Headscratchers / The Last Jedi Strategic Decisions

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Strategic Decisions

Assault on D'Qar

• So the First Order brings in a huge orbital cannon platform to destroy the Rebel's base. They see Resistance Fighters going after the point-defense guns on said Dreadnought, and a squadron of bombers massing to destroy it. The First Order has several Star Destroyers flanking this Dreadnought. Why did they just sit and do nothing? They don't fire on the fighters or the bombers at all.
  • It's been established several times that larger ships like Star Destroyers have trouble tracking smaller ships with their guns. Many misses and near misses occur before something is actually hit. With the bombers and fighters skimming the surface of the Dreadnought (or being close enough to count), every Star Destroyer fire-and-miss is a potential hit on their own ship.
  • And yet the same Star Destroyers had no trouble at all accurately picking off the Resistance Transports later in the film...
  • A lot less to lose if missed shots can't hit your own people.
  • But, unless those bombers literally warped in right in front of the dreadnaught, they'd had to travel to it all the way from the Rebels' positions, and we've seen how excruciatingly slow they are. How did the Destroyers fail to shot them down then? There's no indication they were cloaked, which, BTW, would've nicely offset their other flaws but they weren't.
  • More to the point, the First Order's Star Destroyers were previously established as carrying TIE Fighters, none of which appeared to have been launched yet by the time the bombers began their attack run (Captain Canady even complains about this). Clearly, what they have in technology and equipment, they seem to make up for in amateurish inexperience. Perhaps General Hux thought he'd just show up, demand a surrender, and the Resistance would meekly comply.
  • Those people had just blown up his superweapon. They clearly wouldn't meekly comply, and Hux had no reason to expect them to.
    • The current leadership of the First Order is actually the indoctrinated kids or grandkids of imperial officers. The original plan was they were supposed to be raised as the new officer core while the kidnapped slave kids would become storm troopers. However before the training of the new officers core was complete they started to question the old guard hand picked by the Emperor for not being aggressive enough against the "illegitimate" republic. This eventually culminated in a bunch of indoctrinated zealots who refused to acknowledge the faults of the Empire seizing control and killing most of the professionals leaving the first order in deeply inexperienced hands. The few remaining old guard officers, like the commander of the Dreadnought, know better but with space zombie wizard Hugh Hefner in his golden bathrobe backing the young ones they can't do anything to fix the problems in the command structure. Like having an inexperienced idiot like Hux who didn't think to immediately scramble the fighters in charge of operations.

Starship chase

• Why didn't the First Order send any fighters against the Resistance ships after the initial sortie with Kylo Ren? He destroyed their main hangar and they had their main command ship and numerous smaller destroyers full of fighters. Not to mention that unlike Imperial TIE Fighters, theirs have missiles and were very effective against them before. Not to mention, how did they manage to hit smaller ships that were further away more accurately than a large ship that was closer?
  • I think it's a case of For the Evulz: they thought they had already won, so they decided to have some fun. Their hubris is evident the moment they decide the evacuated cruiser is not even worthy of diverting some fire to destroy it, which bites them back hard. As for the last question, the larger ships managed to keep a safe distance that also allowed for their shields to absorb the shots with little damage, but the small escape ships have no shields at all.
  • But wasn't Hux pissed off that they couldn't catch them and instead had to wait for their fuel to run out? Which is weird in itself that they didn't message other ships to intercept them. And wasn't the problem with the cannons that their cannons didn't have the range to blast the ships to pieces? If that's the problem, how could they hit the ships that got further?
  • The problem with the cannons was that they couldn't blast through shields at that distance. And as Poe says when he finds out about the evacuation, the escape pods have no shields.
  • The cannons simply lose too much power at that range to punch through a big cruiser. They can however easily punch through some transports. And as for fighters, Hux calls them back earlier because he can't 'support them'. I guess he means that fighters are really vulnerable without a capital ship giving them covering fire and a safe dock to retreat to, and unlike Poe he isn't too keen on losing his entire strike force on a risky venture.
  • You still want to make some containment. A ship as big as Snoke's has to have a few thousand TIE Fighters in it, surely the fighters could maintain a perimeter patrol to possibly catch transports trying to escape. There's really no reason *not* to do it.
  • But based on the scenes, they have about a handful of cannons firing at the ship. If the power loss is the problem and not the range, why not simply fire more? We know those Star Destroyers pack a lot of punch. I don't know how they could be vulnerable since the Resistance ships don't seem to have any AA-guns and their fighters are down. And like the guy under me points out, calling for more ships would have been more efficient than letting days pass while they are chasing the ships.
  • The fighters were pulled back, Hux specifying that they couldn't be supported at that range, because in typical large fleet engagements, fighters can operate with relative impunity against capital ships because the capital ships are busy trading blows with one another. In that standard environment, the only threat to fighters are other fighters and dedicated anti-starfighter ships, like the Lancer-class frigates of old Legends content. But in the engagement in Last Jedi, where the Resistance ships were far enough away that they could just focus shields aft and largely ignore the First Order fleet, unshielded TIE fighters that continued to harass the ships would have fallen victim to every single gun in the fleet being able to focus on them. Ironically, it was this very action that got the bridge of the Raddus destroyed: standard fleet strategy is to keep shields relatively balanced across all areas of the ship specifically to prevent that kind of decapitating shot. Imperial forces in Legends would constantly use their fighters to harass different parts of the ship to keep them from focusing shields and negating all damage; they liked to call it 'keeping them honest'.
  • Poe managed to shoot all the guns off the dreadnaught, without any support. Obviously, the imperial pilots were not as good as him, but they had numbers, and the target was much-much easier. I don't see what was stopping them from doing the same thing he did.
  • The First Order was playing cautiously because they felt they had nothing to lose by doing so. Why risk the pilots and equipment when they can win without any risk just by waiting? It's not like they had other places they needed to go.
    • Idk, maybe because by letting them be you're giving them time to come up with a plan, such as calling for reinforcements, abandoning the ship, turning it into a Hyper-Space ram etc, and because Hux had just been given a humiliating spanking by Snoke, so he should be eager to crush the rebels as quickly and brutally as possible.
  • There's an entire trope for this exact thing: Bond Villain Stupidity. Just like countless bad guys throughout the history of fiction Hux and the rest of the First Order fleet was overconfident and decided to play with their food as a result, no more no less. It's not complicated.

