Suspension of Disbelief vs. Payoff... With The Last Jedi · 5:06am Dec 10th, 2018
So this is not going to be a dissection of the movie as a whole. This will be focusing on one of the larger problems of the movie that theoretically could be ignored through suspension of disbelief that, for many, didn't, and the importance of payoff when one is asking their audience to suspend their disbelief for what has happened. This is your warning for spoilers, and this is meant more to teach than to just hate on the movie.
So, first, I am going to try to classify what suspension of disbelief is. In theory, a very easy thing to do. In practice, FUUUUUUUUUCK ME. After all, suspension of disbelief is a very fluid thing, hopping from person to person and from scenario to scenario. What one movie relies on to cause suspension of disbelief may be drastically different from another. One may be relying on cool factor, while another may be purely playing on audience good will to ignore something. One movie may want you to accept an out of character moment because of the possibilities it gives, while another will state that there is a problem in order to lampshade the fact that they are fucking something up.
I am actually going to use this last one myself to ask that you do not try to hyper dissect the definition I give, because I am not trying to do it as a firm, 100% definition, but simply one that is close enough to popular understanding that we can move forward and learn from it. With that said, Suspension of Disbelief is what an audience member allows to slide for a particular piece of media in order to be able to enjoy it in spite of the implausibility/impossibility of the action or setting. Fantasy is a common one where you have to be willing to accept magic, orcs, etc. in order to buy in at all, even if they never explain how this sort of thing exists. Much like that, believing in The Force is in a way Suspension of Disbelief in order to enjoy Star Wars which I am surprisingly not getting into despite my issues with that.
No, what I am going to talk about in order to highlight my points in failing to understand the premise of Suspension of Disbelief and Payoff is Commander Hodo not tell Poe Dameron about her plans. So, first, we have to analyze why this might cause the need for a Suspension in Disbelief anyways, especially since the movie gives us an explanation. The movie claims it's due to the fear of a worm on the ship that is giving their enemies their warp space location. The problem with this is that inspite of Poe being stripped of his rank early on in the movie: A) he is still one of the most liked officers on the ship, enough so to cause a mutiny, B) there is a moral crisis on board as everyone expects them to literally be waiting to die, and C) Poe is one of the most trusted officers of the rebellion as demonstrated in the previous movie, as well as one of the most loyal since he was willing to face down a Dreadnought, a task that should have killed him, by himself to help save everyone else.
These are actually things that can be ignored though. After all, there is a semi-reasonable explanation in universe, the stakes are high enough, and they are acted with a good amount of conviction. These choices also caused a lot to happen, and without them would have led to a DRASTICALLY different movie. So, there is a LOT of supposed payoff for these actions.
But now we have to get into payoff and why it's important. See, Payoff is some sort of reward that we as an audience/consumer get for allowing something to happen. This is why Suspension of Disbelief needs Payoff so much. After all, while we may not know anything about Kylo Ren at the beginning of the first movie, the sight of him holding a blaster bolt is so cool that we are willing to ignore the problem with it being a new trick. Seeing Yoda get to once again trump his old pupil and teach him a lesson is payoff for ignoring the fact that theoretically a light side force user just manipulated lightning. And I could list HUNDREDS of others, and will bring up one more to do with long term payoff/investment later, but I'm also trying to keep this to mostly the new Star Wars movies.
So, back to the payoff problem with Hodo's decision to withhold information. What is the payoff for these decisions? Well, we go to a casino planet with Finn and a new character, get some blunt philosophy lessons that are also not very accurate, especially the economy lessons, go on a wild goose chase that ends in complete failure, and even get to watch as our heroes caused hundreds to die during a plan that was supposed to work. In popular conscious, most of what I talked about are the worst parts of the movie, and parts of the movie that lead to VERY little character development, and not very interesting world building.
That means that the actual payoff for Hodo's decision is very small, so the reason to agree with her through Suspension of Disbelief is equally small. Actually, since the more suspension of disbelief you ask for usually requires an exponential amount of payoff, this isn't even true, as it requires EVEN MORE payoff than was asked of the audience. Because of this, a lot of people decided to rip apart the arguments that were given by the movie for why it was done and why that whole section of the movie happened.
