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| A plot hole on the first Death Star. |
Though I quite enjoyed Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, I've learned since watching the movie that not everyone shares my affection. Having read more Star Wars hot takes since December 20 than I hope ever to read again, I have identified the four strongest and most common criticisms of The Force Awakens: 1) The politics are too vague/confusing; 2) Rey is too perfect/powerful; 3) It is too similar to past Star Wars movies; and 4) There are too many plot holes. I responded to the first criticism here, to the second criticism here, and to the third criticism here. Here follows my response to the fourth criticism.
4) There are too many plotholes.
Examples: Looper, This college English professor who probably was bored over winter break and/or was avoiding grading.
This is probably the most annoying argument against The Force Awakens. For one, many of the supposed “plot holes” suggested by nitpicking critics are unfair. Those identified by the above college English professor who clearly was bored over winter break and/or is avoiding grading are either a) results of his not paying close enough attention to the movie b) assertions of different writing choices he would have made c) stupid d) uncharitable or e) questions future movies will likely answer. I won’t rebut all 60 of his (“unforgivable”!) complaints (though one valiant soul has adequately rebutted the first 40 here), but I’ll challenge some of them to provide a sample:
Example of not paying close enough attention: To blow up the 120-km "Death Star" in Star Wars, the rebels needed detailed plans for the base and a full-scale invasion force -- as well as the supernatural targeting skills of the most powerful Force-user in the galaxy. To destroy the exponentially larger and better-protected "Starkiller Base" in The Force Awakens, all that was needed was a janitor with no special skills, a few run-of-the-mill handheld explosives, a couple not very difficult X-wing blaster strikes, and some moxie. It also helped that the Millennium Falcon was able to ‘fly low.’”
Rebuttal: It’s clearly stated in the movie that the Resistance also based its schematic of Starkiller Base on a reconnaissance flight (that the First Order tracked back to the Resistance base). Also, as pointed out here, the assault was far more difficult than this argument would have you believe, nearly failing and requiring some excellent piloting to succeed.
Example of asserting different writing choices he would have made: “Let's be clear: Han's son joins the First Order, and Luke's attempts to train new Jedis goes horribly wrong, and both men respond to these setbacks by, well, abandoning the Resistance to be utterly slaughtered by the First Order. Luke chills on an island, and Han on a smuggler's freighter, while untold thousands or millions of innocents are killed by the Order. Can we even comprehend how pissed Leia would be at both of them, and how cowardly Leia (at least the Leia we see in the first three films) would consider them both? And yet she seems only mildly peeved at Luke, and, despite Han implying otherwise, is almost entirely happy to see him when he turns up at the Resistance stronghold.
Example of asserting different writing choices he would have made: “Let's be clear: Han's son joins the First Order, and Luke's attempts to train new Jedis goes horribly wrong, and both men respond to these setbacks by, well, abandoning the Resistance to be utterly slaughtered by the First Order. Luke chills on an island, and Han on a smuggler's freighter, while untold thousands or millions of innocents are killed by the Order. Can we even comprehend how pissed Leia would be at both of them, and how cowardly Leia (at least the Leia we see in the first three films) would consider them both? And yet she seems only mildly peeved at Luke, and, despite Han implying otherwise, is almost entirely happy to see him when he turns up at the Resistance stronghold.
Rebuttal: So if this guy wrote The Force Awakens (an unfulfilled desire to have done so being, I speculate, a hidden source of much of the criticism of this movie, but I have no way to prove that), Leia would have slapped Han when she first saw him again, I guess. Cool.
Example of stupid: “Kylo Ren is the head of the Knights of Ren, but there are no other Knights of Ren in the movie.”
Example of stupid: “Kylo Ren is the head of the Knights of Ren, but there are no other Knights of Ren in the movie.”
Rebuttal: This is both untrue (we see what are heavily implied to be the Knights of Ren standing by Kylo in a field of corpses in Rey’s vision) and dumb: We’ll probably see them in the next movie.
Example of uncharitable: “Kylo Ren has such a Force-enabled sense of where his father is in the Galaxy that when his father lands on Starkiller Base, Ren immediately exclaims to himself, "Solo!" Yet a few minutes later, when Ren is just twenty feet from Solo, he can't detect him -- and actually starts searching for him in the wrong direction.”
Example of uncharitable: “Kylo Ren has such a Force-enabled sense of where his father is in the Galaxy that when his father lands on Starkiller Base, Ren immediately exclaims to himself, "Solo!" Yet a few minutes later, when Ren is just twenty feet from Solo, he can't detect him -- and actually starts searching for him in the wrong direction.”
As stated here, the Force has always been arbitrary and convenient in the Star Wars universe. For example: Darth Vader tortures his own daughter in a A New Hope without realizing who she is; he also struggles to find Luke while the latter is hiding behind a column or something in Return of the Jedi.
Example of questions future movies will likely answer: “How pissy is it of Luke to (a) abandon the Resistance, and then (b) leave an obnoxiously coy trail of bread-crumbs to sort of (but not really) help people find him (at some unspecified time)? Why did he leave multiple maps out there in the ether, anyway, given that him having done so allows the First Order to find one of them?”
Example of questions future movies will likely answer: “How pissy is it of Luke to (a) abandon the Resistance, and then (b) leave an obnoxiously coy trail of bread-crumbs to sort of (but not really) help people find him (at some unspecified time)? Why did he leave multiple maps out there in the ether, anyway, given that him having done so allows the First Order to find one of them?”
