be completely reworked into the way-way-more-appropriater relationship of Mistoffelees being a shy Johnny Depp type fixated on the kitten played by Francesca Hayward.
It's very easy to see theater as something of a "live" film performance but they're very different beasts that don't translate well. That's become increasingly true as film has largely won out in terms of standard story presentation and theater has largely found a place alongside it by focusing more on its ability to interact with the audience and make each performance unique. Cats is definitely big on that and its continued success largely comes from the ability to focus on different characters every night and improvise to keep the sense of surprise each time you see it.
LunarSol wrote: There have been tons of attempts to explain it away over the years, but M.Night is adamant that its just water.
And, not for nothing, a quality baseball bat with an MLB-tier swing behind it.
FWIW though it did take more than one glass of water for the alien in the house to go down, we might be able to assume they have a degree of tolerance since it took one to the shoulder and managed to get up out of it with just a nasty red burn and it got still more splashed on it from smashed glasses and such but didn't actually die until it got floored by the bat and multiple glasses poured on its face.
But again, we're speculating on the aliens' biology, motives, and technology which may be a trap, because Signs spends so much time juxtaposing people reading books about aliens or theorizing what the aliens are like against actual scenes with them where none of those theories line up. The only actual things we know about the aliens at the end of the day are that the UFOs exist, the aliens on the ground can be locked in or out of places by locks and barricades, and water burns them (in a hydrogen peroxide way as opposed to a 1980s movie acid kind of way). Why they came, where they came from, whether any world government still exists, whether most of the human race still exists - all speculation we don't have the answers for.
It's kinda like The Road -
Spoiler:
Where we don't know exactly what the disaster that wiped out civilization was - it has characteristics of a biological or nuclear attack but doesn't line up to any one thing, and we're left like the characters not really knowing what happened and never likely to find out because it's so far removed from their survival in the story.
I totally forgot about Skimbleshanks. Yeah, he might have even come off better than Ian. That was the one musical number that mostly lived up to its potential.
The Mistoffelees bit might also have worked if not for the way it kept stopping and starting. The audience in my theater sang along with that and the Skimbleshanks songs, but you could hear the confusion and laughter during Mistoffelees.
Mind, War of the Worlds stories have a tradition of kind of lame endings, so this fits in (not necessarily a good thing).
I don't know. I expect if we ever start encountering alien biospheres, we're going to have more problems dealing with the microbial life than larger creatures we can easily see, shoot, and kill.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: James Corden….I mean…..have….have they not seen anything those cretins have vomited out into the world?
I quite liked Gavin and Stacey though honestly the series did drop a few notches as the focus shifted from Gavin and Stacey to Smithy and Ness.
Halloween 3. This movie is not good. Sure if you want to throw it in the “so bad it's good column” I can accept that. But more and more people are championing this movie as some great work that was unfairly maligned because of its title. Those people are either purposefully being contrarians or are simply mistaken.
I first watched this movie with friends in the early 2000s so I was well aware that there was no Michael in it. I was willing to let that not affect my judgment of the film, especially after seeing Busta Rhymes kick Michael through a window. Maybe no Michael Myers could be a good thing. This movie was no good thing. After spending an hour and a half watching it I then spent the next 3 hours arguing about how crap this movie was and that it didn't make sense.
The basic premise is that druids in America steal a giant rock from Stonehenge to use it in a ritual to kill kids via tv commercial. I’m guessing just American kids since it doesn't seem that they were selling the masks anywhere else and I'm sure the rest of the world doesn't get many American commercials. The plan is thwarted by a drunk and womanizing doctor (no offense Mr. Atkins, I still think you are great) who stumbles across it accidentally and decides to investigate because that's what drunk womanizing doctors are wont to do.
