The Big Picture: Plothole Surfers

Alarien

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I'm a bit tired of the whole "Admiral Holdo" thing.

Look guys, if you're complaining that Holdo could have fixed everything by explaining all of her plans to Dameron, then you really don't understand the military. Oh, and yes, the Resistance, in all depictions, attempts to behave like a military, just as the Alliance did.

You don't walk up to a superior officer and demand all the details of campaign strategy as if you are entitled to it. That's just not a thing you do. Holdo's behavior follows exactly as a general/flag officer would react to that from a far junior officer. It's one thing for a private to walk up to their sergeant and say "hey, sergeant, what's the deal?" It's something else for an O-3 level officer to walk up to a general officer and petulantly demand attention and explanation, as if they are entitled to it. Poe was behaving like a child and was treated like one. He got off better than he really should have, but that entire plot line, the way it was depicted, was entirely for that point in his character growth.
 

blackdwarf

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I find it hilarious that you reference the Patrick H Willems video, but at the same time say that media critics are using 'sleight of hand' rhetoric, with plot holes/logic criticism, while he is pretty much doing the same with theme and characters criticism. He is not actively interacting with the arguments and points made by these media critics, but pretty much waving this criticism aside, because the aspects they criticize don't matter according to him, unlike the aspects he thinks are most important, like characters arcs, themes and what it made him feel. He is using neat editing and talking like he knows it all, but his arguments are poor or non-existent. Saying that People are illogical, so that why characters can act stupid is justified is such a shoddy argument, because when character is acting illogical only to further the plot, and not acting illogical based on the knowledge we have of that character or the situation they are in, that undermines the character and the plot. Especially since this seems to happen more often because of lazy plot based writing, where a scene must happen, so we must write to the scene instead of writing characters that act believable based upon their character. A parent choosing the life of its child over that of ten strangers is maybe a illogical choice in terms of objective math, but logical in sense of character and interpersonal relations. the plot hole criticism has always been present, but the reason we talk more about them, seems more a result of a decline of quality of writing in popular movies than a wish of the audience to speak about it.

His defense of holdo withholding information, because of course we are talking about the Last Jedi here, for the sake conflict and drama is a prime example of this lazy writing. She must be written as illogical so that the film can drum up conflict for Poe and a reason for Finn to go to the casino planet. Her decision of withholding doesn't seem to be based upon her character or her own logic. She pretty much does nothing as the commander, resulting in Poe and the rest of the crew thinking that they are going to die by her inaction. So as a viewer I am asking myself why would she do that? does she have ulterior motives? Maybe she wants to hide the facts that she is going to sacrifice herself so that nobody is going to stop her? These would be 'logical' reasons for her to act the way she does, but no, she just written this way to facilitate conflict so the movies could have a story. A lot of the resulting story lines are pretty jarring, meaningless and extremely hamfisted in their presentation themes: "slavery is bad okay, fuck the 1% am I right guys? save the animals." The presence of themes should not be considered a plus by default, the form how these themes are presented should be considered and in TLJ this is hilariously bad. When seeing these scenes and asking yourself in frustration why are we watching this/why is this happening, just to realize it is because of Holdo being written as a idiot just so we can get these poor C-stories, I find it really hard to care or get infested, because the writer didn't seem to care either.

Sure, Poe was a demoted and a idiot at the start of the movie, so Holdo has a reason to find him unreliable, but he is voicing the concern of the crew when he is asking what her plan is. So her not saying anything to anyone just seems as a poor way of creating conflict that seems to be just there for plot reasons instead of actions resulting of her character. This is underlined when Poe is unconscious and Holdo and Leila are talking about him and Holdo says he likes him. like what, first you don't trust him, then he pretty much tries to steal the ship of you, but he is a still a great guy. Patrick defends this by saying that humans are illogical, so characters can act like that, but this behavior has no base in reality or common sense. It just happens because otherwise there would be not reason to tell the story for some characters. And if the only way of telling stories of characters is by having characters acting illogical, then that is bad writing.

