Re: Kathleen Kennedy to step down from Lucasfilm?
Agreed. In fact, was the "limited fuel" thing even necessary from a dramatic standpoint in the first place? The conceit was "they can track us through lightspeed" - so the result (wherever we jump, no matter how often we jump,. the FO will always be there) would be the same even with unlimited jumps and unlimited fuel. What am I forgetting? What did the "we only have fuel for one more jump" add?
M
To my recollection, it wasn't "fuel enough for one more jump." It was "enough fuel to run at sublight for 18 more hours." It created a ticking clock for Finn and his mission to break the hyperspace tracker. The hyperspace issue was that it didn't matter where they jumped, they'd be tracked anyway. If there was a fuel shortage for the hyperspace jump, too, that only makes it more critical to disable the tracker quickly.
It added a plot hole.
Where were they going with so little fuel? If. Crait was the destination, why drop out of hyperspace so far from the planet?
Alternatively, If they could make it to a new base with one more hyperspace jump, even with the FO in pursuit, it would have been better than sitting around and being picked off one by one.
I don't see this as a "plot hole" but rather as something that...isn't really explained. A plot hole goes against the internally established logic of the story. That's different from an unanswered or unclear question (which is a different kind of problem). It's like saying that it's a "plot hole" that Han gets to Bespin from the Hoth asteroid belt too fast or something. It's not a plot hole. It's just that we have no idea how fast he traveled, how fuel gets used, or how far away Bespin is from Hoth. We have a lot of unanswered questions, but they don't go against the internal logic of the storyline because the storyline hasn't established any internal logic about that stuff.
A plot hole would be more like...it's explicitly stated in a film that Iron Man's suit filters in air from all around him, so it doesn't need a bulky internal air supply...and then he flies into space with it and nobody ever explains how the hell he's breathing while in space when it's already stated he has no internal air supply. But that's different from him breathing fine underwater in Scene A, and then saying "I only have 1 hour of air left in the suit!" later when he's in space in Scene B.
In other words, nothing in the Star Wars films has ever
directly contradicted the notion of there being limited fuel, and there was nothing in TLJ that explicitly stated "Ok, we've loaded the Raddus with 3 weeks worth of fuel, which should be enough to get us to the secret base," and then later, out of nowhere, "OH NO!! WE'RE OUT OF FUEL!!" What the hell?! You had 3 weeks worth! Where did it all go?! That would be a plot hole.
I don't see any fuel issues. Look at how blasters behave. In the films they never run out of energy. But in most games they run out or overheat. And fuel has always been around. Bespin/ Cloud City for instance is where tibanna gas was collected. The idea that Resistance has so little resources, it makes me think that they are worse off then the Rebellion was.
Right, I'm saying that, yes, fuel does seem to exist in some sense in the Star Wars universe, but its existence is ultimately meaningless to the story. It never plays a story role at all until TLJ. Nobody ever reloads a blaster in the middle of a firefight, there's never any other mention of running out of fuel (e.g. Han's trip from the asteroid belt outside Hoth to Bespin at presumably sublight speeds), etc. Sometimes ship components are damaged, but there's never any concern about leaking fuel or whathaveyou. Basically, fuel and the concept of limited resources lies in the background of the Star Wars universe, if it exists at all.
I should note that I'm speaking almost entirely about the films, but I suppose this would also include almost every episode of the two Filioni cartoons that I've seen. Fuel or limited supplies of it come more into play in gaming mechanics (e.g., the West End Games RPG, various video games, etc.) and are then done as a balancing mechanism or to introduce some other kind of dramatic tension. In the films, though, fuel appears to be...not an issue for anyone. You have enough, you can fly anywhere, shoot indefinitely, etc. Reloading and refueling basically aren't a thing in the films, so the concept of "Oh no! What if we run out of fuel?!" feels foreign to the setting on film.
TLJ definitely introduces this concept as a means of creating dramatic tension. If the Resistance can't shake off its pursuers in 18 hours one way or another, they will run out of fuel and be blasted out of the sky! Tension!!! But it's a kind of tension that's never been an issue before in the Star Wars cinematic universe, or at least if it has, it hasn't been in this sense.
It's not that it's a plot hole, as I described above, as much as it feels like a contrivance to introduce a ticking clock and manufacture tension. But it's a ticking clock that feels...inauthentic to the universe in which these films exist. Again, it's not that you
can't have fuel shortages. But rather that the
idea of fuel shortages has never come up and you would have expected it to, given the events of previous films. It just feels jarring, like it would if, for example, Orson Krennic was aiming his blaster at Jyn Erso, who has just fallen on her back, and then suddenly -- click! -- nothing happens and he shouts "Curses! Out of ammunition!" Not a plot hole, but it'd feel fairly contrived, given that literally nobody has ever reloaded or had to cool down an overheating blaster in any Star Wars film ever. Or if a bunch of pinned down rebels started saying "We only have about 4 shots left! What'll we do?!?!" That, too, would feel...inauthentic and contrived, given what we've seen blasters do in every other film. It's not that it's impossible for the situation to exist, but rather that it feels like it's being introduced in an inorganic fashion, solely to create dramatic tension, when other approaches could be taken that would fit with what's been established better.
Don't ever think it was stated or implied that Crait was the destination. Crait just happened to be the planet that was close by where the left lightspeed, and the closest place they could land the shuttles (and it coincidentally held a prior rebel base, making the journey there by shuttle offer at least some hope that they would find shelter, which was better than waiting to be shot out of the sky). I think the plan was (like in ESB) to rendezvous in deep space, then go proceed to (or, in TLJ, find) a new base.
M
Yeah, it's not clear in the film that they're definitely going to Crait. I don't recall them saying one way or the other.