Wow it's been a while, kinda got lost in grinding Anthem, got to answer a lot of replies at once... @X Equestris See, I find the whole "he's an idiot" thing a valid explanation. Unlike some people who criticized the "Hux is a moron which is why he does stupid shit" plot arc in Last Jedi, I'm not really that shaken by it. I don't find it contrived. Realistically there are plenty of people who gain power and prestige simply because they kissed the right ass (see: Brie Larson's entire *fingerquotes* career) or blew someone important (see: literally everyone who used to work for Harvey Weinstein) so the idea that this moron just knows who to kiss up to and gets put in a place of power is perfectly realistic for me. So the whole thing where the guy detects no life signatures in the shuttle and he, idiotically, assumes it's empty is without a doubt stupid but hardly game breaking. There also is simply the subject of racism, after a fashion. In Star Wars it's established that androids are seen like serfs, slaves, they're seen as subhuman and viewed as essentially walking Alexa modules--in spite of the fact that AIs have clearly progressed to the point that androids are obviously human, have emotions, memories, etc. I forget the exact name but there was some instance in the time of ACTUAL slavery where a Black guy helped get info to and from the Confederacy and the Union during the Civil War, because he basically put on a guise of being an apelike moron and the rebels took it as read never realizing he was sneaking in and out of the South and ferrying info back and forth (at first, they were eventually killed if memory serves). The point is I can genuinely see the guy thinking "Oh these stupid droids, they're not as smart as me lolz they'd never be able to carry vital info...despite the fact they're LITERALLY living flash drives so they could realistically carry MORE info in their memories than I do". Now, is that guy a blithering idiot? Absolutely, but again it's not game breaking. If memory serves we never see the guy after that, so someone who had an IQ with more than one digit, like Vader, probably found out what happened and Force-strangled the guy to death from across the room. My point is, it's not some HUGE leap to assume some asshole didn't think things through in the heat of battle and got gelded for it later by the ACTUAL commanding officers who know what they're doing. @Matt E Well, yes, the loss of both the Republic and the Empire back to back probably decimated the galaxy. But here's the thing about "balance" in the Force, the Force probably doesn't care. It's not, at least as far as we see, a truly self-aware entity. As far as we can tell, it's something like a nicer, less rape-fueled version of the Warp from Warhammer 40,000--it's a kind of alternate space-time realm filled with psychic light and anyone who has the capacity can control it, for good or worse, and so the Force just hands out power to who ever has the potential with no consideration for right or wrong. But what we also see and what people who know more about it than normal humans, like Yoda, speak about is "balance", or an even base setting between Light and Darkness. So when it was clear that one side has overstepped it's bounds, the Force responds by trying to "balance" things. It's not considering the political ramifications in the same way that I wouldn't consider the ramifications of killing an alpha wolf on a hunting trip, the fact it's probably going to throw the whole pack into disarray isn't relevant. There is kind of a larger aspect here I could go into, from a religious standpoint. I'm not one of the folks who thinks God tends to wrathfully strike down people on a regular basis, unlike some people I actually live with, despite the fact I genuinely believe in God. I think to some degree He has more important things to think about than what the average person does--in the same way a human has no time to worry what an ameba thinks. Now if those amebas begin to spawn viruses that become a genuine problem, they need to be dealt with, but otherwise...meh. Their "minds" are all but nonexistent, their lifespan is measured in tenths of a second, so why am I worried if they get butthurt at each other. Or if like fifty of them get together and decide to start "rationalist" organizations and scream at other amebas about how no one should "believe" I exist and how awesome Pen Jillette is. No human would be crying themselves to sleep over such a "rebellion" and somehow I doubt God is upset at similar mindless screeching emanating from California. (note: there was also a really interesting Twilight Zone episode that similarly showed how giant aliens see us near-microscopic humans as like specks of dust and don't care what we think, despite the fact we may develop god complexes and scream profane things at them, "The Little People") And to a degree I think the Force may have similar "views"--it cares about maintaining the universe and the balance between Light and Dark and isn't worried about the fact humans seem unable to create tenable sociopolitical systems. And why would it? It wants balance, ying and yang, it's not concerned with mortal political squabbles. I SERIOUSLY doubt that this...path is what Lucas had intended. Considering the entire chunks of the "sequels" are directly at odds with the original concepts in the universe, but maybe you're right. Lucas was always one for cheese so lines like "I ran straight into you" spouted by an ex-Stormie who met some moon-faced desert dweller five hours previously would fit right in with "I hate sand". Though, the main issue isn't with how forced the sequels are, it's that they added aspects which are completely