Planet of the Apes – The Problem with Communication

Planet of the Apes is a sci-fi classic from 1968 starring Hollywood legend Charlton Heston. In the film, Heston plays George Taylor, an astronaut who crashes on a mysterious and distant planet where apes rule and humans are little more than cattle. The shocking reveal being that this is not a distant alien world, but Earth in the future.

The Plot Hole: Language – Taylor has no problem communicating with the apes as they all speak English and not only English but the exact same dialect. Their written communication is also the same. Given how much language can change in just a hundred years it’s inconceivable that after all this time and the evolution of apes that they would be able to communicate so easily. This is true in many sci-fi films where people can converse easily. The film Arrival is essentially about overcoming that almost insurmountable problem.

Cabin In The Woods – I Thought You Were Dead!

A horror/scifi/genre mashup Cabin In The Woods is a post-modern take on horror films where many of the curious behaviours of people in horror movies are explained. Why are people so stupid? They’re drugged. Why do they abandon weapons? They are given mild electric shocks to drop them. Ultimately we learn that the typical horror scenarios are just setups, elaborate ritual human sacrifices to stop ancient gods from destroying the world.

The Plot Hole(s) In the scenario playing out in the film there are five victims all archetypes: the athlete, the scholar, the whore, the fool and the virgin. We see them get picked off one by one until only Dana – the virgin – is left. But we then learn that Marty – the fool – is not dead as had previously been suggested. Given that each death is accompanied by a lever where blood pours down to the ancient gods – how was there any confusion about this? The second one is the organisation behind all this boasts that they have an excellent success rate, but most horror films end with the monster losing.

Back To The Future Part II – Time Travel Troubles

A spectacular sci-fi film of time travelling adventure this sequel builds on the original by going to the future. When Marty and Doc are visiting the future their perennial nemesis Biff steals the time machine to go back to the 1950s, giving the younger version of himself a sports almanack, allowing him to always win when betting on sports. When Marty and Doc return to their time they are in a very different Hill Valley, destroyed by crime and ran by the incredibly rich Biff. Marty’s father is dead (murdered by Biff), his mother remarried to Biff and Doc has been institutionalised.

The Plot Hole When they return to their present are there now two Martys and two Docs? Doc is in a hospital and Marty is in Switzerland but they’re now also in Hill Valley – do these doubles still exist in their respective locations? Or were they deleted when Marty and Doc returned? Also, of course, changing time is not some trivial thing, when Biff did this the whole world changed, people were born who didn’t exist in the “original” timeline and when they put it back these people no longer exist. While Marty and Doc are on the sharp end of the timeline many people will have had better lives, are they right to change that?

The Last Jedi – That Was Quick

The Last Jedi is an odd film, part brilliant, part not-so-brilliant, but there are a number of plot holes in this film. Most of the film takes place with the First Order fleet pursuing the Resistance fleet whilst various characters try to devise plans to escape their enemy.

The Plot Hole – Where to start…but sticking to just one. Finn and Rose slip away from the Resistance fleet, travel to the city of Canto Bight on Cantonica, get involved in all manner of shenanigans, rescue a prisoner, get back and this chase is still going on and only a few hours seem to have passed. This already seems implausible as space is really big and travelling across it takes a long time but after a little bit of research into the Star Wars canon shows D’Qar and Cantonica are seemingly on opposite ends of the galaxy. An appropriate comparison might be if involved in a car chase in America one person gets out of the car, travels to India, comes back and gets back and the chase is still going on.

Alien – An Overly Elaborate Plan

Generally accepted to be one of the greatest films of all time Alien is the story of a commercial spaceship that stumbles across an alien lifeform that promptly wipes out most of the crew, with Ripley and the ship’s cat being the only survivors. It is revealed it was no accident that the ship came across the alien, with Weyland-Yutani engineering the situation and planting the synthetic Ash to make sure the mission is successful.

The Plot Hole – Weyland-Yutani seem very well aware of just how dangerous the alien creature is. They also know where it is and yet their plan revolves around a seven-person crew of a civilian ship with no weapons managing to transport the alien. There are so many things that could have gone wrong with this plan – from the crew simply refusing to investigate, to the crew following better procedures to ensure no crewmember is infected and/or brought back on board (this is a moment where Ash intervenes, Ripley tries to enforce quarantine but Ash opens the door). The real question is why Weyland-Yutani, an organisation of seemingly endless resources, couldn’t commission a specialist team to retrieve the creature. It would have been simpler and far more likely to succeed. Aliens carries on some of the bizarre decisions of this company who when the Nostromo didn’t return seem to have simply forgotten all about the aliens to the extent they colonised the planet!

