The Last Jedi was a Beautiful Cinematic Experience that Insulted Me in Every Single Scene

Now as a writer...

I'm hesitant to speak badly about the work of other writers. As a writer myself I know all too well how badly the bite of criticism can scar. But perhaps being a writer has made me more critical of lazy mistakes and shortcuts that I myself have recognized in my own work, and in turn made me less forgiving when I see them in such high-profile environment as a movie that grosses 200 million dollars on its opening weekend.

The movie was exactly what I expected.

To make this as clear as possible: This is not about the movie being 'not what I expected' as so many complaints have been about. This isn't even about the movie's over-reliance on tired tropes (the latter of which is used by both Poe and Vice Admiral Whatshername at the same time, against each other). This is about the movie telling me "Don't think about it" as each successive story beat is revealed to be more ridiculous than the last.

I went into the theater expecting space battles, light sabers, mysticism, and all things Star Wars. I got them. And they were great. If you look at each scene individually it's one of the most compelling and spectacular Star Wars movies to date. but then you look at the whole and the entire thing falls apart. The movie is less than the sum of its parts.

The problem with the Last Jedi is that it takes every shortcut and path of least resistance that it can. Every character action, every decision made, every 11th hour escape feels like Rian Johnson taking the laziest approach to hand-wave away any semblance of inconvenient logic or human behavior that might interfere with reaching the end credits. It feels like it was written over a weekend, submitted as a first draft, and sent directly to principal photography. Any editor should have been able to tell him "None of this is OK, try harder", but none did and now audiences are starting to tell him instead. Was it luck that these issues made it all the way through production? In my experience there's no such thing as luck.

Warp factor plot

Rather than break down every single example in the movie, let's isolate one particular plot point central to the film: The Chase. If you are looking to avoid spoilers, this is where you should be cautious, because you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

I choose the Chase in particular, because my first Sci-Fi book, Vick's Vultures was completely centered around a similar chase, and so the problems with the chase in the Last Jedi were especially egregious to me because many of them were the same mistakes I made, or almost made in Vick's Vultures before taking the time to avoid or correct them in what I hoped were logically consistent ways.

In case you need a reminder, in this particular subplot the surviving Resistance ships are being harried by Supreme Overlord Snoke and his formation of Star Destroyers. There are two fundamental rules that drive the Resistance side of this plot:

• The Resistance ships are faster than the First Order ships, but not fast enough to escape their extreme weapons range.
• The Resistance ships are running out of fuel, and have only the ability to make one (1) light speed jump.    

Luke, I am your logical fallacy

But where does it all fall apart? Well, let's start with the fact that the chase lasts longer than 5 minutes when both sides had the ability and every reason to end it immediately. In order to draw it out, the movie establishes only 1 rule that defines the entirety of the First Order's behavior during the chase:

• The First Order is allowed to take no action which will bring them closer to their goal of destroying the Resistance, even if that action is shown to be demonstrably possible by the Resistance.  

If they are playing a board game, this is the equivalent to the First Order only ever landing on lose your turn spaces. Let's look at how this manifests in the movie.

1. The Resistance is barred from making additional light speed maneuvers. The First Order is under no such restriction, and yet acts as if they are.

The issue of weapons range is waved away as "The rebel ships are faster". The only issue is that they're not. Not only are they not limited by a single light speed jump, but there are multiple ships in the chase. At no point does it occur for one of the pursuing ships to make a short jump ahead to cut off the resistance. The logical action is disregarded because it's inconvenient. It would be harder to write, would have required thought as to how the Resistance would overcome it, and would result in an actual space battle and plot resolution too early in the film, instead of the slow-speed car chase we got instead.

2. For all intents and purposes, no other First Order ships exist in the entire galaxy.

In order for the chase to make sense within the movie, we are asked to disregard the fact that two technologies exist: Faster than light communication, and faster than light travel. Conveniently, the First Order forgets about both, even though the Resistance first uses instantaneous 2-way FTL communication to contact Maz for help, and then dispatches Finn in a shuttle, who has time to travel to a planet an unknown distance away, get arrested, break out, and return to a battle in which no significant changes have developed.