But according to Patrick I am watching movies wrong then and not focusing on the things that 'actually' matter like the presence of themes and characters with arc's. While in reality I think all these things matter in the context of one movie/book/video game/etc, because they empower and enhance each other. Having one of these aspect be bad in such a way that it is hard to ignore, makes a movie unstable and affects the presentation of the other aspects. in the case of TLJ, the poor plot and writing made me feel that this is poorly written film, which just made me question why it was written this way instead of hooking me and taking me on a space adventure.
 

darkrage6

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Gennadios said:
Any movie out there will have critics and analysis videos, but at the end of the fiscal year the only thing that matters is how the majority of viewers feel about the movie. The majority of viewers won't care about the water tension of the door in Titanic because they recognize it as a primarily emotional piece and it was well made. Nobody cares about the historical accuracy of viability of the castles because the movies genuinely felt like they were set in a different world, accuracy didn't matter.

Nu Star Wars isn't viewed positively. People care about the plot holes because because the movie didn't give the majority of fans anything that they wanted. Akbar's heroic moment was stolen by a character that didn't resonate, and a Mystery Box pushing hack robbed fans of their Han/Luke/Leia reunion to set up a mystery turned disappointment.

Damn straight people are going to look for plot holes in highly anticipated movies that failed to deliver, when something gets broken you look for what went wrong.
Wrong, it is viewed positively by the vast majority of people.
 

darkrage6

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blackdwarf said:
I find it hilarious that you reference the Patrick H Willems video, but at the same time say that media critics are using 'sleight of hand' rhetoric, with plot holes/logic criticism, while he is pretty much doing the same with theme and characters criticism. He is not actively interacting with the arguments and points made by these media critics, but pretty much waving this criticism aside, because the aspects they criticize don't matter according to him, unlike the aspects he thinks are most important, like characters arcs, themes and what it made him feel. He is using neat editing and talking like he knows it all, but his arguments are poor or non-existent. Saying that People are illogical, so that why characters can act stupid is justified is such a shoddy argument, because when character is acting illogical only to further the plot, and not acting illogical based on the knowledge we have of that character or the situation they are in, that undermines the character and the plot. Especially since this seems to happen more often because of lazy plot based writing, where a scene must happen, so we must write to the scene instead of writing characters that act believable based upon their character. A parent choosing the life of its child over that of ten strangers is maybe a illogical choice in terms of objective math, but logical in sense of character and interpersonal relations. the plot hole criticism has always been present, but the reason we talk more about them, seems more a result of a decline of quality of writing in popular movies than a wish of the audience to speak about it.

His defense of holdo withholding information, because of course we are talking about the Last Jedi here, for the sake conflict and drama is a prime example of this lazy writing. She must be written as illogical so that the film can drum up conflict for Poe and a reason for Finn to go to the casino planet. Her decision of withholding doesn't seem to be based upon her character or her own logic. She pretty much does nothing as the commander, resulting in Poe and the rest of the crew thinking that they are going to die by her inaction. So as a viewer I am asking myself why would she do that? does she have ulterior motives? Maybe she wants to hide the facts that she is going to sacrifice herself so that nobody is going to stop her? These would be 'logical' reasons for her to act the way she does, but no, she just written this way to facilitate conflict so the movies could have a story. A lot of the resulting story lines are pretty jarring, meaningless and extremely hamfisted in their presentation themes: "slavery is bad okay, fuck the 1% am I right guys? save the animals." The presence of themes should not be considered a plus by default, the form how these themes are presented should be considered and in TLJ this is hilariously bad. When seeing these scenes and asking yourself in frustration why are we watching this/why is this happening, just to realize it is because of Holdo being written as a idiot just so we can get these poor C-stories, I find it really hard to care or get infested, because the writer didn't seem to care either.

Sure, Poe was a demoted and a idiot at the start of the movie, so Holdo has a reason to find him unreliable, but he is voicing the concern of the crew when he is asking what her plan is. So her not saying anything to anyone just seems as a poor way of creating conflict that seems to be just there for plot reasons instead of actions resulting of her character. This is underlined when Poe is unconscious and Holdo and Leila are talking about him and Holdo says he likes him. like what, first you don't trust him, then he pretty much tries to steal the ship of you, but he is a still a great guy. Patrick defends this by saying that humans are illogical, so characters can act like that, but this behavior has no base in reality or common sense. It just happens because otherwise there would be not reason to tell the story for some characters. And if the only way of telling stories of characters is by having characters acting illogical, then that is bad writing.

