ST Space chase/ Crait plan discussion thread

It is amusing I suppose at the end when Hux tells Kylo not to get distracted by Luke when Hux earlier apparently did the same thing. Rather than send the TIEs and get it over with, he needed to spend 17 hours relishing his advantage.

But I mean that's the problem... It's this buffoon level decision... especially when we know FO lives and equipment aren't limiting factors.

 

TIEs would never be able to destroy the Resistance fleet. They would be outside the range where they could be protected, and would be an easy target for the Resistance capital ships.

In RotJ, Lando says to Ackbar that they will get close to the Destroyers, and Ackbar says that they would not last a couple of minutes if they did so. They only went close to the Destroyers because the Death Star 2 was shooting them, so they chose the option of slower death to give Han more time.

So it was already established in-universe that small fighters and even large Rebel/Resistance ships cannot last long when too close to enemy Destroyers.

The same thing applies for a bunch of TIES trying to pathetically shoot down Resistance capital ships by themselves.

 

If you watch closely, as Hux is telling Kylo to return because they can't cover him, all of the other TIEs get picked off by the Resistance.

 

I noticed the TIEs were picked off. It's just the FO hasn't shown any indication they care about losing people and they supposedly have a ton of resources. In other words if they sent a bunch of TIEs, the losses would be acceptable per their values (or lack thereof).

The Empire didn't care about human lives either.

 

A) He’s a captain based on his earlier actions and she’s a Vice Admiral. She doesn’t have to tell him a thing and she knows it. If she was a male Vice Admiral I somehow suspect a lot of the “He should have told him” wouldn’t be occurring at anywhere near the same rate. It’s the same old thing. When a male in a position of power is assertive, secretive and more goal driven than he is worrying about a subordinates feelings he’s just a strong-willed hard nosed boss. Think any Admiral in any other war movie or chief of Police. If a female has the exact same qualities some think she should have been nicer and friendly and smiled more. It’s a double-standard. Plain and simple.

B) We don’t know when she and the senior leadership thought of this plan. It’s possible when he first challenged her in front of everyone there wasn’t one and she was merely trying to keep morale up.

C) How many other Captains were on the Raddus then? I suspect a decent amount. None of them knew the secret base either until they arrived. Poe was still trying to function like a Commander.

D) Poe is so caught up in his own plan that I’m not even sure if he knew the secret base he’d have stopped. He believed in his plan the most. He wanted to give it a chance and if it had worked it would have been better than her plan but it didn’t work. BB9E noticed them. He is more open to and excited by a plan AFTER he knows his plan failed and he’s stuck on a shuttle and realizing it’s going somewhere.

E) She tried to talk to him in private according to 3PO. It’s possible she was going to treat him more like a Commander and tell her to trust her that there was a plan and not say anything else. He didn’t let that happen.

F) Poe kept key info secret from senior leadership. Rose Tico literally invented their cloaking concepts. She clearly had a more advanced knowledge of concepts related to tracking and Finn knows how they normally track in other ways from being a former FO member. Leia had previously thought it possible and wasn’t sure how. Rose’s knowledge could have possibly sped up the trust process and gave Senior Leadership confidence that their data hadn’t somehow been compromised and viewable to the FO or that there wasn’t a key spy communicating coordinates somehow. We will never know what they discussed in their board room but it’s logical they could have considered any possibility including but not limited to what Rose determined and that could have lead to more of a classified/need to know approach to the base and the plan.

G) She didn’t want to share this location or the plan in case people communicated it to others. Guess what actually happened? DJ heard a part of the plan.

H) Even though she doesn’t have to share anything for the reasoning above, and even though I don’t think the matter was incredibly personal, she is only human and might have simply pushed back more for how much he was trying to challenge. It wouldn’t be unheard of. Many military leaders, regardless of gender, when pushed might push back and decide “Okay. For that I was thinking of maybe telling you a little bit now I’m definitely not.” Humans that are stressed can do that sometimes. I don’t think we are meant to see her as a perfect leader all the way through. Even though I personally did like her character.

None of that works for you? Still find it all impossible? Determined to not even try to find any way to enjoy it? Just wish she had told him? Just want to complain instead? Okay then. I said my piece.

 

Ditto ! I could not have summed up better.

 

Poe, Finn, and Rose not telling Holdo that they figured out how the tracking works and how to take it off line is the most egregious thing done by anyone in the resistance by far.

 

I think it’s a huge reason why she’s so angry in the end and who wouldn’t be? For all we know she and the Senior leaders haven’t been able to rule out other possibilities related to how they’re being discovered after jumps beyond tracking.

Having said that, it’s one of those things where if it had all worked out (and they were incredibly close) then it would have been amazing.

 

Kylo Ren has 3 wingmen.