The chase is predicated by the first rule of of the resistance ships, that they are faster than the star destroyers. But it's proven that a ship can make a round trip to another planet after gaining information from faster than light communication. If this is the case, it is an inexcusable logical jump that the First Order would not add lighter, faster ships to their flotilla using instantaneous 2-way communication to join the chase by jumping in at light speed. There is clearly enough time. The Resistance demonstrates that there is enough time.

3. The Mon Calamari Killshot should have been plan A  

"That's Snoke's Star Destroyer" should have been immediately answered with "Let's ram it at light speed!"

Probably the single most divisive scene in the entire movie (second only to Leia's spacewalk) is the Mon Calamari Killshot. Cornered and broken, the enigmatic Vice Admiral sends the Resistance flagship on a hyperdrive collision course with the seat of First Order power in the galaxy, effectively crippling all ships in the pursuit formation and leaving them with a handful of ties and walkers, barely enough to mount an offensive on the planet. It was a beautiful shot, breathtaking from a cinematic perspective, equaled only by the firing of the first Death Star.

It was also an hour and a half of screen-time too late.

Ignoring the obvious can of worms this opens as to how weaponized light-speed kinetic weapons just made every offensive technology in Star Wars completely obsolete, the problem this poses in the narrative is this: Nothing developed plot-wise over the course of the movie that enabled the ability to use the Mon Calamari in this way. As soon as it was shown as possible in-universe, it retroactively became the the best and most logical opening move available to the Resistance. It also became a progressively worse option the longer the film went on, until it was finally used as a last-ditch maneuver.

Sure, hindsight is 20-20. But it's just too much of a logical leap for the Resistance to weigh the facts, and not immediately take the opportunity to evacuate personnel to the smaller ships and then sacrifice their cruiser to A) Cripple the enemy formation, decapitate their entire leadership command structure, and prevent pursuit. And B) allow the two smaller frigates to escape with all hands. Best of both worlds. The Vice Admiral didn't even have to do the flying, they could have left a droid pilot. As a viewer, I'm expected to ignore that Leia, General Leia, who has been leading rebel guerrilla fleets and fighters for decades is not familiar with the concept of acceptable losses. Sacrificing a single ship (even if it is the most important ship) for the entire enemy command structure? Easy choice. and we're asked to forget that she already applied this tactic in the same damn movie when the Resistance bombers destroyed the dreadnought. Why? Because "We don't kill what we hate, we save what we love"? No. Because it's inconvenient, because applying logic makes the plot harder to resolve, or in this case absurdly easy when they needed to drag it out long enough for Finn and Rey to have their plots. Bad or illogical narrative choices for the sake pacing are lazy narrative choices. It's a writer looking at obvious flaws in his work and saying "Meh, good enough." 

And that's really what the Last Jedi is doing. It's saying we should be happy with "Meh, good enough." It compromises, it settles, it excuses itself. It expects you to play dumb, and hand waves glaring internal logic inconsistencies with nonsensical restrictions so that every little mistake can be wrapped up part and parcel in the most dissatisfying package possible.

Did you think the Last Jedi was Good Enough?

Let me know your thoughts.

-SW-

Guest Post on SFF World, Three Tiered World Building

We're 2 days out from release, and SFF World has been kind enough to host me for a blog post. Here you can read my latest rant on the topic of worldbuilding. Check it out!

July 2017 Update

It's been some time since I've made a blog post. The primary reason for this is that every time I sit down to write a blog, the feeling nags me that the time would be better spent writing actual books. Go figure. The spring and summer have been busy with activity, and in the interim since my last rant I've made significant progress towards my writing goals.

The sequel to Vick's Vultures is nearly complete, only a few final edits are left before it goes to Layout, and then to reviewers and the general public. To Fall Among Vultures will be released later this year and if you were a fan of Vick's Vultures, the second book continues on with more of Victoria's interstellar adventures. If you have not yet read Vick's Vultures, please consider checking it out. In the mean time, I am already hard at work on book 3. Parvus Press has been extremely good to me in their handling of the Union Earth Privateers series.

