literally people keep dying and this holdo lady hasnt told anyone anything and like…why trust her? I don’t trust her. Why should we trust her??
That was such a dumb plothole. If you’re on a ship gathering the few members of the Resistance left in the Galaxy, and you’re in a life or death situation, why not tell your subordinates your plan? It literally had no chance to leak out to the FO. Holdo kept her plan quiet for no reason and it’s bad writing. Rian wanted drama on that ship but didnt know how to cause it smh. If i was stranded on a ship being shot at, knowing that everyone is going to die in a few hours if nothing is done, and that my leader (who i dont even know) refuses to tell anyone her plan and seems to do nothing at all, i would have caused a mutiny too. Like, nothing prevented Holdo to tell Poe her plan. God this movie is dumb.
I could have understood it if there was a subplot about a mole or traitor being on board. Maybe that was how the FO was following them and not some nonsensical tracking device. Heck, or maybe the mole planted the tracking device?
In fact, new plot.
There is a mole on board the Raddus and this person has planted the tracking device and maybe also listening bugs, which is why Holdo says nothing as information may get back to the FO, her plan to evacuate will be ruined and they’ll all die.
But her sactions rouses Poe’s suspicions and together with Finn and ROse they figure out that there is a traitor on board (they think it’s Holdo, this is the one thing they’re wrong about), that they’re being tracked, how and that the traitor is communicating with the FO ship. Hence the need for a hacker to find and stop the device and sabotage communications.
Holdo figures out that Poe and his friends are up to something, hopes they can stop the FO and the traitor and makes herself seem even more treacherous than she might otherwise to spur them on.
While they do find the traitor (it can be anyone, preferably someone close to Holdo which would tie her hand) and the device it’s too late and they do need to use Holdo’s plan to evacuate. Have Holdo, just before they leave, commend Poe for having the intelligence to figure out what happened – even if he was wrong about the identity of the traitor – and the integrity to act in the face of an apparently treasonous leader and also apologize for manipulating him that way but that she couldn’t speak freely.
Not by any means a perfect fix, but still hangs together better and is more emotionally satisfying that TLJ. And without messing too much with the existing plot.
Of course Poe Dameron has flaws.
That’s not the issue here. Nobody’s saying he should have been portrayed as a perfect paragon and him being flawed or having to grow in any way is an à sin. People who put it that way are strawmanning and trying to confuse what the real problem is.
The problem with his characterization in TLJ is that his actual flaws were ignored in favor of giving him a different set of flaws, one that happened to fit anti-Latinx stereotypes rather than the character we actually knew. (Disclaimer: I am not Latina myself, but in this I am following the assessment of other fans of color including Latinx fans.)
Exploring his actual flaws shown in TFA would have made his story so much more interesting and had a feeling of continuity with the earlier movie. Poe from TFA was a hero, but he also had a hero complex. He thought he had to save everybody, and he couldn’t bear to lose people.
As a result Poe tried to shoulder too much alone, as when he was hesitant to leave the villagers in the beginning or when he flew alone in the final stage of the Starkiller mission because his people were getting shot down left and right. Those are good qualities in a fighter but not necessarily in a leader, who must delegate and learn to sacrifice people if necessary. These would have been excellent issues to explore in a movie about the moral ambiguity of war, and like all the best flaws are the flip sides of the character’s most admirable strengths.
Getting people killed with his mistake and not seeming to give a damn, on the other hand? Being an arrogant hothead who doesn’t respect women, a convenient Straw Misogynist to score points against? Those are lazy stereotypes that contradict the established character. They’re off-the-top-of-the-head ideas that should never have made it to the final draft.
The problem isn’t that Poe Dameron was flawed. The problem is that we didn’t get to see Poe Dameron and explore his actual flaws. It’s such a wasted opportunity and a disservice to fans, and people have every right to be angry.
A lot of people have complained that the line about being the spark is Holdo’s and that Poe gets it from her, but their lines are not the same and the differences says a lot about both of them, what they want and what they stand for.
Holdo’s line is “we’re the spark that’ll light the fire that’ll bring back the Republic”.
At this point they, or at least she, still sees them as a Resistance and the Resistance was part of the Republic, not an officially acknowledged part but still a part. But now the Republic is gone and Holdo wants to bring it back.
But the Republic was deeply flawed and I think Poe knows and realizes this in a way Holdo doesn’t.
He’s a child of two Rebel soldiers yes and yes a Republic officer for a lot of years, but he also saw the system fail more than once. Most recently with Muran’s death and nothing still being done about the First Order despite the rising danger from them. And he’s seen what they have done in the Outer Rim and Wild Space, where the Republic have done nothing to stop their reign of terror and abuse even as it slowly encroached on Republic territory.
So he went rogue along with the rest of Rapier Squadron to do what the Republic wouldn’t.
Therefore Poe’s words are “We are the spark, that’ll light the fire, that’ll burn the First Order down.”
Notice the difference?
I don’t think Poe would ever have wanted the Republic to violently disappear, he would have preferred reforms. But now it is gone. And unlike Holdo who wishes to restore the old that was, the way the rebels of the Alliance restored the Republic, Poe wants to burn down the First Order so that something new can grow.
Something that can work, which the Republic – old and new – never really did.
