Except there's a whole genre of movies about hotshot military men saving the day by bucking authority and trusting their own judgment over their clueless superiors' orders. (Arguably that's what Luke did when he turned off his targeting scope and trusted the Force.) That's the very trope that TLJ was addressing and subverting by showing that they weren't always right to do so. Anyway, I find it odd that everyone is talking about the mistakes Poe made at the start of the film and overlooking the fact that he learned better. The reason characters make mistakes is so they can grow, so they can recognize they were wrong and try to redeem themselves. It's not unforgivable to make a mistake -- only to refuse to learn from it. Poe recognized his mistake and became a better person as a result. It's called character development.
Luke's superiors weren't clueless, they were desperate and carrying out literally the only option available to them with the forces they had. Nor did Luke disobey orders or try to hot dog it on his own. He was part of a squadron who provided backup for each other the whole time, and vice versa, at the cost of their lives. The mission and his part in it were fully sanctioned, and they had tried every conventional means of getting a torpedo in the thermal exhaust port, so he adapted and tried something new with a little coaching from Obi-Wan. The Rebel base even radioed him and ask what was happening and he told him it was okay, which they accepted because they were seconds away from destruction anyway and figured why the hell not? Is that the example that was being subverted? Teamwork? Establishing trust and following orders? Caring when your friends and squadmates are killed? Careful planning and execution, which doesn't always work out the way you planned, but that doesn't mean the plan was bad? Not hot dogging it or showing off? Backing up your wingman? That's awful, we should subvert that kind of nonsense right away and make a movie of people behaving like total dicks instead! What did he learn? He disobeyed orders, got everyone in his squadron killed. He disobeyed orders again, resulting in a mercenary betraying them and ruining the plan, and got almost everyone else in the Resistance killed, after he mutinied against his commander. He tried a stupid frontal attack on the First Order's Gronn Gun, just like at the beginning, and got all the redshirts in his speeder squad killed except himself and the two other name characters. Then he ran back into the cave and followed the crystal wolf Pokemon until Rey saved the last twelve Resistance members he hadn't killed yet. So unless the lesson is "Gotta catch 'em all!" I'm not seeing what big lesson he learned. I am better at killing Resistance members than the First Order? Yoda said "Do or do not, there is no try." Not keep trying the same insane, treasonous, and stupid plans until you successfully kill everyone on your side, but then if you walk away with a positive attitude and twelve survivors that makes up for everything else you did. Maybe the lesson is that TLJ Poe gets away with everything without facing consequences for his horrendous actions and all the people he killed? Everyone wants TLJ to be the deep subversion of tropes of the genre, but it's not. Just being contrary to everything established in the previous movie is not deep. Not that any of the SW films are deep, but TLJ is no more so. It's a rehash of Empire minus the coherence that film had with its predecessor. Empire, the film where Yoda also talked about the educational value of learning from one's failures.
Except he wasn't wrong, based off the info he had. Holdo should have told him what was happening, she knew he wasn't a mole. Leia would have told him instantly. I'm not saying that Poe hadn't just came off of making a huge mistake, but there was no reason to hide what they were doing from him, and he did the only responsible thing in that situation: trying to save lives from seemingly terrible orders. All the deaths the situation caused are strictly on Holdo for being an ass who put her hatred of Poe (and she did hate him, regardless of her little comment at the end) over just saying "We are trying to get to a hidden base I know about". One sentence would have saved lives, and Leia would have just told Poe that if she'd been awake. But, she wasn't, so Holdo got a bunch of people killed because she was making what seemed to be irrational decisions. In the end, soldiers aren't droids. If they can't question seemingly bad orders, then what is the point of using organic soldiers over machines? To be clear, Poe was a giant fuck up just based on the first part of the movie, but after that he did what was the best course of action based off of the information he had. If Holdo wasn't trying to demand obedience like she was Palpatine on a bad day by keeping Poe (who was probably still near the top of the command chain at that point even after the demotion, since he was the head starfighter pilot) in the dark for literally no reason then that she didn't like him, a lot of people would have been alive at the end that weren't. The movie could have shown Poe as being wrong for going against orders based off of the first scene, but then it proved that the people in charge can also be idiots blinded by ego, so it all comes out even in the end in my opinion.