detrimental to the previous series. Like I said, when it was NEVER even hinted at that hyperspace could be used to kamikaze enemy FLEETS prior to this and suddenly Commander MeToo uses it to literally destroy "The Supremacy" (I'm surprised they didn't call it "The White Privilege") and this was clearly done, and in fact all but outright stated by the creators, just to make a political statement while pissing all over previous canon from the prior movies and most of the EU canon too, then I have to call BS. That's not cheesy dialogue or suspension of disbelief that's literally stopping a movie and adding a scene which has no genuine impact on the plot and doesn't resolve any previous story points just to give us a PSA on how Purple Hair Girl (who we have never seen, heard, had any interaction with prior and has no backstory or grounding in the plot besides physically existing in it) is able to wipe out half the First Order fleet in one attack...an attack never seen previously despite the fact it cold have ended the movie in the first five minutes, and that never is attempted again. I want to respond to some other posts but let me kinda sum up some ideas: the criticism that some people use against movies, and seen in the Dishonored Wolf video I linked to, is one that applies subjective views of what is and isn't "logical" to a universe where mermaids are a thing. Going into Aquaman and assuming it's going to be as "realistic" as The Grey isn't expecting airtight storytelling, as he puts it, it's assuming two movies with WILDLY different genres will overlap in some way. Likewise it at best is grasping at straws to say this, since that entire opening sequence in Aquaman is literally just a stock Meet Cute opening seen in literally hundreds of movies and which entire genres like romantic comedies or ninety percent of YA books are founded on, and more over it's directly in keeping with the comics. That's why this is, objectively, a good movie: it's well written in the genre of a superhero comic, is adherent to the comics that inspired it, and WAAAY more entertaining than The Grey or Her, two movies he references--again betraying that he expects a movie about a MERMAID SUPERHERO to have the same logical and storytelling constraints as an indie arthouse movie or a suspense thriller set in the real world. That's the problem with nitpick critiques, they ignore actual problems and apply outside standards on the story. Phew! Wow that wasn't very succinct was it?
One note: I'm also not a fan of the "just repeat to yourself it's just a show" worldview either. There is a middle ground, having NO objective standards and nitpicking the plotpoints of a story top to bottom aren't the only options. I always kinda found just that line in MST3K to be so hypocritical, because they say don't question our logic then go on to nitpick EVERY. FUCKING. LINE. of the movie they're watching, and sometimes criticizing it for no reason other than someone (maybe, kinda) fumbled a line or the special effects weren't the same as Avatar. Like what was so terrible about Plan 9 for example? Ok maybe the acting isn't spot on and the special effects aren't great, compared to modern stuff more than anything, but realistically it's no worse or better than thousands of other movies of that era. Complete aside: people even now don't give movies like Star Wars, Aliens and Terminator 2 and similar movies the credit they deserve. Old movies had a level of wooden acting that make Captain Marvel look like Game of Thrones, and special effects that made...well made Plan 9 look like Aliens. It was really only in the last few decades that what we see as a modern blockbuster exists. To say these kinds of movies raised the standard for films in general is an understatement. More over comparing movies of WILDLY different genres to oneanother is nonsensical. Obviously, Aquaman or Attack of the Clones will never be as "realistic" as Her, and thank Christ it ain't, since that movie was so boring and longwinded I began to question corporeal time watching it.
Here's the thing: there's no reason not to shoot the pod even if it's empty. Like I said, absolute worst case scenario your gunners get some extra practice. Family Guy ribbed this point pretty mercilessly. "What are we, paying by the laser now?" I mean somebody could've just tossed a drive with the plans on it into the pod and launched it toward an agent on Tatooine. There are myriad reasons to blow it up, and only one not to: because the plot wouldn't go forward if it did. In that sense, this is both a plot hole and a plot contrivance. This isn't somebody not thinking during battle; the battle is already over at this point. You can argue stupidity here, but that's simply bad writing. And before anyone points to he many instances of real life stupidity in war, I'll point out that what works in real life doesn't always make satisfying fiction. Adapt an Alexander the Great analogue into your fictional world and he'll face Gary Stu allegations. Write a battle that turns on a massive coincidence, like Midway did, and it will be ridiculed as unbelievable and contrived for drama's sake. Write a general charging his men across a river and into entrenched enemy positions on a ridge line (like Burnside did at Fredericksburg) and it will be dismissed as too stupid to happen. All of these really happened, but fact doesn't matter if the audience finds it too ridiculous or far-fetched. While it's not hard to believe the officer was an idiot, it creates holes that wouldn't be there with better writing. Have the pods launched before the battle is completely over, and the officer dismiss it as a diversion to draw fire away from the Tantive IV, for example.