I mean I guess this exchange was intended to make Holdo look like the reasonable, constructive one and Poe the Scary Brown Extremist™, but yeah, I sympathize more with Poe’s take too. Holdo’s analogy doesn’t even work, how does fire even bring shit back lmao. Maybe something new will grow in time after the burning dies down, but fire is first and foremost a destructive force. Sometimes destruction is necessary for renewal, yes, but you can’t just cut out the middle. Nothing good was going to grow while the First Order–and for that matter the rottenness within the Republic that enabled it–existed.
Maybe people have their own biases, but from what I’ve heard it sounds as though nothing Finn, Poe, or Rose did made the slightest difference to the plot so maybe it’s a natural choice.
You don’t need to worry about canon Rell’o, though, the movie closed that door at least.
On the contrary, because they were keep in the dark by the white leaders, Finn/Poe/Rose made things worse ending with many rebels being killed and them (Finn/Rose) being nearly beheaded. (I choose to reveal this because people should be warned of how fvcking racist if not triggering this movie is.)
So there’s your life lesson, kids: Always listen to the nice white people. Thet know what’s best for you.
I would like to discuss the character assassination of Poe (and Leia by proxy) one more time, as I have just talked to a friend who is a casual viewer and saw the movie yesterday, and said that Poe was so arrogant, chauvinistic and unlikable that he became her least favourite character after Kyle, which just utterly broke my heart. Poe had been introduced in BTA and later TFA as such a wonderful, groundbreaking character: sure, he was the best pilot in the Resistance and he knew it and was rightly proud, but he was never arrogant about it. Instead, we met him as a great strategist and team-leader beloved by his squadron, and as an overall friendly, open, humble and good-natured person with great people skills who immediately understood he could trust this scared, deserting stormtrooper; who refused to call him by a number like some object and offered him a name instead; was constantly positive and encouraging towards Finn during their escape; always knelt down to BB-8’s level when talking to them instead of talking down; in the comics told C3PO to stop submissively calling him ‘Master Dameron’ when it was he, C3PO, who was a war hero people should respect. It was also established that Poe’s greatest heroes and inspirations are his mother, ace fighter pilot Shara Bey, and Leia Organa. So to hear now that Rian Johnson has taken this wonderful character and turned him into a reckless, arrogant macho stereotype caricature who won’t take orders from female superiors just breaks my heart so much. Also although the scene is subtle so some may miss it, Leia and Amilyn Holdo absolutely do joke among themselves that although Poe is a troublemaker, they still like him and keep him around because he looks good. Which… is just so disgustingly vile, disrespectful and objectifying and something the real Leia, who was good friends with Poe’s mother and who knows how brave, competent and loyal to her Poe is, would never ever say. The fact that Rian Johnson thought it would be hilarious to have two white women in positions of power make sexist, degrading jokes about their subordinate who is played by a latinx actor (with the latinx community facing so much objectification and hypersexualisation in the media all the time already, and the fetishization of Poe and his suffering being such a huge problem in the SW fandom itself!) just boggles my mind. But I guess nothing about the extent of that men’s racism should surprise me any more at this point. The only way I might have excused Poe’s sudden personality transplant would be if they had explained it as him suffering from PTSD and trauma after being held captive and tortured by the FO and Kylo Ren. But of course what her son has done to him never comes up between Leia and Poe – instead she slaps and stuns him for good measure. I’m just so unbelievably sad because I don’t know how JJ Abrams could retcon this and make it right and bring back the Poe we know and love. Maybe with the PTSD angle, if done right, but I’m not sure…
the fact that his selflessness and bravery is shown as “flaws”….. that is so fucking bad???? because that’s what’s wonderful about poe.
like… this is what i really didn’t like about rogue one and how cassian and saw gerrera were treated. they are selfless heroes of color who risk their life to fight fascism but the movie shows them as if it were bad to be too “violent” like them.. put that centrist bullshit away from me lmao
The problem isn’t that Poe has a skewed concept of what it means to lead, it’s that he is already a diverse character who cares deeply for the lives of his fellows and Rian threw that out the window. Passion and recklessness are NOT the same. Poe is absolutely passionate, that’s why he’s so committed to single-handedly doing fucking everything, risking no one’s life and trusting his superiors. This is why the narrative the comics set up is much more along the lines of Leia teaching him how to accept the risk of delegation, how to trust his team on a mission, how to lead rather than doing all the heavy lifting alone. That’s miles away from some too-passionate terrorist extremist who doesn’t listen to his superiors, goes too far, and gets people killed with his recklessness. Presenting him this way with his “slightly distorted view” is fucking stupid and it is, at the end of the day, still pushing that narrative. He’s already a complex character with flaws. Those flaws don’t have to be racist.
See, Poe is a latino man. Latinos know all too well what revolution is like, the right to kick your oppressors out of your countries so that you can self rule, colonisation.
White people are always the ones who did the colonising, which is why they find it so hard to understand the motivations of characters like Poe and Cassian and Saw, characters who hate oppressors because they know exactly what it feels like to be oppressed.
It’s very easy to scream “extremism” and “terrorism” when you’ve never been forced to be in a position to fight for freedom. Johnson is a white cishet man. I rest my case.
Can you imagine how much Kylo Ren must hate Poe Dameron?
Like his whole deal with his parents was apparently ‘they were too involved in the resistance and rebuilding the shattered empire to look after me :(’
And here is Poe who is also a son of resistance fighters but who instead of making it all about himself he’s right there next to Leia, fighting for justice, being the Best Pilote of the resistance and her most trusted man.
L.J.'s Obsessions 