The Last Jedi (spoilers): Only a Sith deals in plot holes

[polishgenius]

24 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

That's incredibly low, comparing me to a Men's Right Activist type on Youtube channel is filled with screeds against "SJWs" polluting nerdom and so on (go ahead, check out Calibandar's Youtube guy), but go on, tell me how you really feel.

I may have misunderstood your point. You said only a ridiculous person would suggest that people are criticising the film because of a feminist agenda. Clearly those people are ridiculous but they do exist, and saying that at least some of the criticism of it is as a result of that agenda isn't ridiculous.

If that's not what you meant then I apologise for misreading you.

[Ran]

Chill, folks.

[Darth Richard II]

5 hours ago, kuenjato said:

How is that unintentionally racist? edit: I see, referencing in-universe concepts based on binary alignment is "racist." What an incredibly lazy/stupid response. btw it was a joke, originating from my students who "ship" these characters all the friggin time and see that dynamic every other week, but no surprise you get in a druthers about it.

Calling the non black dude Team Light seemed racist to me. I also said unintentionally because I don't think you actually meant it in a racist way. Relax.

[Ran]

Just now, Darth Richard II said:

Calling the non black dude Team Light seemed racist to me. I also said unintentionally because I don't think you actually meant it in a racist way. Relax.

Just to be clear, I understood "Team Dark" being Kylo Ren.

[Darth Richard II]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

Just to be clear, I understood "Team Dark" being Kylo Ren.

Oh fuck, you're right, I totally missed that. I apologize.

And stuff like what cal posted is why I get so pissy, and I apologize again. It just really gets me gping lately, possibly due to current political crap.

and uh, cal wasn't actually agreeing with said video? I hope.

oh and @Werthead yeah I don't know where I got that Ren is bad at light saber fighting from, I need to not post late at night.

[polishgenius]

2 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

and uh, cal wasn't actually agreeing with said video? I hope.

He probably was at some level. He's never been out-and-out MRA on here but he has a consistent history of being 'unconvinced' by movies were women are the hero or the hero woman in an ensemble movie.

[Darth Richard II]

6 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

He probably was at some level. He's never been out-and-out MRA on here but he has a consistent history of being 'unconvinced' by movies were women are the hero or the hero woman in an ensemble movie.

Well, uh, well then.

I'll only respond to one point, I'm pretty sure the Story Group or whatever it's called isn't all female, also rom everything I;ve read, Johnson didn't need approval from Kennedy for anything and was pretty much allowed to do what he wanted(which, love it or hate it, shows in the film).

Oh, and regarding Piloting skills and one off lines, you could interrupt Rey's line when they're going for the quadjumper, she says something like we have a pilot, me. That could imply she has piloting experience. I havn'e seen TFA in a bit though.

[Werthead]

Quote

 

In the Red Room, where they were both relatively healthy, Ren displays far more ability than Rey.

 

No, he didn't. Rey got more on-screen kills and Ren was defeated and about to be killed before Rey stepped in and saved him from the last of the praetorian guards.

Quote

 

2) Holdo over Poe Dameron. He's the established character film 1 who is rising in the ranks but of course needs to put into place by random skinny woman. She idiotically chooses not to inform him of her plans which makes no sense at all, but of course at the end Rian Johnson and Kath Kennedy inform us that she was right, he was wrong, and he should have just sat back and trusted her.

 

This, at least, is one of the legitimately BS complaints about the movie. Holdo is Dameron's superior officer, by about 6 rank tiers. It's his job to sit down, shut up and listen to her and not throw a massive strop and mutiny against her for no reason. She certainly has no responsibility to tell him her plans any more than Stormin' Norman should have personally briefed every tank commander on what route they were taking into Iraq in 1991 and the reasons for it. It's the chain of command. The more implausible thing is that she didn't summarily execute Dameron on the spot and made a cute joke about it afterwards.

[Seli]

3 hours ago, Calibandar said:

 

A lot of it boils down to the women over men theme that is so forcefully being pushed by Disney, by the female Star Wars story group that Johnson submits all his story to, to Kathleen Kennedy, or to whomever is really pushing this agenda in such an overt fashion.

It's basically:

....

 

So it basically complaining about something they haven't ever thought about all the times the reverse happened? As well as misrepresenting the Finn and Luke storyarcs? Missing the point about Poe as well?

Finn doesn't need to be more courageous. He is learning he can use his courage and inventiveness to help a lot of people, not just individuals. Which makes a lot of sense for someone who has only be learning how to be a normal human being for a few months at most.

And Luke did what Obi-Wan Kenobi as well as Yoda did before him. Trying, failing, and hiding because they can't take the pressure of taking a more active role anymore. He tries to teach Rey the very important lessons he learned, explaining why other paths are wrong. He just never got the experience, nor the tools to actually deconstruct jedi philosophy to prune it back to the actual useful lessons.