And why shouldn't he expect that? Was the ticket any less expensive? Other than the limited fantasy elements inherent in a superhero movie (or any SF or F movie) there's no reason the movie can't be every bit as logical and well-told as any other movie. The idea that certain genres of books and movies need not be well-written is unnecessary, regrettable, and unfortunately somewhat a self-fulfilling prophecy. There's plenty of counter-examples, though, from as far back as Le Morte de Arthur through Lord of the Rings, and specifically in superhero movies, Watchmen and the best of the MCU. My point being, bad storytelling shouldn't get a pass just because the work has been pigeon-holed into a particular genre.
@XRD_author I said "constraints" not "talent". First off, what you're suggesting is implausible. There are literally entire genres which would cease to exist if asked to be "realistic", never mind that Her is not "realistic" it's a romantic movie about a guy who wants to hump is Alexa module. It is, at best, more DEPRESSIVE and more somber than Aquaman, and that's assuming that you, unlike me, saw it as a borderline parody. There are commercials, meant to humorous, built around the same concept as Her and Dishonored Wolf is asking that it be the stock upon which we draw romantic tropes. It's creating absurd constraints with no purpose other than to erase entire concepts and tropes that some people consider to be "unrealistic" with their entire criteria for "realism" being "more sad" and "more artsy". Secondly, who says that romantic comedies and the tropes therein are somehow poorly written? The fact they're somehow less couched in real world concepts and politics than Her...which, mind you, is in and of itself a story about a guy who gets a stiffy when he uses Roku. AND which again, most people barely know existed, let alone cared about, let alone were willing to pay for. This goes back to the original point I made, or tried to I may have been unclear, that ARTISTIC MOVIE and WELL-MADE MOVIE aren't the same and public interest decides what is and isn't a good movie. If people don't care about your movie, don't go to see it, don't like it when they do and give fuck zero about it afterwards and mostly forget they saw it then it wasn't a good movie just because it was more artsy (cause smartphone erotica is so artistic lol) than Aquaman. On the other hand if the public enjoys a movie and word of mouth helps spread it further and it expands on a setting, sets up characters, and makes them likable and people tell others about it, they also like it, and word gets around it's an enjoyable movie...then it's a good movie. The fact that the writing isn't "airtight" (whatever that means) doesn't change things. And considering, again, the movie he's comparing the romance plot arc of Aquaman to, is a movie about a guy who wants to fuck an AI living in his smart TV should tell you what the standard for "artistic film making" is. It may sound cynical but the fact is that "artistic" movies and games and books etc are basically just supposed to be "subversive" and "shocking" (i.e., weird and quirky and usually with some bizarre sociopolitical belief shackled on) and not if it actually is well made or beloved by the public, the people whose opinion actually matters as their memories and opinions survives and Rodger Ebert's bloated sense of self-importance doesn't. So if some asshole critic tips his fedora and declares a movie or a comic or a book, etc to be the best movie of the eon because it's contrarian and properly aligns with the beliefs of The Amazing Atheist that doesn't make it great. Or good. Or watchable. Or absolve the film makers of their blasphemy against God by making smartphone erotica. The fact remains people decades from now will remember Transformers, Aquaman, Aliens, etc and no one will know what the fuck Her is...90% of humankind don't know NOW, and only I know it because I decided to look up the movie and watch a dvd rip because I wanted to research what this shit was. And then I almost had an epileptic seizure laughing so hard at it, which I imagine is what the four people who watched it in theaters felt too. ALSO ALSO, let's remind ourselves there is literally zero "realism" in LOTR, and even less in Watchmen, and the basic concept of "realism" was abandoned in Marvel films around the time that Iron Man made a new heart for himself out of a nuclear reactor and used a handmade battlesuit to kill ISIS in the first act of the first movie of the MCU. And basically, there isn't a single romantic movie, let alone rom-com, let alone YA movie or book etc which has ever approached that kind of "realism" and thank Christ it hasn't. Notice the fingerquotes throughout whenever "realism" is touched upon? That's because, again, even the movies he references as "realistic" and having "air-tight writing" have neither genuine realism or a lack of plot holes. What they do have, is a combination of quirky