A vast and detailed selection of spoilers follow—if you haven’t seen The Last Jedi, go see it and come back to this one afterward.
The first time we see Vice-Admiral Holdo in The Last Jedi, we see her through the eyes of Poe Dameron: hotshot flyboy, recently slapped down twice in the Resistance’s scramble to evacuate their compromised base. The first blow to Poe’s ego and stability is his demotion from Commander to Captain by General Leia Organa herself, a suitable reprimand for spearheading the devastatingly costly bombing run which provides the film with its opening set-piece. No sooner has Poe processed this—if indeed he has processed it—than he’s knocked further off balance by the loss of all of the Resistance high command save Leia, who is comatose and out of commission. In this state—stripped of his expected personal authority, with the usual structures of command which he relies on decimated—he looks at the new leader of the remaining Resistance fleet and says incredulously to another pilot: “That’s Admiral Holdo? Battle of Chyron Belt Admiral Holdo? …not what I was expecting.”
Nor is Holdo what the viewer is, perhaps, expecting. (We are firmly in Poe’s point of view, and primed by both the long history of hotshot flyboys in the Star Wars franchise, and our own pleasurable glee at watching successfully executed violence even at high cost, to be sympathetic to him.) And yet: here is Vice-Admiral Amilyn Holdo, a tall thin woman in late middle age, wearing a draped floor-length dress that leaves every curve and angle of her body visible; a woman with dyed-purple hair in a style that requires at the very least a great many pins and more likely a curling iron in addition; a woman wearing star-chart bracelets and lipstick and eye makeup. She looks like a slightly-down-on-her-luck noblewoman from the Old Republic. She’s not just female, she’s femme. And she’s not just femme, she’s soft. All her age is visible; there’s no architectural framing of that body to disguise how gravity has had its way with it. Holdo, in the middle of the remnants of the Resistance, is a kind of exposed that Leia Organa—who does wear those architectural frames around her body, giving her a grandeur and a solidity—never is.
Not what I was expecting. Not the image of a woman who could win a major battle, the sort which a pilot like Poe would remember admiringly. (We don’t know much of anything about the Battle of Chyron Belt—but by Poe’s reaction, it’s a bit legendary.) It isn’t that Poe Dameron’s got a problem with women—his record in both this film and the last shows that he is friends with, respects, and easily follows and leads women—it’s that he’s got a problem with Vice-Admiral Holdo. Who isn’t what he expects. Who has swanned in to the middle of the Resistance’s desperate last stand, her purple hair a shock of color in the middle of the greys and browns and whites of the Resistance’s cobbled-together uniforms, like she’s the Woman from Altair wandered in from an entirely different story.
Then—with Leia’s words in her mouth, no less, telling the assembly to keep the flame of hope alive—she not only gives an order to keep fleeing on an apparent dead-end desperate run just out of range of the First Order’s cannons, but also dismisses Poe entirely. (She’s got good reason to. He’s just been demoted, and, as she herself says, she knows his type: the kind of person who takes big risks and doesn’t follow orders to withdraw.) We, watching, and tightly emotionally attached to Poe’s point of view—through cinematography, Poe being entirely awesome, and generations of ‘let’s blow shit up’ saving the day narratives—are absolutely primed to believe that she’s either a traitor or an incompetent.
A traitor? Well, there’s that ‘we have them on the end of a string’ moment from General Hux. It turns out that the string is just a new application of tracking technology which allows the First Order to follow a ship through lightspeed (please insert sidebar here about how this is one of the few solidly missed moments in this film: how did the First Order invent this tech? How long have they had this capability? It’s a glossy, over-too-fast explanation which didn’t sit well with this viewer). What if Vice-Admiral Holdo—who doesn’t let our hero be part of the need-to-know crowd—is the one letting the tracking happen? Women who look like Holdo—femme fatales, even in their middle age, women who look like women who do politics rather than fight, who like frivolous things, jewels and bright hair and makeup even in the darkest moments—we are primed to read women like that as women who will betray. This is an old trope. It’s the liquid drops of tears that you have shed / Shall come again, transformed to orient pearl—that’s Shakespeare’s Richard III, talking to Queen Elizabeth, promising that for her emotional defection (handing over her daughter to be his wife, even after he’s killed her sons), she’ll have material riches. Women who like beautiful things will betray our heroes to keep their beautiful things.
And an incompetent? That one’s simple. Leia Organa is entirely, fully, hugely competent at what she does; Leia Organa, our General, is an image of mature womanhood which is understandable and immensely welcome—she is a leader of men and women, a strength and a power. Her most affecting scene in this film—when we finally get to see her use the Force which is her birthright as much as it has ever been her brother’s—is heartbreakingly brilliant. So is her ability to delegate, to train, to be both centrally necessary and to have a system in place for when she is incapacitated. But Holdo looks like the opposite of Leia—Holdo looks like an inexperienced woman using another woman’s words, a pale substitute, a coward whose story-function is to (like so many middle-aged female characters in film) keep our heroes down. This too is a familiar trope, and we are set up to expect it by how Holdo dresses and behaves.
But that’s not how it goes. Not what I expected—well, not what we expect either, watching. Turns out that Vice-Admiral Holdo’s plan, while desperate, is exactly what the Resistance needed: a chance to get to an old Rebel base with defenses and a communications array. Turns out, also, that she’s not some lesser imitation of Leia, but a friend Leia has had from childhood (check out Claudia Grey’s lovely middle-grade novel Leia: Princess of Alderaan, where she and Holdo meet for the first time and learn to rely on each other). Their goodbyes as Leia boards the escape pod along with the rest of the Resistance are the goodbyes of dear friends who have loved each other well. “I can’t take any more losses,” Leia says, speaking in a sense for all of us. “Sure you can,” Holdo tells her. “You taught me how.”
This is the sort of friend that Leia can rely on to make an ultimate sacrifice, and thus give to us watching the best visual and sound cue in the entire film: having stayed behind to pilot the heavy cruiser Raddus while the rest of the diminished Resistance escapes to the planet Crait, Holdo eventually chooses to drive her ship while it jumps to lightspeed directly through the First Order’s flagship, destroying a great part of it and preventing the destruction of those last few escapees. She is alone when she does this. She is alone, a captain on a bridge, in her dress and her lovely hair, her mouth set in a firm and determined line, and she doesn’t hesitate.
The film’s director, Rian Johnson, gives her—and us—a silent cut as a reward. My whole theater gasped out loud into the quiet. It is the most striking visual and auditory moment in a film full of striking visual and auditory moments.
And Poe Dameron? Poe Dameron watches this too, and he gets it. When Finn—whose arc this film has been about running away, or choosing not to—says that she’s fleeing like a coward, it is Poe who says that she isn’t. It is Poe that asks us to watch what she’s about to do.
Go out like the hero she is: a middle-aged woman hero in a flimsy dress with impractical hair and impeccable military credentials.
What The Last Jedi does—amongst many other things—is present its audience with more than one mode of female power. We have Rey, strong in the Force, dangerous and necessary and emerging from nowhere to be the center of this story; we have Rose, a mechanic and a patriot, willing to make sacrifices and willing to know when sacrifice is not necessary; we have Leia Organa, the pivot on which the Resistance turns. And we have Vice-Admiral Amilyn Holdo, who looks like none of what we expect. Who is nevertheless what the Resistance needs, and worth Poe’s respect, and worth ours.
Arkady Martine writes speculative fiction when she isn’t writing Byzantine history. She is overly fond of borders, rhetoric, and liminal spaces. Find her online at arkadymartine.wordpress.com or on Twitter as @ArkadyMartine.
Poe still made the right call. The bomber crews die no matter what. They die on the dreadnought run, they die in the hangars with the rest of the Resistance crews, or they die with the rest of the grunts in the trenches. Considering how badly the Resistance was butchered in this film, it was a matter of when, not if. Better to destroy an enemy capital ship then die sucked into the void or blasted by enemy artillery.
And Holdo could have just told Poe or anyone. It’s a decision for tension, which works great in the film. I loved that moment where the mutiny falls apart. But the story beat collapses when you think about. Tell Poe the plan, and he’ll shut up. Tell Poe the plan and he might help smooth tensions with the seemingly sizable amount of people willing to mutiny with him. The Resistance isn’t a typical military operation: it’s a looser, smaller organization where charisma and reputation matter as much, if not more, than rank. As written the story lines comes off as : blindly trust authority, for only they may decide when you are expended.
“please insert sidebar here about how this is one of the few solidly missed moments in this film: how did the First Order invent this tech? How long have they had this capability”
In Rouge One, hyperspace tracking is one of the research projects that Jyn calls out as she is looking for the Death Star plans.
Thank you for writing this. I didn’t agree with every single one of Holdo’s choices – she’s not perfect, nobody is – but I love that we’re given a character that subverts those kinds of expectations and the role women of that ‘type’ typically end up playing in media.
I understand what you say, but maybe because I am not prepared to dismiss women just because they’re dressed fancy of have nice hairand make-up, I never stopped to think about this. Even after seeing the film three times.
@1 – usakar: Holdo told a lot of people of her plan… how else are the transports being readied and fueled up? She just didn’t tell Poe, who no matter how much we like him because he’s cool, had no need or right to know.
@@.-@
If Holdo could tell all those people her plan, than you’ve made the point its dumb she didn’t tell Poe.
He actually does need to know. He’s still an officer, still one of their best pilots, and still has significant pull among the people who can make Holdo’s plan possible. That he’s able to pull a mutiny on short notice without Holdo realizing until she’s at gun point says something for his position in the Resistance. Not telling him is still solely for movie tension reasons, not for any greater point. And besides, he’s not a slave-soldier like the Storm Troopers or Clone troopers.
