The First Order Won, Then Chose Not To

[@gedbyrne8482]

Real quick fix: conversation between Hux and Kylo. “Any sign of Skywalker?” “Nothing”. “Draw out their suffering, he will come.”

[@Vain737]

That's good. It makes the First Order look competent, rather than pathetic. It keeps the character motivations intact. It's internally logically consistent, helping the audience to suspend their disbelief. It's also a nice springboard for the 'Luke cut himself off from the force and can't feel Leia in danger' plot point.

[@GC13]

If there's any plot hole that could easily be explained by a short snippet of dialogue that wasn't even left on the cutting room floor, it says bad things about the writing.

[@gedbyrne8482]

@@GC13 I’m a big fan of TLJ but I do have to agree with you on that.

[@Pas5afist]

You would also have to cut some dialogue. "What is the point of all this? We can't blow up three tiny cruisers." "They are faster and lighter sir," This contradicts most 'they were being arrogant' apologetics. That dialogue gives the clear motivation for Hux. Were it in his power, he would destroy the Resistance fleet. Immediately. Now. Which is why the fact that TIE fighters can catch up and wreak havoc on the fleet is so devastating to the film's story construction. It's the very tool Hux needs and wants. And he saw its successful operation. More of the same is the obvious conclusion for even the most thick-headed commander. It's only after that Hux is mollified by the idea of running the fleet out of fuel. I also don't like putting all three villains on a treadmill for the entire film. Makes the antagonists super passive.

[@gedbyrne8482]

@@Pas5afist Agreed. It’s more than just and extra bit of dialogue. You have to take out the current explanation. I do think the motivation of luring Luke would fit much better. This is supposed to be immediately after TFA, when finding Skywalker was everyone’s main objective. Also, it echos Vader torturing Luke’s friends to bring him to cloud city.

[@baahcusegamer4530]

Kind of serves as a metaphor for Disney’s handling of the whole franchise. They had victory within their grasp and chose to lose.

[@andrewszigeti2174]

They were handed a license to print money and wiped their collective backsides with it.

[@andreakimmel6651]

This. Exactly. They could have taken the time to consider the characters and the story and the franchise. But the only thing Disney was interested in was marketing. The ENTIRE Sequel trilogy isn't really a saga, it's nothing but marketing dressed up as a movie.

[@Kyle-sr6jm]

The only reason it is a trilogy, is that it has the same characters. Arguments could be made that even though they have the same names, the characters are not even the same throughout the films.

[@andrewszigeti2174]

@@Kyle-sr6jm That's what happens when the people making a trilogy are clueless and have no plan.

[@KaiserMattTygore927]

Snatching Defeat from the jaws of victory.

[@Freesorin837]

What else can you expect from a media company who's writers could only come up with "Somehow, Palpatine returned"?

[@andrewszigeti2174]

What do you expect from a hack who started the series with 'let's redo A New Hope'.

[@robertbemis9800]

@@andrewszigeti2174 that was entirely different hack

[@andrewszigeti2174]

@@robertbemis9800 JJ was in the director's chair, and KK in the producer's chair for both. The same hacks.

[@IsilmeTuruphant]

@@andrewszigeti2174 The Force Awakens - Let's Redo 'A New Hope' 'The Last Jedi' - Let's Subvert all the tropes we set up in 'The Force Awakens' and 'Star Wars' in general, imply everything in ALL the prior movies was meaningless, pointless and stupid, and THEN... 'Rise of the Skywalker' - And then... then... wait... fuck, we were supposed to have an 'and then' here. Who was in charge of coming up with the 'And then'?! Fuck, uhm... grab all the plot flashcards from all the other movies, shuffle them all and toss them into the air, whatever lands face up we'll do that.

[@andrewszigeti2174]

@@IsilmeTuruphant 🤣🤣🤣

[@RonofArr]

Even better: in that same movie they point their fleet ending, Ship killing, super big gun at the empty ground base instead of big ship everyone is fleeing too.

[@pepperedash4424]

@@williamshelton4318 The closest and most recent IRL example would be the Russian Federation converting their anti ship missiles into anti surface missiles in Ukraine. But the Russian federation has the excuse of lacking GPS guided munitions, and having a limited stock of anti surface ballistic and cruise missiles. Hux suffers plot induced stupidity for not using his fleet killer against the Resistance fleet lined up in sight, all for destroying the the not Yavin 4 ground base. Hux' debacle with the Fulminatrix just comes across as rehashing Admiral Ozzel's debacle at the beginning of ESB (wouldn't be the only time TLJ rehashed ESB)

[@lukeb1663]

@@pepperedash4424to be fair to Russia, it’s not like they need anti ship missiles atm. The Ukrainian navy was all but annihilated early in the war. Plus they are currently lacking in ground attack missiles.

[@pepperedash4424]

@@lukeb1663 I appreciate the addendum but, ". . .they are currently lacking in ground attack missiles" is essentially paraphrasing what I said with ". . . having a limited stock of anti surface ballistic and cruise missiles". Regardless of the Russian rationale, bombarding an enemy nation into submission is an ineffective strategy to win a war. It didn't work with the German aerial/rocket bombardment over the UK, the Allied strategic bombing campaign over Germany/Japan, the USAF strategic bombing campaign over Korea/Vietnam.

[@lukeb1663]

@@pepperedash4424 totally agree with that. I’d like to think the world has advanced beyond indiscriminate bombardment of civilian targets and that Russia simply is inaccurate but I don’t hold much hope for that idea.

[@lordsrednuas]

@@lukeb1663 Um, Russia has actively been pursuing genocide of ethnic minority groups in the territory they've claimed. Also Russia has shown itself to be fairly accurate when bombing places marked with 'children are here'. it's not 'indiscriminate bombardment', that's when you just shoot at everything, it's more 'let's carefully pick a target that will cause the most pain for the least ammunition' (thus the constant deliberate targeting of children).

[@elijahmarshall475]

Honestly, this is one of the few movies where I genuinely feel that I would not be exaggerating to say that 90% or more of the plot is held together by rickety contrivance and stupid character choices. Like, it literally feels like if just _one_ character actually made decisions that made sense, the plot would collapse and you'd end up with a 10 minute movie. It's like the movie equivalent of one of those dried spaghetti and marshmallow towers that we tried to make in 2nd grade.

[@darwinxavier3516]

The movie is an idiot plot in an idiot universe where nearly every character is in a contest to see who can deepthroat the idiot ball the most.

[@amiablereaper]

​@Peters-xh4xkyeah I think they were trying to be "subversive" by having the big gamble not pay off but even so, it's not done well and it feels less like a devasting near-victory and more like you just wasted the audience's time

[@ClashBluelight]

Wasn't Poe acting rationally? I haven't seen any detailed coverage of the film for a while, but I remember it being a major problem that the movie vilifies Poe despite him being right.

[@amiablereaper]

@@ClashBluelight I'm not really sure what that would mean in this context, but Poe does do things that work under star wars logic (taking a wild gamble on a chance at saving everyone, trusting a smuggler, sneaking on the ship [I think, it's been a while for me too], it's just that at the end it's all pointless and they have to get saved by something that was going to happen anyway. It's like, for a movie (or more idk I didn't watch RoS) the entire internal logic of what works and what doesn't in star wars gets flipped on its head, and nobody told the main characters this.

[@ClashBluelight]

@@amiablereaper No. He acts perfectly logically given that he wasn't told the plan. He believed that his superior officer was marching everybody to their deaths, so he acted on his own. His plan also likely would have worked if Finn had gotten into contact with the correct hacker, instead of the random other one.

[@andrewszigeti2174]

RIght there with you. Presuming the Resurgent ONLY has the same starfighter capacity of an Imperial, ONE Resurgent has 70-odd fighters and bombers. There are what, eight? Ten? Resurgents there? 500 to 700 odd fighters? The Resistance should have been swarmed under there and then.

[@doltBmB]

do you think imperial is a class of senate too?

[@andrewszigeti2174]

@@doltBmB Sorry that my fond remembrance of the FAR BETTER WRITTEN EU over the trash of DisneyWars (TM) bothers you.

[@nemonomen6898]

Absolutely. The single biggest problem with this scene is how the FO fleet only launches a single flight when they presumably have hundreds of fighters available. It just makes no sense. The sequel trilogy in general struggles with any sense of scale.

[@andrewszigeti2174]

@@nemonomen6898 The sequels struggle with any sense... period.

[@nemonomen6898]

Just checked to make sure, and the Resurgent-class carries 144 fighters. According to Wookiepedia, 30 of them participated in the pursuit of the Resistance fleet. Even accounting for fighter complements being understrength the FO would have had a few thousand of them in this fleet - not counting the Supremacy, which I couldn't find a fighter complement total for but which is presumably substantial. Clearly shows that the screenwriters and whoever comes up with the canonical ship data don't talk to each other.

[@Neonsilver13]

To be honest for me the suspension of disbelief was already destroyed with the initial fight with the slow ass flying coffin like bombers. Because it already didn't make sense to me that they would even use bombers like this, the first order has more powerfull ships and a also a higher number of ships, so the resistance would use hit and run tactics against the first order. Get in, do as much damage as possible before the capital ships can release their fighters and get the f out. So the slow things are the exact opposite to what they can effectively use. The resistance doesn't have the ships to guard the bombers properly and what happens in the movie is exactly what is to be expected and what probably happens everytime they use them. It's suicide for the bomber crews and they were lucky to actually be able to hit the first order ship with their bombs.

[@williamclapp9694]

Yeah, my first thought was, where are the Y-wings? It definitely felt that they wanted to have certain things in the movie, but didn't put it together cohesively. My suggestions: Allow them to get a clear win in the beginning and give the resistance more ships. (I don't know why the New Republic collapsed from the events of the first movie of the sequels. The destruction of a capital doesn't and shouldn't cause a collapse of a country or even their military.) Also, have the finding the imperial tracking tech an official mission and send out a bunch of fighters to attack the supremacy to hide their jump. (Cause I can't see how Po disobeying orders as relevant to the message/themes of the movie at all) Have the imperials send out way more fighters, but have the resistance wipe most of them out. Keep the bridge explosion to allow Leia to do her force thing, but lose the hanger destruction.