Okay, the whole Stonehenge rock concept just doesn't work. Sure you have the whole how did they get it there question, but I'm more bothered by the timing and logistics of it all. The stone had been missing for 9 months. Take out about a month for travel time across the ocean and the US they have had the stone at the factory for 8 months. That only gives them 8 months to create and implement the whole druidic microchip process. That isn't much in the way of research and development and everything else to bring a working prototype to mass production. Considering that they need millions of these masks to meet the apparent popularity of them that allows for even less time. The factory does not look to be that automated and there doesn't seem to be that many workers. The real kicker comes in the logistics of it all. If you have ever worked in manufacturing, or even retail, you know that items will sit in a warehouse or distribution center for weeks or longer waiting to be sent to the individual retail points. Once arrived its possible they will sit in the back for another few weeks waiting to go out on the floor to be sold. All of this combined shows that there is no way the masks can be developed, produced, and shipped to retail in just 9 months.
I'll also point out that on Halloween they are still in the factory making the masks. Why? I seriously doubt many people will be wanting to buy one after millions of kids died. Likewise there are vendors showing up days before Halloween to pick up orders that should have been in their shops weeks before if they were planning on selling them for Halloween.
There are about a dozen other issues with this movie that have nothing to do with the fact that Michael Myers isn't in it. However they all stem from the fact that 9 months is not enough time to steal and transport the Stonehenge stone, create and develop a death microchip that responds to tv signals, produce the micro chips in the quantities that the movie is suggesting, and have them distributed to kids across America. Oh and as a final thing, why are Celtic druids hanging out in America with the goal to kill American kids? I mean they could they not have just stayed in the UK and done the same thing there but with a lot less hassle?
Ha! Yeah, why can't they just work in England and not tote the rock to the US? Yep, scratch your head on that one.
Some big discrepancies in lots of plots and not understanding why something happens can break the plot, no doubt. I was originally referring to a plot that simply no longer works due to its own stupidity.
Have we brought up how Indy’s presence in Raiders of the Lost Ark doesn’t affect the final outcome of the movie, other than potentially keeping Marion alive, as there’s no guarantee she’d have survived the Nepal encounter?
I'm more creeped out that he's a thief, desecrator and confessed child molester and yet also the 'hero.' Sure the first two are part and parcel of early 'antiquities' collectors, but the latter is in there for no reason at all.
He didn't actually stand up and say "My name is Indiana Jones and I am a child molester". But the script of RotLA put Marion Ravenwood's age at 25 - so 15 years old at the time of their earlier relationship (when Indy would have been 27). 'Fans' are keen to point out that Dr Jones had an affair with an under-age girl.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Have we brought up how Indy’s presence in Raiders of the Lost Ark doesn’t affect the final outcome of the movie, other than potentially keeping Marion alive, as there’s no guarantee she’d have survived the Nepal encounter?
Of course there is the entire episode on Big Bang Theory on this exact topic.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Have we brought up how Indy’s presence in Raiders of the Lost Ark doesn’t affect the final outcome of the movie, other than potentially keeping Marion alive, as there’s no guarantee she’d have survived the Nepal encounter?
Of course there is the entire episode on Big Bang Theory on this exact topic.
Except it’s not true; the Nazis follow Indy to Nepal, because they don’t know where Ravenwood is. Now, admittedly, after that he doesn’t influence the outcome, but the story never would have happened without him.
Still think that without Indy the baddies may have not found the Ark in a reasonable time frame, as they were digging in the wrong place due to only having a half copy of the head piece and the digsite looks huge and isn't there the implication that High Command is getting impatient with the lack of progress (and as we know naughty regimes generally deal with failings in a fatal sort of way)
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Have we brought up how Indy’s presence in Raiders of the Lost Ark doesn’t affect the final outcome of the movie, other than potentially keeping Marion alive, as there’s no guarantee she’d have survived the Nepal encounter?
Of course there is the entire episode on Big Bang Theory on this exact topic.
Except it’s not true; the Nazis follow Indy to Nepal, because they don’t know where Ravenwood is. Now, admittedly, after that he doesn’t influence the outcome, but the story never would have happened without him.
Turnip Jedi wrote: Still think that without Indy the baddies may have not found the Ark in a reasonable time frame, as they were digging in the wrong place due to only having a half copy of the head piece and the digsite looks huge and isn't there the implication that High Command is getting impatient with the lack of progress (and as we know naughty regimes generally deal with failings in a fatal sort of way)
They only had half the amulet due to Indy’s direct intervention in Nepal. No Indy there, they most likely walk away with the amulet, and not just….an artist’s impression.