sociopolitical diatribes and and subversive plot structure which is focused around weird concepts meant to impress film festivals and not actual film-goers. SPOILER RANT: the Prestige is a movie about a gumshoe who finds out Not-Houdini used disposable clones and Star Trek transporters to preform stage magic, The Grey is basically just every Liam Neeson movie ever in that it's an angry guy who fights things because someone he loved was hurt or kidnapped or something, and Her as I established is basically a slashfic about Cortana. That's not an exaggeration. So saying that these are somehow examples of "realism" when they dispense with any GENUINE realism and simply couch themselves in grandiose artistic film making and aside from The Prestige they're not even that well-written (at least the twist about the clone thing in that one caught me off guard). They're "subverting the norm" yes, but they're not adding to anything and no one cared. Meanwhile, A New Hope wasn't subverting shit, it was LITERALLY just George Lucas beating off to the Flash Gordon serials he liked as a kid, and yet it set a standard remembered, copied and expanded upon to this day and basically created entire tropes onto itself which have by now become so ingrained in film making and storytelling that there are maybe two people still alive on Earth who don't know what "No, I am your father!" and "Use the Force, Luke!" are a reference to--and those two people probably are only unaware because they're in a medically induced coma. So who won the fight there? Her or A New Hope?
Aquaman's opening includes time skipping. It's not supposed to happen all at once. it's just skipping over showing loads of build up in the relationship. Internal consistency is certainly important. Stories work better if they can sell themselves to the audience convincingly. It's difficult to get all the way with everything being consistent and believable but I would err on the logical side.
First, let me point out that XRD's second paragraph was about how the notion that it's okay for a work to be poorly written because it's from a certain genre is bunk, as proven by the quality of works like Lord of the Rings or Watchmen. That wasn't necessarily saying that they were "realistic". Second, I think we need to clarify how realism is being used here. Some people, when talking about realism as it relates to fiction or fictional worlds, simply mean that it feels like something that would logically happen if these fictional elements existed in real life. Like how Dr. Manhattan's presence ramped up Cold War tensions in Watchmen. Others are talking about making something fit real world rules. I suspect the latter is what you have an issue with, but the point seems to get lost in your stream of consciousness posts. Third, if you want to argue that quality or artistic merit is based on popularity or pop culture osmosis, you also have to concede that the likes of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray would be at the top of the artistic heap. Which I, for one, find a ridiculous notion.
Not sure why you're going off on "realistic" like that -- I never used the term in the post you're responding to. Try re-reading what I wrote. "Logical and well-told" doesn't imply "realistic."
@X Equestris Well fair enough, but then you have the question of what "poorly written" is? Because, and btw @XRD_author this is why I mentioned "realism" here in reference to my original point, in this context "realism" is used by some as a synonym for "it makes sense in the real world". E.g, the video argues that if a mermaid washes up on your lighthouse then you should call the cops, then he goes on to say he's never read the comics...but see, that is LITERALLY what happens in the comics, so removing that would make it no longer an Aquaman movie. More over, it's still just a stock Meet Cute concept, at heart, and even if it weren't in the comics saying it "doesn't hold up" would as I said basically make entire genres no longer exist. "Well-written" and "airtight writing", as said in the video, is a subjective concept, and while you could argue it leads to PLOT HOLES and, again, I NEVER denied this, my problem is less with a plot hole (unless it becomes all encompassing) and more with a literal plot contrivance which stops the plot and literally exists for no reason other than to lecture the viewer. To go into a point @X Equestris raised, it's the difference between the droids in the shuttle in Episode IV and the hyperspace kamikaze in Last Jedi. The former, most viewers won't notice or care about, and even if they did it's irrelevant since it doesn't in any real way detract from the rest of the story--the latter literally involves a completely pointless plot element, which defies all logic and shits on previous canon, and even in the movie itself it defiles the actual canon, and exists solely to just have a single scene that looked kinda cool and make a point about how Empowered Wahmens can