[@Neonsilver13]

@@williamclapp9694 To be fair, the Y-Wings were Clone Wars era ships and the ones used by the rebellion were leftovers that were held together with duct tape. They were in such a bad condition that a lot of their parts were exposed because they needed so much maintenance that covering them took to much time. But even then just strapping a few bombs to X-Wings to repurpose them would make more sense for the resistance. It wasn't just the capital, but also the head of government and a lot of other government entities, it definitely would cause a lot of confusion for some time until it's sorted out who is now in charge, but the movie continues directly after the previous one. At that point in time there are probably a lot of people who haven't even heard of the destruction and are just confused why they can't get in contact with the capital. Not enough time for any confusion, let alone colapsing. I think what could have worked for the space battles and what would have kept the plot as it is mostly intact, would have been combining the initial one and then when Kylo attacks in his fighter. The resistance flees from their base barely ahead of the first order ships. The star destroyers can't reach them so they send out Tie fighters and the resistance fighters defend their ships. In the confusion some resistance bombers manage to get to a destroyer unnoticed and destroy it. That causes the first order to recall the fighters to defend the destroyers. The resistance can't attack the destroyers anymore due to the Tie fighter defending them and the resistance ships are out of range for the destroyers, so they end up in the stale mate that is seen in the movie. Not perfect but it probably would work a lot better than what was seen in the movie.

[@andrewszigeti2174]

@@Neonsilver13 Even century-old Y-WIngs falling apart like those silly salt-skimmers at the end would have been better than those flying barges. Heck, they would have been better off with armed YT-series freighters!

[@SoftisNelaris]

​@@Neonsilver13 The Y-wings themselves being incredibly old, obsolete, and high maintenance can be true, but then you just establish a new replacement ship model... It could be as simple as a *Y-Wing 2.0* or you could use the B-Wings from ROTJ, poach something from the EU, or hell just make something original. A cool new bomber model could even sell as toys! (if people cared enough to buy them, anyway) But we can't have that or else we can't have the symbolic + referential visuals... Fucking Rian...

[@aralornwolf3140]

The issue with the "bombers" was they represent a technological regression in every way. They needed to "drop" their bombs on top of their "target"... what works in a gravity well... doesn't work in space... especially when your targets are in a gravity well, but are perpendicular to the direction of gravity and are mobile! They didn't have a targeting computer, so the person in charge of dropping the payload had to _physically_ walk over to the bomb bay's open hatch and look out to see if they were over the target... which doesn't work when you're traveling at any sort of velocity above a few dozen km/h and more than a km "above" your target and your target is only ~8 km long. You need to drop your bombs well before you reach the target so that the bombs you drop _land_ on the target. This is why bomb crews in WWII had directions on where they needed to be and at what point they need to drop their bombs at... it was still incredibly inefficient but they knew from other people's calculations (approximate preGPS locations of their targets)... Then, to cap off the regression, the person in charge had to carry around in his hand, the _big red button_ which would drop _all_ the bombs. Not some, not most, _all_ of them. The simplest fix I have is... instead of making them WWII bombers, I make them into WWII Torpedo Boats... instead of "bombs" they are outfitted with a quad-torpedo turret with the capacity to carry ~100 proton torpedoes (larger, faster, torpedoes with better seekers and larger payloads than a typical fighter could carry). Having _8_ of these Torpedo Boats launching their entire payload in 2 minutes would have absolutely ruined the dreadnought... they might have been able to destroy it if the torpedoes were able to, in successive hits, bored down into the ships primary hull taking out the anti-matter reactor... but that's what maneuvering thrusters are meant to be used for... to change the ship's orientation so the torpedoes spread their damage across the hull... which forces the Rebels to decide how long they want to continue their engagement... and gives the TIEs time to start taking out the Torpedo Boats... There you go Ruin Johnson... you now have the Tico sister die... as her torpedoes touch off the Dreadnought's reactor. All without destroying the Lore you don't give your ass about.

[@HaragothNAR]

I think the first point is the most important, the one that most writers ignore in almost any movie made in the later 2010's, and that is, if you visually establish something, then you're going to have to stick with it. Game of Thrones is a perfect example of this. They will establish how a character is a great fighter, or brilliant commander in one battle, and then in another scene, where they get beaten or outsmarted, they suddenly act really stupid, when it was established they weren't that dumb. There's that scene where one of the dragons gets shot down by a single ballista, then, when the remaining dragon flies over King's Landing, where the walls are covered with the same ballista's the dragon is unenterable. Another great example is how they spent the entire show convincing us that they needed a huge army to take King's Landing, then a dragon levels it in ten minutes, so much storytelling for nothing. Could probably write a book on the amount of times GOT broke this rule in just the last season or two.

[@darwinxavier3516]

Someone has called this phenomenon "coolscene-itis". I think it was Mauler when roasting the Obi Wan show. It's where the creative merely has a list of scenes or payoffs or memes that they want in the story and are too lazy/stupid to figure out a way to make them fit logically. Or are too self-indulgent/stupid/arrogant to leave out all the crap that makes no sense, just because they want their shallow gratification. Latest example being Mando S3 where they establish that the jetpacks have limited fuel and show us that they only travelled a fairly short distance. Yet in the finale another mando can apparently take off from ground to orbit. My fanboi consoomer friend copes by saying "duh he had more advanced gear than the children of the watch, and we don't know how far they actually travelled".

[@paulmdevenney]

@@darwinxavier3516 definitely agree. I call it the "hell yeah" moment. They're addicted to them. I think the other major factor is the expected SPEED at which content is now produced. To be fair to writers for a moment, they often don't have time to consider the impact of something on the next episode, never mind next season. The deadline for the script is FRIDAY and no one is budging from that. I would guess that the difference from this to the best works is generally the that author developed ideas in their own time until they were happy with them.

[@freestalkerdotfr6391]

@@williamshelton4318 The Battle of the Bastards gave me PTSD. First of all, if it was done early in the serie it would have been coherent. But here it felt gratuitiously disgusting. I will not enter in the details. 🤢

[@nuclearsimian3281]

Rian Johnson was asked by The Hollywood Reporter’s Natalie Heltzel: Natalie: "Whenever you are writing, let’s say you are creating your own universe, you said you don’t think about actors, you are starting something from scratch, how is that approach versus something where you have a pre-existing universe? If you are writing characters for Star Wars, you have this universe, you have characters that everybody knows, and then now you are doing something from scratch. Do you find your approach is different for that?" Rian: "No, not at all. Because I don’t really think in terms of universes or in terms of creating worlds or whatever. *That’s not that interesting to me.* The only thing that is interesting to me is story. And the story specific to, like whether you are writing a Star Wars film that’s part of a three movie trilogy or a quote unquote original thing like Knives Out, you are still telling a story that is new to the thing that you are doing that it has to work within the context of that movie. So, to me the notion of what’s the entire galaxy or world that you are creating or something, *I CAN'T IMAGINE BEING EXCITED ABOUT CREATING THAT.* To me what I’m excited about is creating a two hour long experience for an audience to have in the theater. And that means how they engage moment to moment with the story and the characters that are on the screen. And that doesn’t change in either one of those.” THIS is why TLJ is a fucking monstrous insult to the entire fanbase. This is why Luke Skywalker nearly killed his best friend and sister's son, his blood nephew, and then ran away like a *fucking coward.* This is why NONE of the movie makes sense, he created his own fucking canon that showed how bad he was at scifi.

[@anothisflame8266]

Okay yes we can all agree these are terrible films however... Devil's advocate: this specific quote isn't actually a bad take for writting in general for the purposes of film and novels. Sometimes authors and film makers get so hung up on the minutiae that they can't move forward so it is fairly common practice in extremely long running franchises to change or even to ignore previously written stories to make room for the new. You see this a lot in comics, both eastern Manga and Western Super Hero fare. Now to rebuttle myself. This DOES in fact diminish the stories told now and previously because now we don't know when the author will suddenly change things again. What was my point? Basically I'm trying to say that this philosophy is by no means just this one director/writer. It is a school of thought that creeps into long running franchises with lots of pre-established canon with so much lore that they start to hinder new stories from being written. It's a side effect of simply not letting the story *Fucking End* and we as consumers of this media are in fact to blame for that. Let the story end.

[@billwilliamson1506]

His own viewpoint is what damned the series. Star Wars is a sci-fi space opera. It plays on fictional universal laws and forces and how a world with those forces would look, while maintaining the writing of a traditional space opera (objective good and evil). What a lot of people like about Star Wars is how the lack of the thematic opera tropes make their way in. New Hope was full of these hero vs villain cliches but it did so through a very detailed universe. The Sequels were just copy pasted OT with new fancy effects. They didn’t add to the SW experience or lore or anything. The Prequels benefitted from amazing world building but did not do a great job on writing. Johnson should have learned from that. Writing is key, he hypes it up the entire time, but he doesn’t deliver. We are supposed to feel tense, sad, happy, or excited as the film reveals more information to us. Nothing about this information was very immersive for me and many others. TFA for me was also just a mediocre retelling of New Hope. Phantom menace was good in using the exact same idea but in a more organic way. This was literally copy and paste (down to the same factions and same style and same tactics and all)

[@JinKee]

​@@williamshelton4318 it's a tone poem

[@lVideoWatcherl]

@Anothis Flame I would heavily disagree with equating any _continuous_ story with Superhero comics. In fact, I would not equate movies or books to Comics _at all._ Reason being that it seems to me the comic industry actually cares fairly little about continuity. In order to tell the _story_ authors want to tell, they just either creator alternative timelines, let characters travel between times or universes, create entirely new personalities for established characters etc. It seems a practice entirely endemic to the medium. For any story which wants to be seen as consistent and serious, _this doesn't work._ Yes, comics are silly in a way because they devalue their own stories like this. Movies, however, at least movie franchises, should be held to a different standard - in fact all media should be held to that standard of consistency. It's just that the comic audience doesn't seem to care enough for Marvel, DC or whoever to care also. But that's not an excuse for a movie series, _directly tied together and forming an undeniable whole,_ to do this. So I disagree with your devil's advocate take, I agree with your own counterargument. Rian, with this quote, just shows that he is an egomaniac ass who doesn't care about the creative work of _others,_ he only cares about the creative work of _himself._ And he simply doesn't want to put in the work to get to know an established world and operate within it's boundaries - which are _plenty_ wide enough for him to be able to tell a story which is his own, yet _also_ fits them.