While appearances can be deceiving and Holdo’s appearance certainly was, it was her complete lack of leadership as a senior officer that puts most people off. Simply put, there is a time and a place for extreme secrecy and when you’ve got one ship left and no visible hope it is not time to play “I’ve got a secret” from the very people you command.
He’s a pilot, a great pilot, and a great commander of pilots. But he’s not actually part of the Resistance’s leadership. Could he have been added to it now that most of them are dead? Yes, probably. But I do understand why after getting so many people killed after disobeying a direct order he was demoted and not included in any decision making.
@1 The issue with this is that Poe has no right to know anything. He’s not part of the fleet command structure anymore. He’s been demoted. People are willing to mutiny with him because he’s the one stirring up dissent.
And you’re arguing that he should have been told the plan so that he would shut up, when he didn’t tell Holdo hos plan because he thought she wouldn’t approve. Even more than that, he doesn’t report that they’ve figured out how they’re being tracked. If he’s so concerned about her making bad decisions, why doesn’t he give her the necessary information to make better ones?
Yeah I absolutely don’t understand how the giant “why didn’t she just tell him the plan” plot hole made it into the movie. As soon as she FINALLY told him the plan, he understood and even agreed with it. Zero downside to letting him in on it, 100% upside to having him as an ally instead of a nuisance. Major story flaw that can’t be unseen and will hurt the re-watch potential of the movie. In my opinion, of course.
Not reporting how they’re being tracked is very stupid of Poe.
AP – another great point that he didn’t tell her everything either. It just makes no sense that in the face of utter annihilation, they’re going to withhold information from each other to what? Make a point?
Really, right at the point that they made it clear that this agonizingly slow chase scene would be a focal point of the narrative just to give Finn a reason to go off on a mission, I groaned inwardly. Seems lazy from start to finish.
Slow day at work but also:
I thought that we were against pre- and misconceptions in this article….
I love that there are so many different kinds of women represented here, and no she didn’t fit our “stereotype” of an Admiral…good! However……
I agree with #5…..Why keep Poe in the dark? It seemed like she loved rubbing his nose in his demotion. It seemed petty. And although it was probably done for tension in the movie, it was not great leadership. Poe was not in the chain of command, but he was respected by the troops, and keeping him close would’ve been smart.
@12 – Cayour: But Poe just demonstrated he’s that way, and goes on to prove it again.
People are making the argument he’s not part of the fleet command structure. That’s just patently wrong. The star fighters he commands are the only viable offensive element the Rebels/Resistance have ever had. As commander of those ships, he would have to have considerable pull on how the Resistance fights, how those ships are expended, and the training of those pilots. To be put in charge of them would a be a considerable acknowledgement of his skill and command ability. The Rebel and Resistance fleets are ablative shielding for the fighters.
As to getting those people killed, they die anyway. Around twenty people get out on the Falcon, and there were around four hundred Resistance personnel when the movie started (not counting droids, because no one in Star wars does). That’s about 1 in ten odds of getting out alive. So, for those bomber crews and pilots: its die and kill an enemy dreadnought, die in your hangar, obliterated by laser cannons on a defenseless transport, or killed by artillery fire while inflicting zero casualties. It’s a no win scenario, and Poe made the best call there was. The only other call was to let the people still at the Rebel base die, then lose the rest of the fleet to the dreadnought.
Poe should have told Holdo, sure. She should have told her recently demoted flight commander, y’know the guy trusted to lead their best ships and pilots, and often given more independence than most of the grunts the Resistance has.The best argument we have is that they’re both stupid for not trusting each other,
Poe needs to be snubbed and his face rubbed in his mess a little. The big mistake is the narrative spends to long endorsing him, and when it does have him accepting this it doesn’t feel humbling enough. Poe is the Peter Principle in starfighter pilot form. He’s a good flier, and he is a good special forces agents, but he is not a leader; at least not yet. Him thinking he is a leader is him operating beyond his competency. Leia has let him get a bit big for his britches, possibly because he reminds her of Luke and Han.
If Hux had been even slightly more competent then Poe’d have got himself and everyone else killed right at the start with that fake comm signal thing he pulled. Can you imagine him doing that to Vader or Tarkin? That scene would have ended with a pew-pew of space lasers and a “Let us hope the next messenger has better radio equipment” from the Star Destroyer’s radio. All of Poe’s successes in this movie are down to luck, not good judgment on his part.
Finn was not on the shuttles when Holdo was moving the ship to go into lightspeed towards Snoke’s ship. He was on the ship. If I am remembering correctly, the person who said Holdo was running away was the blonde with mini Leia buns. May want to edit that post.
It doesn’t bother me that she kept *Poe* in the dark. He’s in disgrace and not central to the plan. However, she is at fault for laying the ground work for Poe’s mutiny. She is now the leader of a ragtag group of people who eagerly left the overriding government to form their own resistance organization. These are people who, by definition, are likely to strike out on their own. They are in an incredibly tense situation, under a horrifying level of pressure, having just suffered demoralizing loses and are being pursued by overwhelming force. We needed to see her rallying the troops, not just a vague speech about Hope to the leadership. She needed to say something to everyone, to tell them that there is a plan to save them all (or at least a large portion of them). “Follow my lead, there is a plan, we will be safe. We are not just pointlessly running from an overwhelming force that will inevitably catch us. The details will come out as needed because of security concerns. May the Force Be With You.” Done. Problem solved.
I look at Holdos story (within TLJ only, because I was unaware of her until the film) as a classic redemption story. Short explanation: Adm. Holdo’s plan sucked and most of her command died because of it. Her suicide mission redeemed her.
@19 Except her plan would have worked just fine if Poe hadn’t sent Finn off to get captured and reveal that they were fleeing in cloaked shuttles.
It might have even survived that if the shuttles were able to leave on time instead of being delayed by mutiny.
No, Holdo’s plan was perfect. It was only ruined because of DJ betraying Rose and Finn, which happened indirectly because Poe decided not to tell her about his plan.
Unfortunately, any tension that might have been experienced from being in Poe’s point-of-view was destroyed for me by the final trailer. In it, we hear Poe passionately say:
This was obviously during a climactic moment in the film. Its supposed to be a high point. And it absolutely destroys any chance that Holdo will actually be a traitor.
Because Holdo says that in her first minute of screen time. As soon as she did, I realized that Poe would be quoting that later in the film. Which mean she had inspired him in some way. Which meant he was wrong about her. Which meant anything he tried was going to be an obstruction to the actual resolution of the movie. I also knew it meant she would die heroically.
That just sucks, trailer people.
I think the film presents it as Leia’s plan, not Holdo’s. I would assume that the command staff were all in-the-know, and Holdo, as the only survivor, just kept it going. It also gives her justification for not telling Poe, beyond what is said. If Leia didn’t tell him, why should she?
Her plan isn’t perfect. It relies on bizarre secrecy and then not telling one of the other few surviving officers what he plan was. As others pointed out, Poe’s fine with the plan once someone tells him the plan. Which Holdo doesn’t do, because the story needs tension and not because it make sense.
It also leads to a weird place where the shuttles, that are flying away from the Raddus are in range of Snoke’s ship but the Raddus barely was.
This… didn’t make any sense. If the ship can be piloted by a single person, it can be piloted by a computer, especially since at the time when she elects to stay behind, its just supposed to go forward in a straight line. She only needed to enact her suicide run after DJ revealed the plan to the First Order, and they started shooting the shuttles down. So, basically, “The Narrative” (to borrow a Scalzi term) needed her on the ship, so she stayed on the ship, even though there was no reason given. No one needs to stay behind and pilot the ship. Everyone was boarding the shuttles. She was in the shuttle bay, watching the ship. Demonstrably, no one was piloting the ship in that moment.
usakar@24:
Not quite. The Raddus was in range of the SD’s guns, but not at close enough range to penetrate or deplete the Raddus’s shields. You see the First Order constantly firing on the Raddus the whole chase, and them not reaching the ship, because of the shields.
But the shuttle don’t have shields, so the First Order can blow them up at will.
I think they made it very clear that Holdo didn’t have any obligation to share information with Poe in their first conversation. I feel that dialogue was done well and communicated to the viewer what was going on and why. The rest of their conversations didn’t work so well.
For me the real glaring issue is when she gives Poe the speech about “hope.” Obviously this was meant to be a touchstone between her and Leia, underscoring their relationship, but it was also trying to emphasize their first exchange in which she gives him the business and puts him in his place. The problem is that I believe the filmmakers were trying to send a message about “Trust” while using the word “Hope.” “Poe, you need to trust me, we have a plan, just do your job until further notice” sends a completely different message than “Poe, just hope things work out.”
Obviously the whole script of dialogue exists just to move the plot forward but this section stands out to me as one where just a little bit of editing could help everything that comes after play much better on screen, without making Holdo seem incompetent as a communicator. Poe could then just decide that he can’t afford to trust her instead of having her seem to be overtly inept and completely justifying his mutiny. This would also create a stronger moment when Poe realizes that he was wrong about Holdo.
The trust and hope messages seem similar on the surface but are outrageously different when the message comes from person in a leadership role.
Yeah, Rose says that he’s running away and stuns him. I guess that’s true in a technical sense. But he’s not doing it to save himself, or out of cowardice, like in TFA. He’s trying to get the cloaked beacon off the ship, so Rey doesn’t die. He’s trying to save Rey. All the choices he makes to help the Resistance are about trying to save Rey as well in TFA. He doesn’t truly consider himself a member of the resistance until the very end of the film, when Phasma calls him scum, and he says “Rebel Scum”.