 

Obviously most of Star Wars battles require a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief. With a giant hole that leads to yet another incredibly vulnerable weakness in Death Star 2.0 and the Emperor deliberately telling the Rebels the real location of the shield deflector that was protecting it... one would think their best units would have been in much stronger numbers and not so easily defeated by Teddy Bears throwing rocks, and how Lando migrated his way through all those pipes without a detailed map of the Death Star 2.0 to get right into the heart of it again is its own leap. That a single small ship being shot down was able to smash into the bridge of a Star Destroyer and that one direct hit being powerful enough to then smash that entire Star Destroyer into Death Star 2 raises even more questions. We have always been willing to suspend some disbelief to have fun with Star Wars before. That angry, older fans are now scrutinizing combat logistics exclusively for the ST in ways they are incapable of doing some of their earlier favorite films says a lot about the corrosive nature of cynicism in any space fantasy environment dealing with super lasers and unlimited resources and shield generators and hyperspace.

But enough about that... and over to the specifics of this particular engagement. The single most important thing I can say and I think it’s imperative for anyone who wants to be able to better suspend disbelief and enjoy it more is to remember just how arrogant and protocol-driven the FO are under the Snoke and Hux leadership duo.

That they even mentioned that they couldn’t support Kylo Ren and the other 3 Ties snd Hux’s ordering for them to return tells you all you need to know about how conservative they want to be with men and resources in this situation. Hux has briefed Snoke on the situation and the plan and Snoke is happy with the plan and supports it. Hux isn’t going to chance that when victory is assured in 18 hours anyway. He isn’t going to bother Snoke with a “Hey, I was thinking... maybe we can speed this up more, Supreme Leader.” When you get an okay from someone like Snoke you see it through. You don’t go pestering him with new thoughts that enter your mind for approval. My boss at the office isn’t Snoke but even I don’t veer from the plan laid out in a meeting with him or pester him with new ideas that may or may not be better.

This is meant to in some ways be one of the shortcomings and key differences of the FO and before them the Empire. There is very little creative thinking on the FO or Empire beyond the highest levels of leadership. They’re textbook and authoritarian. Poe would have been executed very obviously had he been a FO officer by Kylo Ren himself. There would have never been Rogue One style efforts from a small crew of Empire soldiers who just thought it best to destroy this pesky Falcon and the people on it who keep causing them so many problems. The Resistance and Rebellion are less textbook overall than the FO are. Not by a ton but enough for there to be a difference there.

Everyone does what they’re told in the FO and orders are seen through that come down from the top. It really is as simple as that. Arguing about what the enemy could have done better is a conversation that could extend back to many fights. The bad guys tend to lose quite a bit in the end in Star Wars and with some questionable choices in retrospect and stormtroopers still don’t know how to shoot. This is Star Wars.

If someone completing a siege on a castle knew that the people inside couldn’t attack them from where they were and that those inside would die in 18 hours they wouldn’t bother sending ladders up and men just to speed things up by a few hours. They’d feast and laugh and wait.That’s what the FO feels here. It’s paramount to accept that they are comfortable in their position and the situation unfolding and are enjoying a relatively easy and stress free victory up ahead with minimal risk or surprises. Perhaps they didn’t have a grasp of the attack capability that remained of the Resistance there. Perhaps they were more gun shy following the loss of the Dreadnought. Imagining any of those things combining to simply stay the course works for me.

 

I think this "battle" was too unbelievable.

 

I think the real battle was largely in the mind like much of the TLJ and that’s another reason why it’s divisive and challenging for some viewers who value different things. One of my favorite sequences in the Dark Knight is the two ships with the civilians and prisoners and the remotes that can blow up either. That’s another sequence where most of the drama doesn’t come from physical action or battle but in how people handle incredible stress under horrible situations.

It’s probably the battle that pushed the good guys the most psychologically of any battle in Star Wars film history in that way because we see some splintering off of trust both at the top to the crew and from the crew to their bosses.

It’s their end. Resources running low. Nowhere to escape to. No one coming to help yet. The one leader they believed in most gone and in a coma. What happens to a crew under such stress and diress? That’s what Johnson is clearly most interested in and I found it fascinating to have such drama largely contained within the larger ships and the crews within a Star Wars film.

 

I'm sorry I can't find a way to find the battle believable. The FO had the means to end this without waiting 17 hours, giving the Resistance time to come up with a plan, and they didn't. I think TLJ needed a better battle. They wanted something that went on for 17 hours to make time for all the other plots going on, but this just didn't really deliver it, IMO. I think it's the weakest area of the entire movie.

And part of this is my own standards. I needed the FO to be at least somewhat formidable. I can't take them seriously. Some people are okay with that and one argument I remember was that the FO is a wanna-be Empire and so they are not even as competent as the Empire (which was largely incompetent). But... the dramatic tension isn't there for me when the FO doesn't pose enough of a challenge, I guess.

I could feel it on the Resistance side. That was 17 hours of hell and waiting. (Which, ahem, was why it was SO important for Holdo to offer assurances, which she did not offer.)

Every FO moment OTOH was "we're twiddling out thumbs!" when there was actually a way they could end it. And I struggle with the explanation being that Hux was enjoying toying with them because he didn't really *toy* at all. He just stood on the bridge bemoaning how with all their fire power they could do nothing, so let's just keep firing so they remember we're here? I mean, you have all these people at your disposal and of course the TIEs and you can come up with no plan at all?