defeat The White Supremacy using the power of hyperspace(?) which I presume represents Hillary's pantsuits in this context. If I was unclear or if it seems "longwinded", that's partly on me, but I can only summarize things so much before the actual point is lost. And to be blunt, yeah "pop cultural osmosis" is what makes or breaks a series, or a story. If you write the most brilliantly scripted movie ever put to film, or a book so utterly godlike people can barely look upon it like the Ark of the Covenant, but literally NO ONE gives a shit or reads it or even likes it...but the Asylum makes a mockbuster that starts a Syfy channel film franchise, and tons of people watch the yearly installments (i.e. Sharknado) then sorry not sorry but Sharknado wins. The fact is that people want what they want, the market doesn't lie, and it's the only OBJECTIVE standard we have for "good storytelling". Because anything else is purely subjective and varies between individuals, but if millions of people are crowding into a theater every year to watch Optimus Prime pimpslap Megatron then something must have gone right. Unless we want to fall back on the "everyone who isn't being contrarian and artsy is stupid" argument, which ironically is literally the entire crux of the modern film critic theology, and one need only look at how critical darlings are forgotten in a year but so-called "popcorn flicks" make billions to see how important the opinions of snobby artistes is to the common man. Because in the end, the common man is the only one who actually matters, since their opinion defines what is and isn't remembered, and what is remembered and passed on to the future is what makes "art". Or put it this way...when they built the Eiffel Tower, a hundred artistes and social influencers said it was the most hideous, worthless piece of iron ever built. Now it's literally the symbol of France. Because the people liked it. Le oops!
Only for fiction placed in the real world, which superhero fiction obviously is not. That's what you say. The folks who give out industry awards seem to have a different criteria. And the critics who get aggregated over at RT another. Personally, I don't agree with any of them. Occasionally, I'll find a book I'd wish I had the genius to write. But most of what I've been reading lately, I'd be ashamed to have my name on. If making money is how you define success, being an author may be a poor career choice. Your odds are better in Vegas. Me, I have a successful and lucrative career, I'm not writing for a buck. My criteria for "winning" has nothing to do with money. I win when I enjoy reading what I've written: when a scene I've written makes me laugh, or smile, or cry. Whether my work achieves commercial success or not doesn't change that. The tastes of the public and the publishers are fickle and unpredictable: an author can't know what will sell well. For example: In 1995, Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter. ... The book was submitted to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected the manuscript. A year later she was finally given the green light (and a £1,500 advance) by editor Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, a publishing house in London. ... Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, Cunningham says that he advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children's books. ... In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher's Stone with an initial print run of 1,000 copies, 500 of which were distributed to libraries. -- Wikipedia, "J.K. Rowling" We all know what happened next: the world's first billionaire author.
Then The Last Jedi is in the top dozen or so stories ever made. That's what this standard would argue. Sales aren't an objective standard for good storytelling, they're merely a standard for popularity. Popularity=/=good, though any given person's tastes are probably going to contain overlap between popular works of fiction and ones they consider good.
Last Jedi was a "success" in that it made a profit, I didn't say making money purely, I said it should garner respect and enjoyment from the fans who want to see more of it and remember it will. Last Jedi failed on that mark, and more so the profit was not hugely stellar and led to a massive drop off in sales both for the movie and the next one, Solo, and wrecked and divided the fanbase. Now, most of the public doesn't care, the fans hated it by a huge margin, and the series got shitcanned so bad that they decided to put some parts of it (like at least one proposed spin off movie they had planned) on old. So no Last Jedi isn't a great example. Frankly a better example would be, say, The Force Awakens or Rogue One, both of which were huge hits and yes, even with Force Awakens, led to many fans LIKE MYSELF actually believing that the series was in good hands for a moment...and like many naive moments of my past I look back on that optimism in shame now. I can