And this leads to long term payoff and suspension of disbelief. What I mean by this is a kind of decaying form of both. The longer something goes on without asking for suspension of disbelief, but giving out payoff during that entire time, you're going to be able to ask a lot more of the audience, because ideally they are already invested deeply into the material because you have given them so much, but asked for so little. In contrast, the more you ask of your audience and the longer you take to give them a proper payoff, the less effective that payoff is going to be, so the bigger it needs to be to overcome previous mistakes.
And thus we are brought to honestly one of the most beautiful shots of The Last Jedi, and something that is conceptually AWESOME even if it doesn't make a ton of sense.
The Hyperdrive jump slice. When she takes her ship and literally LAUNCHES IT AT THE ENEMY FLEET! Space is lit up as it slices through the ship, atomizing itself in the process as it tears through the armada. It doesn't make the most amount of sense, and we've never seen it before, but the immediate payoff is AMAZING!
But.
This is why I used the Hodo plan for this. See, that affects so much of the movie, drags the audience through so much that many considered to be awful, that when that scene comes, they may be tired. They may DESPERATELY want something cool to happen, to get any payoff, but they're so burned out by the rest of what has happened, that that payoff cannot ask them of anything. This does though, especially when we consider the damages our main cast takes from the assault, and thus people like me who were thoroughly uninvested in the film at this point only criticized it. We could only see the bad in it because we were already in a foul mood and it wasn't worth the time invested.
This is why balancing these two elements is so crucial. Heck, this is why balancing suspension of disbelief in general is so crucial, because once you have asked too much of your audience and they start ripping apart the flaws of your work, there's VERY little you can do to get them back, no matter how spectacular the payoff is.
And mind you, payoff is not all that goes into suspension of disbelief. There's a LOT else that goes into it and its various forms, but for general use in active media, and not the more passive parts of suspension, payoff is one of the most crucial to understand, at least to me.
So, leave your thoughts about this below, though not really about The Last Jedi. I may not be a fan of the movie, but this wasn't about ripping into the Star Wars franchise and the movie. It's just the unfortunate target that most people will be able to understand if I use it in order to teach the lesson. Actually, with that said, if you liked the movie, PLEASE speak up. I'd love to hear about what sorts of payoffs during the movie helped you believe these two moments so that they didn't bother you, or what else in the movie made it worth ignoring the possible flaws in these parts.
That movie was terrible
I think a good example of Suspension of Disbelief vs Payoff varying from person to person would be the anime Goblin Slayer. Based on what you already posted about it, I know your opinion there. I'm able to let that dichotomy of world setting slide because I enjoy the characters, and once you accept the premise - however unlikely you may consider it - the action scenes and comedy are well worth it as payoff.
...and on top of that, I think I can explain the justification for how Goblins can be so dangerous to low ranks, yet ignored by high ranks of Adventurers and the authority.
Some time in the past, Goblins were exactly like the ones in video games, low level 'mobs' that any newbie adventurer could deal with, to the point higher level adventurers could ignore them since they couldn't hurt them. As a result, few people paid much attention to what they got up to, since a band of farmers could drive goblins away from farms. As a result, the young Goblins were ignored since no one considered them a threat and they didn't go out of their way to cross Adventurer path.
And the young learned.
Each successive generation of Goblins was that much more effective at surviving, stealing, and dealing with Adventurers. Not much each time, but enough that each successive generation had more survivors, and the survivors got that much more dangerous.
Now, someone who'd been around long enough to see this change in Goblins would recognize just how dangerous they'd become, but would be so old they couldn't do anything themself. Unfortunately, everyone knows that Goblins are just the weakest monster, easily killed with one blow of just about any weapon...which is still true. And as each generation got hardier, the adventurers who did succeed in killing or escaping aren't going to 'shame' themselves by talking about how hard fighting 'Goblins' was, so the knowledge isn't disseminated. Those in power know that the Adventuring Guilds handle Goblins and lesser monsters fine, so the military can focus on bigger problems.