First Order jump forward

• Similarly, why didn't the First Order have some ships simply hyperjump forward in order to surround the Resistance ships, or have more ships jump in from another star system for the same effect?
  • Same reasons as above, overconfidence and not seeing the need to waste resources when the outcome seemed inevitable.
  • The outcome seemed inevitable...but it still took them what seems like at least a whole day if not two to destroy a handful of Resistance ships. You'd think Snoke would get more impatient or that Hux would want it done faster given the flak he got for losing the Dreadnought, not to mention they don't know that the Resistance is unable to contact the rest of their fleet or won't be receiving backup anytime soon.
  • Because it's very difficult, if not downright impossible, to jump such small distances in hyperspeed. This would mean the attack force would have to jump the minimum distance, away, and then jump back with perfect timing and precision. Too much trouble and effort when the Resistance is already cornered and it potentially makes your own formation weaker.
  • It's quite possible they would have jumped too short a distance, and come out with their backs to the rebel forces. As for the fighters, Hux doesn't know the pitiful state of the rebel fighter complement, and after losing the dreadnought he's inclined to be cautious. Hux is a competent general, but he's also extremely inexperienced and terrified of his boss.
  • Jumping to Hyperspace is meant for long distance travel, not very specific maneuvers. It's faster than light travel, one fraction of a second in Hyperspace would make them cover a distance that would take years to cover with standard travel speeds.
  • And yet every other time we see it used ships come out of HS with impeccable accuracy, even near a planet, apparently without a fear of telefragging it. Jumping just far enough to appear in front of the Resistance seems trivial in comparison.
  • Likewise, the reason they don't have ships from other systems jump in is because the bulk of the fleet is tied up dealing with the hundreds of worlds that capitulated to the First Order when the Hosnian system was destroyed.
  • But what exactly are they "dealing with"? There's no indication that anyone but the Resistance is actually putting up a fight.
  • Um, no military in the history of ever has gone, "Oh, you're surrendering to us. How nice. Do drop us a line to let us know how that's going on. Thanks muchly. Yours, your benevolent occupying force." If nothing else, the First Order will need to get its military bureaucracy in place on each planet to ensure that the take over of power is handled smoothly, and that means fleet deployments, even if it's just a single Star Destroyer to each planet.
  • Are you telling us they couldn't have spared a single ship from those crucial duties for a few hours, or swap places with one of the destroyers that was uselessly tagging after the Superiority?
  • It's a big plot point that the fleet is using a special technology to track the Rebels through hyperspace. Though it isn't described in great detail, we do know that the Rebel Fleet could jump to hyperspace within a six-minute timeframe while the disabled tracker had not yet been re-enabled, and they would be lost completely. If the ship jumped to hyperspace and, while it was in hyperspace making it's short jump, the Rebel Fleet jumped to hyperspace, it's quite possible that the First Order would lose them.
  • Nope. Apparently every ship could track them, they just only used one at a time.

Bombarding the Base

• Better question than the above: When the dreadnought arrived to find the Resistance fleet in the middle of their evacuation, why did they decide to bombard the Resistance Base first? You know, the base that was on a planet. Which does. not. move. And was mostly empty by the time they arrived, anyway? Here's an idea: Obliterate Raddus and her consorts first, thus ensuring the Resistance is physically incapable of escaping, and then you're free to glass the planet at your leisure. Especially because it would eliminate the problem the First Order had later in the film of their conventional batteries not being able to punch through Raddus' shields by turning the dreadnought on her immediately (rather than wasting time on the base, then targeting the cruiser, which bought Poe's bombers time to destroy it). Considering what he did to Ozzel for his much less egregious blunder at Hoth, Vader would have Force-choked the entire First Order for a display of incompetence of this magnitude.
  • Remember the salvo from the Ion Cannon in the Empire Strikes Back that crippled that star destroyer? In the Star Wars universe, the most potent weapons need to be ground based as they most ships can't contain or power a weapon of that magnitude. Since the First Order were rushing in ASAP before the Resistance could flee, they didn't have time to properly recon the base, and so wouldn't know what threats were hidden on the surface.
    • This ignores the fact that the First Order fleet was already within range of whatever ground-based weaponry the Resistance might have had. So whether they bombarded the base first, or targeted the fleet, they were already exposed to potential ground fire.
    • Perhaps the guns on the ground take a few minutes to charge up or whatever. (Heck, maybe they take hours to charge up. The rebels on Hoth had advance notice that the Empire would attack; they may have been charging the ion cannon all night while they prepared to evacuate.) If you shoot the ground forces quickly, you may wipe them out before they can attack. But if you concentrate on space-based targets first, the ground guns will have a chance to hit you. (Or that's what the First Order believed, at any rate)
    • Then such weapons would be utterly useless, and nobody would ever bother using them. AA is by default supposed to be capable of prompt response.
  • There was also the possibility of the Resistance possessing a shield generator (also seen in TESB) that could be brought up at any second, forcing them into a costly ground battle which would also allow the Resistance to escape piece-mail (a-la the battle of Hoth). Taking out any ground based assets would normally cripple any fleets offensive and defensive capabilities. Unfortunately for the First Order, they gave the Resistance too much credit; the base was already vacated, and they had nothing to threaten the F.O. fleet with anyway. Yet seeing how the Dreadnought Captain was an Only Sane Man Surrounded by Idiots , it was well within his character to take nothing for granted.
    • It's almost like none of y'all have ever heard of a siege before. Once the evacuation fleet is ashes, the First Order doesn't even need to assault the planet. It's not like Empire, where Vader's priority was capturing Luke and the Rebels were just a secondary objective. All they needed to do was set up a blockage outside the range of any defenses and starve them out.
    • Also, are you telling me that with all their super-advanced technology they cannot tell if a base is abandoned or not, something that can be easily done today with mere satellite surveillance? "...and starve them out." Or, you know, just pound them with those huge cannons, until the shields exhaust. "which would also allow the Resistance to escape piece-mail" How? In TESB they only managed to escape due to the Ion Canon. I think we have already established that it's not a factor here.
    • Well yeah the series has always relied on New Rules as the Plot Demands. This is the same "super-advanced technology" that can't detect a fleet of transports coming out of their sole target because of "cloaking tech", the same technology that couldn't detect a space-ship appearing out of hyperdrive and slip through their shields, the same technology that allowed the Falcon to appear within close (firing) range, drop off something and then escape without even an acknowledgement of an enemy vessel appearing during an active ongoing engagement.
    • At least in those cases some special cloaking technology was used, or people took care to act very quickly. Flimsy excuses but still excuses. Being able to pinpoint the base on the face of the planet but not determine if it's abandoned or not hasn't even got that. Regardless, the ships that could escape at any moment were much more important targets, even if they knew they could track them.

