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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3806 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 18, 2024

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*I could discuss at length the Holdo Maneuver, as it was eventually called. I would suggest that that scene didn't undue any previously established canonical point. Many other parts of the sequels did really irk me but that wasn't one of them.

I'll bite. When I saw that scene in theatres, I grinned like an idiot at the visual for roughly ten seconds, and then immediately thought "this breaks every other Star Wars movie forever," and by the time I walked out of the theatre I'd already decided I was done with Star Wars as a franchise. There were a lot of things I didn't like about the plot and writing of TLJ, but that part in particular really stood head and shoulders above the rest as being completely, egregiously incompatible with the entire setting before and since.

Why didn't they use hyperspace ramming against the Death Star, or against the imperial fleet at Hoth? Why aren't hyperspace-ram missiles the standard anti-ship weapon for every faction in the setting? It can't possibly be a matter of expense or scarcity; hyperdrive-equipped fighters and light transports are ubiquitous throughout the setting. There doesn't appear to be a countermeasure, and she didn't appear to be unusually lucky in her execution. In every subsequent viewing of a space battle, as soon as the situation becomes tense, I'm going to be asking "why aren't they solving this problem with a hyperspace ram missile?" And why shouldn't I?

I had the same specific experience. I enjoyed various parts of EpVIII, and then by the time the credits rolled, I left the theater full of complaints. Didn’t even go see IX.

Having that suspension break during the movie was just…ugh.

I'll bite. When I saw that scene in theatres, I grinned like an idiot at the visual for roughly ten seconds, and then immediately thought "this breaks every other Star Wars movie forever," and by the time I walked out of the theatre I'd already decided I was done with Star Wars as a franchise. There were a lot of things I didn't like about the plot and writing of TLJ, but that part in particular really stood head and shoulders above the rest as being completely, egregiously incompatible with the entire setting before and since.

Yeah, me too, and I was genuinely baffled that other SW fans didn't see the problem.

"But... but... the Death Star?"

It was clearly a goshcoolwow moment that looked awesome on screen and gave Admiral Purple Hair an epic swan song and is the reason literary SF > cinematic SF, because an author writing a series would not fuck his own universe over like that (and if he did, his fans would absolutely drag him).

From my view, the annoying part is that a good writer -- and while I don't think you need to be Zahn-level good, coincidentally Zahn did offer his services free of charge -- could have pretty easily pulled it off in a way that made it much more impactful. Even if you don't care about the broader universe or milSF concepts, we never get an idea of why this was heroic and the other suicidal efforts weren't, why it happened now and not earlier or later, and some hints that it was even possible beforehand so people could want it.

Those breadcrumbs don't have to be as explicit in film contexts as in written works, but they still matter there. Instead :

  • With the opening bombing run, have it seem more like an unabashed victory at first. You can still have Rose's sister do her heroic charge, here, but most of the non-bombers survive. Instead, after all they've taken out the dreadnaught, Hux warps in with his megaship right on top of them, just as they're about to leave. They give a panicked order to retreat through hyperspace, but the ship is too close; most of the fighters either ping off Imperial shields like bugs against a windshield, or slap against the hull, and barely mar the paint in the process. The only survivors are those that 'miss' the Imperial ship that was right on top of them, because hyperspace is so twisted, and even that was as much luck as anything else -- really rub in the survivor's guilt. Establish, early, that hyperspace impacts can happen, but that it isn't a useful trick in most cases. ((This also more clearly separate the failure bit here; it makes Holdo's complaints a lot more reasonable if the lives lost weren't necessary to take down that dreadnaught. And if you make it a surprise to the heroes that Hux's megaship can even do that, it explains why the rest of the Rebels can't flee.))
  • If you're going to keep the fuel plot, talk up how small ships can use hyperspace easily, but it takes massively more energy for a bigger ship to enter or exit hyperspace. Establish that the power (and thus energy) for a big ship isn't just a little more, or even 'just' a few orders of magnitude more, but astronomically greater.
  • On the Canto Bight trip, make some point where the heroes are trying to get into a space under a shield generator. Have one of them propose a repeat of the 'warp under the shield' from The Force Awakens, and spell out that it wouldn't work: they don't have a ship fast enough, or the shield's frequency, so they'd just bounce off, they'd have to start the hyperspace jump inside the planet's atmosphere to actually hit the facility, and it wouldn't even damage the facility they're trying to break into. Again, repeat that trying to blast through shields with a hyperdrive is a lost cause.
  • ((Maybe switch the Canto Bight field trip from searching for a slicer to mumble mumble something, instead they're trying to destroy a hyperspace tracker on Canto Bight. The whole DJ arc can have him be a Plan C, where rather than the team blowing up the tracker, he claims to throw a bug into the system that gives random wrong answers and will damage the whole system.))
  • Have a ship (maybe the medical ship during the chase deal?) try to make a hyperspace jump after already being damaged, as a last-ditch attempt to distract some Imperials or to escape, and have it not work. The hyperdrive motivator's down, the hyperspace engine's too damaged, whatever, and instead of getting away or blowing someone else up, it just spreads itself into a sorry streak of interstellar debris, less impressive than just self-destructing or ramming. Establish that hyperdrives, especially big ones, are fragile, so you can't just rely on trying to get close to a target without shielding and armoring yourself, and even that might not be enough.
  • Each time someone goes onto the Imperial megaship, have a scene where their ship or shuttle just rumbles. The first time, have someone (DJ?) explain that it's because they're passing through such incredibly oversized shields, so that even when 'down' to allow something to pass in, they still have tremendous power available. Establish that the Rebels can't hope to break through them from the outside with simple force.

