- Star Wars Disney Plus shows should move away from Jedi-centric stories and explore other aspects of the Star Wars universe
- Andor is a successful example of a Star Wars show without Jedi, focusing on the Empire’s control and morally gray characters
- Suggestions for new Star Wars show ideas include Pod Racing, Jawa Storage Wars, and One Man and His Droid, among others
This is a classic example of the Cinema Sins school of criticism that has completely rotted our collective ability to actually engage with art on an intellectual level; identify something that feels incongruous to you, label it as a “plot hole” and mark up one point in the “sins” tally. Rinse, repeat. Many sins = bad movie.
And I’m sorry but this is a terrible way to approach media, and one that will destroy your enjoyment of a lot of truly excellent art.
Also, if you took “hierarchies are important” as being the message of the movie, you really, really didn’t get it, because it’s literally saying the exact opposite. But that’s a whole other discussion.
Your biggest complaint here seems to be that in your opinion Rian hates Star Wars. Which is very much missing the point of the argument you dove into here. First off, I don’t agree; I think he hates what Star Wars is, and loves what it could be. Hence his herculean effort to steer the ship in a new direction. But even supposing that you were right, and that his goal was just to burn Star Wars to the ground… That would still be a movie that deserves to exist. Hatred is passion. You have to care about something to hate it. Frankly, a movie created by someone who truly hated Star Wars would be a very interesting thing to see, because I’d be curious as to why they hate Star Wars and what they hate so much about it that they would invest that much energy in tearing it down. But that’s not what this is. You don’t write and film moments like Luke’s goodbye to Leia for a story you hate. It’s a movie that’s made out of love, but the kind of love that fuels an intervention. It’s a movie that wants Star Wars to be a very different thing to what it’s become. You don’t have to agree with or like Rian’s vision, but it’s clear that he has a vision, and it’s one that he deeply cares about.
I can’t agree that lazy writing is something that needs to be overlooked in excellent art. Writing is an important part of storytelling media and excellent writing is a part of excellent art IMO.
And no, that wasn’t the message of the movie, but it was a message of the movie, though tbf I can’t tell if it was trying to communicate that the mistake was Holdo refusing to communicate her plan or Poe refusing to just sit back and follow orders.
Hating what it is is the same as hating it, even with a belief that it can be changed for the better. I think he was trying to change it rather than just burn it to the ground but I also think that people who love someone but think they need to change don’t actually love them but instead love a different idea of them that they aren’t.
Maybe he did have passion for what he was doing, but he either didn’t respect what it was or didn’t understand it.