The Plan

• So if the plan was all along to use the transports to go hide on Crait and use the Raddus as a decoy, then why was most of the Resistance not informed? People including Finn began deserting because there was no plan, just inevitable-seeming death, and it led to the mutiny engineered by Poe that cost them valuable time and caused it to be exposed to the First Order. There doesn't seem any real reason why Holdo couldn't just tell them.
  • Vice Admiral Holdo was the commander of those bombers Poe got killed with his foolish behavior. She has every reason at this point in the movie to distrust if not outright hate him for getting people under her command killed in a foolhardy attack on a ship that seriously outmatched them. Combined with the possibility of a traitor since somehow the First Order is tracking them when as far as everyone knows that is physically impossible it makes sense to keep the plan for Poe at least. As for the rest of the operations staff we don't really know if she did tell them or not as the only people we see actively participating in Poe's mutiny would be other fighter pilots and people of lower rank who aren't privy to all the details normally. Holdo might well have explained it to the people directly under her or at least the replacement leaders then ordered them to keep quiet no matter what happened to try and ensure success.
  • Is it possible Holdo thought there was a mole on board, possibly as an alternate explanation for how the First Order were tracking them through hyperspace?
  • Or maybe a Vice Admiral simply felt she didn't need to explain herself to an X-Wing squad leader who had recently been demoted for recklessly getting all of their bomber crews (and a few fighter pilots) killed winning a pyrrhic victory? They are running a military, after all.
  • Poe might just be a Captain, but he's still an officer in the fleet, and probably got promoted back to wing commander by General Leia Organa. A good leader has to know their direct subordinates and be aware of what they need to do their job. Holdo should have realized that someone is willing to take a low-odds gamble if it success will mean victory and is obsessed with doing *something* is not a good person to leave alone with minimal knowledge of the plan...
  • This is where the Mildly Military nature of the Resistance combines with Poor Communication Kills. Holdo is an admiral who is dressed like she is going to a cocktail party during the middle of a major battle and is refusing to explain her plans to the officers expected to carry them out.
  • Yet only Poe got chewed over it, as if he was wrong. He wasn't wrong, he just didn't have the necessary information.
  • Actually Poe is wrong. Mildly Military or not, when things hit the fan Admirals do expect to give orders and expect them to be obeyed by Captains without having to explain what the plan is, especially when those orders are lawful. Given that Poe had already been demoted for insubordination only a matter of hours ago it's no surprise that he no longer has the trust of the Admiral, and no surprise that he's also the one being chewed out seeing as he's flatly refusing to learn the lessons that's going to keep the Resistance alive. Don't forget, he did instigate and lead mutiny, oh, and authorised an off-the-books mission not only without bothering to inform Command of what he was planning, but actively working to keep Command in the dark about what's going on and the fact that the Resistance now two people and one ship fewer than they thought they had available to them.
  • In terms of regulation, sure, there's no obligation for a flag officer to detail plans to an underling. But when that underling is growing increasingly insubordinate over not being told details, wouldn't it be a really good idea to either put them in a brig somewhere or just tell them the info to shut them up?
  • Had there been a full professional military bureaucracy, even in the days of Wooden Ships and Iron Men, Admiral Holdo would have had to answer some serious questions back in the capital (had she returned to port) on why multiple loyal, respected officers in her command had no confidence in her leadership and managed to take control of her ship and begin an authorized mission elsewhere. The outcome usually depended on who lived and returned to testify. Admirals are responsible for those in their command, that is the burden of leadership, they can lead through stick or carrot, but she did neither.
  • The problem there is that the Resistance is not a regular military. It was not even formally backed by the New Republic, hence how poorly-provisioned they were. In reality, Holdo, Ackbar and even Leia have no actual authority beyond what their followers are willing to give them. This is why Leia's call for help from the Outer Rim did not bring the cavalry to the rescue. The Resistance is an informal militia, not a government-sanctioned military with commissioned personnel. Under that kind of situation, Holdo should count herself lucky that Poe didn't just shoot her with the blaster set to kill when he thought she was sacrificing their lives on a near-suicidal escape plan. None of the orders from the Resistance leadership are "lawful" beyond the personal loyalty of their troops. Saw Gerrera probably would have killed Holdo painfully under identical circumstances. When you are running an informal paramilitary without formal sanction you kind of owe your supporters more trust and less superior attitude.
  • Well, if you make the argument that the Resistance doesn't see itself as a military (and given it's command structure, it almost certainly does) the closest parallel would then be World War II French Resistance cells. In which case there would be a clearly defined leader and people who've agreed to follow them. In that scenario then under the conditions they are in at the time it's actually Poe who's lucky not to be shot out of hand; after all paramilitary cells like that are utterly reliant on discipline to stay alive, especially when under live fire.
  • Which is the whole point. It was only because Holdo was not on the bridge with the rest of the senior officers when it was hit that anybody even knew that there even was a plan! This was not a hypothetical battle simulation, nor was it a case where the command rank officers were safely outside of the combat zone. Relying solely on chain of command to maintain strategy when your commanding officers could be killed at any moment just means that lower-ranking officers lack the necessary information to follow a strategy they have been kept in the dark about.
  • There's also the possibility Holdo was feeling a bit overwhelmed stepping into Leia's shoes and the pressure caused her to make mistakes.
  • Something else has also occurred to me. Holdo is a Vice-Admiral who has her own command staff (we see them standing with her during the attempted mutiny). She knows that she can trust her own people, and they are almost certainly in on the plan, but she can't be certain about the people under Leia (after all, from her point of view Poe did just single-handedly destroy the Resistance's last bomber squadrons and get all their crew killed, so whether he is a mole or too incompetent to be entrusted with fleet-level command decisions is immaterial, it's necessary to cut him and his staff out of the loop to stop them doing something that would reveal the transports' existence to the First Order whilst the cruiser made the decoy jump to hyperspace). Add in the fact that if Leia was also in on the plan (very likely) then Leia herself didn't let Poe in on it. As far as Holdo's concerned, that's a clear sign that Poe isn't to be given this information.
  • I agree that Vice Admiral Holdo had no reason to tell Poe what the plan is. However, after my first viewing it really seemed like like she was trying to avoid admitting that they didn't actually have a plan (maybe I'm misinterpreting and it will be more clear after a second viewing). I really feel like if she had just given him some reassurance that there was actually a plan in place and that they weren't just running blind (even if she didn't tell him what said plan was) then he would have been far less likely to mutiny.
  • Calling it a "plan" would be overly-charitable. All they were doing was making a run for a mining base with only one known entrance or exit (i.e. backing themselves into a corner). It would not have required strategic brilliance for the First Order to guess that the Resistance would head for the nearby planet that you could actually see in the space shots. The Raddus was intended to be abandoned anyway as a means of drawing fire, so it was not serving much other purpose besides being a target for the Supremacy and its support fleet and was doomed regardless. Given that we already know that Rose had been trying to keep deserters away from the escape pods, it is fairly clear that confidence in leadership was running lower than their fuel. This was not the best time for commanding officers to keep their plans to themselves.
    • Granted, the Rebellion would have been much better off if they'd averted Poor Communication Kills, but I'm willing to bet the original plan did not include "Step 3: Have a random jailbird sell us out to the First Order". Let's look at what it probably was: the Rebels use the stealthed transports to slip everyone planetside. A droid crew (or, worst case, volunteers who know it's a suicide mission) "try to escape" and the Raddus gets vaporized. The First Order has no reason to glass the nearby planet because they're too busy boasting about how they've finally destroyed the Rebels — remember, stealthed transports, as far as the FO knows no one escaped. This then gives the Rebels time to get to a base with better equipment, park Leia in front of the com system, and have her warm up the Snark Cannons. That would have given the FO a huge metaphorical black eye and given the Rebellion a boost at the same time.