Now, you've established that hyperspace kill vehicles only work when a) targeting someone without shields in the way, b) that you're incredibly close to c) with a big expensive ship with a ton of power, d) targeting a big ship so you can even try to hit it, e) while that big enemy hasn't blown up some vital part of the hyperdrive while disabling the rest of your weapons and engine systems, f) you got really lucky on top of all that to actually hit. What kind of tactical or strategic moron would even risk the slightest possibility of that risk?

Flashfoward to Hux going full 'retreat, at our moment of victory?' He's exactly the sort of moron that would leave a disabled ship in his grasp just to make its commander suffer while he swats down unarmed and unshielded transport vessels. ((That this means DJ's betrayal inadvertently gives Holdo a chance at the cost of countless lives helps.)) Hell, he might try to capture them alive, just to torture them for the fun of it give Snoke a Rebel leader's brain to sift through. Have Holdo spell out, while she's desperately trying to come up with some way to distract the Imperials, to save just one life, that every possible system is down -- weapons, engines, shields, scanners, escape pods, life support -- while the Imperial megaship is taking up more and more of the view from the viewscreens. Have the Imperials give a sensor readout: the Rebel flagship is completely dead in the water, with a scattering of life signs.

Except the hyperdrive system. And then we hear the distinct heavy rumble of Holdo's ship being scooped in through the megaship's shields, and the viewscreens are no longer a sign of dread; they're a target. It's still a hopeless cause: Holdo doesn't have maneuvering thrusters to aim, or time to calculate a good hyperspace solution, no time to even guess that their damaged ship is big enough to damage the Imperial megacruiser, and they're leaking enough fuel that they might not even be able to enter hyperspace once.

Then the scene.

I recently watched so that’s why they cut all her scenes from the movie from CinemaStix about how different the movie Constantine was before being recut, as well as when the editor has to fix it in post about Ferris Buler's Day Off. Amazing how different those movies could have been without big changes by the editing room. As an outsider, all those changes seem like things a competent reader would have been able to tell from the script.

Your post reminds me of the old What if Star Wars Episode I Was Good, and II and III by Belated Media. These sorts of plot fixing recommendations just sound like common sense; what is wrong with the production process that produces this billion-dollar nonsense?

The pessimistic answer's that they don't care, either because modern audiences will buy it anyway, or because the costs of writing well exceed the return. But I'm not convinced.

((For example, take Deadpool 3: It has a brilliant character bit where the protagonists take down Cassandra Nova in her headquarters, if you'll excuse the pun, by exploiting her sadism and fascination with corrupting others to her view of a destructive freedom from past constraints, then offering her a sort of redemption even recognizing how little she'd want to take it, something only that Logan could do and that has had breadcrumbs dropped throughout the film. . And then it has her pop up again, and the second time she's beaten by Deadpool and Wolverine holding hands and trying to kill themselves. There's a mechanical cause why that works, but it's made up five minutes beforehand by a guy who has no idea what he's talking about, and ends up being partly wrong anyway.

The people who wrote the first confrontation weren't facing different pressures than the second -- it's not like Michael Bay helicoptered in, made a bad joke, and then dived out a window.

The less cynical possibility is more that the modern nature of digital editing and massively parallel work means that by the time even a mid-range movie comes out, it's hard for anyone to have a good view of the final product and only the final product. The people making decisions are living, breathing, and sleeping every part not just the scenes that are shot or napkins that are scrawled on, but even some that only existed in their heads. The people touching up individual scenes are looking under a microscope at details we might not even be able to see, without the big picture.

Sometimes that's for the better: a lot of what gets dropped is better implied, or better not done at all. But things slip through the cracks.

Yup ruined all of it for me instantaneously, I laughed at the time and loudly proclaimed how stupid it was in the theater. That is my level of autism...for better or worse.

"Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy. Without precise calculations we might fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?"

This is admittedly George Lucas dialogue, but from the first, 1977 film. It suggests at least the possibility of randomly hitting solid (plasma) objects. If this is true or possible, the Holdo ship ramming thing has to be possible.

Now, as to why this kamikaze or automated hyperspace trick isn't used regularly, no idea. I'm sure there are EU authors somewhere scrambling to find a rationale. I could probably think carefully and come up with a few myself if I had the motivation, which I do not (not out of any dismissal of your question).