But according to Patrick I am watching movies wrong then and not focusing on the things that 'actually' matter like the presence of themes and characters with arc's. While in reality I think all these things matter in the context of one movie/book/video game/etc, because they empower and enhance each other. Having one of these aspect be bad in such a way that it is hard to ignore, makes a movie unstable and affects the presentation of the other aspects. in the case of TLJ, the poor plot and writing made me feel that this is poorly written film, which just made me question why it was written this way instead of hooking me and taking me on a space adventure.
Your post is poorly written.
 

hentropy

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Alarien said:
Look guys, if you're complaining that Holdo could have fixed everything by explaining all of her plans to Dameron, then you really don't understand the military. Oh, and yes, the Resistance, in all depictions, attempts to behave like a military, just as the Alliance did.
And the problem is, that's the thing people don't typically like about the military. The idea of blindly following orders regardless of how dumb they are (or worse, how cruel they are) all because the military has some pseudo-religious devotion to the idea of chain of command is not one that resonates with people.

For any progressive who feels compelled to defend Holdo because THOSE OTHER PEOPLE don't like her purple hair, just take a step back and think about what message that whole interaction is sending, that Holdo is supremely wise by virtue of her title, that everyone should have just listened to her and followed her orders blindly no matter how nonsensical they seemed, because people in authority all know better than you. For people keeping score, this message is a fascist one, or at least totalitarian.

Not to mention, that's not even the way a good military works. Superiors don't just issue orders and expect everyone to robotically follow them without question. The command is a two-way street, the rank-and-file are expected to follow orders, but it's also the command's RESPONSIBILITY to communicate to them effectively what the purpose and goals of the mission are, which is crucial in cases where mission parameters change. The soldiers may be expected to act without orders if it means completing the goals of the mission. If every military superior acted like Holdo, armies would disintegrate quickly. We can actually see this in places like Vietnam, as the tactics and strategy to the average soldier seemed increasingly pointless and ineffective, people just felt like they were going to die for no reason, and morale dropped.
 

Alarien

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hentropy said:
Alarien said:
Look guys, if you're complaining that Holdo could have fixed everything by explaining all of her plans to Dameron, then you really don't understand the military. Oh, and yes, the Resistance, in all depictions, attempts to behave like a military, just as the Alliance did.
And the problem is, that's the thing people don't typically like about the military. The idea of blindly following orders regardless of how dumb they are (or worse, how cruel they are) all because the military has some pseudo-religious devotion to the idea of chain of command is not one that resonates with people.
I don't disagree with a good portion of what you are saying, particularly in regards to the "blindly following orders" portion and why people dislike the military system. However, you are skipping right past my point, which was not about what we think of Holdo's orders, but Poe's behavior. His behavior was, in any military estimation, poor, and, regardless of why people do or do not like the military, that's how it functions. I have my own problems with my time in and how the system works, but questioning the command decisions is not something that military operations can afford outside of special circumstances.

Beyond that, discussing chain of command is missing there apparently should BE a chain of command. In this case, Poe just ignored it completely and went straight to a flag officer because he's buddies with Leia and gets to do it there. Again, bad behavior.

As to the issue you do bring up, it goes to the question of whether Holdo's orders were unreasonably wrong or, worse, actively incompetent. They were neither of those two things. Certainly not to the level of "quick! mutiny!" They were communicated as being part of a plan, the goal of which was reasonably obvious, and the particulars for individuals were communicated. Further, the plan was completely sound and the only reason it started to go haywire is because Poe, Rose, and Finn introduced a code slicer who gave up the fact that resistance shuttles were being sent off-ship.

There is another point you are ignoring: the military is not a democracy. I'm not sure why you feel the need to point out the militaries are totalitarian. They are authoritarian by nature, that's just what a chain of command is and I fail to see a reasonable alternative presented. Also, fascism is an unrelated comparison when discussing militaries. That's not a thing.
 

Callate

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hentropy said:
Alarien said:
Look guys, if you're complaining that Holdo could have fixed everything by explaining all of her plans to Dameron, then you really don't understand the military. Oh, and yes, the Resistance, in all depictions, attempts to behave like a military, just as the Alliance did.
And the problem is, that's the thing people don't typically like about the military. The idea of blindly following orders regardless of how dumb they are (or worse, how cruel they are) all because the military has some pseudo-religious devotion to the idea of chain of command is not one that resonates with people.

For any progressive who feels compelled to defend Holdo because THOSE OTHER PEOPLE don't like her purple hair, just take a step back and think about what message that whole interaction is sending, that Holdo is supremely wise by virtue of her title, that everyone should have just listened to her and followed her orders blindly no matter how nonsensical they seemed, because people in authority all know better than you. For people keeping score, this message is a fascist one, or at least totalitarian.