  • Even worse: the so-called plan left the support ships and their crews to be picked off for target practice, left the Raddus as the only thing left to survive (dodgy at best), and their so-called base was an antiquated, poorly defended bunker with a bunch of obsolete, rusted, and salt corroded equipment to mount a pathetic Last Stand - and as we saw, they didn't last two karking minutes once the ground troops landed. Bunker doors got blown off, base invaded, and if it weren't for Luke and Rey? Game over. As hot headed as Poe was, why shouldn't he roll the dice and try to come up with something better than that?
  • Even if Holdo has her reasons for keeping quiet early on, shouldn't she speak up once there's a mutiny?? She's surrounded by mutineers and apparently nobody is coming to save her or enact the secret cloaking plan. So apparently she decided to rely on her own personal combat strength so she could beat the mutineers and fix everything, rather than just saying "We're going to cloak the transports", which would have ended the mutiny immediately. (Even Poe can see the value in the cloaking plan once he's informed.)
  • If the idea here is that Holdo is keeping secrets because she's worried about spies, there really ought to be a subplot about a spy (or a suspected spy) in the ranks. And furthermore, if she's worried about spies then the cloaking plan is worthless, because presumably the spy is gonna board one of the transports just like everyone else, and they'll radio back to Snoke and tell him what's happening. The only way this works is if Holdo thinks there's a spy and then she makes an effort to get rid of them before she reveals the cloaking plan. But we never see her make an effort.
  • Thinking about Rose in the film, it might not be spies that Holdo is worried about. It might be defectors, or deserters getting captured by the First Order and being tortured for the information.. After all, Rose alone has stopped three people from deserting, and that's just since the fleet made the hyperspace jump.
  • The more people who know the plan without needing to, the more likely the information will get into the wrong hands, one way or another. Which is why the plan would have worked if they did as commanded.
  • Another possibility is that she didn't tell anybody because it wouldn't take a genius to realize that somebody would need to stay behind with the ship, and that the somebody would be Holdo. Throw in a hot head like Po, and somebody is going to try to stop her. Better if nobody knows her plan until it's too late for anybody to stop her sacrifice.
  • Ok so suppose she did need to keep it a secret like several people have pointed out. My question is why didn't she tell everyone there was a plan?. She just kinda hints at Poe she has one but even if she feels she didn't need to explain herself to some X-wing pilot she should still reassure her crew that she has a plan that has a high probability of success but she can't explain it to them for undisclosed reasons. People are clearly freaking out if Rose is tazing people headed to the escape pod. Poe mutinies not only because he doesn't trust Holdo, but because he thinks she has no idea what she is doing. Had she demonstrated a little more authority of the situation Finn and Rose wouldn't have gone on their side quest and ruined everything.
  • Adding onto that. How come Rose doesn't know about the plan, how come the mutineers weren't informed of the plan, how come no one in on the plan took Poe aside to inform him of the plan? The Rebellion, Mildly Military or not, still works together and people are kept in the loop generally so they can properly formulate a plan. Did Holdo just not tell anyone, not even the guys who are refueling the transports? Did she tell them not to tell other people?
  • One of the things usually ignored but danced around in all this is that any organizational structure still requires dissemination of information. Vice Admiral Holdo's plan required preparation and for everyone to be ready. Even if she didn't want to provide all the information, she would still need to tell her bridge staff enough for them to tell their subordinates to get them into action. In a real world equivalent, this would be like a Navy admiral or captain knowing their ship will be engaging enemy forces in ten hours and wondering why no one is at their stations or any of the armaments are ready. Prepping all those shuttles requires the maintenance teams to fuel them and pilots to start preflight checks. They needed to collect all the intelligence and equipment they intended to take with them. The fact that Holdo didn't even issue the evacuation order as she was entering the launch bay slips into the Fridge Horror that she was going to pilot a shuttle and let everyone else die on board.
  • That's a lot to base on...no evidence. Was she actually leaving when Poe launched the mutiny, or just entering the bay to check up on things? He spent quite some time unconscious.
• Based on everything above and the movie itself it makes perfect sense that Holdo would want to tell only ESSENTIAL personnel what the plan was. As pointed out Rose is having to stun deserters even BEFORE most of the command staff is killed. So why would any responsible leader tell people who didn't need to know the plan if there was a chance they might try to ditch? If they get captured the enemy then KNOWS the plan. Holdo doesn't know that Poe is "The POV Hero" in this narrative only that he is a hotshot who has trouble following orders. He isn't hangar crew so he isn't going to be preparing the ships. Ironically had Rose not gone off on her adventure with Finn she likely would have been informed of the plan as part of her duties. And having watched the movie a second time I'm convinced that the second time he asked about the plan she actually looked like she was considering telling Poe, but then he saw them fueling up the ships and he lost it... In her situation I would order him in the brig not just off the bridge.
  • But the chances of people deserting and getting captured would be significantly smaller if everyone knew that the plan, while not perfect, was going along swimmingly, or at least that there was a plan. Soldiers are meant to follow orders, but officers are also meant to recognize the importance of morale and the danger of mutiny or desertion if they don't keep it high. And also, Poe isn't just a hot-shot pilot: he's easily the best pilot, and probably best warrior period in the resistance, with command over one of their most important assets, their fighter squadron. He might not be the hero of this story, but not telling him is like Nick Fury telling Captain America to just sit on his ass while people die for no reason instead of just doing what a solider is supposed to do and risk his life to punch out Red Skull on the spot.
  • There's also the fact that, while she was in action, and even after his demotion, Poe reported directly to Leia and not to an intermediary. This makes Poe the de facto Air Boss of the Raddus, not "just" a Squadron Commander. And, being the Air Boss, the Transports would have been part of his Command. If this wasn't the case, there should have been an Air Boss present/installed by Holdo to tell Poe off; she shouldn't have needed to do so. But if Poe was the Air Boss, then Holdo should have given him appropriate orders; if he refused, then she would be within her rights to relieve him of his post. The Chain of Command is a "Chain" for a reason; The Captain doing an end run around immediate subordinate compromises said Chain as much as mutinous actions by said subordinate. This is one case where conservation of actors is a detriment.
• Wait a minute, who says Poe and the main characters were the only ones who needed to learn to trust and not try to be such hot-shots. Maybe Holdo and Poe are not so different, and Holdo wanted the only plan she'd ever make as the leader of the resistance to surprise everybody with it's brilliance and her valor, and she didn't trust anyone but her buddies in command to keep the plan a secret, and paid the price.
  • Except that, as noted above, Poe is the only one who gets any flak, even though he doesn't deserve any of it, and besides, Holdo was, supposedly, an admiral, not an excitable teenager. Poe, btw, didn't want to astonish anyone with his cleverness and heroism - he simply concluded, not without grounds, that his superior officer was incompetent/treacherous/insane.
  • Also, keep in mind that Leia was wearing a homing beacon! This was so that Rey could find her way back to the Resistance after she (hopefully) convinced Luke to give up walrus-fondling as a hobby and rein in the Skywalker Whining Gene. Even if one argues that Holdo was concerned about spies, the fact was that a spy would not need to know what the plan was! All they would need is a portable tracking device just like the one Leia had. Then the First Order to follow them to Crait, even with the stealth transports! Heck, given how closely the Resistance was being followed, even a commlink would have been good enough to contact the First Order! Holdo was just another arrogant New Republic elite pretending to be a military officer and more concerned about forcing people to respect her authority than she was in common sense or logic. She was no different than the New Republic Senators who ignored all warnings about the First Order because they were coming from their social "inferiors".
  • The problem with this whole idea is that there's no justification for Holdo's actions whatsoever. Spy or not, distrusting Poe or not, Holdo should have said at the very least something akin to "Things look dire I know, but we have a plan to get out of this. Just everybody do their jobs and everything will work out fine." Hell, Holdo could've outright lied to everybody about what the plan was if she had to, just saying that a plan existed was all that was needed. It's called managing morale. It's because Holdo doesn't do this that Poe does what he does. What's worse it shoots Poe's intended arc in the foot as it was intended to show to Poe that he needed to think like a leader rather than a hotshot and then giving Poe no reason whatsoever to do otherwise. Having Holdo tell all the crew there was a plan and then simply having Poe think he knew better and go around Holdo anyway would've gotten the point across much much better.