On them following Indy to Nepal, I’ll need to watch it again.
Its a quick shot of Evil Henchman Guy sitting a few rows back on the airplane, hiding behind a newspaper, iirc. Then they jump to the travel map.
Now they don't show the legwork of one of the US agents being a double agent or someone following them to their meeting with Indy. (or however they get to the point they know they need to follow random professor/thief to Nepal), but its not really that kind of movie.
----
One of the more annoying things about Indiana Jones is he knows far too much (especially for his age, and the period). South?/Central? American tribes, ancient Egypt, Hebrew & Christian Egypt (I'll forgive the grail, since that was his father's obsession, to the point that some knowledge would have been unavoidable), India, random conquistadors and whatever else in the alien movie...
Pick a specialization. Jack of all trades archaeology makes no sense. The languages, customs, burial practices and etc aren't transferable.
Or that when he legs it in the famous opening scene, it’s to his buddy’s two seater plane. Despite he started off with two other buddies, one of who, was the treacherous Doctor Octopus!
Voss wrote: Its a quick shot of Evil Henchman Guy sitting a few rows back on the airplane, hiding behind a newspaper, iirc. Then they jump to the travel map.
Now they don't show the legwork of one of the US agents being a double agent or someone following them to their meeting with Indy. (or however they get to the point they know they need to follow random professor/thief to Nepal), but its not really that kind of movie.
The film starts with the intercepted communiqué that the Nazis were looking for Ravenwood. Indy must have been reasonably well known at this point to have the whole rivalry with Belloch and be funded by “the museum” on his adventures; if he was known to have studied under Ravenwood it wouldn’t be unreasonable to put a tail on him
Voss wrote: One of the more annoying things about Indiana Jones is he knows far too much (especially for his age, and the period). South?/Central? American tribes, ancient Egypt, Hebrew & Christian Egypt (I'll forgive the grail, since that was his father's obsession, to the point that some knowledge would have been unavoidable), India, random conquistadors and whatever else in the alien movie...
Pick a specialization. Jack of all trades archaeology makes no sense. The languages, customs, burial practices and etc aren't transferable.
As much as I agree with the reality of what you’re saying, one of the biggest weaknesses to me of the (non-existent ) fourth film is that Indy doesn’t know what’s going on a lot of the time. In the other films he is the audience’s guide and very early on it will start with a “oh no, they’re trying to find “x” and that will let them rule/destroy the world”, which then gives you a reason to want to stop them.
I still enjoy Crystal Skull, though I fully acknowledge you could replace Mutt more or less entirely. Even then it’s just the bad CGI monkey screen. The fencing duel I actually rather enjoy.
I felt like Crystal Skull wasn't a good film on two fronts, from what I recall
1) The plot was just a touch silly/over the top. The previous Indy adventures were fairly tame overall in their impacts, even opening the Ark only has an impact in a small area - now we've got aliens and massive valleys being destroyed and its all just "turned up to 11". Nuclear tests and fridges.
It has this over the top aspect that I feel just saps the element of realism in the film
2) Indie is "wrong" for the role. Ford is getting old and whilst he's also playing an old character in the film, its all adding up to a lot of situations where he's not really doing very well.
I feel like the role doesn't fit the character and, much like Starwars 7 and Luke Skywalker, it suffers from the fact that this character we knew and understood has changed dramatically off camera. Plus the plot, pacing and style of film doesn't seem to fit his more matured age.
Eg I felt like he fit the role and performance way better in something like Cowboys and Aliens.
If we can include video games as well as movies; the later Halo games were crap to begin with but had some pretty big plot holes.
Halo 3: Humanity has been pushed back almost to the point of extinction. All we have left are a handful of UNSC Frigates, and Hood suggests it may be a last stand/blaze of glory situation, that's fair. Later on at the Ark, High Charity arrives at the worst time possible and starts a Flood infestation, forcing you to activate the new Installation 4 to wipe them and the Gravemind out.