If Fantasy is more your jam, the second book of the Sorcerous Crimes Division has been completed for some time, but I have held off on self-publishing until I can secure an editor to do it the justice I believe it deserves. If you are a freelance editor, feel free to contact me to discuss rates. I am also working on an as-yet undisclosed Fantasy title that I think is sure to excite fans of unconventional Fantasy.

Until next time,

-Scott Warren

Vick's Vultures: Post Mortem

Vick's Vultures has been out for some time, and it has to date sold over 4000 copies and generated extremely positive review scores on both Amazon and Goodreads. For multiple days it was in the top 10 Science Fiction sales on Amazon. To those who read and enjoyed it, and those who left those positive reviews I have this to say: Thank you for taking a chance on Vick's Vultures. Thank you for investing the (admittedly modest) time it took to read. I'm glad you enjoyed it and I appreciate the kind words.

To those that left a 1-2 star review I have only this to say: Thank you for taking a chance on Vick's Vultures, and for investing the time to read something you ultimately did not enjoy.

Readers have a right to know that they might not enjoy a book or its content, and so negative reviews are important too. I think it's easy for an author to lose sight of that.


With that said, generous Vick's Vultures spoilers lay ahead as I discuss the book, the characters, and what worked and what maybe didn't. For fans that are looking for a little more before VV 2 is finished, this may scratch your itch. For those that have not read it, go ahead and pick up a copy before going any further. Don't worry, I'll wait. In the following paragraphs I'll talk about my intentions as well as the reader perceptions, and the areas where my attempt to communicate an idea or personality trait were unsuccessful and some of the challenges in tackling science fiction. As an author, it's important to remember that I cannot fault a reader for misunderstanding my intent. All a writer has is the written word, and it's my duty to communicate effectively with it.

Laying the Groundwork

I've discussed it in interviews and internet radio several times, and the answer to the question "What was the idea you wanted to explore with Vick's Vultures?" always seems to change a bit. Memory is a fluid thing, and I don't always remember the reasoning behind every decision. One thing remained certain though, I knew that VV was above all else a story of adventure, and before the labels started flying (military sci-fi, mad max in space, space opera, space marines,) I had described it as an interstellar age of sail, with powerful nations trading, conquering, marauding, and trying to scrape by. I had a character, Vick, and her purpose for the next two hundred odd pages was to butt into a millennia old conflict. When I begin outlining a novel, I start with the inciting action and the eventual resolution, and decide what message I want the two to say. That pesky bit in the middle is best left to worry about later (As my publishers at Parvus Press are no doubt tired of hearing).

Characterization

By far the biggest complaint in the work, even among the positive reviews, was the lack of characterization for the more minor characters. By its nature, a ship like the Condor is a cog of many pieces and the crew is no less crucial to that ship than the micro reactor or the horizon drive. Not only that, but it is a well-oiled machine of professional starfarers, entrusted with the future of humanity. My intent was to present a crew that had long moved past the early stages of group development and were already an efficient, functioning team headed by a capable leader. In that aspect, I think I succeeded. Victoria leads, but respects and considers the advice of her subordinates, and in turn is respected by them. For all her faults (and boy does she have a lot), she makes decisions that minimize risk to her crew in her inherently risky situation. If not for the opportunistic interjection of a certain six-foot bug, it's entirely possible that she would have completed her mission free from pursuit. But because the scope of the story is so narrow, taking place in only a few days, you don't have enough time to see complex relationships develop between crewmembers. This is simply because the humans in Vick's Vultures are as close to, well, human as I can make them and a few days isn't enough time for such complex relationships to develop. I expect this will be a continuing complaint about individual books in the series, though perhaps not the series as a whole. The pulpy, serialized format which I have adopted for the Union Earth Privateers trilogy means that I have accepted this fault and decided to focus effort in improving other aspects.