Besides which, Finn is ON THE DREADNAUGHT, fighting Phasma, when Holdo rams it. How is it again that he says Holdo is running away like a coward? Oh yeah, he says it much earlier in the film, prior to leaving for Canto Bight.
If Leia hadn’t also been dressed in a formal gown, with her hair done, and jewelry, I’d say that Rian Johnson was intending to make this statement. But she was, contrary to how we left her just a day or two before in The Force Awakens, where she had been dressed in military fatigues the entire time. So, I don’t know. Holdo is from a wealthy and aristocratic Coreward world. Like Leia, and Padmé. It may have just been, you know, Star Wars.
@16: I think its a deeper issue than just Leia personally letting Poe get away with too much. The Rebellion’s military tradition as a whole (which the Resistance would have inherited) seems to glamorize its soldiers going rogue. (As witnessed by them naming their best star fighter squadron after a team that disobeyed orders to go steal the Death Star plans.) If you make heroes out of soldiers who disobey orders and carry out their own private little wars then naturally your soldiers are going to see such behavior as acceptable and maybe even expected.
I was rather surprised when I learned how many people got hung up on this part of the movie. Maybe it is because I was raised in a military family that I have a different view on it. Poe is / was a combat leader. He led the tactical engagements from the front line. There is a world of difference between that role and being a commander at the strategic level. As a tactical commander, you simply cannot know everything you need to know to make the larger strategic decisions. You have to focus on your combat units, their effectiveness, and being able to adjust tactically as the battle unfolds. Oh, and in terms of being leading a fighter wing (or whatever unit Poe was technically in command of) you also have to pilot your own fighter.
That is a huge plate. It is not easy. Especially with men and women you personally know dying all around you.
Which is why military leadership has evolved a separation between the tactical command and the strategic command. It allows both ends to focus on their responsibilities; trusting in the other to execute their part and make the best decisions. In combat, this utterly breaks down if a flag officer has to sit down and walk every subordinate officer below them through every decision they make. I’m pretty sure those Star Destroyers weren’t going to sit back while Poe got brought up to speed on the strategic calculus behind Leia’s decisions.
Poe’s aggressive attack did succeed. Barely. It literally came down to one woman, the bomber’s belly gunner, catching a remote while her ship came apart around her. That catch is all that separated Poe’s “victory” from utter disaster. Even then, the victory cost the Resistance. Someone above mentioned it was the right call because it was either die taking down the Dreadnought or die in the hanger. First, hind-sight is always 20/20. But, when Poe made that call, he had NO idea that the fleet could not escape. Second, he had no idea what plans or options he may have stripped away from high command.
As for Admiral Holdo not telling Poe about the plan: welcome to the military. Information is given out on a need-to-know basis all the time and, generally, for good reasons. The Resistance fleet just realized that the enemy fleet is able to follow them through hyperspace and they have no idea why. Let’s sit down and put ourselves in the Admiral’s seat. How are they doing this? Simple solution is they have a mole in the fleet. Or they have compromised a droid or computer system. An intelligence failure somewhere. It was my first thought while watching the movie. And I guarantee you the command staff has an intelligence officer that laid that out immediately.
Without knowing what is going on, you have to assume you are compromised somewhere. This is why the senior command staff wasn’t going around telling every junior officer what the plan was. Or even mentioning that there was a “secret” plan. All of which is not unusual in the least.
This whole plot line was all about Poe learning that the universe does not revolve around him, that he is not the only competent person around, and maybe he should learn to think through his impulsive assumptions about a given situation. See past the immediate conflict and further afield than his targeting computer.
@30:
Not to mention that the very ship Holdo is standing on was named after the Admiral who defied Alliance orders and attacked Scarif anyway. There were more Rogue One shout outs in this film than any other movie, I think.
@31:
Its about the only part of a real military the film DID get right, lol.
I agree with #16 in that Poe is no leader (and consistently shows that he shouldn’t be till he gets some perspective) but did you see that for a second he thought he was going to be? Before Holdo was introduced he had a brief moment where he thought he was going to be called from the ranks to lead the resistance because he was just that awesome!
While arguments can be made about who should have told who what, once Poe did have the information about Holdo’s main objective he unwittingly brought the whole thing crashing down around their ears. Approximately 400 people lived to run away. As the fleet was being whittled down their crews were evacuated to other ships, leaving one or two sacrifices behind. So, we still have approximately 400 people getting in those transports to the planet. Until Poe told Finn, Rose and whoever else might be in earshot on an enemy ship what was going on. Maybe 20 people got out on the Falcon. Good job.
I just kept expecting her to say “Happy Hunger Games!”
@@@@@ 31
So they don’t kill the Dreadnaught, and then the fleet flees. They end up in the same situation as before, except the bomber crews die in the hangar, and the Dreadnought is free to add its primary armament to killing the Resistance fleet. At no point would the bombers have been useful, as they are clearly hilariously slow, under armored targets that would have been butchered in any other possible engagement. When the fighters go down, the Resistance goes from in danger to utterly toothless.
The other problem is that the entire command staff is dead. There’s no intelligence officer in the film giving Holdo advice. There’s a few other Resistance staff, but there’s no hint as to there role. Whatever demotion Leia gave Poe, it doesn’t change the fact he was commanding and entrusted with the only thing the Resistance had that was worth anything in a fight. And with most of the senior officers dead, telling one of the few surviving senior officers the plan (the plan he was fine with once it was explained to him) is stupid. Again, its for movie tension, not for any actual reason.
“please insert sidebar here about how this is one of the few solidly missed moments in this film: how did the First Order invent this tech? How long have they had this capability”
StrongDreams @@@@@ 2 – In addition to this being an Easter Egg to Rogue One (which I’ll admit I wasn’t aware of until reading online), I saw a first-season episode of Rebels last night wherein the Inquisitor was able to track the Ghost (actually the Phantom) through hyperspace using a beacon that had been fired and embedded into the hull of the ship, so this is not entirely new technology.
@36
I agree that it’s just for movie tension, but that’s only part of the issue. The problem with Holdo also is that she’s a character we’re told is super awesome and deserves respect, etc. But the audience never met this person before, who is now condescendingly talking down to one of the heroes from the previous film.
Also, speaking from (so far limited) experience serving under actual female officers in the Israeli Defense Force, Holdo did not act like an officer confident in her position and ability. She acted like someone who was simply enjoying getting to boss around someone she didn’t like. Again, someone we have actually seen be heroic and help the Resistance. Did she honestly expect him to respect her after completely talking down to him in their first meeting? Of course she was not obligated to tell him the plan (though in the context of the film she absolutely should have). But a real officer would have said “There is a plan. I will tell you when you need to know.” Not saying things like “I know your type.” She came off as petty, and I was very happy she didn’t remember that ships in Star Wars have autopilot. None of the officers I have met would act this way. When, for example, we ask what we’ll be doing later, or something, my officer will just not tell us. She won’t talk down to us, and certainly wouldn’t act like Holdo did.
@usakar
I doubt I will persuade you on this as you seem emotionally committed to your stance. However, do remember, at the time Poe had no idea that the fleet was going to be tracked, followed, and trapped. He had no idea what was happening on the larger strategic scale. When he made that decision, based on what he knew, the fleet was getting ready to jump to safety and to begin the process of regrouping and re-building. Like I said, he succeeded. And, yes, it did turn out that the bombers may well have been useless later. None of that, however, was known to Poe or part of his planning. He got lucky. Even in that luck, he diminished the Resistance’s fighting force a significant amount.
You also seem to be set on the concept that since the Resistance’s fighter elements were their strongest military asset that it should logically follow that the best fighter pilot should be given command of the entire Resistance. History has proven that this is typically a terrible method of selecting commanders (with some exceptions). I’m sure Star Wars has their own history showing similar results. Ignoring that debate, however, you yourself undercut your own argument. You stated that since the Resistance fighter elements represent their most powerful combat force Poe should be in charge. Yet, as you also state, Poe destroyed most of that force in his attack. So, when Holdo take command, their are not many fighters left. Then the surprise attack led by Ben wipes out the remaining fighters in the hanger. Now Poe has no fighter force to use to justify his assumption of command by your own logic.
As for your argument about losing the command staff on the bridge, you then have to make the argument that Vice Admiral Holdo, a woman that earned her rank and is a hero of at least one famous fleet action, would not be able to generate an intelligence leak as a possibility on her own.
@@@@@ Yakov Merkin – When your officers never talked down to you dismissively, were you ever just coming off an operation where you ignored direct orders from your commanding officers AND in doing so got the majority of your unit whipped out? Didn’t think so. Last I checked the IDF really, really frowns on insubordination in combat.
37 – JamesP: That’s active tracking, the same kind of tracking used by the Empire in ANH to follow the Falcon. What they used here was new tech.
@31
The reason the bombing run nearly failed was because those bombers were absolute crap, and flying in far too close of a formation. You’re telling me that a single tie fighter wing smacking a bomber full of armed ordnance (IN THE BAY??) not only destroys the entire bomber, but nearly every flanking ship as well?? That’s either incredibly bad luck, terrible design, or messed up training, probably a combination of all of the above.
Much of the matter of Holdo rests on the same troubled ground that many other aspects of the film share, namely that you have to follow every aspect of Disney’s new expanded universe canon, not just books but video games and other media. Introducing a character to the film audience from out of left field by literally having a functionary summon her out of a crowd with no further detail except a single vague exclamation from a known character does not establish anything about the character of that character (I really need to find a new word to swap in for “character”). When all we see on screen is that Holdo is condescending, how are we to judge her or feel sympathy for her? Since the entire command staff of the Resistance was dead or incapacitated before her introduction, how are we to know that she isn’t implementing a “plan” that she came up with on her own in the last two minutes in an effort to stall until something else pops into her head? When she deliberately alienates not only the only remaining high-ranking officer left (even with his demotion he still commanded the entire remnant of their strike craft element) but also several key members of the auxiliary bridge crew, it really speaks to her incompetence.