Cut to the present, where the only ones who realize the issue are the ones who can't do anything, ones like the Quest Giver Girl who see the casualty report of new adventurers against Goblins, only for reports about that to come back saying they aren't doing a good job screening good Adventurers, so the Guild's better off with 'the chaff' weeded out at the beginning before they got people killed when it got 'serious'.
And the old rhea who watched this all happen teaches the one boy determined enough to exterminate Goblins no matter how hard it is or how long it takes or what people think of him for doing so how to do it.
4978967 I will say that honestly, despite all I said, I imagine I could enjoy Goblin Slayer so long as I pretty much skipped the first episode. In fact, most of my issues with the dichotomy of genres goes away with that, just as you say yourself.
As for the Goblins thing... I like your explanation. I still have some problems with it, and not just ones I can chalk up to genre, but I can see how that works, and it does allow for us to have a show where the Goblin Slayer has to work harder and harder to kill the goblins, thus giving us better and better payoffs in order to reward us for that pay in of believing some of the more problematic parts of the show.
In fact, honestly, that, or any Shonen show really, would be a great one to focus a blog around about the importance of pay off on your concept in order to make the Suspension of Disbelief worth it. Kind of a counterpoint/continuation of the old one, where those who buy in for a dark fantasy find their suspension wasted for no payoff, while those who buy in to see goblins die are paid off in spades.
Problems with the Last Jedi are nearly as innumerable as the stars themselves, but as you asked I'll focus my attention elsewhere. A big part of maintaining suspension of disbelief is the all important factor of maintaining internal consistency of logic and rules. Audiences are willing to accept a great many things in a movie, so long as the rules do not suddenly or continually change, or there is such a lack of rules that the audience has no idea what to expect and thus is left more confused than interested. If a work establishes rules for how it works within its world, you REALLY should not break those rules without a damn good reason and justification for it, otherwise breaking the rules makes the audience question how much the rules even matter.
(Okay I lied, I'm sorry I can't help it). Lets look at the Last Jedi as an example. The Hyperspace Ram is the big one here, so I'll stick with that. From the very beginning of the series space battles have played a major part in the action and in the plots of the films. Oftentimes the fates of the heroes and the story rested on the results of a space battle, and thus their importance is easy to highlight. However, what The Last Jedi did with the Hyperspace Ram is entirely upend what we thought were the rules for the series by introducing a new action that, by all rights, should have been possible in every single movie before it. Now, there is a difference here between the introduction of new force powers lets say and the Ram, since while Force powers do change things, they often don't completely alter the landscape of light saber duels. The Ram, however, basically undoes all expectations from previous space battles by saying that any ship with a hyper-drive can turn itself into a missile of unstoppable death should it choose to do so. That means that, for example, the Rebels in Episode 4 could have just taken a cargo ship with all of the people evacuated, aimed it at the Death Star, and then fired it right at the thing to cripple it for the cost of a single ship. From there you can make all the arguments either side will want about how effective that plan will be, the costs, and so on, but the fact remains that this method is CLEARLY AND UNARGUABLY far more powerful and effective than traditional ship combat ever could be. Thus... why hasn't it been used in all this time in the previous movies?
For the sake of one (admittedly damn cool) shot, the Last Jedi completely f*&ks over the prior films' internal sense of logic and thus causes the audience to forever question why this tactic hasn't been used right from the start. And in that inconsistency of the Star Wars universe, the fans are told that what they knew is wrong and this is the new reality. And that is an excellent way to cause people to give up on their investment in your series, because if a rule that important is broken, do the rules even matter?
See this is hilarious cuz Hodo's plan was something I took no issue with. Secrecy and deception is so common in Star Wars that I kinda just shrugged and said ok. But then she took the rebel flagship and...used it as a hyperspace missile. Something absolutely impossible in lore. Yoda manipulating lightning was fine because I know he's walked both sides of the force...but 90% of the premise of that island was bull. Heck Kylo and the blaster bolt technically even pans out as "plausible" as it's just and extension of Vader's Force Deflection. But Rey dueling him to a standstill after just a few days? No.