In regards to Victoria herself, I could likely write an entire post. Part of my intent for her was to be something of a black mirror to the stereotypical vulgar, heavy-drinking, womanizing, Colt 1911 slinging do-no-wrong maverick space captains prevalent in science fiction. Her heavy drinking is seen negatively by a majority of the crew, her vulgarity is purposefully over the top (and unique to her). she can't effectively use her favored sidearm, she marginalizes the opposite sex in a negative way, and sometimes she makes decisions that don't save the day but instead lead to the very real consequence of losing crew members. Her sexuality is quite possibly where I saw the biggest break in terms of what I intended vs what was perceived. More than a few people saw her as simply promiscuous, and I failed to convey that her attitude towards men was in fact harmful and toxic because she saw most men only for the ways they could be used to validate herself. In fact, it is only in spite of these faults that she succeeds as a captain, not because of them, and in fact each of them has caused damage to her both personally and professionally in ways that the tightness of the narrative did not allow me the opportunity to explore without sacrificing the carefully maintained pace of Vick's Vultures.

One last thing about Victoria. Of the negative reviews mentioned earlier, her appetites and her vulgarity are mentioned more than once. The strangest aspect is that I agree with them. Excessive profanity is one of my bigger pet peeves when reading sci-fi and fantasy, and graphic sex scenes are another. More often than not I find that they take me out of the narrative, but I also knew that I wanted to challenge myself with Vick's Vultures and that sometimes the things I enjoy creating do not exactly align with the things I enjoy.  

Set Sail, at the Speed of Plot!

Having previously written Fantasy and knowing that my meager knowledge of cosmic geometry, real-world chemistry, and advanced rocketry were severely lacking I knew I was in over my head the moment I decided to move into Science Fiction. Plainly put, the realism to inject even a modicum of believably makes sci-fi much more difficult for me to write. Having completed my last math class in 10th grade of high school, researching stellar dynamics first required researching how to understand the information I was seeing. Concepts of acceleration, chase mechanics, relativistic delay, and combat at appreciable fractions of light speed had my head spinning. It took me some time to realize that none of it mattered at all. No matter how fast a ship supposedly was, they all moved the same speed: exactly as fast as the narrative demanded. It didn't matter exactly how fast characters were moving, only whether they were closing, escaping, evading, or engaging. It's much more important to know that a Grayling cutter is catching up to your hero than it is to know that cutter is moving at 11,000 meters per second in relation to the local star.

Once I realized this, it was easy to apply my real world experience as part of a tactical ship-board tracking party to making the encounters between these ships as intense as possible, with just enough touch of small group communications to shift the focus from realistic space combat to the realistic team dynamics that make naval combat possible in the first place. The interactions between Victoria and her crew became the highlight, and the way the Condor could be wielded as a single deadly weapon by many small moving parts became the driving aspect of what many have declared to be the best part of Vick's Vultures. I'm glad that I succeeded in this, because a similar approach is rarely seen outside of hard military fiction.

Onward and So Forth

For now, the future of the Union Earth Privateers is secure. Parvus Press has extended me the opportunity to continue my unique take on science fiction and the crowded galaxy of Vick's Vultures. Some of the reader considerations I will take into account, others conflict with my vision for the story and so I will have to disappoint. I hope that future volumes meet with a similar response from sci-fi fans as Vick's Vultures has, but now and for always I write for the challenge and the drive to create. See you around the Orion Spur!

-Scott Warren

Yo, the Marines! A Review of Mary Gentle's Grunts

When it comes down to it, books about orcs are anything but gentle, and Grunts is no exception.

I make no secret of loving the monstrous races. orcs, goblins, troggs, trolls, and my own grenndrakes. So when I see an orc on the cover of a book, and come to learn that he's the main character I'm pretty predisposed to reading it.

Grunts is the story of Ashnak, the leader of the Man-Smart Agaku in the days leading up to the last battle. On orders from his master, the Nameless Necromancer, he infiltrates a long-dead dragon's horde to find a cache of weapons and equipment kept in the the dragon's collection of artifacts from across time and space.