Halo 4: Despite humanity being pushed back almost to the point of extinction, less than 5 years later they seem to have amassed a pretty big empire spanning multiple planets, they've found the other Installations and are researching them, and they've also somehow built the largest, most spectacular ship ever seen.
We're also presented with the Didact, who appears over Earth in his even more spectacular ship and begins to wipe out a random US city. He's a Forerunner who can literally shift parts of this ship around to form whatever tool he needs, but he doesn't even bother to lock a single door to stop you getting to him, or even getting rid of the door alltogether.
Halo Wars 2: Despite the activation of Installation 4 in Halo 3, the Flood are still active and present on the Ark.
Halo Infinite: Had this issue with the opening trailer/cutscene. In a blatant ripoff of the opening scene of Endgame, we see the whiny pilot watching a hologram of his daughter. It then cuts to him sometime later on where he's been stuck inside a dropship long enough to grow a beard, which we find out later was actually 6 months. How is he alive? How has he found enough food, water and air to last 6 months? The toilet must be overflowing with 6 months' worth of crap by now.
Voss wrote: Its a quick shot of Evil Henchman Guy sitting a few rows back on the airplane, hiding behind a newspaper, iirc. Then they jump to the travel map.
Now they don't show the legwork of one of the US agents being a double agent or someone following them to their meeting with Indy. (or however they get to the point they know they need to follow random professor/thief to Nepal), but its not really that kind of movie.
The film starts with the intercepted communiqué that the Nazis were looking for Ravenwood. Indy must have been reasonably well known at this point to have the whole rivalry with Belloch and be funded by “the museum” on his adventures; if he was known to have studied under Ravenwood it wouldn’t be unreasonable to put a tail on him
That's fair. I forgot the back and forth of who's reacting and who's instigating.
Though thinking about it, now the opening scene makes even less sense. It was weird enough that Belloch just happened to be around the cave in the jungles, but as he's already running the German archaeology project on the city of Tanis, lost to time and history... popping off to the Americas to annoy his rival over an obscure tribal treasure (as important as it is to them, internationally and in terms of money and fame, it doesn't even vaguely compare) is... unlikely.
Overread wrote: I felt like Crystal Skull wasn't a good film on two fronts, from what I recall
I like it better than Temple of Doom, but I consider a pretty enormous gap in quality between the even and odd numbered films in that series. Hoping it holds true for the 5th.
I did enjoy Harrison Ford playing Sean Connery; that was well done and made Mutt somewhat worthwhile for me. Also jumping to sci-fi worked fine for me since it kept in lines with the trends in pulp.
The main issue is just that its one of those films that is constantly trying to create spectacle with CG rather than creative stuntwork and the result is a bunch of uncanny valley goofiness that doesn't really feel right. The plots of these films have never really been the draw as much as an excuse to string together a bunch of stunt sequences and when those don't connect, the resulting movie is honestly just forgettable if it hadn't been a big name on the box.
True and I feel like another thing that's been lost with Hollywood over the years is stringing together scenes.
I don't quite know why and its likely multiple things; but I feel that I see a lot more films now where individual scenes are amazing (be it stunt work, CGI, dialogue etc...); however the lead in and out of that scene is very weak or sometimes not even there. The result is the film starts to stop being a story and starts to become a show of scenes. Each one on its own is great, but there's no binding between them. This is always part of any media, you can't string every part together and the viewer/reader has to be part of the process. However I feel that a lot of films now the viewer is having to do more and more legwork linking things up and putting the parts in place.
I felt it very strongly with the new Dune film. Individually great scenes, but they lack the connections between them. Of people walking from A to B or establishing why they are attending a thing at point B etc... The result is characters start to feel hollow and the viewer starts to really "see" what the scenes are trying to convey in a story sense. Ergo you're starting to see the building blocks and not the story.
I do wonder if films aren't trying to do way more than in the past and the result is a lot more material being made connecting things which then gets left out in the cutting room because you're covering so much in so little time you can't keep it all. So an issue arises that wasn't in the writing or the script and wasn't there t obe spotted until you've cut the film up because you've only got 120mins or whatever the time slot is.