link to some videos where they explained it better, and with more profanity, but Last Jedi's "success" was from a pure superficial front if that and a temporary one even then, and on a larger level it failed LONG TERM. It didn't create a fanbase, or expand on the current one, it alienated the actual fans and had zero good word of mouth, to the point that there is almost a genre of YT videos decrying how shit it is. Unlike, say, the Force Awakens which was basically the polar opposite (in every respect--including not making me want to hang myself as I left the theater) or God forbid we compare it to movies which got rave reviews from fans AND critics and exploded into massive franchises, kinda sorta like a little indie project from a few years ago called Empire Strikes Back. But perhaps I was unclear so I'll restate my point: SALES aren't what defines good media, but public reaction is, on a long term scale. If you make a movie and bunch of people go see it but they hate it, you failed, but if they go see and then want more and it starts a huge franchise that is beloved by millions (e.g, Fast and Furious, Aliens, Empire Strikes Back, Iron Man, Transformers) then it is a success in a long term sense. And again unless you think humans are sheep unless they tip their fedoras just right, the public and the demand by the public for more of franchise are the only objective standards to go by, since subjective criteria like "art" varies so wildly between individuals as to be irrelevant. I would argue the Lensman series is art, some people would call it "common sci-fi" and then point to ST Discovery and tell me how it's so subversive and "rebellious" (and yes someone said that, that literal sentence, to me). And publishers aren't the public, they're CORPORATIONS, they just want to make money, they care even less about "art" than the average person does, because that's not how corporations work. And throwing Harry Potter out there only proves my point. It was probably turned down by a lot of publishers because it was a complicated YA novel before they really hit it off, by a first time author no one heard of, and I'm sure critics shit on it too...then the PUBLIC gets their hands on it and OH! would you look at that a multi billion dollar franchise, the fuck that come from!? Harry Potter literally is the book equivalent of Transformers, a series which many critics even now write off as "silly children's books" but the public adores (including me) and all those money grubbers who turned down Rowling probably went and hanged themselves when they saw the books flying off the shelf like a Snitch on heroin. And because of that, because of the massive fanbase it created and the fantastic word of mouth it garnered, a century from now someone is actually going to remember and give a shit about Harry Potter.
And just to clarify, if something being genuinely popular, long term, with the public and developing a real fan base isn't "objective" criteria for something being good or bad, what is? Because the alternatives are either there IS no objective standard, a kinda bizarre argument but one I guess I could get behind on a logical level, just sounds kinda cynical but whatever; OR that "good" should be decided by, what? Some clique of critics whose actual grasp of the medium may be little more than superficial at best (see virtually every film critic ever) and at worst completely divorced from what the larger public feels? Because then, it stops being "objective" criteria, something that can be shown and has grounding in fact, and becomes subjective hogwash which has no meaning besides personal feelings and only for some pre-selected clique of media gods we're supposed to pay tithes to, I guess? In all honesty, that's not sarcasm, like if the public's long term adoration for a series is not the criteria for it's success or failure, then what should we apply?
Personally, I stopped letting other people define my worth and the worth of what I've created decades ago. Public reaction doesn't define good media: the vast majority of media streamed over the Internet is cheap pornography. And then there's the Kardashians.
Sorry, but this just isn't true. Audience exit surveys rated TLJ highly, DVD/Blu-Ray sales were very high, and it made a lot of money. Solo's failure is purely due to 1) troubled production, 2) it was a spinoff, and 3) there was no enthusiasm for a Han Solo movie, especially since it meant recasting an iconic character. I think it's funny you mention Empire Strikes Back as an example of your argument; large chunks of the existing Star Wars fanbase hated it when it came out. To the point it was considered the worst of the original trilogy movies. Fast forward a few decades and it's often considered the best of the whole franchise. The same think could happen a few decades from now with TLJ.
... but that's not the way to bet. Rumor is they've brought George Lucas back to rework Luke for SW9 and supervise the reshoots.
