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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3830 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 18, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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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.

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