Good question. I sure hope this movie has a sequel!
Out of the 60 (!) “plot holes” this guy identifies, I’d say maybe a handful are legitimate. To which I respond to him and to others that Star Wars movies have never been perfect; The Force Awakens is not an unusually violent offender of plot logic compared to its brethren.
Well, there you have it: My massive addition to the pile of Star Wars hot takes. I defended the movie because I liked it, because I hold out for the possibility that good Star Wars movies can be made today, and because so many of the critics of the movie that I read are 30-40-year-old-men whose petulance in reacting to the movie one could psychoanalyze endlessly (refusal to believe that anything could be as good as something from their childhoods? Jealousy/anger that they didn’t get to be a part of a new Star Wars movie? Seduction by the ease of tearing down rather than defending?) but baselessly and unprofitably.
I can say one thing with more certainty, however: The Internet has subjected movies to more pressure, analysis, and hot takes than ever before. Based on the expectations going on, and the fact that the Star Wars Internet criticism machine has been churning along for 16 years now, it was perhaps inevitable that some backlash would occur, and that some people would be more primed to pounce on another Star Wars movie than to enjoy it. For many of these people, I would speculate that A New Hope and its sequels constituted a powerful personal experience upon first viewing and assumed an incredible standard of perfection as a result, and that they would derive satisfaction from nothing less than a complete replication of this unduplicable novelty and perfection (so-called) from The Force Awakens. Having watched the original trilogy two weeks ago for the first time in at least decade, I question the legitimacy of the claim that it was perfect anyway. Yet I digress.
I still really liked the movie. I was happy and, indeed, grateful to see the story not only continued in a natural way (unlike 2015’s fellow massive franchise restarter, Jurassic World; will they ever figure out that cloning dinosaurs is a bad idea?), but also done so with fun characters old and new, and in a way completely consonant with past films. And in an age when subjectivity and stubbornness make convincing people that they’re wrong about something almost impossible, that may end up having to be enough for me.
And now that I have written more than 7,000 words about Star Wars (and read far more), I am tired of Star Wars takes, Star Wars analysis, and all other attempts to read into these movies more than there is and to do anything other than be entertained by them, which is, after all, their main purpose. I’m not quite to the level of Alec Guinness (the actor who originally played Obi-Wan Kenobi), but I might be getting close:
Out of the 60 (!) “plot holes” this guy identifies, I’d say maybe a handful are legitimate. To which I respond to him and to others that Star Wars movies have never been perfect; The Force Awakens is not an unusually violent offender of plot logic compared to its brethren.
Well, there you have it: My massive addition to the pile of Star Wars hot takes. I defended the movie because I liked it, because I hold out for the possibility that good Star Wars movies can be made today, and because so many of the critics of the movie that I read are 30-40-year-old-men whose petulance in reacting to the movie one could psychoanalyze endlessly (refusal to believe that anything could be as good as something from their childhoods? Jealousy/anger that they didn’t get to be a part of a new Star Wars movie? Seduction by the ease of tearing down rather than defending?) but baselessly and unprofitably.
I can say one thing with more certainty, however: The Internet has subjected movies to more pressure, analysis, and hot takes than ever before. Based on the expectations going on, and the fact that the Star Wars Internet criticism machine has been churning along for 16 years now, it was perhaps inevitable that some backlash would occur, and that some people would be more primed to pounce on another Star Wars movie than to enjoy it. For many of these people, I would speculate that A New Hope and its sequels constituted a powerful personal experience upon first viewing and assumed an incredible standard of perfection as a result, and that they would derive satisfaction from nothing less than a complete replication of this unduplicable novelty and perfection (so-called) from The Force Awakens. Having watched the original trilogy two weeks ago for the first time in at least decade, I question the legitimacy of the claim that it was perfect anyway. Yet I digress.
I still really liked the movie. I was happy and, indeed, grateful to see the story not only continued in a natural way (unlike 2015’s fellow massive franchise restarter, Jurassic World; will they ever figure out that cloning dinosaurs is a bad idea?), but also done so with fun characters old and new, and in a way completely consonant with past films. And in an age when subjectivity and stubbornness make convincing people that they’re wrong about something almost impossible, that may end up having to be enough for me.
And now that I have written more than 7,000 words about Star Wars (and read far more), I am tired of Star Wars takes, Star Wars analysis, and all other attempts to read into these movies more than there is and to do anything other than be entertained by them, which is, after all, their main purpose. I’m not quite to the level of Alec Guinness (the actor who originally played Obi-Wan Kenobi), but I might be getting close:
In the final volume of the book A Positively Final Appearance (1997), Guinness recounts grudgingly giving an autograph to a young fan who claimed to have watched Star Wars over 100 times, on the condition that the boy promise to stop watching the film, because, as Guinness told him, "this is going to be an ill effect on your life." The fan was stunned at first, but later thanked him (though some sources say it went differently). Guinness is quoted as saying: "'Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?' He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. 'What a dreadful thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities."Aside from a few sentences in an upcoming blogpost, I shall write no further about Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens*, except in a final post that combines all of these parts into one whole for the masochists out there.
Until the next movie comes out, that is.
*or maybe I will.
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