Badly Planned Evacuation

• Back when The Force Awakens came out a lot of people were wondering why the Resistance was standing around fixated with the battle at Starkiller Base when as many of them as possible should have been packing up and fleeing since the planet was about to be destroyed. Poe and the X-wing squadrons managed to avert that. But at the end everyone seems to be hanging around celebrating rather than preparing for the inevitable arrival of First Order star destroyers. Leia apparently even found time to change outfits more than once! Contrast this with the battle of Hoth in The Empire Strike Back where General Rieekan calls for immediate preparation to evacuate the base as soon as they realize an Imperial probe droid was on the planet. Given the lack of surface-to-space defenses the base on D'Qar appeared to have, the disastrous escape seems less a problem with Poe being a hotshot and more a case of the Resistance leadership dragging their feet about evacuating. Especially given Leia's past experience, why was this handled so badly? Things only looked worse since their planned destination was Crait, an abandoned, poorly-equipped base wherein they would literally be backed into a corner. Who the heck came up with this retreat plan?
  • We don't really know how long the attack on Starkiller base took, but now that we know that TLJ takes place immediately after TFA, there's no reason to assume that preparations to evacuate D'Qar weren't taking place in the background during the assault on Starkiller Base. The reason we don't see it is because the focus on D'Qar is on the op-centre, and that would be the last thing to be evacuated; it is, after all, the Resistance's primary intel and comms hub. As for heading for Crait, this wasn't the original plan. The Resistance jumped, fully expecting to have gotten away, after all, they are jumping to a system that doesn't see much in the way of traffic. It's only when they realise that the First Order can either track them through hyperspace do the brass come up with the plan to evacuate stealthed transports to Crait whilst the empty cruiser makes it final decoy jump.
• Separate question that also ties into the "Running out of fuel" question above: who in their right mind plans a planetary evacuation of all facilities, equipment, personnel, etc. into a small fleet of ships in order to make a desperate escape from retaliation, and forgets to make sure the ships are fully fueled for their trip? This seems like the kind of boneheaded logistical mistake a newbie ensign would make, certainly not what you would expect from a seasoned command staff that includes Admiral Ackbar and General Organa. Keep in mind that back when these two were still relatively young leaders of the Rebellion, they were forced to make rapid evacuations of their bases all the time to stay ahead of the Empire. This is not the sort of thing they would disregard. Short story: the chase portion of the main plot of this film shouldn't even have happened, or at the very least it should not have happened for something as contrived as "we're low on fuel". Any theories out there that might explain?
  • "Forgets to," because that's the only reason that an underfunded, mostly-underground organization could be low on fuel? Why do you jump to, "They must be stupid!" as an accusation instead of, you know, them just not having the fuel?
  • Background material from The Force Awakens establishes that while the Resistance may be an underground movement, they were one of the "publicly disavowed, privately endorsed" variety. The Republic's financial and material support for the Resistance was even mentioned explicitly by General Hux as evidence of the hypocritical nature of that government's refusal to recognize the First Order as a legitimate faction. And considering that the Resistance clearly had access to modern weapons, facilities, ships, and equipment, it is hardly unfair to assume that not having fuel would be the result of poor logistics or planning rather than a crippling shortfall. The fact that such a shortfall of material is never discussed lends weight to this notion.
  • That they didn't have the fuel just plain makes more sense than that their leadership was dumb enough to "forget" to fuel up. "Forgetting" is stupid, and out of character, and nobody makes reference to that having happened, either. On the balance, that they didn't have the fuel (the evacuation comes after they mounted not one but two major offensive operations) is the most likely answer.

What was up with that side quest?