@X Equestris Well, from what I have read and seen, the reaction from both critics and fans to Empire was very different. But even if you're right remember I said LONG TERM, so while initial reaction may have been unsteady (and again I never heard this but whatev) in the long term it succeeded, due to word of mouth. And again I could show some stuff to back this up, it would take me a sec, but people who I trust that are more..."into" all the gossip and Hollywood politicking than I am. I'm just viewing this shit from the outside, I would need to link to someone in the court to actually get a better grasp on it. But I have seen literal TV RECORDINGS of how critics and fans were raving about Empire, so I think some of this is--not an insult to you, this is more directed at critics--but I think some of that is just hipster artiste types looking back with dirt-colored glasses at "lowbrow mass media" that the "unwashed masses" ate up. @XRD_author To each their own. I don't really let public opinion "decide" what I like, but I accept it as a reality. Which goes back to what I said, SUBJECTIVE opinion and "feels" is fine on a person level but OBJECTIVE opinion by the common man is what actually means something long term. Also, complete aside, why do people throw such shade at the Kardashians? Like what precisely did they do so horrible? "Oh look how slutty they are!" Really, cause they seem to have stable relationships, marriages even, and managed to build business empires on their own so they must be doing something right. "Oh they're so vain!" Yeah and? They have something to be vain about, some neckbeard like MovieBob sitting around in his mom's house calling beautiful women with millions of dollars and stable husbands and families "vain" because they're glad they have this and show it off isn't vanity it's being proud of yourself. Mind you I've never thought highly of myself, personally (severe depression will do that to you) but if I was a millionairess married to an internationally famous recording artist who looked really hot I'd be rather prideful about it yes. And anyway, last I checked no one got hurt because Kim Kardashian likes to pose sexy on magazine covers...and that's not a swipe at you @XRD_author, I just genuinely never saw what was supposed to be so horrible and inhuman about the Kardashians, or Paris Hilton for example, like these are the least threatening most harmless people ever. But people think someone like Kathy Griffin who openly preaches for the death of other people, including a SITTING PRESIDENT, is fine? Huh? I don't want to go into politics but I will say a lot of it I think has to do with the tendency by some to look down on the "unwashed masses" (e.g, what I said about Empire above) for not being "woke" enough. But I digress.
My point is that histrionic "Star Wars is ruined" screeches from sections of the fanbase have gone on since literally the first sequel, and yet ESB is now considered classic. So fan reaction (and it's not even universal reactions, it's just a very vocal group) isn't a very good barometer of quality, success, or how a movie will be remembered. That "long run" being post RotJ and post prequels. The critics were very mixed, unlike the nigh universal critical approval for TLJ, and lots of people disliked the darker direction it took. Finding sources of this is easy. Long story short: there is NO objective measure of good storytelling. People can agree on the basics--no plot holes, internal consistency, characters behaving in character--but defining what qualifies is another matter.
To quote Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: "This never happens." For most of human history, slavery was considered acceptable (morally correct even) by "the common man" in almost every human civilization. This actually means nothing long term.
I agree that The Force is more analogous to a force of nature than to a person. The fact that it has an ingrained concept of “Light,” “Dark,” and balance between them, however, implies that this force of nature has a sense of morality. Or at least mortals have assigned moral postures to its rules. Since morality is just a word we use to describe rules to live by, this distinction can be seen as more semantic than anything else. Humans have rules of morality, and The Force has rules of morality. The Force itself is not conscious, but neither are the shared ideas that form the zeitgeist. The shared sense of morality that everyone holds together. Perhaps the force is malleable, and responds to the ideas that its users hold? But that is just speculation. Why do you dislike Vice Admiral Holdo? In a world filled with all sorts of exotic aliens, purple hair is hardly the outrageous fashion statement. Robes seem to have been stylish since at least the founding of the Jedi order. Many people in the real world seem to use her as a symbol for political ideas they don’t agree with, but I hardly remember any speeches from her about 21st century political theory. The Holdo Maneuver doesn’t seem to have been done before, but it likely only succeeded due to the exceedingly special circumstances of that space battle. The slow retreat scenario is also new to the Star Wars universe, due to the First Order invention of a hyperspace tracking device. A better option would be to hyper out, but they couldn’t do that. They’d just be followed. They usually would not have the time to prepare such a jump, which probably requires all sorts of calculations, because battles are usually much faster. Slow retreats don’t happen. Fleets don’t cluster and move in a straight line, making them sitting ducks for basically any kind of attack. And that failure is on The First Order, who just suffered a very large disruption in their command structure. They entered a tactical space that had never been entered before through use of a new technology, and failed to realize that a strategy that is usually unviable just became viavle. This isn’t the first time that that’s happened. And while I am not an expert on warp drive physics, my guess is that this particular jump was actually a micro-jump plotted to take the ship a few kilometers forward and translate it out of hyperspace into the same location that the enemy ship currently occupied. This can easily be seen as an absurdly difficult maneauver to pull off that has a low probability of success, and a high probability of landing your ship just off mark and in range of enemy laser cannons. It’s a suicide maneuver, basically.
