Anyone else notice how frequently movies today use cuts to transition? So much dialogue in these Disney mass-produced SW and Marvel films is shot reverse shot. And many other scenes have an almost compulsion to cut when there's no point to. Sometimes you'd think they don't know how to frame a scene any other way. The shot reverse shots are not even the good kind of shot reverse shot like in a Coen Brothers film, where each cut actually reveals something, I feel like many of the scenes in the newer Disney films with lots of cutting are cutting between people who have no particularly interesting expression.
Case in point:
Comparing two kinda similar scenes from The Last Jedi and Empire Strikes Back. I noticed recently that Irvin Kershner and the ESB editors did longer shots with less cutting. Less cuts makes a film feel nicer. You'll notice Leia's speech has two cuts. Holdo's has ten. Now, to be fair, part of the scene with Holdo is also about showing us what Poe is feeling during the speech. So some cuts are warranted. But some of them make no sense. Like at 0:35. They cut to show us some dudes sitting there, for what? I guess to show us they brought back a character from RotJ, but it's a fast segment that's kinda pointless. I do like the cut to the outside of the ring at 0:26. I feel like this framing is good.
Technical aspects aside, Holdo's speech doesn't make much sense. Paraphrasing: "All we need to do is survive, and we will spark the rebellion." Uh, what? How? This movie makes a big deal about needing hope. But hope is stupid unless you have good cause to be hopeful. Like an abused spouse shouldn't just hope their partner will stop being abusive. They should probably do something concrete. So making your rousing speech a ramble about a metaphysical nothing seems kinda stupid. Also, you know, the rebels who do survive call, and nobody comes. So like, that idea is stupid? I guess at the end, though, the kids on Canto Bight are super duper inspired. I suppose that mean the kids will rise up, pick up weapons and beat The First Order. Child soldiers in Star Wars, yay! But this scene and the rest are just as unclear as to what anyone's concrete plan is, long term. Apparently, in Star Wars, all you need is metaphysical beliefs to accomplish concrete goals. Or, instead of this scene and the weird pointless theme about hope, you could just make it about a fight to survive, which doesn't need a bad speech to be motivating.
Or, like in ESB, you could just have your commander give concrete instructions that make the scenes easy to follow. And you could just shoot the scene in a couple nice segments which use the medium effectively. Also, the framing (behind the pilots) makes us feel like we are one of the pilots listening. Compared to Holdo's speech, where.. idk, there isn't really any emotion to any of the shots, nor are they framed in any way which makes the scene feel personable.
Also, yes, I'm kind of obsessed with this, and I may be toying with the idea of making a video essay on this topic. So as I'm editing video and writing I'm posting thoughts here.