• So it's very well established that the Resistance fleet is under immediate existential threat and that the most they can hope for is to outrun the First Order's long range guns for a period that is measured in hours. Finn, Poe, and Rose get in touch with Maz Kanata (somehow), and she gives them a lead on a person who can probably fix their problem with being tracked through hyperspace. Here's the question: How did anyone think that Finn and Rose would have enough time to travel to another planet - the distance to which wasn't clearly specified, unless I am mistaken - and locate a specific person based on nothing more than a description of his favored accoutrements, convince him to help their cause, then travel back to the fleet, board the single largest starship that has ever been built apart from the Death Stars, find a very specific room that is housing the tracking system, and disable it before the fleet runs out of fuel? Even if Finn knows where it is, they still have to get there, and that obviously entailed finding suitable uniforms with which to blend into the crew population (which eats up even more time). Just how much fuel did the Raddus have on board, and how long were they running on sublight engines? How much time did Finn and Rose spend just transiting from the fleet to Canto Bight and back? How long were they hanging around the casino? Between the cutaways to Rey and Luke on Ahch-To, to Poe and Holdo on the Raddus, and to Kylo and Snoke on the Supremacy, it's impossible to tell if they were gone for hours or days. I know this is partly the fault of editing, but there seems to be a noticeable lack of tension and urgency from Finn and Rose throughout most of the sequence (case in point, they have the time to watch a fantastic horse race and muse on the ugly truth beneath the glamorous veneer of the casino town).
  • And furthermore, the entire side quest ends up being pointless. In fact it was worse than pointless; it was actively harmful. If they'd just decided to stay with the fleet, they would've all escaped on the cloaked transports, and DJ never would've sold them out, and they wouldn't have lost like 80% of their people as a result. And yeah, it appears that the entire movie takes place in a day, maybe two or three days at most.
  • Yes, that was the point. If Poe had just trusted Holdo, and/or vice-versa, he wouldn't've done his maverick thing and gotten most of the Resistance killed. Also, I can forgive two overwhelmed, star-struck kids for taking a few seconds to gear down.
  • If the whole idea of the plot line is that Poe and Holdo made stupid mistakes in not trusting each other, then I would have liked to see the movie make a real point of that. Maybe have these characters go through some serious remorse about how their stupid mistake led to like 80% of the Resistance getting killed. Maybe give them a chance to redeem themselves via showing trust at a critical moment. Maybe Leia could give them a lecture about it. Maybe there could be some real character growth. I acknowledge that they set up the "Poe is too much of a hotshot" idea early on, and that does tie in with the Holdo plot line, but personally I don't think it reached the thematic conclusion that it deserved. And as for the bit about Finn and Rose, they're not exactly star-struck kids; they're soldiers on an urgent mission.
    • What you want is exposition. The film trusts you enough to realize that Poe DID grow, he DID learn, all on his own, without anyone else coming in to tell him "See, you made a mistake, but here's how to fix it." He grew into the leadership role that Leia and Holdo intended for him when he realized the futility of the skimmer attack, pulled back, and weighed other options. The fact that he realized this himself is what marks his growth into maturity; if someone else had explained things to him, it wouldn't have been as valuable a lesson. As for Holdo, and her own mistakes, she simply didn't have time to look back on them. When the Resistance transports leave the Raddus, she and Leia still believe the plan is going to work. They had NO idea Poe had blabbed about it on an open channel where DJ could hear it (and, consequently, sell it to the FO.) By the time Poe's mistake screws everything up, Holdo has no opportunity to, say, get on the radio and go "I'm sorry I didn't trust you, my not telling you the plan will not force me to take drastic actions to protect you all." She just acts, immediately. Her devotion to the people she serves is what redeems whatever mistakes she made; Poe's realization is what redeems his. The film respects the audience enough to portray both characters without the need for exposition or third-party interference.//
    • Agreed, it would have been nice to see Poe more overtly grow from his mistakes. Say if Holdo were giving her final status report over hologram to Leia on the transport, with Poe visibly uncomfortable in the background, staring at the floor, fists clenched, brows furrowed with guilt of hearing a woman approaching her impeding doom with grace and dignity. Just before the holo cuts out, he dashes over and blurts "Admiral Holdo!" <beat> "... may the force be with you." A moment of clear character growth, zero exposition, and a nice nod towards Han Solo's similar moment in ANH.

As for the Canto Bight side quest itself —as said above, the failure of the quest was the point. Heroes make mistakes, especially inexperienced ones. Finn is less than a day from being a Stormtrooper, and just got out of treatment for a lightsaber injury; Rose is a mechanic who has never seen action. Poe is a hotshot still dominated by his passions, for good and ill. The entire point is that they thought they could do better than anyone else and save the day all on their own. The quest deconstructed the infallibility of mythical protagonists and mavericks, showing that, hey, sometimes authority figures ARE right, sometimes they DO get to be authorities because they have experience and wisdom the younger generations lack, sometimes they stop you from doing something because of legitimate reasons, so maybe it's a good idea to go to them for help (or, at least, to let them know what you're doing.) The fact that the heroes' mistake led to the Resistance losing everything but the Falcon and a collection of characters that would fit in a Hasbro Action Figure carrying case, while they could have likely just had a boring trip if Poe hadn't prejudged Holdo from the instant he met her, IS the point. BUT, and this is entirely by accident of his actions, the movie also goes well out of its way to show that a) the side quest was a major transformative experience for Finn, thanks to Rose; and b) there's still "sparks" of resistance, rebellion, and of the Force reaching out to new adepts, even in places as humble as an animal stable. And that the legend of Luke Skywalker reached far and wide, giving courage to those people and undermining the FO's dominance. THAT was the good that came from the side quest, so, whatever way you look at it, it wasn't pointless.

• Which brings us back to the original question: At best Finn & Rose had a day or two to go to Canto Bight, convince the mega-slicer to abandon the craps table for an all-but-Suicide Mission, get back to the Crait system and board the Supremacy and disable the tracker before the Raddus runs out of fuel. And, of all that, I see "convincing the mega-slicer to abandon the craps table for an all-but-Suicide Mission" to be the biggest unknown in the timeline.
  • They had less than a day. They had 18 hours. It was a desperate ploy. The movie and the characters are very clear about this. In fact, it's BECAUSE they have so little time that Poe grows increasingly anxious and restless.

Hey, let's just get in the shuttles now!

• This sort of ties into the above about Finn's side quest being nonsensical. If the shuttles truly are good enough to get Finn and Rose to Casino World with a good chunk of time left to find their codebreaker (and they seem to think it would ALSO have been fast enough to get them back to the flagship in time), why doesn't the crew just get in the cloaked, untraceable shuttles from the start? You don't have to wait until you're near Crait if they can travel that far. In fact, waiting until you're near Crait gives Hux a better idea of where you've fled to and a better chance of finding you.
  • Maybe they were too far for the shuttles to have enough fuel to make it to Crait, but not Canto Blight?
  • Completely possible, but leads us to a rather unbelievable coincidence of the heroes just passing within shuttle distance of the one planet where the one hacker who can help them happens to be at just the right time.
    • When Finn and Rose leave the fleet, they have eighteen hours left. When they head back, they only have six. By the time they get there, the Raddus is running on fumes. Six hours in hyperspace is a LOT of distance covered —look at the time it took the Falcon to go from Tatooine in the Outer Rim to Alderaan, a Core planet. They're not coincidentally "within shuttle distance", they're barely within range.
  • Actually, don't Finn and Rose jump to hyperspace? In that case it becomes more plausible for them to reach Canto Blight but not have enough fuel to reach Crait until it's close enough.
  • We don't know how many shuttles the Resistance has available, especially after the attack on the fighter bay hanger. Plus, when you look at the size of the shuttle, it isn't really designed to hold that many people (fewer than can fit on the Falcon) which means that the Resistance is going to need a lot of shuttles to evac ~400 people.
  • But the shuttles were clearly part of the evacuation plan from the start. When the evacuation plan is underway, even without the shuttle Finn and Rose hijacked, they managed to get everyone aboard except Holdo, and even then it sounds like the could have fit her as well but needed a pilot to keep the flagship going.
  • If I remember right, they used transports, not shuttles to evacuate to Crait. The shuttle is the small craft you see on the beach at the casino world, the transports are larger, more similar in shape to the transports the old Rebel Alliance used to use.
    Update:Managed to check it when I saw the film again. The shuttle Rose and Finn use is much smaller than the transports used by the Resistance to evac from the cruiser to Crait. There also aren't any shuttles seen evacuating with the transports, which means either there aren't any more shuttles, or there isn't the fuel for them.
  • They didn't use shuttles OR transports from the start because they didn't expect to need them. When they first light-sped away from the FO, they thought they were home free; when they realized they were being tracked, the attack that eliminated the command crew and the fighter complement happened hard and fast, without giving them a chance to regroup and jump away again. By the time they reconvened, they realized they were being tracked somehow, so they studied their options: waste all their remaining fuel in one more jump, or enact Holdo's plan. Now, you'll remember that Hux's crew informs him when the Raddus is about to make a jump to hyperspace. This indicates that the energy buildup in a hyperdrive JUST before a jump is detectable by the sensors of a ship thousands of kilometers away. The FO likely detected and saw Finn and Rose's shuttle, but didn't care because they knew it was just a tiny, negligible ship that could carry maybe ten people at most, so no point wasting resources on it. But if the cloaked transports with hundreds of people on board had even TRIED to jump away, they would have given away the entire plan and the FO would have shot a good many of them out of the sky and pursued the remainder. Sure, the survivors could have plotted courses that scattered them far and wide, but then you have a handful of isolated Resistance members spread across the galaxy.