After she openly mocked him and dismissed him as a type rather than a person, how was Poe to be expected to trust her enough to share his own secret plan?
I get that Vice Admiral Holdo being a woman, and a badass at that, is going to make any criticism/defense of her more than a little fraught – but let’s be honest, her actions in this film are absurdly dumb and negligent.
First off, lets state that the Rebellion and the Resistance seem to have a long history of including everyone who has to volunteer to put their life on the line, in strategic briefings, and moreover, being honest with them. This is the case before attacking Starkiller Base, before attacking the Death Star, etc. Which makes sense, since these are movement dedicated to personal liberty, resisting tyranny, and volunteerism – it is clear that including even snub fighter pilots in a mission briefing is a nod of respect to their risking their lives.
Second, the great strength of the Resistance is that while outnumbered/outgunned, it’s individual members are conspicuously brave and resourceful, which means they innovate and implement new strategies on the fly, which is often why then win.
By denying Poe and ALL the Resistance pilots the information they want (and debatably needed), Holdo is cutting off this great strength at the knee, and dictating that her plan is the ONLY plan worth trying (which is a very Imperial way of doing things), even in the face of a secondary plan which at no point would have impeded her own primary objective! Sending Finn and Rose on their mission does not do one bit of harm to her plans, and could have done a great deal of good.
Third, the entire need for secrecy is unbelievably dumb. What, she doesn’t think all of these people will notice her fueling up a bunch of escape craft? She doesn’t even have to reveal the linchpin of her plan (that she’s going to sacrifice herself to save them); she can say that there is a base they can refuel at, or something. At the very least, she lets her subordinates know that she has a plan beyond “I’m resigned to being run down like a rabid dog and am hoping for an unforeseen miracle.” History is full of justifiable mutinies where soldiers refused to follow orders that were obviously suicidal, that obviously wouldn’t work, and didn’t serve any objective (like the French in 1917).
And I can’t stress this enough: the movie is literally built on the idea that even the faintest spark of hope is the most powerful weapon of all. And Holdo…. deliberately extinguishes that hope by refusing to reveal there is a workable plan in place! She has an opportunity to give these people the hope of surviving, of continuing the fight, and she keeps it to herself, for absolutely no reason. There is no need for secrecy; if there is a spy, that person will communicate the plan whenever it kicks off anyway. It’s all about falsely building narrative tension. The fact that Poe is able to round up a well-organized mutiny that cuts across gender, species, and job description speaks to how bad of a commander Holdo is – if anything, SHE may be the hothead, unwilling to share her plans with anyone, committed to going it alone.
And lets all stop giving any credence to the “if only we had the bomber fleet, we could fight back, Poe!” argument. Those bombers are wiped out while attacking a crippled capital ship with no ability to fire back at them. But now, magically, they are expected to be a meaningful asset in a fight against a much larger fleet that doesn’t have its weapons disabled? Bullshit.
Poe may be a hothead and a pilot too willing to go rogue, or shoot first and ask questions later (though as others have said, the Rebellion and Resistance idolize this stereotype). But Vice Admiral Holdo is a secretive, authoritarian figure who causes a major mutiny within hours on the job, solely on the basis of her own inflated sense of self-importance.
@40
Last I checked, all armies really frown on insubordination in combat.
I have seen officers talk down to soldiers for various infractions numerous times. Never have I heard any of them use the condescending tone Holdo did. Depending on the infraction, it could range from a simple stern statement to a much harsher reprimand. Leia’s reprimand and demotion of Poe was appropriate. Holdo’s comments after the fact were unprofessional, and she more went after his character than after his prior actions. His actions in the battle had already been addressed. Holdo was being petty, and in a crisis where they had few people left, went out of her way to alienate one of their few remaining high ranking officers, to the point where he and a number of their other few remaining key crew mutinied. All the blame for that falls on her.
I only mentioned the IDF specifically in your case because I happen to know they are a very formidable, respectable, and professional military force. :)
Poe is a case that most military commanders would not have to face. While not stated, I highly suspect that the only reason Poe was not in the brig after his actions was Leia gave him a pass. A slap and demotion, sure. But a pass none the less. One that many other senior officers would not have approved of, but upheld out of respect to Leia.
Now, I will agree that Holdo does have some blame in the mess. She’s not perfect or above criticism. My primary argument in all this is that Poe is not without fault himself. Which seems to be the primary stance of many I have talked to. Poe was right and should have been in charge. I simply do not see it that way. As in real life, the truth is often a muddled mess left chewed up and forgotten somewhere in between.
Ironically, one of the first classes we had from our (female) sergeant was about when we are legally obligated to disobey orders (referring to illegal orders, obviously.)
Poe of course has at least some fault, even just because he disobeyed orders. But the whole conflict that came afterward would have been avoided if Holdo had acted professionally and treated him with respect. Not saying she should have ignored what he had just done, but she could have been firm with him without the condescension and the needless secrecy that led to not just Poe, but several others mutinying as well. Unity was what they needed at that point, and with his X-Wing blown up, Poe couldn’t have gone off on a crazy mission anyway. All Holdo had to say to him (and the others) if she really felt secrecy was important was “There is a plan, and you will be told what it is when the time is right.” He’d either accept that, or still try and pull something, but that would be an entirely different situation.
Also worth pointing out that Poe didn’t take his demotion seriously.
@36 Except the bombers probably wouldn’t have fit in the X-wing hanger, so they might have survived. Or if Poe hadn’t gotten almost all of their fighters killed, there might have been a better perimeter keeping the FO from taking out the hangar and the bridge in the first place. The DN might not have followed the resistance while its small craft defense were out. Not after just getting a dose of trench run defense. Sure, Poe’s recklessness might not have had a significant effect on subsequent events but it wasn’t his call to make.
@@@@@ 48 – Apparently it was Poe’s call to make, since… you know, everyone seems to obey his orders.
And it works! They sacrifice like… 10 fighters/bombers for a bunch of enemy fighters and a major capital ship. The First Order does not have limitless resources either (even aside from the very obvious thumb-on-the-scales nature of the Resistance being unable to replace lost assets), so had the First Order not had a new technology at their disposal, Poe’s actions would have been the cause of a MAJOR victory for the Resistance, especially in light of the destruction of Starkiller Base (which… just saying, also due to his actions).
Holdo’s sex is not a problem. Her age is not a problem. Even the purple hair and makeup isn’t an issue. The long, clingy, completely inappropriate though lovely dress kind of is a problem. The only other female commander I can think of who made a practice of leading in an elegant evening gown is Servalan of Blake’s Seven.
Good article. I enjoyed Holdo and her role, largely because she did not fit the cookie cutter patterns generally used to create action movie characters. I did find the level of secrecy around her planning to be excessive and unnecessary, and the whole setup of the chase scene unrealistic (call for additional forces? use hyperspace to jump units ahead of the Resistance?).
But my biggest issue is one that the concept of hyperspace in general introduces to space battles. Objects moving at those speeds are incredible weapons; they don’t even need warheads. Why use superlasers to destroy planets when you can just ram a large vessel into them? And, given their power, why aren’t hyperspace missiles in common use? It gave the movie a badass moment, but opens many questions that will have to be addressed in the future. Kind of like Star Trek transporters, first introduced to save on special effects budgets, but then a constant concern for every script written thereafter.
@49 Except it clearly wasn’t his call because he was demoted for not following orders, that people followed him doesn’t make him right. The Resistance appears to have one squadron of fighters and one squadron of bombers. How many dreadnaughts does the First Order have? Sacrificing your last major offensive weapon for anything other than victory or preventing immediate defeat is not good strategy. It might have been a major victory but it could have very easily been their last victory even if the Resistance had gotten away clean.
@51 In the old EU (I don’t know if those “physics” are still canon), a planet’s gravity well pulls a ship out of hyperspace and stops ships from jumping. So no cheap and dirty planet killers.
Great article. What fascinates me is the deliberate parallel being drawn in this movie. Poe destroys a dreadnought through testosterone-laced gung-hoery at great cost. Holdo achieves exactly the same result at the cost of one life: her own. We’re supposed to think about this.
I agree that she didn’t have to share the details, but given the dire straights the Resistance was in, I think she had an obligation to boost their morale, and reassurance that there even was a plan would have done that. I also think that Poe was senior enough in rank to know. But beyond that, Poe’s rash, heat of battle mistake, isn’t really a good justification not to tell him. It demonstrates that he is reckless, that he’s not ready to be a leader, but not that he’s a security risk. Especially since in TFA, he was tortured by the First Order, and didn’t crack (not until Kylo used the force to invade his mind). So I think Poe, despite his recklessness, would be someone with a reputation for keeping confidence.
@31
The argument could be made that while Holdo held a strategic command position, the fortunes of war had put her in a tactical command situation at the point we are all talking about. If that is the case her decision to marginalize one of the best of her few remaining assets is a bug, not a feature. Not telling Poe the objective seems to me like bad admiralship, and she was an Admiral after all.
But I don’t think it’s that complicated. The Holdo/Poe thread of the storyline is a case of unnecessary cultural/political signalling. All of the Resistance leadership in the movie is female. All of the major males on that side are impulsive (Poe, Finn) or reluctant (Luke). The females are powerful and morally certain (Rey), sober and adult (Leia, Holdo) or relatively weak but morally certain (Rose). It’s unecessary because the Rey character is so good that her gender is not even a plot point. With that accomplished why emphasize Holdo putting Poe in his place except as a kind of gender politics revenge porn? How does it advance the story?