Not to mention, that's not even the way a good military works. Superiors don't just issue orders and expect everyone to robotically follow them without question. The command is a two-way street, the rank-and-file are expected to follow orders, but it's also the command's RESPONSIBILITY to communicate to them effectively what the purpose and goals of the mission are, which is crucial in cases where mission parameters change. The soldiers may be expected to act without orders if it means completing the goals of the mission. If every military superior acted like Holdo, armies would disintegrate quickly. We can actually see this in places like Vietnam, as the tactics and strategy to the average soldier seemed increasingly pointless and ineffective, people just felt like they were going to die for no reason, and morale dropped.
I would add that additionally- the Rebel Alliance/Resistance really hasn't been shown to behave like a conventional military before. I guess one could make the argument that it's become more like a military in the interim between the original trilogy and The Force Awakens- Leia going from "Princess" to "General", for example. But in the past, it's been the kind of operation where some smuggler in a Corellian freighter showing up on a major battlefield at the last minute could prove to be the turning point of a mission... Where a princess could use her diplomatic credentials to operate as a spy and claim diplomatic immunity when the Empire shows up to challenge her (which becomes frankly ludicrous when her capture occurs as soon after a pitched battle as Rogue One portrays it as being)... Where some jerk whose only credentials are governing a Cloud City and who previously betrayed the cause can end up piloting the flag ship of a make-or-break mission... Where most of the most important members of the Rebellion might drop everything to free a friend trapped in carbonite, regardless of the risks or the dangers of antagonizing a crime syndicate that is the de facto ruler of at least one planet...

It's still a pretty inconsistent organization, to all evidence. Rey is permitted to come and go as she pleases, despite having possession of data that could lead the enemy right into the midst of the surviving Resistance fleet. (And I was genuinely surprised that never came up in the movie.) Finn, a former stormtrooper, is folded into the ranks with nary a thought. The battle that started the movie begins with the premise that the First Order will be sufficiently distracted by a combination of "can't quite hear you" and "yo momma" jokes that a single ship will be able to take out all the anti-fighter guns (and to all evidence, this was not Poe playing hot-shot; this was the plan the Resistance went in with. That the planet-destroying First Order would be too polite not to wait and hear them out.)

It is well established that both Poe and Finn are respected and admired by the rank-and-file of the Resistance. Regardless of the military chain of command, keeping them in the dark shows a utter failure to understand how morale works, in an organization that is dependent on volunteers, constantly out-gunned and out-manned, and cannot remotely afford to fail on that front.
 

Ukomba

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darkrage6 said:
Ukomba said:
Samtemdo8 said:
Patrick's video became viral because of Mauler's 5 hour long stream criticising it:


Honestly to me this is gonna soon create precendent where everyone are gonna now criticize youtube critic's videos when it comes to movies and tv. Making video responses to other videos.
Soon? Do you not remember the days of youtube where the response video's use to be listed directly below the video being responded to? Youtube use to promote that exact thing to fuel debate.

Mauler, Rags, and Wolf do a great job here though. Mauler in particular absolutely destroys The Last Jedi in his review really breaks these things down. His deconstruction of the whole "Theme" argument really puts Bob's shallow defense of it to shame.
Nah, Mauler sucks major ass. Rags and Wolf are both bigoted pieces of shit not worth listening to.
Name calling isn't an argument. I could not only say the same thing about Bob and show tweets to back it up, but ad hominems aren't terribly convincing.
 

PsychedelicDiamond

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Ukomba said:
darkrage6 said:
Ukomba said:
Samtemdo8 said:
Patrick's video became viral because of Mauler's 5 hour long stream criticising it:


Honestly to me this is gonna soon create precendent where everyone are gonna now criticize youtube critic's videos when it comes to movies and tv. Making video responses to other videos.
Soon? Do you not remember the days of youtube where the response video's use to be listed directly below the video being responded to? Youtube use to promote that exact thing to fuel debate.