Poe was a top-gun pilot. Brilliant at what he does, but in need of learning more about strategical thinking. Making him a mary-stu that could fit in in a strategic level as well would have been far outside anything Star Wars has ever shown.

 

[Mark Antony]

The response to this movie has been more entertaining than the movie itself

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

Only an insecure man would concoct the ridiculous notion that people are responding to a scary female agenda and not, you know, to actual flaws in the story that would be there whether the characters involved are male or female. 

How ridiculous.

It's accurate, though. Again, #notallmen, but it's absolutely the case that men are responding to a Scary Female Agenda.

[Darth Richard II]

I kind of lost what we're arguing about now.  Are we saying that video is fake, or something?

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

(I also can't help but note that there's a _lot more_ of "but the OT has flaws" stuff over TLJ than over TFA -- at least on this forum; I don't really go elsewhere for my new trilogy discussion. I have no idea why, other than there is, perhaps, a recognition that there's more needing defense in this film than in the previous film.)

I brought up basically the same arguments when people talked about TFA having plot holes and the like. I think this is more selective memory on your part than anyone else. I'm not saying anything that I didn't say already about TFA and Rey. If anything, TLJ has fewer plot holes and far fewer stupid contrivances than TFA did (Starkiller Base was deeply, deeply stupid). 

[felice]

2 hours ago, Calibandar said:

This video is one of many of its type on youtube that explains perfectly why a lot of guys are so disappointed with the characters in this film.

Guys, not people? Yeah, I really don't think I have any interest in watching that. Real problems in a film don't need you to belong to a particular gender to spot them.

2 hours ago, Calibandar said:

1) Rey over Ren in film 1. Film 2 has a presumably more equal footing but it's still Rey who saves Ren from being murdered by the Praetorian Guard. Of course it is. I think we all know what happens in film 3 and it is not going to be Kylo getting the upper hand over Rey, Disney and Kennedy with her notorious tight control will never have that. It's just a matter of seeing how Ren will be defeated and deconstructed. By Rey of course. She will finish gloriously, and triumphant. 

After Ren saves Rey from Snoke, and after Ren has been holding his own against more guards than Rey. And you don't think film 3 is more likely to be about the triumph of good over evil?

2 hours ago, Calibandar said:

2) Holdo over Poe Dameron. He's the established character film 1 who is rising in the ranks but of course needs to put into place by random skinny woman.

What does her weight have to do with anything? And she's not random, she's the most senior alive-and-conscious member of the Resistance.

2 hours ago, Calibandar said:

3) Finn is now a coward who has to be told to man up and actually be courageous by "Rose" another new woman. Throughout the film he is pushed mentally by her to get in gear. His decisions are verified and overruled by her.

He was a coward in the last film too, or at least only interested in helping Rey, not the Resistance, whom he gets to take him to Starkiller under false pretences.

2 hours ago, Calibandar said:

5) Why is the Resistance basically led by an all-female cast, old or young?

Aside from Ackbar and a bunch of other men who were killed in the attack on the bridge, amongst whom Leia was a token female? Poe also seems to be reasonably high up, presumably second in command by the end of the movie with Holdo dead like Ackbar. Do you complain about movies where the good guys are lead mostly by men?

2 hours ago, Calibandar said:

Is there even a male character in the film that can be admired or respected?

Is there a female character who can be admired? Rose is instrumental to bringing back a traitor who gets 90% of the rebels killed, then prevents Finn from destroying the battering ram, making the sacrifice of the others who died in the attempt meaningless, and forcing Luke to sacrifice himself instead. As you point out, Holdo is incredibly stupid to keep her escape plan a secret, and it's hardly the greatest plan ever - saving lives is the priority, sure, but abandoning all their ships is a terrible blow. Leia spends most of the film unconscious and doesn't achieve anything of note beyond not dying. Rey attempts to get Luke to come back with her to help the Resistance and fails, tries to get training from him and mostly fails, then gives up and leaves without him, before failing to resist Snoke and failing to turn Ren back to the light. Phasma is just completely useless.

While Ren turns on his much stronger master to save Rey in a cunning manner, Finn grows to believe in the Resistance and becomes willing to sacrifice his life for it, Poe is doing his best to help the Resistance, and Luke does sacrifice his life to help the others.

In my opinion, it was a stupid decision to have so much incompetence and failure all around in TLJ, but it's not an anti-male film.

[Calibandar]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

Only an insecure man would concoct the ridiculous notion that people are responding to a scary female agenda and not, you know, to actual flaws in the story that would be there whether the characters involved are male or female. 

How ridiculous.