Female leadership and heroism has been a hallmark of this universe from it’s inception. Think Mon Mothma and Leia, Padme, Jyn, Rey and now Adm. Holdo. Holdo is the first instance to leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. Simply too much of a bow to the current political climate.
How about we agree instead that nearly the whole of the Resistance leadership — as well as pretty much all of the First Order people — are idiots. Both this movie and its predecessor (and, come to think of it, R1) are filled with dumb decisions, actions, and motivations. Poe, while a fine pilot, shouldn’t be allowed to do anything but pilot. Holdo has no noticeable leadership skills, and her all-in plan only succeeds because she has no choice but to sacrifice their one useful ship and herself with it. Other than being able to conceal his tracker, Hux is below the level of a green recruit, officer-wise, and the beat goes on. The good part for the franchise is that children don’t notice; they tend to see good/bad instead of competent/incompetent. But when they finally do — though, given most reviews of seen of the movie, most adults haven’t moved past good/bad — the magic disappears.
@56 The series may be called Star Wars, but an accurate portrayal of competent military leadership would be a total departure from the tone and feel of the series to date, whether you are talking about the Republic, Empire, Rebel Alliance, First Order or Resistance. Kind of like the way all the fighters bank in the vacuum of space–reality is not what this thing is all about.
Not telling Poe was a leadership failure. He had both tactical and referential authority. He made a serious error in judgement and it was up to Leia to discipline him. That should have been enough for Holdo but the story implied otherwise. On the other hand, mutiny was a worse failing. Both characters suffer based on the ‘failure to communicate’ trope. This is the only issue I have with the movie. I truly appreciate the broader strokes of story telling they were aiming for but the underlying failure to communicate was a distraction. Better to have had Poe flat out oppose the hidden rebel base strategy (perhaps out of fear of losing their cruiser) rather than mutiny due to miscommunication.
I was pleased with the outcome: Poe admired Holdo and learned a huge lesson in leadership, but I didn’t like how they got there for this plot line. I think Holdo deserved better.
56,57 when it comes down to it, many fictional works are frankly terrible about portraying sound leadership, though to be fair, history is full of examples that would baffle any mind that came up with them.
In this case, however, I’m wondering how much of the problem is a result of the death of Carrie Fisher.
@59 I don’t think her death had much of an effect. I thought they were done with shooting and such (unless they had been planning re-shoots). I think I remember reading that her role in TFA was limited due to health concerns, so that might have been why she spent a chunk of this movie unconscious.
It poses a huge problem for the next movie, of course. I suppose it reinforces the bit about not focusing on heroes. Though the angel iconography when she force pulls her way back on the ship doesn’t help either.
60, it’s certainly a limitation going forwards into the future, though health concerns might also have kept her from taking the role in this movie she might have as well, and then they shoe-horned a complete stranger of a character into it just to have a conflict, because…
I’m sorry, but Vice Admiral “I wear a flowing evening gown instead of uniform” has no call to be getting hung up on military discipline. There was no leadership structure left, and there was no reason to withhold the one real hope from the remains of the crew while spouting a high school sports pep talk about hope. She could have been engaging her pilots with the tactical plan, having them asses the value of what assets were left to them, and then employing them to implement the plan. It was all very contrived. And this from a guy who doesn’t even really like Poe all that much. A real lack of leadership.
As for Poe’s ‘failed’ attack, I found the whole thing laughably ludicrous: both the ease in which Poe disabled the Dreadnaughts defense, and the all together uselessness of the slow lumbering bombers that somehow rely on gravity to drop bombs in space. Especially when it has been shown that the rebels/alliance have faster more agile and capable bombers.
I don’t see the problem that others seem to see when considering the death of Carrie Fisher. Even in that fictional universe there wasn’t much left for her. They’ll have to abandon any thoughts of the Leia and Kylo, mother/son thread, but that’s minor. I assume they’ll write her out, off screen in some way that does justice to her, and her character.
Holdo/L.Dern= Steven Seagul in Executive Decision. A star brought in because they didn’t feel they had enough star power to carry the movie but what they really needed was a better plot, characterization, and more continuity.
Your remarks about Holdo are ageist and body-shaming.
@39
I take your first sentence to mean “if I call you emotional, I can code you irrational and I can be safely ignore your arguments.”
Further, you misread my statement. The majority of the fighters were destroyed on the attack on the hangar. You should go back and reread. Secondly, I’m not even arguing Poe should have command. I have been saying he’s one of the Resistance’s remaining senior officers. He commands its one capable element. He’s not some kid with a chip on his shoulder. He’s been entrusted with command of a valuable asset and led the assault on Starkiller base. That has to be as least as valuable as whatever off-screen thing Holdo did.
Not telling him is petty and nonsensical. Because otherwise, she suspects one of their best as being a spy for the First Order.
63, an off-screen death would be a problem, it’s a terrible thing to have to do that. Not to mention the other possibilities that would be closed off. As far as I can tell, they’re claiming they didn’t change anything in this movie because of it, but I’m dubious it didn’t have any conceivable effect.
66, I think you may be right about keeping it secret as false dramatic tension.
It’s interesting that so many people think that Poe was in the right, despite getting a lot of people killed twice. My take was that Poe should have been in the brig most of the movie! He disobeyed a direct order at the start of the movie and got a lot of people and valuable equipment destroyed. Leia was too easy on him–maybe because he reminds her of her husband, and a son she might have had. It seems to me that Holdo had pretty good reason to keep him in the cold.
I’m not quite a fan of the sloppiness that allows DJ to betray the Resistance though. Finn, Rose, and Poe should have known better than to blab about their plans while he was listening.
@65, as near as I can tell Holdo’s showcasing her aging body in a clingy gown is being presented as a positive thing. Force knows why. For what it’s worth I think it’s a lovely gown and she looks good in it. I do not think it is appropriate wear for a senior officer on the bridge of her ship during a desperate battle.
The idea seems to have been to present an unashamedly feminine leader of men and women, a fine idea. The elaborate do, the make-up and the bracelet however would have been enough to establish that. The evening gown was a step too far.
@66 The warrants for your argument are emotionally based: the movie makes clear that aside from his prowess in an X-Wing, Poe is at the moment a major detriment. He disobeys a direct order to disastrous consequences (others have covered his inability to know they’d be tracked); he has the hubris to assume he will be put in charge based on that prowess (if I remember, the cinematographer is shooting him at the hero angle at that moment); he drops lots of coded language about his skepticism of Holdo’s ability to command precisely because the woman he sees before him doesn’t conform to the generic assumptions he holds about who a hero is supposed to be (and the film forces its audience to confront this as well, as this author points out—we’re supposed to think Holdo is the mole); he is immediately presumptive and dismissive to Holdo BEFORE she puts him in place; he participates in a secret plan that eventually allows the First Order to annihilate 90% of the remaining resistance; and he leads a mutiny because he’s sure he knows best despite his not knowing the strategy at all (and his justification for knowing, and one that most defenders seem to invoke, is that HE IS POE AND A SHIT-HOT PILOT). It takes A LOT of work to see Poe as the aggrieved figure here. The strenuous defenses of him suggest the film makers were right to stage the conflict this way, even if some aren’t willing to engage it.
But no one is talking about two things:
1. A BOMBER in space? Anyone know the tech on this??
2. A skied-up cloud speeder on a salt-crusted planet that turns up BLAZING RED PLUMES on a white field?
Quick reminder: please keep the tone of the discussion civil and avoid making disagreements personal.
@70:
Traditionally in SW bombers function by propelling or projecting bombs or bomb-like energy weapons out of a chute. Compare the TIE Bombers in ESB with the Y-Wing bombing run in R1. The Resistance Bombers are exceptional in several ways, not least being that their bomb deployment mechanism doesn’t fit with anything we’ve seen otherwise.
The film established repeatedly that the salt was primarily red crystal with a white surface. The speeders kicked up red smoke by means of their stabilizing drag rods or whatever those were supposed to be. Finn specifically had a very rough ride until told to deploy his stabilizer rod thingy.
@70, 73:
The delivery mechanism of the bombers works fine. They are not dropped, they are on a conveyor belt and released when they reach the end. That provides enough propulsion to make them move as we see in the film. But even if they were “dropped”, we see that the ship has artificial gravity, and in that section of the ship, “down” is out the bomb bay. So, even if they were just “dropped”, the artificial gravity would pull them down, and once they hit zero-g outside the ship, they would continue to move in the same direction they were released at the same velocity achieved prior to leaving the ship’s artificial gravity until acted upon by an outside force. They just wouldn’t accelerate.
It works either way.
@@@@@70 and @@@@@73 – My headcanon for the bombers is that the bomb release mechanisms, while conceivably more gravity-based than they have any right to be in a vacuum, are some kind of spring-loaded contraption that, in ejecting the bombs from the hangar, actually pushes the bombs out, rather than releasing them and letting gravity do the rest. Obviously, that’s my take on it, and the movie should have made it less controversial, but it works for me.
Magnus @@@@@ 41 – I see what you’re saying, and I understand the difference (and I had completely forgotten they do that to the Falcon in ANH), but they were making it sound like tracking through hyperspace, in any manner, was unprecedented.
The bombs drop for the same reason that fighters bank in the vacuum of space: they modeled them on WWII air combat because it looked cool. Has nothing to do with physics. Star Wars is space fantasy, not science fiction.
@44 – Andy: “Well-organized mutiny”? Sure, very well organized, to the point that they didn’t think to restrain the officers they were mutineering against.