Mauler, Rags, and Wolf do a great job here though. Mauler in particular absolutely destroys The Last Jedi in his review really breaks these things down. His deconstruction of the whole "Theme" argument really puts Bob's shallow defense of it to shame.
Nah, Mauler sucks major ass. Rags and Wolf are both bigoted pieces of shit not worth listening to.
Name calling isn't an argument. I could not only say the same thing about Bob and show tweets to back it up, but ad hominems aren't terribly convincing.
I'm sorry, I don't think that someone who takes hours to nitpick Last Jedi and then turns around to praise Infinity War to high heavens has anything worthwhile to say.
 

hentropy

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Alarien said:
hentropy said:
Alarien said:
Look guys, if you're complaining that Holdo could have fixed everything by explaining all of her plans to Dameron, then you really don't understand the military. Oh, and yes, the Resistance, in all depictions, attempts to behave like a military, just as the Alliance did.
And the problem is, that's the thing people don't typically like about the military. The idea of blindly following orders regardless of how dumb they are (or worse, how cruel they are) all because the military has some pseudo-religious devotion to the idea of chain of command is not one that resonates with people.
However, you are skipping right past my point, which was not about what we think of Holdo's orders, but Poe's behavior.
I might agree with you, but I didn't want to spend time going over pacing and plot structure. At least to me, a lot of the reason the Poe/Holdo stuff is weird is because of the way to conflict is structured. The conflict is one that has been used many times, ego-driven hotshot gets taken down by reality and finds out there's more to things than just being talented. Poe is never really established as a foolhardy hotshot though. We cheer when the space-killing ship gets blown up, as it makes the sacrifices worth it. Leia being upset because he didn't follow orders just seems weird considering how much of an objective success the mission was. They could have easily cleaned this up by having Poe do something obviously stupid and unnecessary, even if he still comes out a hero.

Then with the scenes wit Holdo, it never really seems like we have enough time to make up our minds about whether Holdo or Poe is right or wrong, because it becomes all about the conflict rather than the events around it. The reason why so many reacted to this badly is because Poe was the one who seemed more in the right, as we're given no logical reason why he's wrong. And he's not protesting because he's just a big baby hotshot pilot, but out of a seemingly genuine and understandable concern for his comrades. We're left to wonder, like Poe, whether Holdo really does have a secret plan, or whether she's just improvising and projecting her authority as a way to mask the fact she had no real plan (something that happens all the time in real life), or even worse, whether she secretly working for the Empire. The subplot would have worked much better had the characters fit more traditional archetypes for the traditional conflict. He could have subverted the conflict more, had Holdo admit that maybe she didn't fully know what to do and having a pilot gripe at her every step of the way wasn't helping. Show some shred of humanity, I dunno. Of course the conclusion only raises more "nitpicky" questions as to why they couldn't get a droid to push the lightspeed button or just do it automatically, but I don't mind bending logic for heroic self-sacrifice if it was earned. It wasn't earned.

But bringing it back to theme, I do agree with Bob that theme is the most important thing here. Which leaves us to wonder what Johnson was trying to say or accomplish with this storyline. That's why I bring up fascism and totalitarianism, because that's the only clear message of this subplot: trust authority and follow orders against your own sense of morality and instinct. I don't think that's what Johnson intended, but that begs the question as to what DID intend. The only thing I can think of is he wanted to make a shallow feminist appeal, but turning "Daddy Knows Best" into "Mommy Knows Best" isn't feminist or progressive in my opinion.
 

Gennadios

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Gizen said:
Gennadios said:
Nu Star Wars isn't viewed positively.
This is something the internet has to get over itself about. TLJ is viewed extremely positively by the movie going public at large. Just because an extremely vocal minority doesn't like something, doesn't mean the silent majority who can't be bothered to argue over internet forums agrees.
I realize that I'm probably in the minority on here, but I see aggregate user reviews as a better indicator than critic reviews, and the user scores on Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic paint a different story.

Either way, I'm not shopping for an argument, which one of us is right won't be apparent until Ep. 9 comes out.
 

Tsun Tzu

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I'm not really surprised to see this video, considering the guy in question specifically called out Bob as "one of the good ones" in terms of producing content like this.

But yeah, suffice it to say, agree to disagree.
Windknight said:
Samtemdo8 said:
Patrick's video became viral because of Mauler's 5 hour long stream criticising it:


Honestly to me this is gonna soon create precendent where everyone are gonna now criticize youtube critic's videos when it comes to movies and tv. Making video responses to other videos.
on the one hand I've never heard of this takedown till now, but I absolutely saw the 'shut up about plot holes' video. On the other hand

... 5 HOURS criticising a 13 minute video?

Five. Full. Hours. That's over TWENTY times as long as the thing their critiquing.