Harsh, you've got to separate what we experience in real life from a film. Take a look outside the forum and see the thousands of complaints from all sorts of people on this women over men agenda that Last Jedi pushes. Whether one is insecure or confident is not the matter here, these things are blatantly out in the open in this film which is why so many people are losing their shit over this. You can choose to ignore it of course, and I fully expected to be vilified over what I posted, I know where I am. This film very clearly diminishes the male characters, it's just that some people love that and are very much ok with that, or have become so used to it that they don't care anymore, it's the new reality in entertainment. 

Why couldn't this film have great and heroic male characters next to great and heroic female characters? Surely Leia was more inspiring in this film than Luke. Surely Rose was a stronger personality than Finn, who was actyually one of the 3 lead characters in film 1? What male character can you really enjoy or admire in this film? And are these things I mentioned not in the film? They are, but to some it's just not relevant. I like to see great female characters but not at the constant expense of...

Having said that, I generally enjoyed this film, it has a variety of great individual sequences and I liked it even more than Force Awakens. I just don't like this particular part for  the way they seem to be pushing a message. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/22/movies/star-wars-last-jedi-women-run-universe.html

 

[Ran]

42 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I brought up basically the same arguments when people talked about TFA having plot holes and the like. I think this is more selective memory on your part than anyone else. I'm not saying anything that I didn't say already about TFA and Rey. If anything, TLJ has fewer plot holes and far fewer stupid contrivances than TFA did (Starkiller Base was deeply, deeply stupid). 

I spent an hour looking at the TFA threads earlier. I don't think I'm the one with selective memory, however. For the most part the big complaint was that TFA was too similar to ANH (which is a fair point) but there was very little in the way of "this is a plot hole", except explicitly in discussing Rey and her exceptional level of competence. Which we've gone over more recently, so I'm not going to get into again, but in any case there was definitely a lot less discussion of plot holes in TFA from what I saw. (In fact, the only post that leapt out at me was about Rey, where you went to the Anakin and Luke well...

[Calibandar]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

 

and uh, cal wasn't actually agreeing with said video? I hope.

To be perfectly honest, I've only watched 5 minutes of that video, I got linked to it on youtube where I was watching a video about Rian Johnson explaining the ending of Luke's storyline in the film, which is actually what interested me. I don't know what he says in the entirety of the video so I'm not going to say I agree with what he says. However I have seen a few other related articles and films on the response to the Last Jedi about this particular topic of women over men in this film and I do agree with some of the examples he made in illustrating how the writers of this film push that agenda.

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

He probably was at some level. He's never been out-and-out MRA on here but he has a consistent history of being 'unconvinced' by movies were women are the hero or the hero woman in an ensemble movie.

I had to google MRA ( in my line of work it stands for Marketing and Regulatory Approval ) but that I am not. Christ. 

It is true that I am far more critical and less enamoured of female lead characters in films than most respondents here.

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Well, uh, well then.

I'll only respond to one point, I'm pretty sure the Story Group or whatever it's called isn't all female, also rom everything I;ve read, Johnson didn't need approval from Kennedy for anything and was pretty much allowed to do what he wanted(which, love it or hate it, shows in the film).

 

DR, Johnson has said in interviews recently that he certainly did submit his writing and decisions to the story group.

So that's apparently a fact that you can't really ignore. It is also fully in keeping with what we've been told about the Han Solo movie and the two directors who were fired from it. They had very little creative freedom and it was remarked upon by people what a tight contol Kathleen Kennedy maintained over both what story was told, and how it was done. So it seems that Rian Johnson is not joking around when he says to Collider that his intention of Luke had to pass for approval from the story group, to which he submitted it.

Not saying having a story group is at all wrong by nature or that it would not be common. Obviously it differs per film and director how much freedom they get. I'm suggesting that this story group has clearly stated they want strong female characters as one of the main objectives ( read the NY Times link I just posted) and the writing and the directing certainly shows that strongly.

Also, if you read that article, you will see that Kathleen Kennedy is the big boss, she erected that group and installed a woman, who then hired two more women as the main part and core of the SW film story group.

Quote

"Kathleen Kennedy founded the group in 2012 when she succeeded George Lucas as president of Lucasfilm, putting Kiri Hart, a former film and TV writer, in charge of the unit. Ms. Hart’s first move was to make the story group entirely female, starting with Rayne Roberts and Carrie Beck."

Later on male members were added ( someone had to bring coffee I guess). You can't tell me that the things they explicitly mention as being important to them, such as the strong female characters, does not shine through in the eventual product, at the expense of others.