@50 – princessroxana: What about Leia in the SAME MOVIE AS HOLDO?
@52 – noblehunter: Those physics hold in the animated series and newer books, which are canon.
@59 – LordVorless: I doubt that any significant story decisions made for these film are related to Carrie Fisher’s death.
@64 – Eric Dercf: Oh, yes. Star Wars needs Laura Dern to carry a movie. With all due respect to Dern, she’s not that big of a star, nor Star Wars needs any kind of star power.
@70 – Fett Uccine: You’re right about Poe.
@75 – JamesP: They specifically say it’s unlike active tracking, because they’re certain they don’t have a tracker on themselves, so it must be new tech. Not hyperspace tracking in general, just that mode.
Poe was demoted from Captain (read 0-6) to Commander (read 0-5) not the other way around as stated. Even in space “ships” use Navy rank
@78 You are not correct, I’m afraid, as the Star Wars universe, while it uses some rank titles that sound familiar, does not put them in the same order as the US military. I learned that playing the Tie Fighter game back in the last century. Poe was demoted from Commander to Captain.
@77, Unlike Holdo and Servalan Leia wasn’t going for slinky and glamorous, though she is certainly inappropriately overdressed. Long skirts, seriously Leia? And it’s such a departure for her. She’s always dressed appropriately before.
In ANH she wears a loose gown with a long skirts to give dignity and formality, she’s a princess, but cleverly cut not to restrict her movements. She has no problem running and fighting in it.
In ESB she’s wearing a practical, warm, jumpsuit and parka in her trademark white.
In RoTJ she wears a Rebel uniform and camo to take part in the attack on the shield generator.
Even in TFA she wears a sensible trouser suit. So why is she suddenly channeling her Mom in bulky, over the top robes?
I suppose it’s one thing if you compare Holdo’s outfit to other people in the Resistance, but my read is to contrast the way that members of the Resistance dress (eclectic; multicultural; sometimes practical, sometimes elaborate) with the literal uniformity of the First Order. Leia and Holdo may look like they are less capable than Phasma, but that appearance is deceiving.
Practicality has never really been the strong suit of Star Wars, so I don’t really let that bother me.
I wonder if the reason that Holdo and Leia are wearing gowns in this movie is that, like Mon Mothma in the OT, the leadership of the Rebellion/Resistance is now also the defacto leader of the New Republic and they are hoping to project that image of Civil Power Leadership if/when they deal with/escape from the First Order. Obviously neither Leia nor Holdo know that Poe is going to fuck things up so badly they are down to low double digits by the end of the movie, they believe for a long time that it is only temporary in order for them to withdraw and regroup in a stronger place, where they can start to reposition themselves as a government in exile.
By having Leia and Hondo be in civvie garb it creates a contrast between themselves and the militaristic/fascist First Order (I’m certain this is what they were going for, out-of-universe with the audience too) so that they seem more legitimate. Unfortunately, Poe……….
77, there’s story decisions, and there’s what they shoot, which can vary a lot. And now, there are significant limits as to what they can shoot in the future.
@82, Wanting to show civilian control is a Good Thing. Problem is both Leia and Holdo are still using military titles and acting a military commanders. Mon Mothma had generals under her. She never took direct operational control. Leia was acting as a military officer n ESB and dressed accordingly.
@84 Mon Mothma sure seems like being in direct control in RotJ. However, she’s at the head of a multi year long effort, Princess Leia and Holdo are stepping in directly in immediate crisis and are, in large part thanks to Poe, much shorter on manpower, so are probably trying to split the difference.
Portraying Civilian Power while still balancing their Military Responsibilities; maybe they planned on stepping back more and delegating more of the military role if/when they managed to regroup and actually hold some civilian population centres. That is really the point, they are trying to show they are ready to be the face of the civilian population whilst not actually having a civilian population to represent right now. It is all about the optics.
You’re probably right. Though optically speaking Leia’s severe formal robes Seema better choice than Holdo’s draperies but maybe what she’s wearing is suitable in her culture.
It’s possible that Holdo didn’t anticipate ever actually being in command (seeing as there was a whole bridge of officers ahead of her in line, right?) so she forgot to pack her command clothes. Or else it’s another way of showing how desperate they are that a civilian leader is the highest ranking remaining person to take command. I don’t know if that makes sense considering she was already an admiral, in which case I would imagine there is some kind of cultural significance to her choice of dress. We aren’t privy to the subtle cultural meanings of the many, many planets worth of cultures that are represented in the Resistance. Poe would know that a lot better than us. Clearly it challenges our cultural perceptions.
To those who call her unnecessarily dismissive of Poe, I think it’s pretty clear when he marches up to her that he is dismissive of her, she’s no leader worth her salt if she doesn’t pick up on that right away. Thus she has even less incentive to give someone whose already been insubordinate to the last boss the benefit of the doubt or the courtesy of a briefing, as some have asserted she should have done. It is difficult to get a sense of the nitty gritty of the military cultural norms of the Resistance for me to have any idea if excluding him from The Plan is a slight to him in the normal course of Resistance strategizing, but it still seems clear to me that she’s not wrong to tell him to get on his way now. Especially when you are conscious that you don’t look like how your leaders are expected to look, when your leadership is new you do have to demonstrate your authority early with people like Poe or they will walk all over you (which, he pretty much did, so, her attempt at doing so was not effective. I don’t that’s on her, though.) Someone can want to avoid letting a subordinate walk all over one because one understands as an admiral that strong leadership is important in a time of crisis and so is doing one’s best to assume that quickly after being given that task unexpectedly, not because one is self-centered or self-important. I do wonder if someone who looked more like what we think of as a military leader had said exactly what she said to Poe and exactly how she said it, we’d still be calling that person condescending, or dumb, or a bad leader. I’m torn for myself on whether I think she was an inept leader, or just in a horribly desperate situation all around with no good choices, in part because honestly Star Wars is not great at deep multi-faceted interpersonal conflict anyway, and there’s not enough information for me on how the in-world stuff works to really evaluate if anybody’s strategy is good or not (except for the whole Rose and Finn adventure, going to a casino to convince some legendary codebreaker to help you, in just 12 hours or whatever short time they had, then trusting that some random guy you meet in prison can do it instead…that’s the kind of thing that only makes sense in movies! Oh wait…)
Even though Dern was striking as Holdo, her dress did not seem so out of place to me – instead, I found it reminiscent of Mon Mothma. Coupled with her leadership position, it just seemed like maybe the director was trying to demonstrate this as a cultural affect of women in leadership positions.
As for her hair, it’s Star Wars. She could be some percentage non-human or any of a billion reasons.
Honestly, I thought she was great.
Meanwhile, Po was insufferable and spoiled.
The argument about Holdo being horrible because she didn’t tell Po her plans suggests a similar arrogance or inability to understand the contexts of the situation. Maybe I’m just lucky to have seen the 2005 Battlestar Galactica remake, which clearly influenced this particular subplot. (The episode “33,” in particular.)
The resistance is a military organization with a command structure in place and a predetermined plan for succession. Holdo was the designated successor, _per Leia herself._ (Po obviously has little or no respect for the general, either, so it’s not really a surprise that he treated Holdo with such scorn – as Leia’s opinions, whether in strategy or people, hold no weight with him.)
Now, Holdo has her own staff and, given the First Order’s ability to track them through hyperspace – which is apparently believed to be technically unfeasible – it’s therefore likely that there is a leak of some sort. Possibly intentional, maybe unintentional. (The tracker on the Falcon from the original trilogy comes to mind; but the sky is the limit.) In that environment, it is therefore essential to control information. Particularly given the stakes being whatever is left of the resistance, apparently.
So – this soldier, from another ship, another crew, with her own staff that she has vetted with her own experiences with them, takes over the big ship. _Her_ trusted Lt’s take up the cause of vetting options and inventories.
Po, however, has __not__ earned that trust with Holdo; not only has he just been demoted, he was one of the few to survive a devastating skirmish that resulted from his intransigence. That’s a point in the possible spy column. But, perhaps the best reason not to tell him is that there’s nothing to suggest he won’t just blab the plan to any and everyone. (Which is essentially what happened, in the end.) Thinking is plainly not his strong suit.
The bigger dereliction of duty is Po’s refusal to even bring up Rose’s theory to Holdo or her staff. Maybe if he had, and she told him no, then he’d have a moral or ethical leg to stand on. But he was more interested in being the boss than doing things the right way. Who knows! Maybe someone may have known more about this code breaker or had an alternate/parallel plan.
As for the mutiny, no one knew Holdo; they knew Po – so they went along with his agitating. (Agitating that occurs because someone had the audacity not to tell him their plan; can we just acknowledge how narcissistic that is? Get over yourself, douchebag.) Notice that it was equally easy for Holdo to take _back_ control.
Honestly, getting stunned was too good for Po. Most other militaries would have had him executed for sedition.
That’s not to say there weren’t issues with the movie- like, why not use those cloaking devices on some of the surviving starfighters? (Also, can’t X-Wings go into hyperspace? Or am I misremembering?) Why is Holdo basically staying behind to perform autopilot functions? I mean, I figured she was staying behind to do a ramming maneuver. But, her reactions seemed to contradict that notion. Why not split the fleet with different hyperspace destinations? Why didn’t Hux just immediately scramble fighters and disable Po’s ship with ion canons – and then tractor/interrogate for later? I’m assuming that the hyperspace ramming maneuver was just incredibly difficult to pull off, because if they were going to abandon the med ship (etc, but the med ship was huge), I guess they were figuring the fuel was better spent for more delay – but they could’ve rammed the lead ships, rigged up some explosives. I don’t know, maybe that’s just my ignorance. But, most importantly, __why are the space engineers and ship designers so dumb that they design such terribly easy to destroy capital ships?__ I mean, these flaws can’t _all_ have Rogue One backstories.