[@SammEater]

The worst one is not even Rian, but Disney themselves for hiring a guy that finished off a trilogy in the freakin middle point of the story.

[@NageIfar]

Easy fix as well. Both sides have heavy fighter presence. Rebel ships are slowly getting their point defense guns online, and they are shielded well enough with Mon Calamari tech so that fighters can't damage them and they need capital ship guns instead. TIE fighters are pulled back because they would just die. Also speaking about Battlestar Galactica, the episode 33 Minutes shows how to do chases. frequent jumps, maneuver and intelligence warfare, mounting attrition, etc.

[@pepperedash4424]

Didn't the Resistance essentially lose their fighter presence during Kylo's strafing run on the Raddus? But yeah, having Kylo decide turn back after receiving damage from the Raddus' point defense makes sense. But there's no reason the FO didn't use it's thousands of fighters to make a second run.

[@Dreamfox-df6bg]

Had the Dreadnought fired at the Resistance ships and not on the ground base, the movie would have been over. After that mistake, had they not destroyed the Dreadnought, the Dreadnought would still have destroyed the Resistance ships. Had the Star Destroyers launched all fighters and bombers and attacked the Resistance before the Dreadnought arrived, the Resistance ships would have been wiped out. Had a Star Destroyer jumped ahead of the Resistance ships, the chase would have been over. And BTW, they had enough Star Destroyers to jump ahead and cut off the fleeing Resistance ships even in the three dimensions of space. BTW, in 'Rise of Skywalker' the Final Order is destroyed. The First order, with a fleet to subjugate the Republic is still around as is their entire support network, their shipyards and resources.. I.e. the First Order still rules the former Republic after the 'Rise of Skywalker'.

[@Sorain1]

Honestly I hadn't even thought about the sheer comedy of the First Order's rule still being intact. This makes the writers stupidity even deeper.

[@LontEnCaras]

the sequels are such a mess... We practically don't even know the state of the galaxy even now. Because you are correct. In every logical sense, the first order should now be in charge, because nobody did anything against them. But all the known leaders of the first order are dead. And the resistance never had the goal of building a new government either. They are not the rebel alliance. So... I have no idea what is happening lmao.

[@FlugwurstGaming]

While some of the writing is very dumb, ur kind of wrong on this one. The First Order was currently in control, bc no one challenged them as they kind of didnt rly hold their grip to tight. However Palpatine did the same mistake as he did twice before: Building a weapon of mass destruction. This made most people rise up, even against the First Order, which is why they soon lost most of their territory, as they even lost their leader. Its a lesson of war to always pretend to leave an escape path for ur enemy so he does not fight as hard as he would if there would be no escape at all.

[@LontEnCaras]

@@FlugwurstGaming Palpatine was in control of the final order, not the first order. Those two are different. Only the final order got defeated. Nobody really cared about the first order anymore so.. we don't really know what happened to them.

[@FlugwurstGaming]

@@LontEnCaras We do, as Palpatine did his stuff, people started rising up, which is why we see all these ships from different sectors/planets at the end. Guess what happened to the First Order garrisons which where stationed at all these sectors/planets.

[@lisaruhm6681]

Also for the chase szene, if the First Order does not want to use TIE Fighters, they could just let a couple of Resurgents do some jumps out of the chase and appear right in front of the Raddus.

[@herrsiemes7094]

@@williamshelton4318 its so hilarious when they go " oh but there are set hyperspace routes you can't just jump back and forth 🤓" Yes, yes they can they did it in the same movie 3 times 🗿

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

If we go a bit outside of movie lore, there is technology in expanded canon to stop people from hyperjumping, and even pull passing ships back into normal space. Use that if you want to make a chase. Let the bad guys turn on the thing and prevent anyone in a certain radius from flying away. That way you have a reason for the heroes to fly away (they want to get out of range so they can finally jump away) and for the bad guys to follow (their anti-hyperjump thing is on a planet or another immobile location, so they can't move it with their pursuing fleet) Why would the baddies do that? Let's put it down to ego. They know they've won and they want to enjoy the slaughter. Let them be low on man power, they aren't the empire proper after all, so fighters are out of the question. But don't tell the heroes. Give the baddies slightly faster ships in vastly superior numbers. That way it's a real race. Can the heroes get out of range before they are caught? Can the baddies catch up before the heroes escape? Maybe someone decides to stay behind and fight off the pursuers. Some sort of heroic sacrifice. Make the heroes be angry and sad about the loss. They will try to make it worth it in the next movie.

[@GnarledStaff]

Writing is tough because you need to know a lot about whatever topic shows up in your story. Its weird watching Hollywood put the level of knowledge of a 13 year on their first old fanfic into projects that cost more than most people will ever see.

[@Barwasser]

i know, right? You can find better writing in every KZbin comment section - for free. What the hell are they even doing? Why are they earning 200k$/year on average? And why are they on strike right now? do they really think they have done such an amazing job that they deserve better pay?

[@herrsiemes7094]

@@Barwasser maybe this whole writers strike will have a positive effect...they could probably just ask AI to write a coherent script in the future. Hell the MCU probably does that already

[@iang0th]

@@Barwasser I would assume that most scripts start out as logical and coherent, but then they keep being told by the higher-ups to cut things and add different things, all without redoing anything already filmed. By the end you've got a collection of individually competent scenes from six different movies glued together with nothing but chewing gum and dream logic.

[@Barwasser]

@Peters6221 At this point, I'm not sure. The quality has been bad so consistently over the last few years that I can't limit the blame to a single group of people. There is something fundamentally rotten in Hollywood.

[@tarvoc746]

11:22 - When your bombers are so fragile that the only possible military application for them is war crimes.

[@AbyssWatcher745]

​@@williamshelton4318 Yeah but the Death Star could atleast destroy big slow ships

[@ALG2691]

You know, I hadn’t even thought of this when critiquing this scene; it was always just the not-Empire putting the heroes in timeout, stopping themselves from insta-winning, and setting up the useless slow speed chase.

[@aaronbill3]

There is another, incredibly charitable, interpretation of Hux's order: the rest of the fighter screens can't cover Ren's squadron, because doing so would open a hole in the defence lines for the capital ships. However this interpretation only works if Hux is not aware that the fighter bays had just been disabled and Kylo is too stupid to tell him. This interpretation also only sorta works if you've already spent more time discussing the tactics of space combat than The Last Jedi does, because so far as I remember the movie there is little to no attention paid to the interactions between fighters and capital ships in any meaningful way.

[@grumpus5248]

As if the FO really needed a "defense line" against 4 obviously fleeing Rebel ships with zero fighters.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

I like that idea. Kylo has a big ego (wanting to prove himself to granddaddy Vader) and is emotional. He alone will be the one to stop the ship and win. And Hux doesn't know because some idiot got his green milk in the radio and has to run to the bridge to tell.

[@Halak014]

If they somehow had written a "Mexican stand of" moment the order had made some sens as in "fall back and guard our flank, NOW" , but you make a good point, they did write to a corner and didn't know what to do.

[@shinote4]

It's an error to think that the survival of any of the resistance ships or crew matters. The conflict can only be decided by personal combat between rival space wizards. Nothing else can compete with the space wizards. So, that battle, like most scenes in TLJ, was meaningless because Rey Palpatine-Skywalker wasn't involved. For Hux to spend an extra few hours mopping up a harmless fleet makes no difference when she could stop in to visit Snoke whenever she chooses.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Yup. The empire fell because the two leading space wizards died and the fleet immediately surrendered despite vastly superior numbers. The new republic fell because they had no leading space wizard, but non space wizard politicians that died and the fleet immediately surrendered despite vastly superior numbers.

[@TheDemigans]

It takes more than 5 years to completely dissect the failure of TLJ. Here’s another good one: we have an establishing shot of the Rebel fleet in orbit. We see this shot come by again when the First Order inexplicably shoots the ground base which couldn’t run away instead of the ship that is being loaded and can run away. Poe launches himself and when he succeeds… magical bombers appear out of nowhere. They weren’t in the establishing shots. Why not? Especially with the budget they had, what reason would they have NOT to include them in an ESTABLISHING SHOT which surprise surprise is supposed to establish the scene. Or how the cinematography perfectly sets the scene early on, the way the rebels need to look up to the Dreadnaught, their reactions, the music. It all sets the scene for the Rebels to be at a disadvantage while the First Order is established as a dangerous capable force. It sets a certain tensions… and then they throw that all away for jokes that show incompetent morons as the leadership. If those incompetents were leading the First Order, the Rebels must have been even bigger morons. The only reason the First Order could have succeeded at anything is purely that everyone of lower rank actually is super capable but doesn’t dare show that in the presence of their supreme leaders.

[@SamwiseOutdoors]

My brain is broken from reading a bunch of X-Wing books as a kid, but Hux just checking Ren's status and saying that he's only enough fuel to return home and he's out of recovery range would have been an easy fix.

[@Barwasser]

...A fix for about 5min until he would launch about 500 extra fighters and bombers to finish off the rebel ship.

[@lVideoWatcherl]

Exactly what @BeWater said - if Ren was too important to let him float around in space (even though I don't see how he couldn't just be recovered by any one capital ship making a detour then, but whatever), that doesn't mean that they don't supposedly have hundreds upon hundreds of other fighters with pilots the FO would most likely consider entirely expendable. So if that convoluted explanation made sense for Ren, it doesn't make sense for noname pilots when considering the apparent insistence by which the FO wants these ships dead.

