Podcast Episode 21

Also if you're going to revisit how to make a movie trailer - may I also suggest one for how to do a Youtube instructional video ? Because pretty much all of them follow the same garbage format that just invites mockery.

Mike Lieberman

This summed up my feelings on The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker pretty well. I don't think I fully appreciated just how much I respected Johnson for trying to something different and new (and develop character arcs) in his movie until I saw the fucking pile of diarrhea that was Rise of Skywalker just rehashing the same stupid shit for like the third time.

Mike Lieberman

I love the point about the First Order rolling in and blowing up a massive temple where a single droid the size of bowling ball that was critical to Kylo's plan was hiding. Side note, I remember when they initially entered the temple, Han (other than saying they were safe there) says something like "Maz is awesome, she's run this place for a thousand years, but whatever you do, DON'T STARE. AT ANY OF IT." I remember wondering what crazy thing would be inside, and it was just another space bar.

I think the only thing I really don't like about TLJ is the bombs... falling down... IN SPACE.

ASkyBison

This was fantastic. Please give us more of this!

Enfinn

Yeah, I also was hyped up because all the interviews prior to its release was propping it up as a really darker star wars movie. I thought it was going to basically blow the battle of hoth out of the water in terms of visceral damage a full scale First Order assault would look like on the modern screen. Or how an untrained, raw powerful Jedi student could slip into the dark side. But really none of that was actually explored deeply enough. I was pretty much mirroring kylo in my frustration when she didn't take his hand and just fell back into "you bad, me good" painting after she peeked her head into "let's team up and do our own thing." I'm not a reylo shipper, but I did actually want a Rey/kylo team, where they sort of discover their own destinies and work off eachother, where she obviously doesn't like the first order, and he's like, I don't like them either but now that I killed snoke, i have the power to do what I want. That would've been an interesting power struggle. And maybe that would be the reason for luke to come back, to try to save both of them

They definitely could have sold it more. And frankly I was almost more surprised that Leia and Holdo were all like “we like Poe, he’s a fun and exciting man” as they were bording the ships. Why are they giving him a pass after they just found out that the mission has been jeapoardized? Johnson definitely does have a tone in his film making that I can understand not working for a lot of people. Personally I loved the humor most of the time. Like “do you think we got him” was the sweet spot. And I also think he balanced the humor with some legitimately dark moments.

Auralnauts

Y'know upon further look, since he literally JUST got demoted for telling leia, get stuffed, I'm gonna turn off my radio and do my own thing, that's a pretty good reason to not have Poe in on the loop. But yeah like I said, the movie tries really hard to star wars(happy music for Poes dreadnaught run, and explosions and yay, x wings) that it forgot to movie, where this is supposed to be BAD. You got people killed, you disobeyed orders, and Leias slap was sort of like less serious than a 'lol pwned' gag. At least just ONE line from Holdo telling him, "you just got demoted for disobeying Leia in a battle, and it got a bomber squadron killed, you're lucky you're not in the brig, I'm not going to tell you what we're doing so you can muck it up again." That wouldve given him a better way to reflect on his actions and also eliminated the canto bight sequence haha. But I think most of my biggest gripes with this movie, is all the gag humor at all the wrong times. I think even if you told the same story but with just a different director, or different writing crew, you might have had a better movie. So, I think at the end of the day, we'll have discussions about where things could have been better or worse, but just at its roots. I just didn't like this movie. Plain and simple. Like I just remember leaving the theater just NOT feeling good. And even after the nostalgia drugs wore off and force awakens looks just dumber and lamer, I can still watch that movie and not overtly cringe or feel angry at what I'm being shown. TLJ won't ever NOT do that.

Totally fair points. I always thought that Holdo was painted as a bit of a blank slate rather than inherently good or bad, which is interesting if you want the audience to be on the same ride as a particular character in their discovery. I see that more as a storytelling device rather than an outright trick. Poe's distrust of her vibes with his recklessness and overt sense of entitlement that causes more problems for them all down the line. Agreed that she could have kept him less in the dark, but when you look at what Poe was doing it could be argued that he may be more of a threat to the plan if he knew; Poe is yelling at officers, kicking chairs around the room, screaming that they need to fight. What if Holdo had said "OK dude. Here's the plan", and Poe didn't like it? What if Poe demanded that they fight instead of hide? Now I do totally agree that this wasn't done perfectly. I've got my own problems with the way a lot of things went down and also frustrations with characters and all that. But I do also see the logic of the storytelling as pretty airtight.

Auralnauts

I think, everything that happened on the resistance ships is all shown from mostly Poe's perspective, and if that's the case, it makes sense to make Poe's distrust of Holdo the audiences distrust of Holdo. So within the movie I guess I could concede that from the outside looking in, you might not see her as a threat or a reason to doubt, but I just think the movie did such a bad job of showing her in a reasonable light. Like I don't get how someone could at first glance be on her side, and not think Poe was justified in questioning. Maybe not full on mutiny, but at least some pushback. Like he may have gotten demoted, but he's not just some Pee on. Like he's the freaking squadron leader right or at least was? That's definitely grounds for being privy to some war room action/knowledge. At least a 'hey, we're working on an escape plan, just do your job and work with everyone so we can execute.' you don't have to "awww look at the little demoted pilot, now get lost kid you bother me."