I don’t think they do.
When you look at Rogue One, Rebel ships were trying to go to lightspeed when Vader’s Star Destroyer jumped in and they just bounced off it. Of the capital ships destroyed in the OT: The Death Star’s was due to a design flaw which was pretty much impossible to trigger if you didn’t have space wizard powers, and the Super Star Destroyer was because it was operating too close to the second Death Star to recover in time. Bad strategy seems to be the main cause of capital ship destruction rather than bad design. I have to agree with you that Holdo’s suicide manoeuvrer was either super difficult or she got super lucky about the scale of destruction.
I think one thing we can agree on is that it would be super expensive to replicate though, even under ideal circumstances. As to why she stayed behind, maybe the autopilot needed adjustments that needed to be inputted if the First Order changed tactics or if the constant fire on the shields knocked it off. If systems go offline then someone has to bring them back online. Okay, she can’t do any large scale repairs, but restarting systems or minor bypasses she could do.
Am I the only one who interpreted Poe’s surprise at her appearance more along the lines that he thought she was attractive rather than dismissing her as a flimsy old woman? I also never suspected her of being a traitor because she has a nice dress and is therefore a superficial greedbag, nor did I assume any of the characters were thinking along those lines. I did think it was a very odd choice to have her decked out in such an outfit as a vice admiral while being surrounded by people in uniforms. I get they were trying to make her Mon Mothma-esque, but I thought Mon Mothma was more of a political leader, whereas Holdo’s clearly supposed to be a military officer.
To me, Poe and his co-conspirators were just freaking out because they thought she didn’t actually have a plan — which was done purposefully in order to create tension. Nevertheless, Poe seemed to have been inflicted with some serious plot-induced stupidity somewhere between Force Awakens and Last Jedi.
And I can see why the Rebels/Resistance are in shambles, given how no one follows orders and people just do whatever the hell they want with minimal consequences, even mutineers.
There may just be a practical limit as to what can be done in terms of protection versus attack. Just take today, for ships, there’s no real expectation of stopping the latest weapons with armor, instead, it’s defensive weapons that take out those weapons before they can hit.
Loved the character, hated the actress. Laura Dern as ADM Holdo is the new Mace Windu / Samuel L Jackson WTF moment. She does not fit, and it smacks of some Disney marketing stunt.
There, I’ve said my peace.
But, most importantly, __why are the space engineers and ship designers so dumb that they design such terribly easy to destroy capital ships?
Realism. Look up the Battle of Jutland some time. “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.”
Also, no one is fussed about the take home message being that the black guy, the Asian girl and the Latino guy should have just known to shut up and do what the white people told them?
Strongly disagree about Leia’s force moment. It wasn’t beautiful, it was the low point of the film – we had no indication she was training, no shots of her practicing, nothing, and then suddenly she’s more powerful than the Emperor was?
This is Star Wars – some suspension of disbelieve is required. I would have been on board with this so far if the followup was dealt with appropriately … but it isn’t. The whole ship should have been abuzz with talk about it, but no one says a word.
Remember, in Return of the Jedi, the Emperor dies by falling down a chute. So apparently levitating is hard to do, even for people powerful in the force. Leia using her powers while floating isn’t some easy trick, this is some jedi master wizardry. It was cheap and un-earned, and the crew’s blase reaction to it was easily the least-believable thing to happen in any Star Wars movie.
She doesn’t need to levitate – she’s in free fall! Remember?
93, amusingly, it might not have been the ships, but the crews, depending on which explanations on Jutland you favor.
Holdo was one of my major issues with Last Jedi – for the record I enjoyed the film, although I thought it was flawed and could have been better. I see what Johnson and Disney wanted to do with Holdo and I can see why the OP and others uses these arguments – ‘she is subversive, she undercuts our expectations cos she’s feminine and wears a ballgown and has purple hair and yet is an admiral’ but I felt the way it was done just wasn’t up to what it was trying to achieve. For one as others have said it relies on her not explaining the plan when it was needed, Poe also took a level in douchery and it felt like it was all set up to ‘make a point’ on men and flyboys and how older women have got it covered/are important etc. Leia and she also exchange a rather patronising conversation afterwards which underscores the whole thing. Also at their goodbye it doesn’t sound like an older Princess Leia and her old childhood friend the Admiral, it sounds like two older socialite women from our world. I say this as a woman, a feminist and a writer who adores writing different and subversive female characters including older female characters who are both combatants and non combatants. But on many levels this plot and this character just didn’t ring true to me so I can completely understand why people didn’t like her and found her an example of the ‘PC brigade’ taking over. Do it, but do it well. Leia in the OT was a perfect example of the soft feminine character with a kickass side. Another key thing for me was Holdo can wear or look or sound however she wants but don’t call her an Admiral if she acts like she’s at a ball rather than in command. She supposed to have been in the military for God sakes! Being in the military gives you a certain stance, rigour, discipline that even years later would shine through your physicality. Im not saying she has to act like a drill sergeant or you can’t be feminine and in the military – look at all the sci-fi heroines who do both over the years – but the way the actress was directed did nothing to convince me she has been trained or commanded anything. Now if that had been an act – great! And the physicality came in as her core character took over I would have loved it but sadly not. The only saving grace was that awesome final attack. Ps – whoever left ‘Godspeed’ in the script of a Star Wars movie needs to be fired immediately.
As we’re discussing whether Holdo should have told Poe the plan, I note in passing that the Resistance had just learned that they had been tracked through hyperspace by means they did not understand. We also know — conveniently — that it is possible to communicate a location through a cloaked tracking device with two that are in sync.
It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that Holdo would have strongly suspected a New Order spy was onboard one of the ships.
Under those conditions, I wouldn’t tell jack to anyone about what I was doing or where I was going. While the New Order couldn’t quite figure out how to warp ahead of the fleet and intercept the rebels, I suspect they easily could have warped to the abandoned rebel base and destroyed it if they knew where to go.
I don’t see how another actress would’ve been better if you liked the character. I doubt Laura Dern came in and did her own character design and said this is how she’s going to act.
Sigh. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s a sorry state of affairs if you can’t have people of different ethnicities or “races” interact on screen without overanalyzing it to find the racism that has to be there because it HAS to.
Except, everyone — including the theoretical spy — is going to be evacuating pretty soon anyway, and they’re all going to that abandoned base. So it doesn’t really matter if they let them know the plan beforehand. If the First Order can destroy it before they get there, they can destroy it after while they’re all gathered, and from orbit. The only reason to not tell the plan — besides to create tension and contrive some turmoil within the story — would be if Holdo was planning on jumping somewhere where they’d have allies ambush the First Order, or something along those lines.
@100 The plan was very explicitly said to be summoning allies from the base on Crait, with the expectation that they would come. That the latter expectation turned out to be unfounded and those allies were presumably too scared was not foreseeable. However, the plan was: evacuate to a fortifiable position, summon allies, then regain the initiative. Even if a spy evacuated with them, there was an expectation of being able to hold out in a siege until their outer rim allies arrived.
@88 – P: Most likely, starfighters are too small compared to transports to carry a cloaking device.
@90 – Jhimmi: What in TFA told us that Poe was anything more than a great pilot and an adequate commando? Nothing showed us he was a great strategist. Small-scale tactics, perhaps, but long-term strategist, no.
@92 – Tmgotech: How the hell is Laura Dern a Disney marketing stunt? It’s not like they cast, I don’t know, Scarlet Johansson or someone like that… Laura Dern is great, but she’s not a marketing-driving star at all.
@98 – Starsaphire: What in the movie says that Holdo was in the military previous to the Resistance? Leia was called a General and she wasn’t in the military before this.
@102 — When Holdo first appears, Poe says something to the effect of, “THAT’s Admiral Holdo? Battle of [such and such] Holdo?”, which seems to indicate that she does have some kind of known history. Which, admittedly, might only be from after she joined the Resistance.
@98 — Holdo’s “Godspeed, rebels,” was actually a callback — one of the captains on one of the smaller Resistance ships (don’t remember if it was the corvette or the medical frigate) says, “Godspeed,” just as he’s getting blown up.
Not only is “godspeed” said by the commander of the medical frigate, but 3P0 says the Ewoks consider him a god in ROTJ. Not to mention Dooku in Clone Wars saying “godforsaken”.
Yeah, there are probably millions -if not billions- of gods to choose from in the Star Wars universe. We all know superstitions die very hard indeed, so it is believable in a galaxy where people do have magic powers that some people will believe in an assortment of deities. Gods-speed is probably as close to a non denominational blessing as you can get in a Galaxy far, far away.
For me, dissecting Holdo down to the cellular level ignores the sly, glittering vulptex in the room, the author herself: Arkady Martine. Any author who can ignite a thread this passionate ought to get the Medal of Bothawui for intelligence gathering, and presenting it here in neatly encapsulated form. Metaphorically speaking, I’d also bestow the medal for Valor Under Fire, for taking so many hits in the comments.
Just sayin’.
@36 & @66, After the Dreadnought was destroyed they brought in Snoke’s flagship. On Snoke’s flagship was Kylo Ren. Kylo’s superior piloting skills put him in a position to blow up the hangar bay and destroy all of the Resistance’s X-Wings (and his wingmen blowing up the bridge).
You could argue that if Poe had followed orders and withdrawn it would have just been the Dreadnought chasing them. Putting them in an even better position. Bombers, X-Wings, no Kylo, leaders who weren’t dead. And an undemoted Poe who probably would have been told the plan.