[@SamwiseOutdoors]

@@lVideoWatcherl It's just bad writing through and through. If the Hangar hadn't been blown up, then a defensive fighter screen would explain it- BUT as Thrawn articulated, A-Wings are great for offensive use and bad for defensive use. We'd be back to the no fighters problem all over again. It's just bad plot armor and incompetent villains.

[@lVideoWatcherl]

@@SamwiseOutdoors And even if they had x-wings, they are outnumbered about what, 10:1? Not even including the losses already destroyed fighters from the engagement at the start of the movie! So the FO, even with significant losses, could just simply let their TIEs swarm them anyways. Your last sentence is the only conclusive answer one can arrive at. It's idiotic, but I, as an amateur, could make a more coherent story than what was presented in TLJ.

[@SamwiseOutdoors]

@@lVideoWatcherl Right? And don't get me started on the initial attack against the FO- if one single bomber can take out a massive siege ship, then why mass them together? Scatter them into smaller flights and have them deal some damage to other attacking ships! It's just- ugh. Dumb.

[@CowCommando]

I thought it was interesting that you mentioned the idea of WW2 being different from Star Wars. The filming of the dog fights is actually designed to mimic WW2 dog fights, that's why you see them banking and maneuvering like atmospheric craft rather than void craft. I've heard the trench run is even based off of a WW2 film about the bombing of a dam. Funnily enough, the one thing about that entire scene, and I do mean one thing, that The Last Jedi gets right is those worse than worthless bombers are visually similar to American WW2 bombers, so they actually do feel like they fit in universe visually if nothing else.

[@Pas5afist]

Visually, certainly. I immediately thought of the B-17 Flying Fortresses. Functionally- nothing of the sort because they didn't function except as an exceptionally slow kamikaze bomber. It's hard to imagine a more ideal scenario where all the Dreadnaught gun were destroyed and for some reason TIE fighters were not launched in the opening rounds of combat. You could never expect such favourable conditions, and yet they were still wiped out.

[@nocrtname]

The trench run is almost a shot for shot and line by line homage to the final attack in the movie dam busters. There is a side by side comparison on youtube.

[@CowCommando]

@@nocrtname Thanks, I didn't know the name.

[@CowCommando]

@@Pas5afist 100% agree, I found myself thinking they'd have been better off not using those bombers and just going in with fighters with torpedoes. They'd have lost less people and ships. I think they did more damage to themselves with those paper mache bombers than the TIE fighters did.

[@Rusty_Mitchell]

'Tend the goal!' This is the last place I expected to hear someone quote Steve Dangle.

[@pugdomination]

The one thing I don’t think you addressed was that they didn’t want Kylo Ren, apprentice to the supreme leader, to die. Still doesn’t explain why they just didn’t send someone else out there instead of him though.

[@qq-wy7zs]

See, this was what I was thinking but there just doesn't seem to be much threat to him. Capital ships dont seem to be much of a threat to fighters directly and the rebels have no fighters. The easy fix would have been to give the rebels a corellian gunship or other anti-fighter frigate maybe instead of the nebulon-b and have Kylo launch his raid with 50 fighters and emerge with only 3. The line could have then been "Lord Ren, fall back. We can't cover you from their point defense frigate at this range."

[@andrewszigeti2174]

Or a couple hundred someones; according to Wookiepedia the Resurgents carry 144 fighters and bombers.

[@alexm2889]

But then he wouldn't be out there in the first place.... And Vader wouldn't have gone out in a new hope... And basically any space battle with jedi wouldn't exist...

[@strategicperson95]

​@@andrewszigeti2174 I know, the First Order could have swarmed the Resistance Fleet like the American Naval Aircraft did to the Yamato and her escorts. A single Resurgent has twice the amount of fighters and bombers of a Star Destroyer (144), and there are like 10 of them. And then there is the Supremacy which I'll give a rough estimate of having 10 times the squadron complement of a Resurgent. So other than Rian making sure there was a story, what prevented this story from ending right then and there. The losses of a few Fighters are acceptable in destroying the remaining leadership.

[@Dash123456789Brawl]

Tying in to that, the only way I could justify the supposed ‘cover’ is the hypothetical covering fire a large encampment (For example, a mounted gun) would provide against oncoming enemy forces. An individual soldier approaching the mounted gun, or in this case capital ship, should be theoretically turn to shreds before they get anywhere close. They would need to do something about it from a greater distance with specialized weaponry, superior firepower, overwhelming numbers, etc. With this justification, Kylo has this kind of hypothetical cover when he is within the effective area of the weapons on the capital ship. This is of course wildly insufficient justification for many of the reasons laid out in this video, like the complete lack of resistance fighters, but that’s all I’ve got.

[@sinfjotlisghost465]

I had always assumed that Hux meant that they can't provide covering fire since the fleet was out of range (as is made explicit shortly thereafter). I think that would also be kind of stupid; the point of covering fire is to make an area too dangerous for an enemy to lean out of cover long enough to take an accurate shot, and that scenario simply doesn't apply in space.

[@winter945]

​@@williamshelton4318 they also disperse over time, being less effective the further the range

[@derkaiser9881]

@@williamshelton4318 What does being out of fuel mean in the context of space? If you're out of fuel, you'll still drift forwards at the speed you were going beforehand for a long ass time. Why do the ships run out and just fall backwards?

[@toast651]

@@derkaiser9881 Bold of you to assume anyone nowadays can even remember Newton's laws

[@herrsiemes7094]

It gets even worse the more you think about it...if the Resurgents can't cover Kylo ANYMORE that implicitly states that they were in Range mere minutes before. They could shoot the Ship the entire time 💀

[@voidtempering8700]

​@@williamshelton4318No, it is the opposite. Physical projectiles keep going until they hit something. Plasma weapons eventually disperse.

[@robertcain7630]

What do you expect from writers who don't even understand basic physics in space?? I mean, Star Wars has never bothered overly with logic and physics, but the last jedi takes it to a *whole* new level! Why, in space where there is no up or down, only orientation, do bombers have to fly over the target ship to drop their bombs? simply rotate you craft 90 degrees so that your bomb-bay door point towards the target and let the bombs go? Why do the rebel ships fall back when they run out of fuel? have they been burning fuel the whole time? This is space, you burn fuel to change acceleration! i.e. slow down or speed up! if they have been burning fuel that entire time then the ships have been constantly accelerating the entire time and would probably be approaching light speed by the end of the film! And why is this the only time fuel has ever been a problem over all 9 films?? What fuel do they even use?!? But the basic reason for "the chase" is that the rebels can't jump and the first order can't catch them in real space. Fine. Why does the first order not jump some ships ahead to box them in? They have enough ships that they could jump a couple ahead, above, below and to either side so that no matter which direction they go they'll be trapped! This is a film where logic is completely absent and ever single character is a moron

[@Dave-rd6sp]

The film is garbage, but some of this has a reasonable explanation, physics wise. Gravity extends farther than people think it does. For example, the gravity on the ISS is 90% of the gravity on Earth. It only appears like zero gravity because the ISS is in constant freefall (orbit). If these ships were maintaining position outside of an orbital trajectory, there might be enough gravity to pull the bombs towards the planet, and resisting gravity would be forcing them to burn fuel.

[@gorgit]

​@@Dave-rd6sp they couldve just used gravity. I mean the calculations for the angle they needed to drop them can be done by almost anyone who ever took a class in physics, so the onboard computers should definitely be able to calculate that. Just drop them like one would try throw a ball at something. Not directly aiming at it in a line, but rather over it in an arc.

[@Dave-rd6sp]

@@gorgit I agree that it's an awful scene and an awful movie. I'm just pointing out that they could be close enough to the planet for there to be significant amounts of gravity and thus a "down" direction.

[@Chadius_Thundercock]

There’s many problems with the sequels but this is just nitpicking

[@BeautyDarkly]

"You're approaching the max range of our targeting disruptors. We can't cover you." A simple but elegant solution if the tech exists in the universe. There is no excuse for sloppy writing.

[@WhatIsThatThingDoing]

Electronic warfare gets too little love :(

[@leonielson7138]

I spent the entirety of 'The Last Jedi' waiting for Rose Tico to be revealed as a brainwashed agent of the First Order, that she'd sabotaged the bombers, set off bombs in the hangers, escaped with Finn because Vice Admiral Holdo didn't buy the 'hyperspace tracker', and DJ was her handler (bringing her and Finn to the First Order). Rose had put a quantum tracking device (the same kind of device that was supposed to lead Rey back to the Resistance) in the Navicomputer, so whenever a course was set it would transmit the destination to the First Order. Rose also damaged the hyperdrive, and then left in the shuttle containing the parts needed to repair the hyperdrive, so the Resistance had to cannibalize the hyperdrives from the other shuttles, screwed up, and that's what made the 'Holdo Maneuver' possible - unfortunately, recreating the precise screwup is impossible. So much could have been explained with a who-done-it, but Kathleen Kennedy decided that she wanted TWO self-insert characters, one of whom gets to kiss John Boyega.

[@FormerBunsenBurner]

That's... actually genius.

[@DrBones-ys1ii]

Whoa dude... That actually kinda works.

[@hariman7727]

@@DrBones-ys1ii Indeed. The other option would have been to make HOLDO the traitor, with her enacting a suicidal but seemingly okay plan to try to wipe out the rebels.

[@deriznohappehquite]

One thing I hate about space battles in Star Wars is that you don’t really have an analogue for real life Destroyers, that are designed to destroy light craft, in the movies. There’s hardly anything between “multiple kilometer ship with thousands of crew” and “one or two man fighter/bomber”.

[@commandoepsilon4664]

Not true, the class of ship that Leia's was using in A New Hope, CR90 corvette, when used in military applications were primarily used to destroy fighters with blaster cannons. There are a number of other ships with similar roles, just the empire doesn't use them because of their naval doctrine and the First Order is just a copy past empire.