There are a lot of random issues even in the original trilogy. Tie bombers going over the asteroid field. A space slug with, inexplicably, a mouth full of incisors. The boats on a wave phenomenon of spacecraft floating upright in the same angle. To say nothing of sound. I suspend disbelief, as the saying goes, willfully. Until I don't.

Now, as to why this kamikaze or automated hyperspace trick isn't used regularly, no idea. I'm sure there are EU authors somewhere scrambling to find a rationale. I could probably think carefully and come up with a few myself if I had the motivation, which I do not (not out of any dismissal of your question).

I can think of a lot of potential narrative fixes that could work, if they'd been integrated properly into the movie we all saw. Like, they're in a super-weird region of space with anomalous hyperspace physics; they didn't want to go in there in the first place as the localized threat of hyperspace collisions makes it near-suicidal, but they had no other options and the imperials are arrogant enough to follow them in. Or the super-cap imperial ship has some sort of experimental, super-powerful hyperspace jammer and hyperspace ramming is a unanticipated side effect, or when they infiltrate the supercap they tweak its hyperdrive to create a resonant frequency with the cruiser, allowing an otherwise impossibly-precise ram jump to be programmed, etc, etc... But the common thread of all these is that they establish an explanation for why this is going to be a one-time thing, because it really, absolutely has to be a one-time thing or else all space combat in the setting breaks forever.

The problem is that the movie that we actually got does none of these, nor does it really leave room for anything like them in the story as delivered. I like to think I'm something of a storyteller myself, and technobabble is a thing I've done before. I don't think the issues raised by the holdo manuever can actually be technobabbled.

I suspend disbelief, as the saying goes, willfully. Until I don't.

Authors can make that suspension easier or harder, though, based on what they write and how they write it, and this is a big part of the difference people perceive between good and bad writing. There's a degree to which "I suspend my disbelief willfully, until I don't" is a fully general answer to any complaint about any element of any story, no matter how incongruous or poorly thought out.

Give me a scene where the whole focus is on the tragic death of one of the main characters, and then two scenes later they're suddenly alive again and the story carries on as though nothing happened, and this is never explained or addressed again. Maybe this is some super-subtle 3d-chess thing where the death is supposed to be read as metaphorical, or maybe the author is intending this as a demonstration that something else is going on behind the scenes; maybe the world is actually a simulation. Funny Games did something like this by injecting blatantly incongruous, nakedly-unjustified cartoon logic to abruptly reverse a pivotal character death, very clearly on-purpose and with an obvious narrative intention. The problem with the holdo manuever is that it's very nearly as disruptive to the story and setting as a character literally re-winding another character's death with a VCR remote, and the disruption is never addressed; there's no evidence the authors even understood why it would be disruptive. To the extent that "bad writing" is a meaningful category, this is about as central an example as I've ever seen of bad writing. It makes suspension of disbelief hard enough that there doesn't seem to be a point in trying; if I'm going to have to rewrite the whole story in my head anyway, I might as well do that from the start and just write my own from scratch.

It suggests at least the possibility of randomly hitting solid (plasma) objects.

Not necessarily. Stars and supernovae (which contain neutron stars) both have strong gravity wells. There is an RL theory out there that the reason gravity's so weak is that it leaks into hyperspace (as in, literally, 4th+ spatial dimensions), and that dark matter is normal matter out in other membranes whose gravity is leaking into our membrane through hyperspace.

I don't have my copy of the original Star Wars novel to hand, but I seem to remember "black hole" being used in this line.

Not to geek out, but this is the passage from the book:

“Traveling through hyperspace isn't like dusting crops, boy. Ever tried calculating a hyperspace jump?” Luke had to shake his head. “It’s no mean trick. Be nice if we rushed it and passed right through a star or some other friendly spatial phenom like a black hole. That would end our trip real quick."

So the book was ghost written by Alan Dean Foster from the story by Lucas. I assume the only reason "star" and "black hole" are used here are because they're things in space, and "there's a lot of space out in space" (thanks, writers of Wall-E.)

Anyway as I say this point can be discussed at length and I am sure on reddit and other places it has been, but my point is it always made sense to me based on my viewings of the films and having read the book.

I am also sure that it never crossed Lucas' mind to have ships doing hyperspace kamikaze jumps, and that this decision by Rian Johnson or whoever wasn't great. But it wasn't a dealbreaker for me.

Quotes like that exist pretty early on but it's easy to interpret them as "shit IDK they need to avoid a gravity well of large objects?" instead of "constant direct interaction with objects in real space is a thing."

But once you have use the technique you need to explain why you aren't using it all the time. Was Holdo the first one to think it up? Did they have to override some navigation settings? Are shields somehow just that powerful so it doesn't make sense most of the time? All of these explanations are bad and the fundamental problem of the original trilogy is under resourced group needs to blow up something big......which is easy to do this way.

They didn't even put it in a line with a bad explanation they just didn't think at all.

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