The contents of this cache will be immediately familiar to fans of Vietnam era movies. M16s, M60s, humvees, Hueys, and an assortment of odds and ends from the 1960's era US army. Capable of shrugging off magical defenses, the Nameless Necromancer's hope is that these weapons will give Ashnak and the orcs the edge against the forces of Light in the coming apocalypse.

But things aren't quite so simple. The weapons carry the dragon's curse, that only those steeped in the training and attitude of the gear's origin are capable of employing it. And so very quickly, the orcs begin to take on the qualities of cinematized Vietnam Era Marines.

Naturally this is not without a great deal of hilarious juxtaposition between the high fantasy and modern military tropes expertly jumbled into a great genre mashup. The book is deliberately and successfully funny, playing off genre stereotypes and expectations to great effect. It's very easy to fall in love with Ashnak and his varied and versatile orc compatriots, but they will very quickly remind you of what they really are. This book is not for the young'ns. Gore, profanity, and even some sexual violence abound in this story about Orcs being the leanest, meanest forces of darkness around. It's all handled in a very cavalier and casual attitude that completely honestly made me a bit uncomfortable at times. But I do not consider that a strike against the book in any way, shape or form. Rather, I feel it was the intent. Despite the light-hearted tone of the book, there is some very dark subject matter to be aware of going into the experience. But it's an experience I wholly recommend. I have never read a book quite like Grunts, and to say I devoured it would be something of an understatement.


Read this book if you like: Rooting for the bad guys, orcs, Apocalypse Now, genre mashups.
Avoid this book if you do not like: Extremely dark subject matter, classic tropes.

And as always, feel free to let me know your thoughts on the novel as well. I greatly enjoyed this book and I think you will to.

A Review of Goblins Know Best, by Daniel Beazley

Every so often a book comes along so in-tune with itself that it helps define the very genre that would try to label it. Goblins Know Best is just such a book.

Goblins Know Best: the Trivial Trials of Bogrot and Gorag by Daniel Beazley is a Fantasy novel told from the perspective of a Goblin chef named Bogrot Blistertooth. Raised in Gert’s Kitchen of the city of Kentai (A city so prone to earthquakes that it holds no permanent structures) Bogrot is a budding chef in his own right, driven to become one of the finest cooks in the land. Often drawn away from his kitchen for errands, adventures, and other misfortunes, he travels in the company of his best friends: a ravenous and rambunctious Orc named Gorag and a talking pony with a victim complex, Mona, acquired after he cooked and ate her brother.

The novel is laid out as an anthology. Rather than chapters each section of varying length is a self-contained story set in chronological order that might contain anything from Bogrot sneaking into an orc gathering to cut a double-crossed Gorag loose from his backstabbing brother, to traveling deep into the swamp for rare slugs that have become the mainstay ingredient in a popular curry. Along the way the pair meet and explore the wildly varied and interesting population and landscapes and play host to a collection of bizarre and genuinely endearing and funny encounters. Following the adventures carves out a world that while still having all the trappings of traditional fantasy tropes manages to feel like an incredibly unique experience that not only subverts the Fantasy genre, but is possibly the best example to date of emphatically non-epic fantasy by way of its focus on the humble goals of its protagonists and the intimate natures of the conflicts. Even minor characters are believable, with their own hopes, goals, ambitions, and shortcomings. They’re not allies or enemies of Bogrot, but they share his world and understand his challenges. Goblins Know Best is an excellent example of character study due to being so far removed from the epic struggles that dominate the genre that it allows you to see these characters in their natural state with their usual struggles. The subtitle ‘Trivial Trials’ perfectly encapsulates not only Bogrot and Gorag, but also our look at each individual character in their world just trying their best to get by.

I make no secret of enjoying works with the classic Tolkien races that so many modern authors try to avoid, or even for having a preference  for Orcs and Goblins in general (probably thanks to Warcraft). But with that said I feel comfortable with the claim that Goblins Know Best is by far my clear favorite out of all the books I’ve read this last year, and the entirety of my read-through was an absolute joy.