[@deriznohappehquite]

@@commandoepsilon4664 I’m aware that these things exist: I played Empire at War! I’m annoyed that we never see them doing their jobs in the movies. We just the the CR90 trading shots with a Star Destroyer and getting boarded. We see Star Wars visual media get this wrong more often than it gets it right.

[@Neonsilver13]

At least for the empire their is a lore reason for it, they follow a military doctrin that focuses a lot on intimidation and generalization. So they use the star destroyers because they are intimidating and probably because they can fulfill multiple roles to some degree.

[@nemonomen6898]

@@Neonsilver13 The Empire is supposed to have vast numbers of lighter ships to support the Star Destroyers though, we just rarely see them because the ISD is considered so iconic. This is part of a much wider issue with how the SW universe is developed in most visual media.

[@EgoEroTergum]

Raider Corvette is my favorite Legends ship, and it is exactly this.

[@DancerVeiled]

What baffled me more, is that they're within visual range of one another but the Resistance cruiser still hasn't launched its fighters? Nobody seems like they're in a hurry, either. Certainly not scrambling in defense of their carrier, and they get exactly what's coming to them for it.

[@samtheweebo]

Ideas that could work/explain the visuals that are also clunky 1. The cruser is far enough away that they can raise their forward shields! Your fighter won't be able to do any damage. 2. The cruser is accelerating, your fighter can't keep up for long, you are going to run out of fuel at this rate. 3. The cruser is getting out of sensor jamming range, the auto cannons will be able to target you soon, get out of there 4. You are our supreme leader! Why are you out there risking your life? Just come back. We will catch up and crush them in a few hours without any losses. 5. Come back, Snoke wants to see you right now 6. That area us full of micro meetiors. You need capital ship grade shilding to pass through safely.

[@stevejenkins7954]

Glad you brought up battlestar galactica in this context because every time I think about TLJ all I can think is that the whole big chase scene would be infinitely better if they had just done the BSG episode "33 minutes" instead

[@Pyromaniac77777]

in 13 minutes you put more effort into thinking about this than the people who actually wrote the movie

[@diegovalentino3953]

A easy way to fix this: Hux tells Kylo to fall back as he is at range of the cruiser´s anti air cannons

[@Gengarguy-dx1kz]

Then how would he able to destroy so much of the capital ships

[@diegovalentino3953]

@@Gengarguy-dx1kz they weren't active yey :P

[@LucTaylor]

Uh oh you mentioned Cinema Sins Now I have to go on a tirade about how they try to 'cover' their factual inaccuracies that occur through ridiculously low effort writing by saying they are deliberate jokes

[@boobah5643]

Well, some of them are. That doesn't mean they don't also play the clown-nose-on, clown-nose-off game.

[@Pas5afist]

Also a fair amount of deliberately misreading the film to stretch into their supposed jokes as pointed out in a number of EWW Cinema Sins videos.

[@Deliriumend]

This is a good summary of the main problem with the entire sequel trilogy. The ideas and tentpoles they're trying to tell a story around are 100% fine the execution on the other hand mucks it up a LOT. They needed someone whose job was to keep JJ and Rian in check while simultaneously ensuring continuity between the three movies and with the rest of the Star Wars universe (looking at you everyone hyperspace jumping in/around gravity wells)

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Makes me wish we've gotten the empire remnants instead.

[@ryklatortuga4146]

"I just think Pekka Rine is too good right now..." Commander Hux talking to Kylo after the battle.

[@chrisandrews3979]

None of what is going on in the sequel trilogy makes sense. They are the worst written films i have ever seen. Why is there a resistance in the force awakens? They are on the side of the galactic govt no? Lucasfilm was just so creatively bankrupt that they just wanted to put everything back the way it wasa in a new hope.

[@cameron.t]

This man really brought the NHL into Star Wars. We will watch your career with great interest.

[@darkreflectionsstudio4506]

I agree if 99% of what the OP says. There is in lore one reason, that could explain part of the conversation. It is how shields work in Star Wars. In Star Wars shields can be reinforced by giving up coverage. Instead of covering the whole ship, you can increase the shield strength on a side, for example doubling the strength in the front or back, at the cost of leaving the rest unshielded. This also helps explain how the fighters could do so much damage. The Cruiser had their shields reinforced backwards to stop being destroyed by the big new order ships. This allowed the fighters to shot at the unshielded side and do so much damage. As the rebels leave the range of the big ships, they can stop reinforcing their shields and switch to full coverage. Making it almost impossible for such a small group of fighters to damage. The problem is that the film already to make shields work differently to have its starting scene, where the rebel fighter ignores shields to destroy point defense weapons. There are also a hundred more fighters in the fleet. We are even shown some of them when the infiltration team is about to be executed, if I remember correctly. Enough fighters that based on all movie's before they should easily take care of the rebel fleet, with no sign that it should be any different in this one. What I hate the most is the blatant disregard for consistency and logic in the movie. There are so many cases like this. And its not like they are unfexiable. Someone else already mentioned that using Luke Skywalker as a motive could be a reason to let the Rebel suffer (or to wait for the fuel to run out and then capture them). Killing the Rebels is not Snokes primary goal, he personally does not even take command despite being right on board.

[@lukasweiss4462]

First Order hangar commander: "General Hux, should we send the over 1000 fighters our fleet has to destroy the enemy fleet?" Hux: "No, send 4." First Order hangar commander: "Dude, WTF?"

[@TheKarishi]

There is another option for certain space battles, though it wouldn't have worked for Star Wars' sci-fi system: In a system like Star Trek or Eve Online it'd be possible for "cover" to literally be a shield projection. A "we can't cover you" from the capital ship would then just mean "you're exposed; You're out of range of our shield projector!" and assuming the capital ship couldn't compensate by closing the gap - perhaps for fear of entering optimal attack range of the enemy's heaviest weapons - even a ship that had just done great damage could have to pull back. I know it's kind of off-topic. But it sprung to mind when you had the graphic of the giant hex shields covering the destroyers.

[@Off-Brand_Devin]

Also, didn't Hux despise Kylo because he was Hux's only rival to being second in command of the First Order? Wouldn't he be happy for an opportunity to let Kylo get himself blown up? I was talking with my buddy the other day, and he mentioned that he liked the concept of an extended chase in Star Wars, but The Last Jedi's chase was horribly executed. And there was such an easy fix for that. Don't bother with the fuel nonsense. Just have them keep jumping and the First Order showing up shortly thereafter to chip away at the fleet. Meanwhile, the Resistance is in a race against time to figure out how to prevent the First Order from tracking them.

[@BNOBLE981]

Think Hux was worried about being held responsible by Snoke if Kylo were to get killed with Hux making no serious attempt to save him.

[@jcohasset23]

A chase like that would have worked better and fit better into the established universe. Heck the reboot Battlestar Galactica had a 2004 episode devoted to a chase where the Cylons showed up every 33 minutes for 5 straight days showing the toll it was having on the crews and the ships to keep jumping in an attempt to escape. Something similar would also have made the First Order look more competent and thus a bigger threat.

[@Off-Brand_Devin]

@@jcohasset23 You just reminded me I need to rewatch Battlestar Galactica.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Just have the first order activate an interdiction field to stop the resistance from jumping away. But put it on a planet, so there is a fixed limit to how far it reaches. There you have it. The resistance try to get out of range of the field, the first order pursues. But they have faster ships, to they will eventually catch up. Give Kylo a super fast fighter that can quickly catch up with the resistance. The big deal is, can the resistance get out of range before they are caught.

[@jcohasset23]

@@HappyBeezerStudios An interdiction field is what I thought they were going with in The Last Jedi since it's something that has regularly shown up in the Extended Universe as a viable tactic, even if hyperdrive mechanics are one of those things the movies have never really touched on. In a vacuum TLJ works fine but it really requires ignoring most of the canon and EU lore.

[@Lattidude]

In the star wars universe you have frigates whose sole job is to shred fighters with an array of AA guns and these are placed defensively around the larger ships. The Lancer Class Frigate for example has 20 point defense guns and was designed purely to fight star fighters. Would have been easy for them to show one of these ships shredding TIE fighters and then Hux's reasoning would make sense. If the ship is out of range of the first orders turbolasers then it has free reign to chew up the squadron.

[@MisterofBattle]

This is uh, not explainable outside of Ryan Johnson being *absolutely* a shiny, gleaming, smooth brained genius.

[@french_fried420]

That hockey analogy fucking killed me that's hilarious😂😂😂😂

[@masonperich1760]

wow, never has someone used a hockey analogy better than you here. i tip my hat sir

[@darwinskeeper421]

The problem was that Ryan Johnson was a cocky director of indie films that didn't feel like bothering to learn the rule of Star Wars space combat. He MAY be a good director for certain films but he had no business directing a part of a Star Wars trilogy. The fact that Kathleen Kennedy hired Johnson and gave him free reign on The Last Jedi point to her own unfitness to run Lucas Film.

[@peasley1107]

You forget that hux vehemently hated Ren and was competition for being next in line after snoke so there is a chance that he said "We can't cover you from here" in knowing that Ren by this point wouldn't listen and go towards the rebel cruiser Hux most likely was hoping that Ren would be shot down and killed.

[@guillaumepiet7171]

I like the explanation! Another theory is that there is a degree on electronic warfare and counter measures that only the capital shipmare able to conduct and that outside of this range, the Ties would be less effective/more vulnerable… but indeed no description of such thing in the movie…

[@Pas5afist]

Hm. True. Yet another thing Battlestar Galactica pulled off more then ten years prior. All this has happened before...

[@pyropulseIXXI]

This would be like if an AA gun on an aircraft carrier said "We cannot cover our attack planes; bring them back!" It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. In fact, it makes so little sense that it passes 0 and goes to negative sense

[@WulfMek]

Incidently in both the “Return of the Jedi” and “The Last Jedi” they actually change strategies based on conditions. In RTOJ they first utilized the fighters as a screen to protect they Capital Ships. However, after the Death Star starts blasting the big ships they then engage into an all out furball with the imperial ships to defend against the super laser of the Death Star. In TLJ they also switch tactics and rebels go full burn to temporary escape the capital ships. In both cases they are a stratagem of doing something desperate for more time. It the Resistance had some bombers at that time they might have had more options.

