Honestly the last jedi had so! many! scenes that were honestly visually stunning (that white and red salt planet?), but this one was just breathtaking :) I remember watching it and the entire theatre gasped at the wide shot of space, when the ships disintegrated in flashes of light. also i keep rewatching it and i keep getting goosebumps HAHA
The reason why this scene works so well is because of the lead-up to it, mostly attributed to editing that really builds up momentum — it’s the movie pacing version of an EDM beat-drop. The stakes for each character in each of their arcs — Poe on the rebel ship, Finn and Rose on the Imperial ship, Rey in a battle with Kylo Ren — have been rising, and the tension reaches its peak in each arc just for this moment. Poe and Leia watch from afar, having escaped from Holdo’s ship and now playing the role of the audience, worried but helpless. Finn and Rose are about to be executed by Captain Phasma, and Rey and Kylo Ren are screaming at each other, straining for the lightsaber.
So that’s how the storytelling helps to build this moment up to its climax. Editing also helps too! For example, when Phasma says “Execute”, we see the scythe rise, but instead of the downward swing or cut to reaction shot of Finn and Rose, we cut to a close-up of Holdo’s hand, accelerating the ship and going into light speed. Our fear and worry and tension gets transferred over to Holdo, gets an acceleration from Holdo, then cuts back to Finn and Rose, then Rey and Kylo Ren burst away from each other and /then/ finally, the beat-drop hits.
Music, again, is important (stan talent stan john williams) — it rises as tension rises, and then when that wide shot in space comes… we get silence. Silence when the ships break apart; silence when we expected a deafening clash, screaming, fire; silence that not only subverts expectation but backs away and lets the visuals do it all. The wide shot does the same: no fancy camera work like when the X wings fly, it’s just a wide shot, letting us see everything. We feel the impact of the crash, but the silence lets it be drawn out — a shining beacon of destruction, slow-motion in space, existing in the silence between heartbeats. And when we hear sound again it’s like an aftereffect, carrying us back into narrative.
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