The Dreadnought’s surface canons could have probably had the punch and range to blow up the Raddus and the rest of the ship.
There were reasons for Holdo NOT to tell Poe what the plan was. First, he had just been demoted, and sharing top level information would have been inconsistent with his newly downgraded status—at least until he proved he could be trusted, and he immediately went off the reservation and proved he could NOT be trusted. Second, Poe might rebel against the plan anyway, revealing it to the rest of the crew and endangering its secrecy… I do like this episode’s repeated rejection of macho flyboy impulsiveness… Anyone who has a problem with that happening once in eight episodes…really does have a problem, but the film doesn’t!
This whole plot with the chase and secret mission and vice admiral Holdo basically ruined the franchise (going forward) for me. I don’t see where it goes from here without, again like in force awakens, pretending everything before it kinda didn’t happen. We are left with a tiny band of rebels, whose most recognizable characters pretty much aided in the decimation of the resistance.
It is OK if someone makes a mistake and that’s a plot point. But this is an already super contrived plot which is moved forward only by bad decisions, and the actual events depicted in the movie are treated as if they had happened differently.
1.- Leia has a channel of communication with all ships. Am I missing something here? She called off the attack. Why are all ships listening to Poe? Why isn’t she just telling them to retreat? I find it already hard to believe that because Poe decides to be a rebel (ha) everyone else will just jump in against her authority. Which, to be fair, doesn’t really matter because
2.- The whole tension of THAT scene (the bombing) is built around “will they be able to detroy the dreadnought before the resistance can escape”? I mean, wasn’t that what happened? The dreadnought shifted from attacking the base to destroying the resistance’s fleet. If they hadn’t destroyed the dreadnought, it would’ve fired on Leia’s ship and there goes the rest of the movie.
2-B.- This one is speculation, but, wouldn’t the starkiller like cannons of the dreadnought been able to shoot the resistance from a longer distance, once the super weird slow speed chase was under way?
3.- It is not that Finn doesn’t get told what the plan is. He gets a strong, STRONG hint, that THERE IS NO PLAN. He thinks Holdo is just running on fumes hoping for a miracle because she all but tells him that’s what they’re doing. And this is my main issue with the movie: it tries to shove this fable about irresponsible hotshots down our throats when the irresponsible hotshot is actually acting in a very sensible way considering what he knows. It tries to subvert the plot of the daring hotshot with a hail mary plan… by actually presenting you with scenarios where the daring hail mary plan is the sensible option. I don’t have issue with the message, but it is just so poorly executed and it resonates throughout the whole movie. To me, an example of a film that does that particular fable right (regardless of what you think of the overall movie), is Star Trek: Into Darkness. You see a daring hot shot crying as he apologizes to his crew for leading them to certain death in his stupidity. And it works.
4.- Now, what did Poe accomplish? He (and Finn, and Rose) got everyone killed. EVERYONE, except 15 or so guys. Through mutiny and disobeying orders. First, after he openly rebelled and pointed a gun at her, Holdo turns to Leia and says “I like him”. Seriously, what? When he gets results by disobeying, he is a problem. When he threatens you with guns, he’s a darling. And then, after all the transports get blown apart because of the alternative plan that Poe was complicit too, Leia hands him the baton in that “follow him!” moment. Thus making the whole “curve your disobedience” arc pointless. He gets rewarded for mutiny and recklessness.
5.- Nevermind that, in the last battle, Finn’s suicide run is the only thing that makes a modicum of sense. There’s no way out of the base (but then there is, conveniently), and the First Order is going to ram its way in. Blasting that ram is the only chance they have, going with what they know. But we are told what Finn is doing is wrong and stupid. We are told this via a speeder crash that might’ve gotten Finn killed anyway, this time for nothing. And we are told this after we’ve just witnessed Holdo doing the very same thing.
I understand the idea of Holdo. I like the idea of Holdo. But this train wreck of a movie is just good intentions sprinkled on a nonsensical plot. Everything it does, it undoes a minute later from beginning to end, and it just doesn’t work.
… and who should not have died on that ship, where Leia should have forced her to trade places (at blaster stun point if necessary, and with Luke appearing to her on the bridge, right before she completes the charge, but just off camera so that we can be not entirely sure it was really him) and Holdo leading the ground battle to come from the very front and giving Poe the ‘now it’s time for reckless’ moment he needed, and surviving to lead the resistance into the next film, until Rey can take the lead (that we know she will to one degree or another)…
@70 I’m in total agreement. Furthermore, while it’s true Holdo spoke down to Poe, can you imagine him trying to justify his actions at a military inquiry by saying “she was rude” when they ask why he mutinied and got so many people killed? He was a tactical level captain talking to a Vice-Admiral currently operating as their effective General! The way he initially approached her and assumed he was entitled to her consideration was extremely disrespectful, and it further emphasized he didn’t learn his lesson after disobeying Leia’s orders. I only give him a pass on withholding intel on the basis of the movie suggesting there could be a mole, but that’s also why I give Holdo a pass on pretending like there wasn’t a plan. Her operation’s success hinged on The First Order arrogantly believing the Resistance was at the end of their rope then assuming they destroyed the entire fleet once all the main crafts went down. If there was a mole, even an assurance they had a plan at all could have caused the mole or First Order to dig deeper. Also, let’s never forget that Poe, Rose and Finn unintentionally leaked that very information once they were in on the plan, so I would say Holdo was right not to trust them with any intel she didn’t want to get out. I think they all proved her point.
They made an error. Captain is senior to Commander. He might have been commander of a squadron but his rank was Captain. The rank of Commander is a junior rank to Captain. She was an Admiral so the ranking system follows that of the Navy, since they are commanding ships.
Not in Star Wars Starfighter Corps ranks; Captain is lower than Commander for that service. Poe was a Commander, and he got demoted to Captain.
I’m late to the party, butttt…
A.)the first time they jumped into hyperspace, why did the jump to the middle of nowhere, instead of right in front of their target like everyone has ever done any time they’ve ever jumped to hyperspace?
B.) someone just mentioned it, but why was Holdo going on a suicide mission to save the rest of the resistance good and noble, but Finn going on a suicide mission to save the rest of the resistance stupid?
116, you may want to look at this other thread with its discussion on the subject.
One thing I’ve noticed, from another thread in another place, is the sheer volume of male posters who think that Holdo ought just to have been “respectful” of Poe and done what he asked so he could feel better. There is is this assumption of power, and assumption of entitlement in -real and fictional- where you just need to tell the man and the man has the right to know and the right to have his feelings catered to. The idea that Holdo, a Vice-Admiral, needs to be respectful of a disgraced captain who barely avoided being cashiered by virtue of his personal connections, is laughable just purely on its face. I wonder why female authority always has to be respectful of men, but men never have to be respectful of women?
Poe just needed to be respectful.
@118 – related to that, on the ‘Everybody is mad at Poe Dameron’ thread on Tor, I do see a fair amount of people arguing the opposite (and some of them do have names that seem to imply they are male) – that Poe absolutely should have been respectful of his superior officer. So I think there are a lot of factors going on here regarding how both Holdo and Poe and their actions are being looked at, and gender is just one part of it (and in universe I imagine is not really a part of it as all as Poe in general has not otherwise been a character who cares about gender).
Well Poe absolutely should have been respectful to his superior officer. That is kind of non-negotiable in any even vaguely military (and ranked service) organisation. You’re either respectful to your superior officers or you leave, that is the very bare minimum. There is no way of avoiding that one. If you are given a lawful instruction, even one which may be interpreted as to Die in Place, you do it. You can register your disagreement, but as soon as you are told that your disagreement has been overruled then you snap to and follow the order you were given.
I think it’s more that Poe is the main character, the hero, and as such, not intrinsically related to gender, combined with a bit more…lax attitude towards military discipline.
Personally my expectations for female military power include some basic competence both strategic and in managing subordinates. I’d also like to see a uniform.
122, or rather, what we’d think of as some form of uniform. but I just read this description:
One of the film’s most feminine looks was a draped, cape-back jersey gown worn by Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern).
I thought when I read the script that Holdo would be wearing a uniform, so I did some uniform designs and showed them to Rian and he said, “Oh no, no, no, no. She’s flirting with Oscar Isaacs’ character, I don’t want her to be in a uniform, I want her to be unique and almost balletic.” He said, “I’d like to see her body and her body language, and her silhouette, and have her be more feminine.” So I started thinking about feminine balletic design, and something kind of Greek, which made me start thinking about jersey, and then I started thinking about Madame Gres. So that’s where that came from.
<twitch>
She’s a flag officer and he’s a fighter pilot (and a disgraced one at that). If the plan doesn’t involve flying a fighter, it’s none of his business. A real admiral aboard an aircraft carrier isn’t obliged to share strategic planning details with random yahoos in the air wing.
@123, Oh God! A flag officer flirting with a subordinate? Didn’t they realize how wrong that was?
The woman just needs to dress right and be respectful of the man.
I’m not sure that is a good position to be taking in trying to pull down Holdo.
A flag officer should dress as one and she shouldn’t flirt with subordinate officers. Is that so out of line? Turn it around; what would you think of a male officer who wore body revealing clothes and flirted with subordinates?
I am ALL for visibly feminine senior military officers. Holdo’s hair- do is fine by me. So is her jewelry. The evening dress is a step too far.
@123 – LordVorless: I’m guessing that’s a quote from the costume designer. We don’t have actual proof that Johnson said exactly that, the context, etc.
128, your post cuts off there, but I’m not sure I’d buy those explanations. It’d be a really tough sell.
Yet you’ re buying an out of context second-hand quote.
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