 

From “I have 3 Star Destroyers parked in front of D’Qar but I’m not going to use them” to “I have a bunch of OP TIE fighters but I’m not going to use them”, and “what the f- is even our evac plan?”, there is a lot of contrivances in the space battles of TLJ that makes it difficult for me to appreciate the tactics, the plans or buy the narrative.

 

I mean if they wanted the FO to be incompetent they could have made a little plot about it to make it entertaining. Some Cannady type could come up with a TIE assault plan and present it to Hux, and Hux could be in his gleeful-Hitler mode and actually be doing things to toy with the Resistance (perhaps to make up for Poe's phone call in the beginning, which could have been done in a more entertaining way that actually really would believably get on Hux's nerves), making it clear Hux actually *wanted* to delay things because he was having too much fun.

I'm not sure if this would be entirely in character for Hux though because in TFA it seemed he really wanted to be as efficient as possible.

Or maybe the FO wanted to not only end these remains of the Resistance but find their contacts as well.

Anyway if all the people making the movie had a brainstorming session about it, I'm sure they could have come up with something cool and more convincing.

Or maybe the FO really wanted to put the Resistance through a 17 hour hell for some actual purpose.

 

TIEs would never be able to destroy the Resistance fleet. They would be outside the range where they could be protected, and would be an easy target for the Resistance capital ships.

In RotJ, Lando says to Ackbar that they will get close to the Destroyers, and Ackbar says that they would not last a couple of minutes if they did so. They only went close to the Destroyers because the Death Star 2 was shooting them, so they chose the option of slower death to give Han more time.

So it was already established in-universe that small fighters and even large Rebel/Resistance ships cannot last long when too close to enemy Destroyers.

The same thing applies for a bunch of TIES trying to pathetically shoot down Resistance capital ships by themselves.

 

Agreed.
IMO this is the style of RJ. He puts the drama before the plausibility. A chase in a universe in which there are hyperdrives feels contrived, but he doesn't care because it is dramatically suggestive and it allows to develop the interaction between Holdo and Poe. At the same time, such interaction requires that Holdo does not reveal her plan. It feels contrived again, but in RJ's hierarchy this is secondary.

 

God forbid Rian actually put something on screen that makes sense in a real world military.

I mean, Poe had the God-given right to know everything from the Vice-Admiral, even if he was 3 or 4 hierarchy levels below her.

Pro tip: do not do what Poe did, if you are in the real world military.

And it has been established in Star Wars that all ships follow the same laws: they have sub-light speeds, and light speeds. Both are completely unrelated.

By your argument, you should be bashing ANH becase the Death Star was too slow to get near to the rebel base ... "In a universe which there are hyperdrives"

 

I would have loved to see what you are implicitly suggesting, that is an admiral with an authority that cannot be discussed, who simply says to his inferior: "I don't own you any explanation, and you better shut up if you don't want to be arrested", or something like that (you are the expert ).

But this is not precisely what we see on screen.
We see a Holdo who's more or less open to a discussion, who talks about the sun, who lets Poe tell her that she's a traitor and so on and so forth.

 

Holdo is more os less open to a discussion, yes, because that is how kind she was, until Poe started berating her in front of everybody on the bridge. Then she started playing by the rules with him and put him in his place.

 

Did she? He called her coward and traitor and in the following scene they were still discussing. What was he supposed to do to worry her? Did she need him to explicitly shout out

-------------------------- " I _ am _ going _ to _ mutiny "----------------------------------

 

Of course he was not helping his cause by calling her these names. So we agree that Holdo had all the reasons in the world to not tell the secret plan to Poe, as he was berating her just a few moments after he disrespected Leia and was demoted for being irresponsible.

 

The problem is we watched TIEs take out the hangar bay and the bridge. Imagine what else they could take out. Could they perhaps take out the engines? There's always a critical part to hit. Kylo's maneuver to take out the hangar paralleled Anakin's in TPM. Anakin actually destroyed the entire Trade Federation ship from the hangar shots. The FO had 17 hours to decide which targets to aim for. Kylo didn't even need any time to come up with his targets, and both were hit. Once the hangar bay was taken out the Resistance had no fighters with which to defend themselves. The #1 danger to TIEs was already eliminated.

Poe managed to take out all the cannons on the dreadnought with a single fighter. There were only so many cannons on the Raddus. All of them could be taken out by TIEs. That would leave no defenses at all. Also the FO could even run this as a step-by-step process. 1. eliminate cannons 2. aim for key targets (e.g. engines, fuel stores, shield generators).

But given how easy it was to take out the bridge, I'm not sure they even needed a plan. Just swarm the ship and fire on it. It will go down.

 

Nothing else, because the whole Resistance fleet was leaving the hangar. The 3 TIEs, including Kylo, were lucky. They decided to not push their luck and returned.

In fact, I lie, they were all destroyed, except Kylo.