Also Read: The Best Sci-Fi Films of the Decade (2010 – 2019)

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What’s Going On?

Kylo Ren has seized control of the First Order and brought its military might to crush the Resistance, who are all but defenceless. Seemingly all is lost until the legendary Luke Skywalker appears amongst them, last seen on the other side of the galaxy, living as a recluse. He goes out to face the First Order alone to give the Resistance time to escape. Upon seeing Skywalker, Ren orders a barrage of fire that should reduce Skywalker to a pile of ash. But as the dust settles Skywalker remains unhurt so Ren goes to challenge him in a light sabre duel. Throughout the brief duel, Skywalker refuses to strike Ren, instead dodging his blows until eventually, Ren plunges his light sabre into Skywalker. Again, to no effect. This is merely an illusion, Skywalker remains on his secluded planet, using the Force to project himself across space. But so great is the effort in doing this it causes Skywalker’s death. While this is going on the Resistance are escaping in the Millennium Falcon, but that’s not the iconic part of this scene.

Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi Craves Not These Things

When Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda talk about the Jedi to Luke they often come back to ideas of peace and justice, not adventure or glory, yet most of the films have seen the Jedi fighting and killing, even becoming generals in war. This is not terribly peaceful. As we learn Luke Skywalker had already tried violence, going to kill Kylo Ren (or Ben Solo as he was then known), and that failed, indeed, that set Kylo Ren off on his dark path. Luke failed his student and nephew. He uses this opportunity not to fight Ren but to talk to him. He won’t make the mistake of his past and he won’t do what Ren did, striking down people once close to him. This to how a Jedi should be, not charging into battle, but stopping the battle. Luke has seen this play out before – Obi-Wan taught his father, Anakin turned evil and in the end, Obi-Wan let Darth Vader kill him. When Luke faced Palpatine on the Death Star he was resolved not to fight, understanding that to give in to violence would not lead to any kind of victory.

The Rage of Kylo Ren

Kylo Ren is defeated because of his inability to control his anger. He’d brought an army to deal with the Resistance and there was no reason for him to face Luke in one on one combat but he wanted to beat him. Ren identifies with Darth Vader more than Luke and presumably would see defeating and killing Luke as not only getting revenge but taking his place as the most powerful Force user. By the time Ren realises this is an illusion and marches his soldiers in the Resistance has escaped. Everything about Ren’s fighting style and manner show us his recklessness, how he is just anger unleashed, wild swings of his light sabre and screaming at people, whereas Luke is almost blase about the whole thing. To compare Ren with Vader, the latter always seemed more in control, even when Force-choking admirals. I think Ren is still very much dealing with the betrayals and trauma he’s suffered (much of this self-inflicted), this isn’t just war and politics, he’s upset with Luke. This is Anakin Skywalker of the prequels, violent, unpredictable, emotional, demanding respect and quick to anger.

An Epic Setting

The scene looks amazing. The stark landscape outside this last base, the salt that covers the ground and when disturbed reveals the red beneath, the barrage of fire unleashed against Skywalker that throws up great plumes of red dust and smoke. They fight against the backdrop of the rows of AT-ATs behind Ren and the smouldering base behind Luke, making it look as epic as any fight scene I’ve ever seen. The reveal of the blood-red dirt as Ren slices through Luke only to realise there is no blood as Luke isn’t really there is spectacular (note for pedants: I know light sabre wounds generally don’t bleed as the heat of the blade cauterizes the wound). Ren also gets points for shrugging his cloak off in an awesome way and to make things equal Luke brushes some dirt off his shoulder after being shot 1000 times so both look pretty cool.

This is one of my favourite scenes in Star Wars. It showed a tremendous journey for Luke Skywalker – from the boy on Tatooine, to the Jedi Knight who destroyed the Empire, the Jedi Master who failed his student and nephew and finally giving up his life and winning a fight without fighting. Skywalker’s life wasn’t a simple trajectory of growing power and success, he had faltered, he made mistakes, and he had learned from these.

Also Read: Beyond The Mandalorian: Expanding The Star Wars Universe

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What Is Review Bombing?

