#Mood on Finn’s role being smaller. That said, I don’t think there’s a need for Poe’s role to be as big as Finn’s. Finn is the male lead, after all, while Poe is a major supporting character. Poe in TFA was meant to be a mature and competent hero, and I have argued that he was taken out of the story specifically so Finn and Rey couldn’t avoid the problems and challenges in TFA (link). Some people took that meta as my saying Poe should have been the real hero, but it’s actually the opposite–what I meant was that Poe was taken out of the way so the main heroes, Finn and Rey, could be challenged and grow as characters.

This was Rian Johnson’s fundamental misunderstanding of the character dynamics in TLJ. He thought they had to be a co-equal trio who all had lessons to learn, so he changed Poe’s character to artificially create conflict. Even more frustrating, it wasn’t about Poe’s actual issue as seen in TFA and the comics, which was his eagerness to put only himself on the line and not watch anyone else be sacrificed.

But I guess RJ couldn’t relate to a humble and self-sacrificial hero and can  only understand self-aggrandizing gloryhounds. That’s a shame because I wanted a movie about the characters I fell in love with in TFA, not RJ’s personal issues as an overgrown man-child.