Rose and Finn's miraculous landing

• Rose and Finn escape Snoke's ship via a smaller craft, and head for the Resistance base on Crait. We see Leia at the open door, and she says "They're coming. Close the door". First off, why is that door open at all? If the Resistance forces are already inside, just shut the door immediately! The FO is right on your tail, after all. Second, why is General Leia Organa personally manning this door? Shouldn't there be some other guy? And shouldn't that other guy have radar, or at least a pair of binoculars? Relying on an elderly woman to spot incoming ships with the naked eye does not seem like a good strategy. Plus she's the commanding officer, and she's standing at the most vulnerable spot in the entire base, so that's a bad strategy too. Third, how is it that the door just so happens to close at exactly the right time, so that Finn and Rose get in but no imperials manage to follow? You might think that this is all part of the plan; Finn and Rose radioed ahead and Leia has decided to close the door with perfect timing on purpose. But as soon as Finn and Rose arrive, everyone starts shooting at them, so obviously nobody knew who they were. They only managed to get in here by pure dumb luck. (Also note: Neither Rose nor Finn is an ace pilot who might be expected to pull off a stunt like this.)
  • Can't answer most of that except to say that there is a small justification that Rose and Finn got to the base earlier than the other fighters, namely because they left the base earlier (the other ships would not have headed to the planet until they had been organized and commanded to do so).
  • Leia has the Force. She can sense they're allies long before she should be able to, and/or it showed her the right time to close the door. She just forgot to tell everyone.
  • But she also fired at the shuttle.
• Another question is why neither Finn nor Rose thought to hail the base and tell it's them and please not to shoot them. Even if they don't know the frequencies, just radio it openly, not like it would do any harm at this point.
  • They are, to be fair, being chased and shot at by enemy forces while piloting a craft that neither of them presumably has much experience in flying towards a location that both of them are trying to find pretty much by the seat of their pants. I imagine the interior of that cockpit was probably full of a lot of semi-panicked yelling and flailing throughout the journey, so they might not have fully had the wherewithal to think of sending a message ahead of their arrival.

Lightspeed Attacks wasted

• Since we've seen that a jumping to hyperspace can deal massive damage, why didn't they put a little more fuel into the medical ship and other support ships and let them hyperspace-kamikaze instead of just getting shot up? They could have taken out another few Star Destroyers at least.
  • Admiral Holdo only came up with the plan since she needed to defend the remaining transport ships. Ramming the First Order's ships was never part of the plan and wouldn't happen if the First Order didn't attack the transport ships.
  • Which is weird. Ramming is the oldest naval tactic. We've seen in Rogue One that the Rebels/Resistance are still fond of it. Why wouldn't it be common and, consequently, why wouldn't everyone expect it and be prepared for it?
    • There's a difference between ramming and light speed ramming. In Rogue One, the Rebellion used ramming tactics against a disabled Star Destroyer. It's quite another thing to try ramming a ship that's firing at you. And Star Destroyers are generally portrayed as possessing very powerful weaponry, so without the lightspeed maneuver Holdo would have been shot down long before she even reached the First Order's fleet. Besides which the only reason Holdo's ramming tactic worked in the first place was Hux had already written her off. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that if it had been attempted at any point previously, the First Order would have simply concentrated their firepower on whatever ship was turning around to face them, and blown them apart before they could even complete the turn, since they'd likely have to divert some of the power from their shields to the hyperdrive anyways.
  • The problem with the whole idea that any ship in the Resistance fleet could've just Hyperspace Rammed the First Order Fleet instead of the Raddaus is that it relies on a number of assumptions. First and foremost is that it would've actually worked. Even if the other ships had the time to turn around to line up for the Ramming and not get obliterated, even if the other ships had the fuel to be able to attempt the jump, even if they could've attempted it without lost of life... why is it assumed that the ships wouldn't have been simply annihilated on contact with the First Order fleet without doing any damage? For all any of us know the Raddus' Hyperspace Ramming was a 1 in a billion shot that would've done nothing otherwise that the vast majority of people even those extremely desperate wouldn't have been nutty enough to even think of trying to do much less actually do. The fact that this tactic is never seen in the entirety of Star Wars, Movies, old and new EU, whatever, is pretty strong proof that it's nowhere near as reliable as people might think.

Why not call in another ship to pinch down the Resistance?

• Surely the First Order can at least spare one more ship to head the Resistance off in their escape direction. And Hux can't really be that stupid to risk toying with them after the recent Dreadnought incident where he failed miserably after having them pinned initially.
  • They literally had hours of fuel left, if that. By the time another ship arrived the Resistance's fleet would've stopped anyway. Also yes Hux is really that stupid.
    • Hux is only that in this film not the last one and Snoke could have figured that out also Plus with how big the fleet is they could just split up their forces so the Resistance fleet is trapped.

Poe demoted?