While it happens in various mediums, we’ll stick to films…review bombing is when online review sites receive a huge number of negative reviews with the intention of not providing a review for the film but actively dragging down the average rating. Often these people have not seen the film – certainly, it seems like many such review bombers have made their mind up before seeing the film and often these are organised efforts. Why are people orchestrating these bad-faith campaigns? There are usually two reasons – first, they are fans of the franchise and are upset by decisions made about the film. Second are people who see the film as simply another part of an ongoing culture war, where the film is, or is perceived to be, making some kind of statement. These two groups are not mutually exclusive.

Films That Were Review Bombed

The best two known examples of review bombing I can think of are the Ghostbusters remake and The Last Jedi. Remaking a beloved film is always going to be difficult but 2016 Ghostbusters endured a nightmare of backlash from the start. I would argue that this film is a mix of the two mentioned above – fans unhappy with the direction the film was taking and people engaged in the culture war. Many people were upset that the four ghostbusters were going to be played by women (rather than men as in the original), and many just assumed, seemingly because of this, that it was going to be a terrible film. This is despite the fact that it’s director was the very successful Paul Feig and the women in question were very talented comedic actors (three of whom had all been stars of Saturday Night Live, the very show that launched the careers of some of the original Ghostbusters cast). A cliched refrain from certain people was that this remake was “ruining their childhood”.

The Last Jedi faced similar problems. The Disney Star Wars films have been dogged by fans upset by decisions made, ranging from perfectly legitimate criticism of plot-holes to hounding actors off social media with horrendous abuse. Some fans were already upset after The Force Awakens and ideas about what Rian Johnson planned to do upset some of them all the more. The Huffington Post published an article in which they spoke to someone who claimed to be behind a bot attack on Rotten Tomatoes to lower the rating and his criticism ranged from it’s “feminist agenda” to characters in danger of “being turned gay”.

It’s important to say it’s fine for a person to dislike these films and it is okay to give them bad reviews – if you’ve seen the film and you’re not simply acting in some bad faith campaign. Also, review bombing isn’t inherently about people wanting to criticise perceived progressive political bias – many of the cases of review bombing in video games were due to issues like anti-piracy moves that limited the number of times games could be installed, or high prices on games in certain areas, and review bombing was felt to be the only way to communicate with the game makers.

What Is Being Done To Stop It?

Sites that use reviews submitted by members of the public are aware of this issue (and some have had some pretty angry reactions to it) and have taken measures to prevent it. Rotten Tomatoes started a policy of verified reviewers, meaning a person had a to verify they had actually bought a ticket for the film. IMDb has developed a behind-the-scenes formula to detect attempts at review bombing and “weight” reviews. Some sites are taking action for films that have clearly already caused a stir before their release and are likely targets – Rotten Tomatoes has disabled the comments feature for some films before they were released in theatres – such as Captain Marvel which had received a large number of negative reviews before being released.

How Do We Know What People Like?

The best way to work out what an audience thinks of a film to ask them after they’ve watched it – and there are companies who survey audiences as they leave the cinema, but that costs money. Streaming services seem to offer an almost foolproof way as they can tell if a person has watched a film but it’s a minority of films that are released on streaming services at the same time as a theatrical release. Part of the problem is I’m sure many Star Wars fans who review bombed The Last Jedi did watch it but were never going to give it a fair chance.

It does seem like any online system is open to this sort of problem – where many people can easily be organised to disrupt the purpose of the task. Many an organisation has regretted leaving the decision of naming something open to an internet vote (see Boaty McBoatface and all the things named after Stephen Colbert). I don’t know if there is a simple solution to easily gauging what people think online that is immune to this sort of problem but, for now at least, this is a problem for only a handful of films.

I’ve never liked putting too much stock in rating on IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes as they’re a self-selecting sample. IMDb does not force everyone who watched Inception to rate it and I suspect most of the people who submit ratings either loved a film or hated it as they felt motivated to give their opinion. I don’t think a fair online measure of what the general public thinks really exists and if you’re looking for a way to tell if you will like a film then talk to friends who share your interests, find critics who have similar taste, talk online about films. Trusting a review is like deciding whether you should listen to someone’s advice – you have to know a bit about them first.

