i'm curious to hear more about what you thought of poe's arc? after the first scene i was so excited! to get a story about rebellion & death and how dying for a cause might not be as important as living for it BUT THEN i felt like the movie took a hard left and threw poe into a character arc about not being hotheaded and listening to superiors. so when poe has his line at the end telling everyone to pull back, it feels plucked from a story i didn't get to watch.
I actually thought that “dying for a cause might not be as important as living for one” was the heart of his arc, and it carried through the whole thing from beginning to end.
After all, when Poe stages the mutiny and Admiral Holdo actually hears what he’s got planned, she’s not horrified that he’s disobeyed her---she breathes, “You’ve wagered the lives of the whole Resistance on these two people slipping through the First Order’s defenses,” in sheer horror. And she is horrified! Poe’s gone and done exactly what Leia warned him about after the dreadnought; he’s concocted another brave but overly reckless plan and leveraged it against people’s lives and the continued existence of the Resistance.
Then, his heroic-but-unnecessarily-risky plan not only fails, but threatens the cautious plan that Holdo’s set in motion, with its calculated and limited losses. (Not by any fault of his own, but like. That happens.)
And Poe learns from this! On the Salt Planet, his reaction is not to rush the Death Star Cannon once the cause is lost, or to stage a desperate last stand when Luke is buying them time. Instead, he stops, he thinks about how to get everyone out of there alive, which he does. And that’s the moment Leia lets him lead. (”Why are you looking at me? Follow him.”)
Given that The Force Awakens portrays someone willing to mouth off at people who want to kill him, and rush back to Jakku to complete a mission while still bleeding, and make an impossible shot against a planet-sized laser.......I think “discretion is the better part of valor, live to fight another day” was a perfect lesson for him to learn.