[@Pas5afist]

Given how poorly the bomber fared in one of the most ideal conditions imaginable, I cannot imagine another time that they would have been useful. Do they fit in the Raddus? They would've been destroyed with everyone else.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

With how the capital ships are battleship/carrier hybrids and how fighters have effective anti-capital torpedoes, the idea if a dedicated small bomber seems stupid to begin with. Just use the equivalent of a "capital bomber", a big ship, but instead of hangar bays give it massive bomb bays. Instead of trying to use B-17 against a USN carrier group, use battleship atillery.

[@deriznohappehquite]

Physically taking cover behind larger ships is the best way to complete the space battle section in Halo Reach now. In Halo: The Master Chief Collection, the upgrade to a 60hz frame rate broke a lot of the mechanics in the games, making the AI much more aggressive, and changing some mechanics like projectile velocity. Some of this was accounted for, but the Space Battle in Halo: Reach’s Long Night of Solace is still massively more difficult. I was doing a high difficulty play through of the game, and the way that’s I found to complete the mission was to hide behind the space station and later behind the heavy frigate, and let their much more aggressive and powerful point defense guns deal with all the enemy fighters before attacking the larger vessels.

[@richardtingler4798]

Long Night of Solace is savage now!

[@deriznohappehquite]

@@richardtingler4798 I’m a bit sad that it probably won’t be fixed.

[@DesertPictures]

Wow that explains so much! I was just playing through Reach a while back and got completely brutalized on that mission, even on just Heroic. I had to do the same thing. I was thinking it seemed so much harder than I remembered when I played it on xbox.

[@meh1977]

Honestly, if they wanted to show the Empire, I mean first order, as being incompetent, they could actually argue that the fighters are flying to far to be able to provide cap for the capital ships and need to pull back. It’s still not a good excuse, but could used to show that the first order command structure is top heavy and chooses to follow doctrine to the letter instead of taking initiative. Instead they came up with the worse excuse of the fighters needing cover, which makes no sense. I would argue that even the idea of the ships guns providing cover makes little sense, as they would have to be firing into the area in which their own fighters are flying at high speeds and preforming maneuvers leading to a chance of friendly fire.

[@jasperslavone1275]

Love the McDavid comparison haha, this was a great video! Can’t wait to go through your other stuff :)

[@Lordmewtwo151]

Love that you use Bernie (Dash's teacher) from the Incredibles in your commentary.

[@Pas5afist]

"Don't 'Bernie' me." One of my favourite Pixar films.

[@Lordmewtwo151]

@@Pas5afist Same (although Inside Out is also up there for me). Incredibles 2 was meh. I think the latter's greatest weakness is the fact that it is the sequel to this movie. I'm not saying that Incredibles 2 is a fantastic movie even in a vacuum, but I personally feel like its shortcomings hit that much harder because the bar was already set so high by the original.

[@StarboyXL9]

In the immortal words of WinterStarcraft: "Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory"

[@Pas5afist]

And in the words of Dustin Browder, "Terrible, terrible damage."

[@HrHaakon]

BUT AT WHAT COST!? - WinterStarcraft

[@joshlepage488]

Hux: Fighter squadron Fallback to the Supremacy Ren: I have them Hux: The Glory of this kill belongs to Supreme Leader Snoke not You There, two birds one stone gives a reason for why Kylo Ren is forced to withdraw and builds resentment between Snoke and Kylo it's so very far from perfect but it makes more sense

[@rippentare4383]

Hockey comparisons and Dangle references are always appreciated.

[@hell5fire974]

Rian Johnson pulled a MasterCraft of subverting expectations by making a film that was somehow more unredeemable than the prequels.

[@majorearl12]

The best thing is that they had like a dozen+ Resurgence-Class Battlecruisers, each one housing dozens of fighters (which we see in The Force Awakens when Finn/Poe steal one). So if each one has alot of fighters, why didnt they swarm the lone Resistance cruiser, or ya know that giant Supremacy which should be able to repair the Resurgence's and produce even more fighters than the Resurgences, which we do see later IN THE SAME MOVIE. Like it makes no logical sense whatsoever. In the OT they hd no such sequence whatsoever that didnt make sense, neither the Prequels. Its just like The Last Jedi is a separate universe altogether.

[@wolfiewoo3371]

"Capital ships don't defend fighters, fighters cover capital ships." Thank you! It's such a simple concept that anyone who knows anything about WW2 fighters or fighters in general would understand. You can literally google this stuff, I have no idea what these writers are getting paid for.

[@LordDarthHarry]

It would have been so simple to fix that bit. Have more fighters involved in the fight. Then just have the defenses on the Resistance ships shift power from shields to weapons once they are far enough and start blasting Kylo's wingmen out of the void. Would have been that easy to at least make it plausible.

[@connorquerin]

Ah man, that Oilers metaphor killed me 😂 I just subscribed - I'm looking forward to seeing what else you cover!

[@themount6549]

My idea would be to just have a few houndred Tie-Fighters attack the rebels, but they get brutally decimated as they come in range of the rebels anti-spacecraft guns. This could be the moment to build up Kylo Ren, by having him evade all the fire of the rebels and strike one impossible shot on the bridge of the capital ship. Afterwards he could just retreat without any flawed logic, because the rebels defence systems are shown to be highly effective (by hundreds of Tie-Fighters being hit). This would serve to strengthen both Kylo Ren as well as the rebels, because now he was shown to be an excellent pilot and powerful force user, and the rebels actually aren’t outmatched by the first order entirely. Of course this wouldn’t fully remove the dumbness out of the concept of this chase, but i have an idea, that might even resolve the other problems: The chase happens inside of a stellar nebula, that has something to do with the force and somehow stops all of the long-range weapons as well as the hyperdrives from working. The first order now positions their fleet around this nebula, and goes in with only a few ships to find the rebels and either destroy them in close combat or get them to leave the nebula, where other ships wait. As they have now found the rebels the first order launches their Tie-Fighters. This would fix most of the issues with this sequence, but i would say, that the entire movie is no concept to work with at all. It would be easier to just start off fresh, because this concept has big problems everywhere.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Kylo just doing a death star trench run, but from the opposing team. Nice. That would show his competency, but also his disregard for the chain of command. And I think I've seen that nebula poke at some point in Star Trek. Which doesn't mean it's a bad idea. Quite the opposite, it's an idea that has already been tried and tested.

[@imperialistgondola3488]

The only time I have ever seen large capital vessels 'cover' for smaller ones is when a fighter or bomber is in danger of losing to another fighter and needs to retreat. That's it. And honestly it makes sense since other time that capital ships cover for ships is physically, and usually that means the other craft have an objective that doesn't involve the fleet engagement at hand, or are performing boarding actions. This makes no sense and is weird how anyone missed the fact its contradicted in the same movie.

[@ion_force]

Question: Why would they pull back at the last minute?? Ryan George: So the movie can happen!

[@hadesdogs4366]

At least the empire tried to be competent, because if not then either their luck has run out whenever Vader shows up, in which case all bets are off and you know someone’s going to die, vs baby ren who’ll cut a computer apart or have a hissy fit like a child

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Vaders biggest mistake was killing high ranking admirals after a minor mistake. Those people were competent enough to become admiral in the first place, let them try again. But then, with that kind of promotion quality maybe the admirals are indeed incompetent.

[@Golden284-fan]

"BuT hUx WaS A sPy the HOLE TiMe" Those last two movies made me so sad. This video was so cathartic for me.

[@petersmythe6462]

One thing I would say, Galactica does a good job at being space fantasy combat but that does not mean it's an accurate representation of what combat in space necessarily has to look like. 1. Missiles have such thing as a no escape zone. Outside this zone a target can just run off in some direction to avoid the missile. This is determined by the Delta-V of the missile and its acceleration advantage over the target, although it assumes that the target can actually run long enough to ensure the missile misses. 2. Particularly useless missiles simply can't out-accelerate their target. We can call these missiles torpedoes. 3. Battles in deep space have two important characteristics: the relative velocity and the minimum approach distance. 4. highly maneuverable ships also have a no escape zone. That is, once within a certain distance, a slower ship with more delta-V cannot avoid the engagement. Moreover, the more maneuverable ship can largely dictate the relative velocity and minimum approach distance for the engagement once the slower ship with more dv enters its no escape zone. 5. Ships with much greater dv inherently threaten to "run down" ships that have low to moderate relative velocity and nowhere safe to go. It is pointless for a lone fighter to expend all of its fuel trying to escape from a slow capital ship with large delta-V. Instead, the fighter needs to engage the capital ship, but can decide at what speed and distance their first encounter will be, giving it an assymetrical advantage. Groups of fighters may very well be able to split up if the fight is unfavorable though. 6. If the capital ship can kill fighters at the edge of their no escape zone for it, then it can just kite them and never actually take damage. Extremely long range and lethal weaponry precludes using fighters to attack capital ships directly. 7. If the capital ship and fighter have no point defense and have the same number of missiles of equal range which can only be launched from the vessel and not put on standby floating in space, the fighter will win every time. The reason is that the fighter can set up a collision course, fire its missile within the no escape zone, and then get out of the way of any enemy missile. This is significant because it means that a slower ship with more dv always needs a way to boost its effective range. This can come in the form of webs of missiles that lead the target in all possible directions, loitering missiles that can sit thousands of km ahead, longer range missiles than the fighters get, or big capable point defense systems that conclusively negate the threat posed by a fleet of fighters missile-dumping a capital ship. 8. Missiles and diffuse missile swarms scale inefficiently because of the rocket equation, the fact that space is 3D and therefore a 2D area must be saturated to create an effective attack, and high thrust high efficiency engine technologies seem to be difficult to miniaturize. Therefore, missiles will likely be chemically fueled. I could also talk about why radioisotope thermal missiles probably will not exist since they would have to be manufactured onboard a fighter right before launch, but that leaves nuclear reactors. Simply put, nuclear reactors do not miniaturize well. It is downright rare to discuss a reactor that is under several hundred kg even without shielding, and keep in mind that a reactor to power a high TWR application needs to have very very high performance. Nuclear thermal missiles are unlikely because they will not greatly exceed to numbers or cost effectiveness of ramming the enemy with fighters. Most of the types of engines that would make ideal fighter engines rely on pretty large (tonnes or more) reactors that can reach temperatures hotter than the core's melting or even boiling point and heat their exhaust to the same incredible temperatures, or making the exhaust *BE* a running nuclear reactor that activates almost explosively upon being exhausted. If you want that 20-100 km/s delta-V range for a useful fighter to be achieved with a reasonable mass ratio and acceleration, that's how you do it. Making a missile using that stuff isn't practical. Neither of these things can be scaled down to a few kg in size while retaining high (or likely ANY) performance. Thus the dynamic is likely to be that point defense missiles have one stage with maximum 2 km/s of dV, attack missiles have 1-2 stages with 2-8 km/s of dV and are used in swarms to increase the chance a few make it through, fighters are at least 1000 times larger than missiles and have 10s of km/s of dV and still reasonable acceleration, enough to comfortably maneuver in combat, and capital ships are much larger and have some giant direct nuclear fission or fusion engine with 100s or 1000s of km/s of dV or even more but relatively poor maneuverability. It's really quite hard to know whether this will look anything like WWII combat or not. One thing is certain, dogfights shouldn't occur. But whether you get this nice analogy is not really clear. Like, turn up the effectiveness of laser point defense and capital ships become nearly invulnerable to fighters. Turn to the effectiveness of missiles and you risk fighters not being able to disengage without jeopardizing their fuel supply, thus rendering them obsolete. Eliminate speculative atomic engine designs and missiles reign supreme with an unlimited range.