Also Read: Great Video Games That Should Be Adapted Into A Movie

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The Last Jedi divided opinion while still being a tremendously successful film, but you would assume in an ideal world Disney would want both the money and the fan approval. I had mixed feelings on the film – parts of it were undeniably great with some amazing ideas, first-rate fight scenes and stunning visuals. But I was also annoyed by a lot of it. An article about the criticism of The Last Jedi has to deal with the issue that some (but not all) of the criticism was awfully misogynistic. I liked the addition of Rose, she was a character that to me represented the grass-roots of the organisation, she wasn’t a Jedi, a general or a cool fighter pilot but she believed in the cause. Kelly Marie Tran was subject to such abuse she abandoned social media. This was absolutely appalling but I have never understood anyone’s specific problems with her (of course, no one should have to go through that). The first trailer for the concluding part of this trilogy has just been released so should be different in The Rise of Skywalker?

Rules Exist For A Reason

The Last Jedi seemingly broke the accepted rules of the Star Wars universe in a couple of ways. First, General Hux announced they were able to track ships once they jumped to light speed. Second, Admiral Holdo light speed jumping into another ship to destroy it. These might seem like minor points but they are potentially hugely important. Regarding the first point, this effectively means no one can ever get away. At the end of The Empire Strikes back the Millenium Falcon jumps to light speed and escapes – if they had had the technology Hux has Darth Vader would have found them easily. Of course, that’s in the past, but it is still true, how could anyone ever escape again?

Using light speed to jump into another ship raises the question that why had no one ever done this before? Why didn’t the Rebels do that to the Death Star? In any good science-fiction or fantasy, there need to be rules to how things work otherwise it’s just nonsense and you can get out of any situation just by saying there is a new bit of technology. It might seem – and probably is – a bit pedantic to dwell on how made up technology works but it suggests it hasn’t been thought through by the writer.

No more “Casinos”

I don’t literally mean casinos, I mean no more weird side-plots that take up a lot of time but don’t really serve much purpose. The side-plot in which Rose and Finn looked for an expert hacker on a casino-planet to help the Resistance fleet escape is universally unloved. The only purpose I can see for in the film is to provide a visually pleasing spectacular of aliens, droids and people in fancy outfits to contrast with most of the rest of the film taking place on spaceships. And look, each and every one of us would, given the opportunity, write in a part for Benicio Del Toro but he could have been used so much better.

No More Rehashing Scenarios From The Original Trilogy

This is a hard one as they get criticised either way – if they try and forge their own path and come up with new ideas people are upset – or absolutely furious in the case of The Phantom Menace. If they rely on setups from the original trilogy they are criticised for bringing nothing new. The Force Awakens had a huge world-destroying superweapon. The Last Jedi saw an assault by the bad-guys on a remote base. We’ve seen this before and I want something new even if it’s just drawing from films other than Star Wars. I thought it was a such a missed opportunity that we ended up with the exact same dynamic of the First Order (which is virtually identical to the Empire) fighting a handful of Resistance/Rebels.

There Better Be Something About Snoke

Who was Snoke? Where did he come from? How did he become so powerful? To introduce him as the mastermind behind the First Order but be eliminated so easily seems odd and I really want answers, as it stands he just seems like a lazy Palpatine rip-off.

Stay The Course – Things The Last Jedi Got Right

• Rey’s parentage – the obvious and easy route would be to tie Rey to someone already mentioned in the saga, make her a Skywalker, or a Kenobi, maybe even a Palpatine. I know for many fans this was the biggest issue but I really liked it and Kylo Ren explicitly stated that she wasn’t part of the story. Well, you know what? The fate of the galaxy shouldn’t just be the concern of the extended Skywalker family.

• The End of the Jedi – well, maybe not the end, but I loved how it was pointed out by more than one character that the Jedi weren’t all they were cracked up to be. They never saw who Palpatine really was, they let themselves be manipulated into fighting a huge war and were then so easily eliminated. Maybe the Jedi Order as it was had run its course.

• Luke Isn’t Perfect – Luke was essentially the main character of the original trilogy. He was good, noble and had amazing superhuman powers but The Last Jedi showed he was still a flawed human. He made a terrible mistake with Ben/Kylo Ren and essentially drove him to the Dark Side. I’d also say his confrontation with Kylo Ren at the end of the film was genius – Luke had already confronted Kylo Ren with violence once and made things worse, his solution seemed a very Jedi thing to do.

The Last Jedi wasn’t perfect but it was a very enjoyable film. The problem is when it comes to Star Wars films it seems the fans want something amazing or nothing at all.

Also Read: The Movie Villains Who Nailed It (And Those That Didn’t) – Part 4

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