Rafael Motamayor on Holdo and Poe’s story in The Last Jedi (major spoilers follow)…
In a development that should surprise no one, the latest Star Wars turned out to cause controversy among fans. Really, not a single movie since the original 1977 space opera has managed to avoid backlash. Fans have complained about every aspect of the movie, going so far as to sign petitions ranging from making Rian Johnson apologize for the film, to completely remove it from canon. The initial backlash has given way to backlash against that backlash, which brings me to this, trying to defend the most underrated sub-plots in a movie that came out a week ago.
Do I really need to say it? I’m going to spoil the shit out of this movie, so come back after you have seen it.
One of the complains I hear the most is that Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern) should have just shared her plans with ace-pilot and former Commander Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), instead of forcing him to make plans of his own that resulted in the obliteration of most of the Resistance. It would be easy to just answer with “if she had done that, there would be no movie”. But instead I’m going to look at the themes of the film and why it makes sense for Holdo to act that way.
Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? In the opening scene of The Last Jedi we see young hot-headed Poe mercilessly taunting The First Order’s General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) to gain enough time for the Resistance to evacuate their base. The evacuation is a success and General Leia (Carrie Fisher) orders Poe to join the others. Instead, the impulsive pilot decides he simply can’t miss a chance to maybe take down one of possibly hundreds of ships in the bad guys’ fleet. We cheer for him because we want to see an epic space battle and we want the bad guys to blow up, and because Poe is the same archetypical hero we’ve followed for the last 7 films: impulsive, sure of himself and young – but The Last Jedi turns our expectations of triumph upside-down, the young hero’s plan fails, and the Resistance loses their bombing fleet.
Throughout the film, Rian Johnson explores the idea of generational conflict, in old characters wrestling with the younger characters for power. Something Mark Hamill said during the press tour for The Last Jedi summarises everything Rian Johnson tries to do with the movie. In an interview with /Film, Hamill said he took inspirations from the way his generation failed in their promise to end war and famine, “Arguably the world is worse now than it was in the ‘60s and early 70’s”. Luke was that “flower power”-guy who, after seeing how he failed to make the galaxy a better place, went into exile and now refuses to help fix his own mistakes.
Honestly, if you think about it, none of the legacy characters are better off than when we last saw them at the end of Return of the Jedi. Leia is still fighting a losing battle, every day with fewer supporters, and with an evil, murderous son. Han didn’t change much before The Force Awakens, which is sad in its own right, and ended up murdered by his son. Chewbacca is now alone without Han, and can’t even eat his damn roasted porg in peace! R2 has pretty much been deactivated during most of the new trilogy. As for Luke, he feels like a failure, and he don’t do anything to fix it. He’s become part of the status quo, and it is up to the new generation to change things. We see this reflected in Rey taking up the mantle of the last Jedi, in Poe being groomed into the possible new leader of the Rebellion, and even in Kylo Ren killing his master – an old guy in a golden robe – and declaring that everything old has to die.
Going back to Poe, it’s all about the dynamic of power-struggle between generations. We see this after the rebels manage to blow up a dreadnought and Leia slaps Poe and demotes him for having disobeyed direct orders. Poe argues it was worth it since they took out a big ship, and the people they lost were heroes. Poe is the typical millennial who thinks he can fix what’s wrong with the world without consequence or effort. All his ideas involve blowing stuff up and ask questions later. Because he’s our protagonist, we side with him and agree with his plans, and therefore Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo is made to seem like an incompetent leader – because she stands in the way of our hero. This also resonates with the Rey/Luke and Kylo/Snoke dynamic of the older generation being condescending and thinking they know best. We obviously want Luke to join the rebels and train Rey, but he has good reasons not to.
When Holdo refuses to share her plan with Poe and just orders him to go back to his post, we immediately side with him and want Holdo to be removed. If only she had shared her plans, Rose and Finn wouldn’t have needed to go look for a master codebreaker and eventually got half of the Resistance killed. Holdo serves the old trope of the withholding, frank, and stubborn commander in chief found in countless movies. She could share her plan with Poe, but to her he is an out-of-line soldier who should just quietly and obediently listen to his superior officer. She doesn’t even consider the damage not sharing any information could do, because she thinks just because she’s older and with a higher rank, everything should listen to her without complaining.
Was it a huge mistake? Absolutely, but that’s what The Last Jedi is about. For the first time since the idiot Qui-Gon decided to take an orphan slave as his apprentice, we see Star Wars characters making mistakes – and more importantly, those mistakes have consequence. When you think about it, did any of the main characters in the original trilogy make a mistake? Even when Luke abandoned his training and fell into Vader’s trap, it didn’t cause any other damage than the loss of his hand. Han was already frozen in carbonite, and Lando was already helping Chewie and Leia escape. The only thing that changed by Luke going to Bespin was Vader telling him in person that they’re related. In Return of the Jedi Luke’s plan to save Han from Jabba didn’t go exactly as planned, but they did end up saving him and killing a disgusting mobster in the process.
The Last Jedi instead shows us how mistakes can end up with huge consequences, from Luke creating a new Vader, to Poe causing the loss of the rebel’s bombing fleet, to Holdo’s withdrawal of information indirectly causing half the transports to be destroyed. We see the folly of the younger generation in believing they are invincible but having all their plans fail. Ultimately, it is only through the sacrifice of old characters that they survive (Luke, Holdo). At the same time, it is because these older characters think so highly of themselves and alienate the younger characters that cause all the failures in the film.
With The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson shows off how all generations think they are the only ones that can make the world a better place and thinking that way prevents them from communicating and finding an actual solution. Just as Poe made a mistake that resulted in the loss of the bomber ships, so did Holdo make a mistake that indirectly resulted in The First Order finding out their plans and blowing up half their transports. The Star Wars franchise has always reflected the real world, and this one seems to tell us that the only way forward is to stop creating barriers between generations.
Rafael Motamayor
Originally published December 22, 2017. Updated December 23, 2017.