(disclaimer - not actually watched the video (again FIVE HOURS) so if they don't actually spend all that FIVE HOURS on on 13 minute video, feel free to mock me for jumping to conclusions)
They do a few of his videos.

There's a lot of banter and back and forth too. But, yeah, 5 hours.

Was an enjoyable listen while I was driving up to Michigan the other week.
 

vallorn

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Blachman201 said:
EDIT: And for the record, I think that Knights of the Old Republic II had already done all the most interesting things TLJ tried to do, and it also did it so much better that it isn't even funny.
Apathy is death.

P.S. Kreia is the best character in all of Star Wars.
Aiddon said:
darkrage6 said:
Personally I don't think Cage is a "hack" at all, I think he's a damn good writer, Laura Kate Dale did an excellent review on Detroit:http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2018/05/24/detroit-become-human-succeeds-by-focusing-on-small-timely-stories

I actually think most of what Bob said can apply to the people whining about Cage's writing having "plot holes", for me I was too absorbed into the storyline of his games to give two shits about plot holes.
No, Cage is a genuine hack both in game design and writing. I wasn't even getting into plot holes with Cage, more about his themes are dumb and he can't actually tell a story worth a damn. Like our own Yahtzee said in his review of Detroit, one of the twists he brings up is how the child the nanny bot runs away with also turns out to be a robot. That completely undermines and actual, interesting question of "can a robot mother truly love a human child." Why would you do that? It makes no sense.

And that's before you get into his uncomfortable writing, his treatment of women and minorities in his narratives, and his reliance on lazy cliches. And if we're going to do the "well, look at what this critic says!", I raise you Heather Alexandra, Kirk Hamilton, and Evan Narcisse:

https://kotaku.com/1826578490

https://kotaku.com/detroit-become-human-the-kotaku-review-1826277408

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-casual-inhumanity-of-how-detroit-become-human-uses-1826776147

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-opening-of-detroit-become-human-is-some-dumb-butt-1826270803

Yeah, I can play that game too, it's not hard. And the funny thing about Detroit's main theme: most of its fandom doesn't care, even admitting its political commentary is awful and just wants to ship characters:

https://kotaku.com/the-super-fans-of-detroit-become-human-hate-most-of-th-1828260985

Cage is not very good at his job.
I think "Cage is a hack" is a nigh universal opinion round here. He manages to both go overboard in his themes and also sell them short, he may as well be screaming his themes at you from an android cabin at the back of the bus most of the time.
 

Dalisclock

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hentropy said:
Alarien said:
hentropy said:
Alarien said:
Look guys, if you're complaining that Holdo could have fixed everything by explaining all of her plans to Dameron, then you really don't understand the military. Oh, and yes, the Resistance, in all depictions, attempts to behave like a military, just as the Alliance did.
And the problem is, that's the thing people don't typically like about the military. The idea of blindly following orders regardless of how dumb they are (or worse, how cruel they are) all because the military has some pseudo-religious devotion to the idea of chain of command is not one that resonates with people.
However, you are skipping right past my point, which was not about what we think of Holdo's orders, but Poe's behavior.
I might agree with you, but I didn't want to spend time going over pacing and plot structure. At least to me, a lot of the reason the Poe/Holdo stuff is weird is because of the way to conflict is structured. The conflict is one that has been used many times, ego-driven hotshot gets taken down by reality and finds out there's more to things than just being talented. Poe is never really established as a foolhardy hotshot though. We cheer when the space-killing ship gets blown up, as it makes the sacrifices worth it. Leia being upset because he didn't follow orders just seems weird considering how much of an objective success the mission was. They could have easily cleaned this up by having Poe do something obviously stupid and unnecessary, even if he still comes out a hero.
It really doesn't help either that it appears Poe did exactly what he was expected to do. He went out there, Trolled the First Order(that might have been his own idea) and then did a maneuver to take out the AAA guns on the huge ass warship, clearing the way for the bombers to blow it up. The fact all the bombers were lost taking it out is then blamed on Poe, which begs the question 1.) Why use such a shitty design to begin with? and 2.) Why have them ready to go if they weren't meant to be used?

It comes across like high command was setting Poe up to fail if they told him to go execute this plan to blow up the super-cap ship and then immediately punish him when he succeeds(albeit with heavy losses). Granted, Poe then goes and immediately starts mouthing off to the nearest flag officer in full view of everyone on the bridge, which was a mistake on his part and he really should know better. But it's easy to see why he felt frustrated.