The musical cues definitely create a setting of danger, or mistrust. Now I will absolutely admit that it could just be the movie telling you what to think: this happening is bad, because it WANTS you to be on Poe's side so you also have the realization he had when he grew a little bit. I thought Poe's arc was rather well done in TLJ, from just being a hotshot pilot to realizing his actions need to be oriented to save his fighting force than to just blow shit up when he gets the chance. Kind of bummed JJ didn't expand on his leadership growth in ROS. But yeah with Holdo, and having served in the military, keeping your troops in the dark on like covert operations taking place behind the curtain makes sense for yknow full scale operations. But in the case it was presented, 'we're all in this or else we all get blown up', that's the kind of leadership techniques that would get officers fragged in 'Nam. It's not like if she told essential personel that there were in fact plans in motion that would have stopped the plan from working. So it's not like hey lemme say over the ships PA, attention all lower enlisted workers and everyone else, here's the plan. But she didn't even SAY there WAS a plan. Just "go away Poe." And he got busted down to Lt, Right? So not exactly NOTHING, but yeah that's a junior grade officer not really gonna be in the war room, by it's not like his experience and expertise as sort of Leias right hand man goes out the window. Like he still possesses those skills. So I don't think it was dumb for her to not tell him exactly what was happening, but the execution on her part, and the film makers execution in demonstrating that event I believe we're poorly done.

Hey Daniel (Craven here). Lots to unpack there! Right out of the gate I disagree that Holdo was designed to create distrust. Can you point to anything specific that indicates that she is up to no good aside from Poe's immediate reaction when she takes command (after he's been demoted for disobeying direct commands from Leia)?

Auralnauts

This post has more thought in it than Rain Johnson put into Last Jedi.

Silentphil9

I get they're jokes about ackbar and holdo, but those aren't the strongest arguments against holdo being presented. It's like the chicken and the egg. We didn't hate holdo because previously listed reasons. The movie MAKES YOU THINK that there is a nefarious sense about her. It points you in the direction to not trust that she's doing what's right. The movie painted her in the way to make you distrust and dislike her. AAAAND of you happen to be of the type that is going to get triggered by "liberal looking woman feminist studies teacher" who talks down to Poe and "emasculates him" (that's how that crowd saw the events) then they purposely made her that way just to piss them off and S U B V E R T E X P E C T A T I O N S . So that's the bone people want to pick with her, they got mad because she was there to CREATE the backlash, and everyone's like, you don't have to purposely piss people off to create a reason to fight back against your shit movie, so that you can now call out the criticism of your bad characters and dumb moves. Like don't use identity politics as a fuckin shield when the impending shit storm rolls in because fans hate your movie so you preemptively put in some obvious pander bears that will only bother people that WILL speak out in taboo language (so called women haters and such) so you can dismiss criticism as hate speech. That's a bitch move and it cost the movie the constructive criticism it could have received if everything wasn't all surrounding stupid politics.

Did you guys see the deleted scene from last Jedi? It was an alternate final stand between phasma and Finn where he was on a platform with other Stormtroopers and he called her out for lowering the shields. And called her out for being a phony. Which actually gave her a reason to exist. And then the storm troopers we're about to train their blasters on her. And that was a prime opportunity to give Finn that shepherd arc you mentioned for the Stormtroopers.

So with Finn and canto bight, I was hoping that sequence would be used to build a false rock for Finn to stand on, which it kind of did, because after they escape with DJ he has some misplaced sense of moral high ground by saying I smashed the rich ppl that supply the first order. I smashed the machine. But DJ shows him what anyone that knows anything about the star wars universe beyond a few books and games knew: weapons manufacturers sell to both sides. It's not so black and white. There IS no ultimate moral high ground outside of the direct conflict. So I was hoping that realization that DJ showed him would sort of break him. But break him INTO developing his OWN purpose, not just getting railroaded to do what Rose told him, rich bad, animal good. But to stand on his own two feet and say "I CHOOSE to sacrifice myself for the resistance. I CHOOSE to stand up to the tyranny of the first order." But he got sidelined because Rian wanted "the nerdy girl" to have a reason to exist in HIS movie. And he's quoted basically saying he was shoehorning her in as much as possible just cuz he wanted to. Not because she'd be a contribution to the story at all. You guys definitely bring some really good points to not give last Jedi such a hard time, and you've opened my eyes to be a little less critical of it for the sake of consistency in my standards so I'll concede some previous grievances I've had with it. I still think he was just not the right fit for a star wars movie period. Regardless of how fucked Abrams has been since he botched lost, Star trek and anything else he touches.

Hmmm interesting take on how Abrams should have let his collaborators know what the overall vision/direction was prior to letting them do their own thing... Almost seems like a valid critique... Of admiral Holdo????

Can I comment in real time? I think Lor Sen Takka or whatever his name was (Max von Sydow) "made" the map. I think the expanded universe idea is that he was helping Luke find Acht-to or whatever. So it's not so much that he was building a map to Luke Skywalker but rather he just had a trail of all the places they'd been and knew where he was heading. Then as the First Order comes up into power, he is smart enough to hide the part of that trail that has a conclusion.

Scott B.