[@BNOBLE981]

The main thing that bugged me was the Tie fighters engines somehow allowing them to catch up to the Resistance cruiser but the big First order ships somehow can't, especially how they made a big deal of how the First order had spent all these years biding their time creating more advanced tech than the Empire had. Yet the engines on these top of the line star destroyers aren't able to overtake or at least move into effective weapons range of a decades old ship design used by the Resistance, surely when designing warships to defeat the New Republic you would think they would make it a priority to have superior performance to their enemy's ships.

[@danielhedland5720]

Amazingly, how you described the hockey metaphor with McDavid was actually Todd McLellan's strategy against the Oilers in the playoffs. Two years in a row LMAO

[@BoomerWarfare]

The real moment the day was lost: “FIRE ON THE BASE!”

[@amplifire-]

Rian Johnson: The missiles were launched off-screen.

[@HrHaakon]

I think that in order to steelman a bit we should look at Episode 1 a bit more: These were forces that were pretty high tech and well designed, as far as anyone could tell, but who had not actually fought wars for a millennium or so. So nobody really knew how to wage war. So it's completely fine that there were screw-ups. It's easily explained in that people weren't really ready for war but did as well as they could. So even if fighters got lucky in Ep 1, that's not really an excuse two galactic scale wars later. Similarly, the reason they attacked the death star with X-wings was that they had to hit it with proton torpedoes in a specific part, to make it work. That was their only option, normally they'd not send X-wings against capital ships. Certainly not entirely operational battle stations/small moons, whichever it was. Now, two galactic scale wars later what we *should* have seen would be competent, grizzled veterans, passing on lectures on how to not screw up and die, tactics, stratagems and similar being honed, and things being quite different. You could play this up with the rebellion getting their ships from multiple shipyards across the galaxy and sometimes on the down-low having a lot more specialized classes and a more eclectic mix, and the Empire desiring more generalized capabilities so that they would have a more predictable force projection available. An ISD is an ISD, and it can solve 90% of the world's problems. The rest may or may not require *two* ISDs. They do after all have good shields, weapons, fighter wings and ground troops. They can do things. And now you have an excuse to order the tie fighters back: You're heading away from us, and they may have some help in that asteroid field. We don't know what it is, it's not worth risking you Kylo, you have to return. Stonking great job Kylo Ren, but risking you is not worth these little rodents' lives. THERE. HE HAD TO GO BACK. SOLVED. And you could use visual storytelling to explain a lot of this. Refer to the "Hodgen asteroid incident" as a reason for why he has to turn back. Have some grizzled scarred vets advising Hux about it. Show the cool and varied look of the rebels, and make it a nice visual contrast to the Empire's flotilla. It's eminently doable.

[@newdefsys]

I agree with you very much in your analysis about fighters covering capital ships. There is a lot of truth to that. But, let me add that fighters also project power. An aircraft carrier, in and of itself, is not a threat to an opponent. It is the carrier's compliment of F/A-18 Super Hornets that are the threat. The fighters press the attack and if they open up an advantage then they would be expected to exploit it, even if the risk intensifies.

[@FoxhoundAK74]

Every problem that space Chase sequence could’ve been solved by having them flying through a giant gas nebula. The rebels are getting too far away? Kylo better pull back because the fleet is starting to lose him on their scanners! Admiral holdo wants to ram their fleet? Well, golly the gas nebula has deactivated their shields! They are having trouble catching the rebels? That’s because they’re playing cat mouse in the giant gas clouds! The first order doesn’t notice the transports escaping? Well, yeah, they’re offloading at the thickest part of the nebula!

[@drakegrimm1287]

Just for the sake of argument (not defending TLJ), you missed one more way to cover. The capital ships can cover with shooting their main batteries. Without it, fighters are the sole concern of rebel ship, it can focus on them and have little impediment while aiming. Under the fire of other capital ship is an absolutely different setting: huge explosions everywhere, the power needs to go to the shields, the ship has hazards like fire or system malfunction popping up, and the accuracy is less effective altogether, when a ship is under fire. Like when there is a shootout, and s person covers their partner, this person doesn't try to intercept bullets, this person shoots at an opposiion to suppress it. To supress opposition's ability to aim and shoot at its leisure.

[@DoubleK1990]

Ok so did i get this right, what exactly do fighters..... cover? Did not really get that. Video made me chuckle, thanks.

[@flammamancer]

Whether the star fighters are covering the capital ships or the other way around depends on what kind of ships you build to make up your fleet but regardless you use the tools best suited for the task at hand so if your star fighters are destroying the enemy you keep it up. The move to fall back would have been easily fixed by adding some scenes where the Tie fighters are being shredded by rebel fighters or point defenses than falling back would have made more sense.

[@ArgentWolf95]

Learning WWII naval combat tactics and playing Empire At War (and loosely applying these tactics) is something that everyone trying to write a star wars ship battle should do if they can write one on their own. Capital ships are your central command ships, they are the main ship in the fleet, not the arcraft carrier, so these are the ships you want to deal with the other cruisers. you have the fighters to cover the bombers. Bombers go after the strategic targets (Y Wing, TIE Bomber), cruisers, capital ships, or the targets. Interceptor (A-wing, Tie Interceptor) classes are your quick response fighters. Then you have your cruisers, such as Victory Star Destroyers whivch are the smaller ones, these carry a lot of TIE fighters too, but are there to shoot at other cruisers and smaller ships. Dreadnoughts are your heavily armed ships, that would be the ship with a lot of long range guns. Super Star Destroyers or the Supremacy could be one of these. Though thwe one thing I'd say the movie side of Star Wars gets wrong is there's no gunship class, but the tartan cruiser, or the Corellian Corvette (in Episode IV) Fulfills these roles of anti-fighter gunships. Also you'd think that the First Order, supposedly making improvements on the Empire's failures, would have an interdictor class ship, bu I doubt Rian Johnson knew they existed. Now if Disney had writers who knew a lick of strategy , Last Jedi could have been a bit better. The Prequels used WWII to 1960's ship combat well.

[@gaberobison680]

That whole engagement drives me crazy. Starfigbter patrols have clearly been shown as part of rebel fleet engagement doctrine. Mom Calamari cruisers are also absurdly modular and designed with incredibly redundancy so the idea that their air wing could be so easily crippled is stupid. It’s also extremely clear that one way shields exist so the attack on the hangar isn’t feasible in of itself. Not too mention the vast superiority of the X-Wing series over Sienar’s TIE’s. The writing of this film defied both lore and good writing conventions by introducing inconsistencies that’s deuce the believability of each sides threat potential

[@TheJudge1933]

I dont think Ruin Johnson took his job very seriously

[@Milo-id9qd]

Ladies and gentlemen .... Rian Johnson in all his glory, the 'i am not that good at world building' guy (actual answer in interview was that he was interested in story drama and not world building because that is what will keep ppl watching). Star Wars and all sci-fi series, are all about world building, about immersing you and keeping you in that.

[@SammEater]

Also, originally I thought the movie was setting up for Holdo to be a First Order spy, because there was no way her stupid decisions were made with another intention but self sabotage.

[@freman007]

After reading Ender's War I could never look at space combat the same way.

[@ButchersNailsEnjoyer]

You can even apply this in the real world cuz there’s a tabletop game called star wars armada that focuses on capital ship warfare. Fighters are a nuisance in it, especially bombers so you deploy your own fighters to intercept them. Ive played games where i dont run any fighters whatsoever and it doesn’t work very well as you have to worry about enemy fighters and enemy capital ships. Trying last jedi logic will either result in your fighters being completely shot down from being intercepted or just enemy AA guns or your ships being chipped away by both ship classes. It’s simple: capital ships engage each other, bombers are sent to do additional damage, enemies launch interceptors to counter bombers, you run and escort of fighters to protect your bombers. Capital ships covering your fighters leaves them vulnerable to enemy capital ships hence why you launch fighters since they’re their own unit

[@parcirecords]

i think in the original version they wanted to make kylo make that decision because he feels guilty but then wanted to make him the tough guy and hux the traitor and so they changed it..