Quote Ms Hart:

Quote

"As a writer I was very hungry to create female characters who felt real, and I was interested in telling stories from an outsider’s perspective."

on Rian Johnson 

 

Quote

While writing “The Last Jedi,” the writer-director Rian Johnson moved to San Francisco, spending three months working closely with the story group to develop ideas for the film. Ms. Hart credits Mr. Johnson with the decision to introduce diverse characters for “The Last Jedi.” Of the new cast members, several are women, including Rose Tico, played by Kelly Marie Tran, the first Asian-American women to star in the saga.

The article also speaks of them using computer software to ensure that enough lines of dialogue are spoken by female or mixed race cast. Make of that what you want but don't try to tell me that this story group does not have huge influence and a very clear idea of what they themselves wanted for The Last Jedi.

49 minutes ago, Seli said:

So it basically complaining about something they haven't ever thought about all the times the reverse happened? As well as misrepresenting the Finn and Luke storyarcs? Missing the point about Poe as well?

 

 

I appreciate that we have a history of cinema in which the male characters have upstaged female characters.

I don't think we need to "make up for it" now though, by having the female characters upstage the men on screen. I'd rather have strong characters of all genders. This film does not have that.

34 minutes ago, felice said:

Guys, not people? Yeah, I really don't think I have any interest in watching that. Real problems in a film don't need you to belong to a particular gender to spot them.

 

Yes, I said guys, not people. Because from the thousands of reactions to this film, it's much more men who are complaining bout this issue than women. Women aren't going to complain anywhere near as much about a film that pushes this feminist theme, obviously.

And what's that about an issue can only being a real problem if it's a problem for both genders? I believe there are some women who would like a word with you. There are many issues which are far more problematic for one gender than they are for the other, that doesn't mean they're not real.

 

[Davrum]

12 hours ago, mormont said:

Speaking as one of them, I'm not at all sure that's a claim you could back up.

As I've noted before, it's not people who're perfectly happy who tend to react the loudest in any medium ...

Oh yeah, I haven't done any actual data collection, let alone analysis, and more to the point I should've been clearer and said people who feel negatively about all 3 new films seem to be in a minority.

Everywhere I read and post most people like at least one of the new female lead, mixed cast films but somehow not all three.

 

14 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Uh, then you must really hate all of Star Wars since about 1993 or so onward.

Hey, don't put it all on me, it was Yoda who said it.

Also, Rogue One and the prequels work just fine as films which don't have to lean on extra-curricular material to make sense. And even The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi aren't so horribly flawed in their construction they need some technical manual to get all the way through

 

12 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

No-one? I don’t think that’s what these films are doing, or what most of us here are expecting/hoping for. Rather, a rejection of the two extremes - the rigid, inflexibility of the Old Republic’s Jedi Order and their flawed value system and a rejection of the Smith extreme at the opposite end of the spectrum. The balance is somewhere in between, so both must be reformed. I think Luke sensing a darkness in Rey that she reaches for (arguably I guess that could actually be Snoke’s manipulations) is a sign she is on the right track to achieving balance

"Darkness rises ... and light to meet it" is being interpreted on some sides in more or less the way I described it, as part of the explanation for why Rey is able to do things with zero instruction that other jedi have not. As if the Force itself is her mentor in some way. 

In A New Hope Obi-wan confirms to Luke that the Force may "partially" control a person's actions, which is obviously open to interpretation. Unfortunately some writer or other may interpret that as if the Force has a will of its own.

[Seli]

11 minutes ago, Calibandar said:

...

I appreciate that we have a history of cinema in which the male characters have upstaged female characters.

I don't think we need to "make up for it" now though, by having the female characters upstage the men on screen. I'd rather have strong characters of all genders. This film does not have that.

...

 

We know there is an effect where you only need 30% women in a group for them to be perceived as equally represented. And actual equal representation comes across as dominance.

It does seem that something similar is happening here. Because that is certainly there.

Just look at Ren. Lost, alone, manipulated. And strong enough to take control and kill the person manipulating him, taking the control he lacked. Which is a bigger win than anyone one the rebel side gets.

[Eggegg]

Well look, I’m sure there is a concerted push by Disney to promote positive female characters. I’m also pretty sure there is an element of fear of projecting negative traditional stereotypes into female characters for fear of backlash. 

BUT I don’t think anything in that video is really true or holds up to scrutiny. Male characters like Poe and Luke are still pretty heroic, willing to sacrifice themselves for the group, Kylo Ren is by far the most interesting character in the series, he’s not flat out evil and he saves Rey from Snoke. 

Even the female characters are far from perfect, Rose makes some bad decisions, is pretty irritating , Rey doesn’t really manage to achieve much , Purple hair maybe could have handled things better. Even Phasma gets her ass handed to her and looks ridiculous. 

So it just doesn’t stand up.

There is clearly a very small, very vocal minority of people out there mouthing off about stuff like this but just because they are loud it doesn’t mean they are relevant.