This, exactly. It’s actually less of an issue with TLJ itself, which I think is a very fine movie, it’s how the trilogy really doesn’t even qualify as such because of how large the tonal/thematic/plot leaps are.
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
My one other issue with TLJ, as someone else brought up recently, is that the Holdo Maneuver, though very emotionally effective, is a universe-credibility-ending physics plot hole.
The hyperspace plot Maguffins throughout eps 7-9 are honestly all pretty bad, but that one I think is the most egregious (again, despite its very real emotional power).
How about in TROS they had to do this rally car crazy ass navigation on the Falcon to get to Exogol and then they turn around and the entire free legion of ships is there after doing none of that foolishness.
the physics of hyperspace are so underexplored in star wars i have a hard time understanding how this can be a position to be taken; there's quite literally no reason it's implausible.
It’s not about the physics itself, would be totally fine conceptually for it to work like that - it’s about the military and political situation those physics would create. If Holdo is even situationally possible there is a completely different balance of power than what any of the films present.
"It was only possible because Snoke's flagship was so stupidly big. If his ship was reasonably sized then she couldn't have reliably landed the shot."
Solved.
Right, you still have the “using it on planets” issue, but even a single line like that would have helped. As presented, with zero explanation for why this isn’t constantly being used by droid piloted ships, it breaks the world the story is happening in.
ready? gravity fields wreck ships jumping into hyperspace, that's why they have to go to space before jumping and couldn't jump into a planet, warfare trends are ancient and cyclical (strengths and weaknesses rediscovered anew), interdictor ships and tractor beams (why not) can smash the maneuver
I think part of why some of us were really quick to accept it was that The Clone Wars already did it in Season 1. It wasn't even a new concept to Star Wars.
Am I hallucinating plot points in the X-wing novels or isn't this the universe's equivalent of MAD: nobody did the Holdo maneuver because it poisons hyperspace and renders the planet, and maybe the whole system's gravity well, completely inaccessible?
Ah, don’t remember that! But even if that were true, an Empire willing to make and use a Death Star would have been able to strap hyperdrives to asteroids at a tiny fraction of the cost. And at least some militant and dissident groups would have been willing to as well.
My technobabble of choice: Tie it to the advanced hyperspace tracking system they were using: the FO flagship was keyed to the Raddus in a way that made them exist in the same hyperspace phase during the acceleration process.
So this is my jam. The Holdo maneuver was 1) Incredibly lucky 2) Wasted an entire battlecruiser 3) Visually spectacular but tactically insignificant. The thing I always point out is it mission-killed the Supremacy for maybe an hour. It was literally performing landing ops later in the movie!
That all makes sense and is fair. I just cannot buy that someone like Saw Gerrera would not have been droid hyperjumping junk freighters into Star Destroyers constantly if this was even situationally possible.
It's entirely possible that Saw did spend most of his time as a rebel hyperjump spawn gibbing Star Destroyers, it's just also entirely possible that it was completely ineffectual at hobbling the Imperial war machine just like everything else Saw did.
Saw smugly pontificating to Mon Mothma that slamming a frigate into a We-Built-This-Yesterday Class Star Destroy once a week shows that he has Clarity Of Purpose.
Basically the Holdo Maneuver doesn't actually break the universe because it's utility is extremely restricted to situations like the one we see in TLJ.
I remember chatting with friends throughout and we assumed that when the directors claimed they had total freedom to do whatever they wanted etc that it was just corporate PR talk. Then realised with TROS that… no that was somehow the truth
ROS rivals eps 1 and 2 for worst film of the 9. And I think it honestly might be the single worst, Lucas at least had some political and narrative thought behind 1 and 2. Just a completely incoherent and goodwill squandering note to go out on.
Taking one of the most valuable IP and going into three massive, highly anticipated movies without any cohesive plan for a narrative across them was malpractice
It’s pretty unbelievable in retrospect. Ep 9 was a complete mess, but a trilogy coherent across three films in tone/theme/plot with either ep 7 *or* ep 8 would have been just fine. Instead they all barely even reference each other.
They barely referenced each other, but 7 and 8 each clearly exist in *some* trilogy; the problem is that those trilogies don't actually exist, and are at odds with one another.
I mean, I think 7 was more vibes than any new specific plot or theme ideas, but that could have continued in that direction. It's a pretty shallow approach, but it could have been fun rollercoaster stuff. I had a great time when I first watched 7, despite how closely it was copying the originals.
My preference would have been for an 8-style trilogy focused on different ideas about what the Force is and who can have an impact on the Galaxy, but obviously that would have been better-served by having it planned out from the start.
Comments
props for consistency i guess
Solved.
Star Wars was always closer to science fantasy than science fiction anyway.
But obviously that failed to be conveyed to the audiance.