Abrams Sets Up the Third Act of A New Hope

Before Kylo finds Rey gone, he goes to meet up with Snoke to tell him that Rey is Force-sensitive and very powerful. Then Hux enters the scene and says that Kylo decided Rey was all they needed to gain access to the map, so Kylo abandoned the droid.

Fortunately, Hux just so happened to stumble onto a random reconnaissance ship that was heading to the Resistance’s base, so now the First Order knows where the Resistance is. They can destroy the Resistance and the droid carrying the map all in one go. That was . . . lucky.

Snoke does the obvious thing: tells Hux to destroy the Resistance and tells Kylo to bring Rey to him. Both men leave Snoke to follow their orders, Kylo finds Rey gone, and throws his fit.

Oh, and by the way, there was something I didn’t mention last time, but upon watching one of Mauler’s reviews again, he points out that, although Starkiller Base was supposed to be built in secret, the Resistance already has a map of it. How? It’s just one more detail. Abrams wants the same story beats but refuses to adequately set up the chain of events needed to make the story beats happen or matter in any way.

This detail is something so obvious; I’m a little annoyed at missing it, but it goes to show just how much is wrong with the scene depicting Finn’s arrival at the Resistance base. The scene is about five minutes tops, but so much goes wrong so quickly, it’s absurdly difficult to catch all of it. I find this amazing in the worst possible way.

Now, when it comes to the third act of this film, everything moves just as quickly. The first thing to point out is that Abrams has now set everything up to be a beat-for-beat repeat of A New Hope, but there is already a glaring problem when it comes to the stakes of the plot.

The First Order has found the Resistance and is charging up their weapon to fire. Han and Chewie are sneaking Finn onto the base, while Poe and the Resistance fleet, such as it is, will be flying to the base to destroy the device stabilizing the planet as it eats a sun. But the act of eating a sun takes time, so in the same way the Death Star had to move into position before it could destroy the Rebellion hidden on a moon, the Starkiller Base has to finish charging its weapon before it can fire. In both cases, the story has set up a ticking clock, but here’s the thing.

The clock allows both the Rebellion and the Resistance time to flee. The Republic supposedly didn’t have time to flee because the First Order’s attack was a surprise, but the Resistance knows what the First Order is about to do, so arguably they have time to be moving ships off their base before the First Order fires.

The Rebellion was in a similar situation, but if such an evacuation was taking place, it was happening off screen; however, The Last Jedi retroactively creates a plot hole for this movie because it confirms that no such evacuation happened. The entire Resistance remains on the base. It doesn’t even attempt an evacuation. Why? This is odd, especially when one considers the fact that Leia had been in this exact situation before, and common sense would suggest that an evacuation would’ve at least been attempted the first time, so why isn’t she ordering her people to flee now?

They’re going to have to anyway, since the First Order now knows where they are hiding, so success or failure will both require the same evacuation. Again, same story beats, no thought being given to the setup.

When Han, Finn, and Chewie arrive, Finn explains that he is only a janitor and basically admits to lying when he claimed that he knew how to shut down the shields. The trio’s solution to this is to capture Captain Phasma and have her shut down the shields. She does, so the fight begins. The next step after this is to find Rey.

They essentially stumble across her while Finn is trying to form a plan. Now, it’s one thing to find a prisoner like Leia in a cell, and it’s another thing to come across Obi-Wan fighting Darth Vader when all the parties are heading toward the same place, but to find Rey on a space station the size of a planet when neither party knows where the other is and they are all heading in random directions with different purposes is just ridiculous. There’s no way they should’ve simply found her running around the base.

The moment they reunite is endearing, so I’ll give the movie that. But as they begin their return to the Falcon, they realize that the fleet is still having trouble breaking through the doors leading to the device that will destroy the planet. So, Han, Chewie, Finn, and Rey, decide to use the bombs Han has brought to blow a hole in the door.

Finn and Rey head to one section of the base to disable all the needed doors, and Han and Chewie begin adding the bombs. There has been some criticism over Rey knowing how to do this, but I do believe the movie covers itself on this point. Finn says he was a janitor on the base, so he should know where the needed maintenance areas are located, and Rey has been shown to know how to take apart Empire-era spacecraft.

Between her prior knowledge and what we know regarding the Force’s ability to create advanced intuition when it comes to technology, I’m willing to say this isn’t really good, and it may push the realm of believability, but it is fair. I don’t believe the movie is breaking any rules on this point.

But what happened next was something of an omen for the rest of the trilogy. This would be the death of Han Solo, which I plan to discuss in the next review.