I don't quite know why and its likely multiple things; but I feel that I see a lot more films now where individual scenes are amazing (be it stunt work, CGI, dialogue etc...); however the lead in and out of that scene is very weak or sometimes not even there.
Oh! I know this one!
The main problem is that CGI takes years to do correctly and is often started in very early preproduction often before the actual script is finished. They are often constructed in their own bubble and can't really be too heavily altered by the time final editing comes around so a lot of studios just work them in how best they can.
A great example of this is the poor nanny who gets torture/killed by the pterodactyls in Jurassic World. That whole CGI sequence was created for an entirely different character (or a more prominent version of that same character depending on who you hear it from) whose roll got dramatically altered in the final script. They still had this huge sequence though and they found a character to slot in and as a result its just kind of needlessly cruel and tonally out of place.
To entirely unironically quote Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park? They spent so long wondering if they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
For those who don’t recall or haven’t encountered my opinion on SFX? Practical effects always land better with the audience. By all means enhance them with CGI, and not just a Spit & Polish. But if you can do it practically, do it practically. And if your idea can, in your opinion, only be done with pure CGI? Stop and really, really think.
I'll agree with that. It was my biggest problem with the Hobbit trilogy (beyond bloating it beyond reason). Every time the 'exciting' action sequences started, I tuned out.
There was no substance to them and they didn't carry any of the characters or the plot- they existed solely for the action, which because it was so fake, was dull.
My other stand-out is the intro to Age of Ultron. Partly because they're bullying hapless nobodies (yes, evil hydra, yaar! They still have no capacity to harm anyone), but because its empty CGI action leading the introduction to the film. That's a hard sell, when the intro is supposed to get me invested in the film.
A good contrast to that is the last Avengers film, where the intro is Hawkeye's family vanishing and he's turned away from the VFX, only catching the afterimages. The realness of that creepy moment really sells the intro to the film, while the end descends into irrelevant chaos.
I don't mind the Age of Ultron montage because it just an opening and doesn't impact the flow of the story in a meaningful way. The Hobbit movies are definitely rife with weirdly paced CG action.
The Barrel scene was also very odd. Almost felt like "Ok so we have to do this scene, but we've used up most of the budget and its got to feel like an amusement event for the new Hobby Theme Park"
lord_blackfang wrote: Ah so the groupthink has finally circled round to me saying movies are just collages of scenes instead of a plot now?
Depends on the movie and how well the CGI sequences are planned and integrated. Every form of entertainment is mostly so so with a few diamonds in the rough we remember years later.
LunarSol wrote: I don't mind the Age of Ultron montage because it just an opening and doesn't impact the flow of the story in a meaningful way. The Hobbit movies are definitely rife with weirdly paced CG action.
Shades of Jackson's King Kong.
It's a problem when directors get so big that no one can tell them to cut the friggin' film. Sometimes studio involvement is a GOOD thing.
Well, in the case of the Hobbit studio demanded more movies. Regardless of how you want to portion the blame, the core problem with the films is just that they weren't made with a solid vision of what the product should be.
LunarSol wrote: Well, in the case of the Hobbit studio demanded more movies. Regardless of how you want to portion the blame, the core problem with the films is just that they weren't made with a solid vision of what the product should be.
I think they did have a strong vision- they were taking The Hobbit and related appendices and setting the story in a Middle Earth consistent
with the films, emphasizing the connectiom to Lord of the Rings and finangling a coherent narrative from that all over the place book.
It was the audience thst didn't share that vision.
I think one of their biggest problems was 3D. They couldn't use any of those traditional techniques that kept Fellowship feeling gritty. CG effects can do some pretty cool stuff these days but they lose something you had with traditional effects.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I just got to see an old Lon Chaney film that made no sense. It was amazing.
It was called "The Indestructible Man."
A death row inmate swears vengeance on the criminals who double crossed him after he stole and hid their money. But after the execution, a doctor steals his body and runs some electricity into it. The result is that Lon can't talk but us super strong abd impervious to bullets.
The cops eventually track him down to a sewer where they hit him with a bazooka and flamethrower.
But ironically, the Indestructible Man dies in a freak electrical accident that wouldn't kill a normal human.
You are right!!! You get a star for today!!!
