If you haven’t seen the new Star Wars, you should. In my opinion, it’s probably the best film in the series since the original trilogy. One of the things that I appreciated was its nuanced take on heroism. Most of us think of heroes as brave and dashing. They take bold steps and inspire others with their audacity. That description doesn’t fit Vice-Admiral Holdo—at least not at first.

With Princess Leia injured, Holdo takes command of the resistance’s fleet. Poe in particular (this trilogy’s hotshot pilot) is waiting for a big move like a counter-attack from her. It doesn’t come. Instead, she appears to sit there passively. She keeps the fleet out of range of the First Order’s cannons, but there isn’t enough fuel to do that for long. Finally, we learn that she is diverting fuel to transports to abandon ship. The whole time, she had a plan.

Of course, it wasn’t good enough for Poe. He starts to think she might be a traitor working for the First Order, or at the very least weak and incompetent. And it’s hard not to sympathize. If Holdo has her way, the resistance won’t have a fleet to fight the First Order with. He stages a mutiny which Holdo eventually puts down.

That’s when we find out the final part of Holdo’s plan. While the transports are traveling, she intends to stay on the ship to draw First Order fire. Aside from Leia and a few individuals nearby who may be listening into the conversation, no one knows about the sacrifice Holdo will make. Of course, the plan is disrupted when the First Order gets wind of the transports. It starts shooting them out of the sky. To give the remaining transports a chance, Holdo flies her ship into the First Order’s fleet, sacrificing herself all the same.

Holdo is a true hero. Thing is, she doesn’t look like it for most of the movie. In fact, her plan demands that she not look like a hero. She could’ve ordered a foolhardy attack to look brave, and it probably would have brought her cheers. But given the First Order’s superiority in numbers, such an attack would have inevitably failed. So, in order to be a hero who saved the people she cared about, Holdo had to be willing for her subordinates not to think of her as a hero.

That got me thinking. Some part of us probably wants to be considered heroic for the adulation we’d receive. If we were heroes, people would look up to us and admire us. It may be fair to say that most of us would jump at the chance to do something heroic if it meant we’d get praise. But how many of us would do something heroic if it meant we’d be condemned for it? What makes Holdo so heroic in my view is that she puts the good of her fleet ahead of her image. It’s a basic insight, but one that leaders fail to live by all the time.

Lots of impressionable kids were at the theaters watching this movie. I hope they all aspire to be heroes in their own way. What I hope they realize looking back is that the same actions that will make them true heroes will not always look heroic.