[@escapegoat8704]

This makes a lot of sense. Do you have a source by any chance? But even in this case, they would have had to re-shoot / re-edit some of Kylo's dialogue. At the very least they should have done the same with Hux so that his logic in this scene made sense.

[@parcirecords]

@@escapegoat8704 not a source just a feeling at the end of the force awaken there was a struggle with him and letting his loved ones go.. he killed his father, but In the second movie the scene he also senses his mother and doesn't shoot (I don't remember exactly if it is in that sequence or later on.. but he hesitates at shooting his mother and enough another pilot has to finish it..) so in that moment he could give the order to return .. giving hux enough ammo too question his loyalty.. but instead and yes it was in the third movie he betrayed the first order but that could already started in the second film storyline.. he hated kylo from the beginning. And he is the weak link not hux from the beginning never really evil enough...

[@lVideoWatcherl]

@Parci Records This doesn't make sense. Even if Kylo would give the order, there is no way for him to enforce not having a huge number of _other_ fighters be launched and attack the Resistence. Hux could just, on his retreat, order hundreds of others to attack. But the explanation of Hux being a traitor also doesn't work with what we see, because in that moment it has to be _obvious_ to all but the most incompetent and stupid that Hux gives either an obviously tactically dumb or suspiciously self-defeating order. Just scrambling more fighters _will_ kill the Resistence there. In order for the movie to convincingly portray Hux as the traitor he supposedly is, you'd have to have a scene where he has to explain his order/insist on his rank to one or even _multiple_ other officers in the FO who question his order. But none of them _do_ question him. They all seem to think this is a sensible order for an officer to give. This means that the order is implied to be deemed sensible by the script, again undermining the traitor explanation. Nevermind the fact that the traitor explanation does not work in the slightest, anyway. It's pretty obvious that it was shoehorned in to make a feeble attempt at explaining the FO's incompetence retroactively, but as with the entirety of these three disney Star Wars episodes, it does not work.

[@parcirecords]

@@lVideoWatcherl do you really think when Ren gives you an order .. you will not do it?? maybe for minute it was a good idea . but hux is a snake.. and he didn't like to get force choked... the fact that HUX gave the order only makes sense if the starships/ airplanes don't have enough fuel.. plus Hux was loyal to snoke not REN. so the fact that he gave the order.. at that point in time sets him up to be a traitor (for REN ) and at the end snoke dies... and so the loyalty too. while in the first movie it was actually Ren that had the trouble.. to be really evil .. and the original setup was that Ren gives the order so the divide is still visible.. star wars did that a few times already in it's story line.. like vader giving permission to land on endor even though he knew luke was on board... also it was always the idea to let Ren become a solo again..

[@lVideoWatcherl]

@@parcirecords I'm sorry, but your comment is really not written in an understandable manner. Perhaps try to clean up and write it a bit more clearly?

[@Evelyn-qt3hi]

Not to mention, the Empire and First Order both would have practically zero care for their cannon fodder. They would happily send dozens of fighters out to take out or heavily damage a target on complete suicide missions if need be. They wouldn't go "oh we don't wanna risk having four TIE Fighters destroyed, better come back". MAYBE they'd have Kylo return since he's more high value, but there should be like 100 other fighters of cannon fodder ready to go and shred the resistance fleet.

[@matiasyannuzzi9655]

I enjoyed TLJ overall, but I agree that Hux's reason for ordering Kylo's squadron to pull back was nonsense. It could have been fixed with anti-fighter missiles being shot out from the Resistance ships, or fighter wings coming out from the other hangars in the Raddus and shooting down one of Kylo's escort fighters, or anything.

[@aquapendulum]

I mean, depending on the given technologies of the fiction's universe, bigger ships CAN cover for smaller ships. For example: ships from frigate class and above in FreeSpace (video game series) have a particular type of turret: precision beam. They are a pillars of light that fire in short pulses and then they need to charge up after about 4 consecutive pulses. They are laser-accurate. So accurate that they can even intercept torpedoes launched by bombers. Because of that trait, they also double as anti-fighter weapons. Because of their accurate nature and the fact that they fire in short pulses, friendly fire against ally fighters is almost non-existent. Maybe it can happen if the beam turret, enemy fighter and friendly fighter happen to align in a straight line (in that order) at the time of the pulse, then friendly fire can happen, but repeated friendly fire with the next pulse is near impossible because anti-fighter beams would throw off the controls of fighters in an unpredictable angle, causing the turret and 2 fighters to immediately misalign when the next pulse happens. But of course, anti-fighter beams that behave in that specific way has never been introduced in Star Wars so TLJ still made a faux pas in visual storytelling.

[@scottthewaterwarrior]

The reason 4 fighters were able to destroy the hanger and bridge so easily was because the rebel ship had the shields to full rear and the fighters attacked the unprotected front. Therefor the fighters couldn't have taken out the engines but still they could just keep hammering away at the front of the ship, maybe destroying the secondary bridge as well. Even if the rebels had fighters/missiles, the "We can't cover you at this distance" wouldn't make much sense as the capital ships wouldn't be able to engage them with point defense weaponry without endangering their own fighters in the crossfire. Also keeping full rear shields was an unbelievable tactical blunder on the part of Ackbar once enemy fighters were launched. I could see the empire making such a mistake, especially early on as they didn't consider fighters much of a threat, but the rebels should know better!

[@andrewshandle]

All three of these movies are filled with so many unforced errors and blundering by the First Order, you have to wonder how they didn't accidentally destroy themselves _long_ before Episode 7.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

It seems the entire galaxy is full of people who can't build a stable government. The Empire somehow deleted itself within a day after the two leaders were gone. The New Republic somehow deleted itself after the senate was gone. The First Order somehow deleted itself after the leaders were gone. The closest to a stable government was the Old Republic, and they quite literally fell for the same trick as germany in 1933

[@Schnittertm1]

This is a very good video, that does mention some of the main problems with especially this movie, not understanding small spacecraft like fighters and bombers. What's more, they don't understand why the fighters work the way they do in Star Wars. George Lucas specifically made them behave more like WW2 propellor driven fighters in combat, as he really liked to see dogfights in space. This led to prominence in the use of fightercraft. From this, one has to extrapolate that every high ranking military commander of a warship in this universe knows and understands this. Even more so, since the biggest mass produced ships, like the Star Destroyers and Mon Calamari Cruisers are, more or less, hybrid battleship and aircraft carriers. The BSG Battlestars also follow this design philosophy, i.e. hybrid carrier and battleship. Which brings us to The Last Jedi. They didn't just choose to lose during the chase, they chose to do so right in the first battle. They knew roughly what they were up against, meaning a MC Cruiser and some smaller support ships and their fighters. Therefore, once all four ships of this strike group came out of Hyperspace, at least half of them should have launched their fighters. Their mission was to stop the Rebe.... sorry, Resistance right then and there, by any means possible. The Dreadnaught should also have fired at the Raddus, the most dangerous ship in the enemy fleet and not on the base on the planet. Most planets are not known for their ability to go to hyperspace, space ships are. This alone could have created an entirely different dynamic in this first space battle in the movie. The Resistance would have had to chose between fleeing right there, in view of a superior force or to delay fleeing to get as many people on board as possible. The tension could have been heightened even more, if the Resistance had to wait for a few important pieces of equipment to be transfered to the ships, that would be needed in the future. You could then have fighter screens battling it out in space and over the base. You could have the escort ships of the Raddus move into positions to sacrifice themselves to stop shots from the Dreadnaught. You even could have a bombing run at the Dreadnaught, with a significant loss of the Star Fortresses (which should be changed to be a bit more durable, akin to their real world inspiration in the form of the B-17), that disables the cannon and damages its hyperdrive, but doesn't kill it outright. There'd be lots of chances for heroics and for characters to shine. What did we get in the end? Incompetent commanders on both sides, your mom joke calls and the humiliation of both the commander of the FO fleet and of the commander of the fighter force aboard the Raddus. Disappointing to say the least. It certainly did show that Ryan Johnson goes for visual spectacle and jokes over substance and logic, and does not understand military tactics, command structure and space combat at all. Then again, he does understand how to humiliate almost all of the male characters in the movie and how to "subvert expectations".

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

If he really wanted to subvert expectations he should've let the First Order win.

[@JahJah-CleverHandle]

The best part about the First Order destroying the New Republic is that the *entire* Republic fleet just so happened to be there. The Sequels suck at realistically depicting how the First Order would do anything. The first Order is woefully underequiped, doesn’t have the manpower, and they just blew up the seat of governance and bureaucracy of the galaxy. I’m so confused, what were they planning to do? Hope that everyone would be like “Oh no, I guess we’ll just submit to you, even though you can’t garrison the entire new empire you have.”

[@owenosborne8543]

Another supporting arguemnt: Besides Kylo, why would the First Order care about the coverage of a few tie pilots? Any First Order sympathetic pilot would jump at the chance to sacrifice themselves to defend their beloved order. Very good video

[@lordcringe4227]

In clone wars there is a episode where they postion a already destroyed cruiser as cover to launch bombers. they only do this after having their own fighters destroyed so they improvise with bombers who arent normaly used in space combat

[@tsarfox3462]

Let's also bring up that every ship but, the Supremacy could catch up with the Resistance fleet but "stayed back to cover it". What exactly does that need cover from? What do any of them need cover from? The Rebel ships with zero fighter cover and no ammo? "Fall back Kylo we can't cover you from all the nothing" A fleet that's out of fuel and would need to go through the other Star Destroyers to get near the heavily armored flag ship? And if you're that concerned send a handful of the escorts ahead with bombers and fighters to pick off all the Resistance capital ships. They would have to try to lose and they basically did. To call the First Order inept is an understatement.

[@MrZombiekiller23]

I am surprised you didn't focus more on Rogue one's space AND land battle which turned out really good, imho

[@MfSDD]

The only cover I can imagine is if the capital ships were to cover by destroying smaller vessles that are supposed to destroy fighters, like the Corellian ships (for example Tantive 4 new hope) but I dont see any of those in the battle...

[@derworfnet]

They snatched defeat from the Jaws of Victory.