All Poe had to do was trust his superior, like he trusted Leia. The fact that he was so overconfident, with a bruised ego on top of it, made him extremely irrational. He disobeyed a direct order. Why should Holdo trust him?
I never said they were. I was speaking of the broader literary trope, parenthetically acknowledging that Luke in ANH was arguably similar. You're mistaking something that was clearly marked as a peripheral sidebar for the main point, which is odd.
Weird. It's almost like the film was trying to subvert the idea that the hothead hero isn't always right...how strange.
“Subverting expectations! Well, that’s not what I expected! It therefore is terrible. I suggest, nay, demand a boycott! Let us set our web browsers to rottentomatoes.com and vote negatively on this film,” said the entitled fanboy.
And allowing him to know all the details of Holdo’s plan does? Please don’t mistake me, I like TLJ, but it is not a perfect film. And while I actually do like the Poe storyline, I think they could have played up the traitor in the fleet aspect a little more.
Indeed, it was odd that you were arguing that they were arguably similar in any way, which is why I argued the point, because they're not even remotely similar, much less arguably. Also odd is that you left off the entire second part of the post where I did address the other issues you mentioned, and said how the film doesn't actually make the subversive point people think it does, because the hothead doesn't learn a damn thing. But then you've been cherry picking what you want to see and ignoring that which you don't throughout this discussion, so that's no big surprise. I was also making a point about how the character traits and lessons in A New Hope make for a much better example to learn from than those in TLJ, which is apparently, behave like a total crapsack and get everyone that's counting on you killed and we'll keep giving you chances and letting you lead, because everyone else is dead now thanks to you. But the film failed utterly in its goal of demonstrating that, and learned nothing from its failure, because the hothead "hero" never learned from his mistakes, kept right on making them, and never faced any consequences for the thousands of people he got killed in the process. It's not subversive, it's exactly the kind of movie you all think it's criticizing where the hothead goes rogue, gets a ton of people killed, but gets rewarded in the end despite all the horrible things that he's done. Poe got a promotion by process of elimination, and he was the one who eliminated everyone. He failed upwards and rose to the level of his own incompetence, and then exceeded it. Maybe the Peter Principle in the Star Wars Universe can be called the Poe Principle, and involve a lot more death. That's a cheap shot to bring up here. No one in this current discussion has said anything like that. I have structural, consistency, and character issues with TLJ galore, but I'm not pissed that it had women and minorities as main protagonists (quite the opposite), I don't think Rian Johnson or Kathleen Kennedy are ruining Star Wars or my childhood or should be fired, I don't mess with the film's ratings on IMDb or RottenTomatoes, and I'm not boycotting anything and still love the franchise. So don't lump us all in with the hostile man-child neckbeards just because they happen to have a completely different set of complaints about the movie that are sexist, racist, entitled, and childish. This is why I didn't get involved in the TLJ review threads up here initially, because you always wind up getting lumped in with the douchebags.
Considering that there seems to be so many different opinions about what happened and why, perhaps the storyteller did know what they were doing and its the audience's perceptions that are different for various reasons? Besides...this thread is about a new animated project, not Poe Dameron's actions in TLJ.
Honestly, now that you mention it, I'm not even sure what the catalyst was for this becoming a Poe discussion. When I came in the Poe Talk was already in progress. Is Poe is the new animated show or something? Is that why he came up?
Since I'm still waiting for the conclusion of the story, I'll withhold judgement regarding consequences. Regardless, I fault Poe. I don't fault Holdo. It's about the Resistance post ROTJ so that might be the impetus.
I think you're getting your wires crossed between me and someone else (maybe Kirk55555), because I wasn't talking about Holdo being to blame, I was faulting Poe. Also, I seriously doubt they're going to distract from all the balls they still have in the air to court martial Poe in the next film, and there aren't even enough survivors to fill out a jury, so I think he's safe. I'll just be happy if he at least switches personalities again and goes back to being old Poe.
Sorry. It's going a bit wonky. Also, I don't see it as dramatic of a personality shift as others. Also, sadly, I do agree that they won't bother with consequences. More's the pity.