It's a small example of some of my frustrations with this film, which Ironically, I still enjoyed, but I honestly can't say I consider it a good movie because of how many flaws it has.
 

NerfedFalcon

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Question:
If you had a choice between a game that's fun to play but has a story that you actively dislike and can't skip, or a game that's boring or not fun to play but has a story you enjoy, which one would you play?
 

Abomination

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Dalisclock said:
It really doesn't help either that it appears Poe did exactly what he was expected to do. He went out there, Trolled the First Order(that might have been his own idea) and then did a maneuver to take out the AAA guns on the huge ass warship, clearing the way for the bombers to blow it up. The fact all the bombers were lost taking it out is then blamed on Poe, which begs the question 1.) Why use such a shitty design to begin with? and 2.) Why have them ready to go if they weren't meant to be used?
There are so many issues with that sequence. Poe cuts his... microphone/receiver and ALL the attack run follows him in despite the direct orders of the admiralty? Was his ship the only one capable of receiving communications from the flagship?

Second, next to no time passes. The bombers are clearly visible and the ties are scrambling, THEN the order is given to retreat... all bombers were lost on the attack run, did they somehow think the bombers would survive the trip back to the fleet?

Third, the bombers themselves "dropping" their payload... in space... where there is no gravity... who the fuck designed those things?
 

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Abomination said:
Dalisclock said:
It really doesn't help either that it appears Poe did exactly what he was expected to do. He went out there, Trolled the First Order(that might have been his own idea) and then did a maneuver to take out the AAA guns on the huge ass warship, clearing the way for the bombers to blow it up. The fact all the bombers were lost taking it out is then blamed on Poe, which begs the question 1.) Why use such a shitty design to begin with? and 2.) Why have them ready to go if they weren't meant to be used?
There are so many issues with that sequence. Poe cuts his... microphone/receiver and ALL the attack run follows him in despite the direct orders of the admiralty? Was his ship the only one capable of receiving communications from the flagship?

Second, next to no time passes. The bombers are clearly visible and the ties are scrambling, THEN the order is given to retreat... all bombers were lost on the attack run, did they somehow think the bombers would survive the trip back to the fleet?

Third, the bombers themselves "dropping" their payload... in space... where there is no gravity... who the fuck designed those things?
Yeah, those are all other issues with that sequence alone. Especially #3, which makes no sense at all in universe and seems to exist because someone thought it would be cool to do WW2 Heavy Bomber Formations IN SPACE. You know, the same reason guided missles are pretty much never used in the movies despite the fact it would make a lot more sense then the AAA cannons on Capital ships that can't seem to hit anything.
 

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leet_x1337 said:
Question:
If you had a choice between a game that's fun to play but has a story that you actively dislike and can't skip, or a game that's boring or not fun to play but has a story you enjoy, which one would you play?
I've already made that choice before. The latter option.
 

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leet_x1337 said:
Question:
If you had a choice between a game that's fun to play but has a story that you actively dislike and can't skip, or a game that's boring or not fun to play but has a story you enjoy, which one would you play?
What a choice. Not being able to skip a wretched story would drag down the game despite good gameplay, while a game with a good story but isn't particularly enjoyable to play might as well be just be watched on youtube.

Ideally I'd say they can both go to hell though it's rare I've played a game where the story was so terrible to overpower the fun gameplay(though MGSV came really close, but at least the cutcenes were skippable) or the gameplay so awful to make it not worth it to enjoy the story(The first Witcher is really close to fulfilling this).
 

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CrazyGirl17 said:
I admit to liking Cinema Sins but I don't take it seriously. I do kinda prefer its counterpart Cinema Wins, which is more positive and also goes into detail of why the movie is so good.

Also as a wannabe writer, the fear of plotholes in said writing makes it tricky to even do it since people nowadays are critical about that sort of thing.

(Also I can't be the only one who got the reference in the title, right?)
I also like Cinema Wins (fell out of love hard with cinema sins though), but disagree with your wording a bit. I like it not because it shows how a movie is good, but instead how someone could end up liking the movie. Cinema wins covers a lot of poorly received films. There are several movies I like that I wouldn't call good, but them being bad is also not why I like them. I just like them, unironically. Justice League would be one example; I saw it in theaters and honestly loved just about everything in it, yet also I fully understood why so many others would hate it.