You should read this book if you enjoy: Collections of shorter works, Greenskins, copious tongue-in-cheek humor, self-aware writing, genre subversion, and first person perspective.

You should avoid this book if you dislike: Pun names, phonetic spelling of accents, traditional fantasy races (elves, orcs, goblins, trolls, gnomes, centaurs and others all make appearances).

On the Importance of Death

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD for Malazan and Harry Potter.

Writing in fantasy gives authors a unique opportunity to skirt the effects of death by occasionally bringing a character back from beyond the mortal coil.

But should we?

One thing common theme amongst almost all other genres (unless it's the focus of the work) is that death is permanent, the end, full stop. Death can be used as an inciting action, climax, and resolution. Characters spend entire novels getting over the death of a loved one, or coping with their own impending death, or investigating the death of an innocent. And because of its permanent nature it's used to make a powerful statement. Characters die for a reason, or they die for a cause, or they die to show that sometimes death has no reason or cause which is a statement in and of itself. But the idea is death always makes a point one way or another, and it's the sharpest and most permanent statement that a character will ever make. But when death becomes a gray area, it begins to lose some of that poignancy and begins to lose some of the drama. Let's compare two examples of series that handle death differently and what it does to the narratives.

Let me start out by saying that Malazan Book of the Fallen is arguably my favorite series of all time. The story sprawled over a dozen volumes and followed the adventures of over 100 characters in an epic battle to save or destroy the world depending on which POV you're currently following. These are characters you know and love, and become attached to through battle and mundane activity and you feel their struggles. When they die, you feel that too. Never have I been so attached to a character as I was to a certain Malazan sergeant that met his end somewhere in the middle of the series.

The only problem was, by this point in the saga as many as a half dozen characters had already died and survived the ordeal through magical means. Well ok, so what does that mean for my favorite character's death? Well, it reduced the impact significantly. It blunted the point on the statement his death made, because the finality of death had been reduced to a gamble. Whiskyjack is dead, but would we see him again? Death in Malazan becomes less like the cover slamming shut on someone's story and more like going directly to jail in Monopoly. If they can manage to roll doubles, they're back in the game. And the more you think about it, the more you realize that this uncanny room for posthumous plot armor lessens the inherent risk any character faces when they enter a life-threatening situation. The drama dulls. Instead of life or death, we're presented a third option of 'Death, but then...'.

Now let's look at Harry Potter, and sure we're comparing a young-adult modern urban fantasy to a sprawling quasi-medieval epic fantasy. Why not?

Death is a huge deal in Harry Potter. The entire series is incited by the death of Harry's parents at the hand of Voldemort, and Voldemort also happens to be the only character to successfully come back from the dead. And it takes him 4 whole books of the 7 book series to manage it. This sort of thing is what makes him the dark lord, makes him so feared in the wizarding world, the fact that he's literally the only one that can break the rules. With the exception of Harry Potter himself.

But the rest of the cast? Mortal, pure and plain. When they die, they stay dead or they occasionally return as ghosts, but they never return to the life they had before. And there are a lot of good guys that die in Harry Potter. The big one everyone remembers is Harry's godfather, Sirius Black. Fell through the veil into the realm of death. Sure there was some ambiguity, it's a gateway right? Gateways have two sides.

But ultimately, JK's most powerful decision wasn't killing Sirius, it was letting him stay dead. She could have brought him back. The option was there, the fans wanted him to still be alive, and enough mystery surrounded the circumstances of his demise that even though we knew in our hearts that he was gone there was still some glimmer of hope. But because he stayed dead, the statement he made with his death was powerful. The statement of 'The boy who lived must continue to live, and that goal is worth dying for'. It showed how far the Order of the Phoenix was willing to go in order to keep Harry safe because they knew he was the only hope they had against Voldemort.

And because Sirius Black stayed dead, it made the statement of his death more effective than all of the deaths in Malazan where the character rolled boxcars and found their way back to the fight.

What are your thoughts on death and resurrection in fantasy? Let me know, I'd love to hear your opinions.

Scott Warren