Discussion Only A Perfect Leader Can Have A Perfect Plan: Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo

She's full of feminine energy. No other character has this much of feminine energy like Holdo. I think Rian Johnson really did crack the formula for writing Real Women, and as a female fan who wasn't born with as much feminine energy (tragedy of my life), I greatly admire Holdo and I want to be like her, and I'm now trying to adopt her feminine communication skills, by not talking to half the people I'm supervising.

 

Tee hee!...you go first...no you!...you go...okay, I'll go...May the Force be with you

 

I post here not to bury Holdo, but to praise her.

 

She's literally my hero!

 

I followed the Holdo management style at my workplace to help grow the culture and leadership qualities of the group.

Four people resigned...which is great. Just perfect. They'll now go out into the world and spread the Holdo Model out into society at large.

You're welcome.

 

What I love most is how respected she’s become by male fans. She’s iconic already.

She’s held to a similar standard of other iconic on screen acerbic bosses in offices or militaries, which is a remarkable achievement for Dern considering she doesn’t seem to go to quite the same lengths as some of her contemporaries that she’s been compared to online.

Sure, she’s not the hard ass Gunnery Sergeant Hartman-type (Full Metal Jacket), and yeah, she doesn’t quite rock the boat as swiftly as Gregory Peck initially did as General Frank Savage did early on: berating the guards for not checking his identification, demoting a sergeant to private for not wearing his uniform, and closing the bar till further notice, but she’s comparable in the eyes of many and that speaks to Dern’s performance. It’s true she’s not the jerk that Gordon Gekko, Mark Zuckerberg, Nathan Jessup were on screen but she does decide not to provide military info when verbal demanded by a male subordinate who’s out of line so she was almost there and that was close enough thanks to Dern’s amazing performance which some seem to liken to the iconic Nurse Ratchet who murdered patients.

Bravo to Johnson and especially Dern for building such an iconic and talked about boss figure despite not really doing anything all that controversial as far as film bosses go and then shocking the world to show that she wasn’t actually full Nurse Ratchet mode as much as some thought by willingly sacrificing herself to help the Resistance and take out a huge section of the Supremacy!

Great acting!

 

I happen to also think Holdo and Poe embody different leadership problems worthy of greater analysis and discussion and that neither character was shown at their prolonged best (Battle of Chyron probably was her at her best and Poe has also had better days) but I love the discussions around leadership that have occurred based on their dynamic. I think fans are asking the kinds of questions Johnson would have hoped they would be from the dynamic.

I sincerely don’t think she deserves to be lumped in with military leaders or bosses who did far worse than simply not tell a subordinate privileged info though. Maybe I’ve just watched soooo many movies with authoritative bosses who regularly say things about “that’s classified” or “it’s need to know and you don’t need to know” — which is interestingly a line Johnson gave to Poe perhaps to be that counterpoint and show how easy it is to behave almost similarly without realizing it — but I just didn’t find her out of line. She’s the boss. If she thinks something’s is classified, to me, that’s her perogative. Wouldn’t make me like her but it wouldn’t seem uncommon from an Admiral. The idea of Poe saying “It’s need to know and she doesn’t” is also something Johnson also did a little with Rey holding a saber above an unarmed Luke while she criticized him for holding a saber over an unarmed Ben. He seems to like that.

I watched TLJ on Blu-Ray earlier again today with the commentary on for the first time and noticed that much of her bridge crew seemed very calm and happily at work until Poe came in and undermined her authority in front of them. At that point they almost seemed to be looking at him as though he was unhinged. I hadn’t noticed it until today, and also checked the visual dictionary more, but she definitely seemed to have some fans from her own ship that came on board beyond D’acy. It’s just that she had inherited Leia’s crew and within that group Poe was well-liked by a sizable contingent who likely saw him as more representative of Leia and one of them than her. I found it interesting how Holdo tried to evoke Leia at times probably for that reason.

The way it seemed to play out to me looking more at the background was that each of Poe and Holdo had roughly similar crews that were very loyal to them and then the vast majority of the crew beyond those two groups didn’t really seem to have skin in the game and were willing to follow whomever was in charge.

Like a lot of Johnson’s storytelling, everybody seems to crack under the pressure before rising in some way later. We see them all make bad choices but also some strong ones.

 

What do you think they have planned for Holdo in Episode IX?

 

Holdo teaches a new generation of kids the word flyboy.

She also demonstrates for us when people should be asked to leave the room.

Her halo is so bright she's left blinking and trying to see around it.