Suspension of disbelief is easier if you know nothing about the universe you're in and it's presented upfront as "the rules". It's much harder to overlook the things that actually break the things you've already accepted. Second level suspension if you will.
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Okay, so I want to start this off by saying that the hyperspace missile is bad for the reasons you stated, but also to me WORSE for other reasons, and seeing the hate flow through this comment thread almost makes me want to just make a giant, bullet point list of all the problems I have with the Last Jedi.
However, the big problems with the Hyperspace Missile to me actually have a lot to do with the theme of this blog. See, they decided to go all out in the payoff here. This thing is shown to rip a ship in two, shatter others, and act as a GIANT shotgun blast of awesome kinetic force.
And they fucked it up by going too far. After all, why was it a shotgun blast? How did it hit things horizontally next to its target rather than MAYBE a cone behind it? Why did it act like a sword cutting through it rather than a massive ass car hitting another one? There are TONS of physics questions brought up due to how they decided to frame the shot.
That is STILL not the worst part though.
The worst part to me is that while this image is cool, it in and of itself creates its own need for payoff. After all, when the Death Star blows up, you don't expect the Empire to be just like "Tis but a scratch" and have it still intact, right? You don't expect them to take that like losing a tie fighter, right?
And yet the Finn and Phasma fight happens after this. On the cut in half ship. In a hanger bay with enough working ships for Finn, Rose, and Phasma to all escape. In fact, none of the vital functions of this, or any other, ship seem to have actually been damaged by this warp space jump. No, instead it's treated like it scratched the paint. After all, it's after this that people are sent to the ground of the planet, and they arrive practically seconds behind the rebels. They lost no time. Add to that the Tie Fighters in the air, the AT ATs that are deployed, the MINI DEATH STAR LASER, and the LEGIONS of stormtroopers, and it seems like literally nothing happened because of this missile.
That to me is the worst part of it. You have this dramatic final sacrifice, and like almost everything else in this movie, due to it being the middle one, it does NOTHING. And nothing the next movie does is going to make up for all the wasted time in this one.
As a note, if you want, in my opinion, a middle thing that does actually accomplish things while raising the stakes and setting up for the 'finale' (it ain't ending anytime soon, but I see the first three as a bit of a trilogy) I'm going to shamelessly plug Sarafune Vol. 2 right here because inbetween chapters don't have to blow as hard as they oftentimes do.
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Well s^%t, I didn't even think of that aspect. The Ram really was rather pointless, wasn't it? All it did was serve to allow the characters stuck on Snoke's ship have an opportunity to get away... somehow.
The Last Jedi constantly finds new ways to disappoint me.
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You picked the one aspect of the Ram I was actually ok with xD Hyperspace is whimsical enough that I can accept the shotgun blast. And the massive imperial ship being the only one to retain a modicum of power/life support/vital function? I can ACCEPT that, barely. The whole sacrifice still thematically fits with the rest of the theme of star wars once again...only to be IMMEDIATELY undermined when Fiona rams Finn out of the way of the Battering Ram Cannon minutes later...It's like the movie had NO IDEA what it wanted to convey and managed to even do THAT badly!
Honestly, imo, the payoff they were going for was actually Luke's Force Projection. And that...worked, a little? I still rate this just above Force Awakens as second worst star wars movie, but...It's a Star Wars movie. Unlike Force Awakens which was someone telling a story about Star Wars, not actually relaying events of Star Wars.
4979204 See, to me, honestly, I think The Last Jedi is worse (and mind you I am not a fan of... Star Wars in general) mostly because it gave a lot less to talk about. It was less interesting, and a complete waste of time. At least The Force Awakens actually had things going on with meaningful progress and the like, even if it was a remake. This one... At least half the movie is pointless. Absolutely pointless.