@Matt E Ok pure fanon here, but I think that humans in Star Wars have anthropomorphized the Force in the same way that humans tend to anthropomorphize everything, including God. Without diving into religion here too much, He's not some guy sitting on a throne, I doubt that He even has what could be described as a physical form any more than gravity has a physical form or light has a physical form. He's a primordial force that creates and maintains existence and while He certainly interacts with us we tend to view Him as some kind of "human-like" entity when the actual holy texts describe a being closer to a self-aware Big Bang who sometimes decides to tell us what He thinks but otherwise has more important things to worry about (like his crazy former general trying to conquer the universe) than human opinions. Like I said a human isn't just all aflutter because an ameba is trying to convince the other amebas that he doesn't exist, assuming the human notices at all. Likewise I think that humans in Star Wars see the Force, or it's twin halves of Light and Darkness, as "good and evil" when I believe evidence shows it's more like just that, a light and dark, a force of creation and a force of annihilation. And by default, I don't think it cares, or that the Force can care, who or how we use it other than if one force becomes too powerful and begins to threaten the necessary balance of life and death, light and dark. But I'm rambling. The point is in the same way I doubt that plasma gets sad when humans use it in a turbolaser to blast a city to pieces because it didn't want to hurt anyone, I doubt that the Force is crying a river when Palpatine obliterates a solar system with a Force Storm, just as long as he doesn't disrupt the circle of life, so to speak. The game Destiny kinda goes into this too. The Traveler is basically a deity, and it kinda gives power ("Light") to whoever can prove their worthiness, good or evil. My problem with Captain Livejournal is that she literally exists just to be a (here's that word again) anthropomorphized political statement. Imagine for a moment I made a sci-fi movie, part of a series no less, like say a sequel to Avatar...and out of nowhere, here comes this guy wearing a MAGA hat with the words Make America White Again on his shirt and he's constantly browbeating and talking down to EVERY female character and he's the leader of a rebel faction named after InfoWars then when a starship named after Feminism shows up he flies a penis-shaped starship into it and kills the USS Margret Sanger and everyone on it in one shot. That's the Right wing version of Commander MSNBC. She's this bizarre looking M-powered wahmans who shows up from fucking NOWHERE then goes on to literally spend half her time on screen saying "I think what Poe actually meant was..." while leading the #Resist movement, and in the end she flies a dildo-shaped spaceship into an enemy battleship literally named The (White) Supremacy and destroys the entire enemy fleet in one shot. It's borderline parody. You're argument as to what and how the hyperspace kamikaze works is perfectly rational. My problem isn't how it works, but why it was never attempted before. Why not do this, literally this, to the Death Star? Either Death Star? Why not do it to a planet--obviously a fleet or a ship can maneuver possibly, but a planet is for all practical purposes stationary so why not do it there? Use this as a superweapon? You don't even need a spaceship, we established that objects as vast as a Death Star, hundreds of miles in size, can accelerate to FTL so why not strap a hyperdrive to a large asteroid or dwarf world or moon and do that. Mind you, Doc Smith LITERALLY had this weapon in he Lensmen books, planets that had FTL drives strapped on and were used like interstellar missiles, so the concept is hardly new to sci-fi. The fact that Starkiller was, I believe, mobile means even PLANETS can be used this way so why not? Beyond that point it doesn't make sense in other canonical respects. Riddle me this...ok so it's a suicide move, and let's say they don't want to risk any lives or anything right? Or droid lives, because I am one of those people who believes that AI with human emotions and sentience should be recognized as human. Ok so, no problem so far. Now, here's the issue...why not use remote operated drones? We have that NOW and we're at best hundreds of years from Star Wars, why not use remote operated drone hyperspace missiles? They can fit them on X-wings so use them as basically interstellar ICBMs? And that's assuming only the Rebels will use it, the Empire has no compunction about loss of human life nor would say, the CIS, or hell even the Republic since their soldiers were mass produced stock clones anyway. So why not use it then? The worse part is that pre-production art and evidence shows they WERE intending to do this with a weapon called a Juggernaut I believe, and decided to scrap that idea and just use the hyperspace kamikaze move...again, purely to make everyone feel bad about Ramona Flowers dying at the end. So they took a concept that while shaky from a canon standpoint at least kinda could work in theory and made it nonsensical just to make a political statement.
Respectfully, I can’t disagree more with how you are portraying Holdo. A lot of people were probably offended by the cast of the original Star Trek series, which came at an important time culturally for the United States. One of my favorite aspects of science fiction is that we can shirk free the chains of our current-day squabbles and spend some time in a future where the world is different. It is a large world with so many different people, and the world of Star Wars is still larger. We should not be so quick to judge.