• As a guy who loves military stuff, Poe getting demoted really bugged me. I know he disobeyed orders and how Leia was really upset about how people dying, but I still have two issues:
• 1. An entire First Order Dreadnaught was blown up in exchange for the loss of a handful of fighters and all Resistance bombers (even still just a handful). I don't care how much you care about other human beings, any general or military leader would recognize 'a handful of fighters and bombers' for 'a capital ship the size of an entire city' as a once-in-a-lifetime trade that they'd sacrifice everything just to have an attempt at. I'm not saying Leia should be a brutal pragmatist who'd kill 100 people to save 101, but Poe's decision just makes too much military sense to be dismissed as reckless glory-seeking. As far as I'm concerned demoting Poe after this would be like demoting whoever planned the original Death Star attack; sure, the rebels suffered a staggering 90% casualty rate (of "30 rebel ships" we only see 3 fly away) but they dealt the enemy a huge blow and allowed the war to continue.
  • It's a difference in scale. Yes, losing the Dreadnaught is a heavy hit to the First Order, but the losses the Resistance suffered were MUCH WORSE. The First Order has reserves, and even if they don't have another Dreadnaught (which there's no indication of— Poe calls it "a" Dreadnaught, not "the" Dreadnaught), Poe just threw away all the Resistance bombers, and several of their fighters, as well as putting the entire fleet at risk over what was essentially a gamble that only barely paid off. The Resistance at this point, is too small and weak to be able to afford something like this. So yes, while if they were in better shape, that would be fine, there's a difference between "destroying a Dreadnaught for a handful of fighters" and "destroying a Dreadnaught for a third of your fleet, and every bomber you have available."
  • For an example of at least one military leader who would disagree that the exchange was worthwhile, recall Gandalf chastising Denethor in Return of the King (book, not film) for sending out a tactical assault party that, even should it achieve a 10-to-1 favorable kill ratio, he may still come to regret
• 2. Yes, I know that Poe's character is supposed to be this hotshot battle-hungry guy and how you're "Supposed to save the things you love not destroy the things you hate." (paraphrasing here), but that thematic throughline falls apart because the dreadnaught had its bombardment cannon poised to take out the rebel cruiser. It would be one thing if the evacuation was fully ready to jump but Poe kept them behind in order to rack up some bonus points, but we clearly hear the order for and see the bombardment cannon getting ready to blast away at the resistance cruiser. His demotion would make sense if Poe had destroyed the dreadnaught at the expense of the evacuation, but we clearly see that he and his bombers pretty much saved it and by extent the resistance as a whole.
  • To be fair there was a line later on about how Poe's attack got all their bombers destroyed that was delivered in a "It would be really nice to still have them maybe we could have used them in a plan" tone, but the cruiser would have been toast if the attack had been called off, and considering how they all got wiped out even after Poe had cleared all the surface cannons I doubt they would have made much of a difference later on in the movie. Seriously, these new bombers might as well be dedicated ohka-style suicide craft for all the survivability of them. And at least the ohkas in real life were faster.
  • The cruiser was ready to jump, that's why Leia told Poe to fall back so they could "get out of here" (paraphrasing). He was just supposed to buy time. Poe's insistence on following through forced the cruiser to stay behind, which is the entire reason the dreadnought could fire on them in the first place.
    • Unless the new X-Wings and other craft are inexplicably less capable than the ones available to the Rebel Alliance more than three decades ago in-universe, they should all be perfectly capable of going to hyperspace on their own. There was absolutely no reason for the fleet to wait for the fighters to return.
    • In real life, starting an engine and acceleration both have a far higher cost in fuel than coasting along; pushing your ship all the way to light-speed would probably murder your mileage. As most rebel attacks during the emperor's reign were swift hit-and-fade maneuvers, thus allowing the rebels to attack on their own terms, they were often in and out before fuel became an issue. With the resistance losing the initiative and unable to resupply, they just didn't have the resources to maintain such tactical advantages. This is actually an aversion of Hollywood Logistics, where advanced technology never needs to be refurbished or maintained.
• It should also be noted that there is no time skip between The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. That means that Poe had literally blown up the biggest superweapon ever in Star Wars (Starkiller Base) earlier that same day! To say that the man was being overworked and under-appreciated would be an epic understatement. In Return of the Jedi Han got promoted from Captain to General just because he was willing to lead a risky mission after an extended time in carbon freeze!
• I don't know how real life militaries work exactly, but there are a few things to consider: A) It's Star Wars. It's a different setting with different rules. Their militaries don't necessarily function the same way real life ones do. Plus, Star Wars is usually Mildly Military anyway. Not to mention the Resistance is more of a militia than a military, especially after the destruction of the Republic. B) Poe may be a war hero after the Starkiller, but maybe that's the problem. Perhaps the victory went to his head and he's starting to throw his weight around. Far from being commended, maybe what he needs is to be taken down a peg or two. C) Most important of all, was the victory over the dreadnought really worth it? How many of those things does the First Order have kicking around? Quite a few I'm willing to bet. Even if the First Order technically lost more people in that fight, the Resistance lost a bigger percentage. The First Order has the advantage of We Have Reserves, the Resistance doesn't. Was it a case of acceptable losses? Probably not, not if the First Order can just bring in more dreadnoughts later.
• Isn't part of the First Order's characterization that they can no longer afford the We Have Reserves attitude of the Empire? Seriously, they lost Starkiller Base, then the Dreadnought, and then by the end of the film they've lost Supremacy and her Resurgence-class Star Destroyer escorts. How many more ships and lives can the First Order afford to throw away by this point?
  • I think the answer to both this and half the questions on this page is that there has been a very clear stylistic change between films that has come close to being a mild but unintentional retcon. This Resistance and this First Order is not the same Resistance and First Order we had in the Force Awakens. To try and explain what I mean by that, you know how James Bond is meant to be the same guy each time even though Sean Connery and Roger Moore act nothing alike? That's what we have here. Even Mark Hamill has been quite vocal in his belief that this Luke isn't the same Luke that he used to play. I think that the First Order is now as strong if not stronger than the Empire was, which is why suddenly the Resistance has gone from celebrating to almost outright defeat in what is meant to have been days in-universe.
  • This also becomes a larger Plot Hole when compared to the original trilogy. Back then, especially in The Empire Strikes Back, the Empire was more than willing to have TIE fighters pursue the Millennium Falcon well outside of the support range of the star destroyer fleet. But here, the First Order makes some lame excuse about not being able to send out fighters beyond the immediate support of their capital ships. This is despite the spectacular success of the TIE fighter attack on the Raddus (which is why Poe was without an X-wing to fly). Since new model TIE fighters introduced in The Force Awakens, such as the TIE/sf, even had things like hyperdrives, there was no reason not to use fighters to chase down the fleeing Resistance rather than only using capital ships. Except for one reason — the need to make Holdo's plan seem even remotely viable, which it would not have been had there been TIE fighters swarming around to target the transports. Cloaked or not, they were not invisible and fighters could have taken them out visually even without breaking the cloaking. Especially since the transports lacked hyperdrive (one of Poe's objections to using them) and nearby Crait was the most obvious destination for the Resistance to abandon ship to.
• Poe was demoted because he disobeyed a direct order from his commanding officer. It's as simple as that. Given that people under his command died and valuable equipment was lost as a result of his disobedience, he's lucky he was only demoted. Obviously he got some leniency because of his service to this point.
  • Considering the alternative was for them to all die, I feel like he should've gotten some slack.
  • He did. He was demoted instead of, say, cashiered out.
  • One consideration is that the demotion was not entirely because of his ACTION, but his attitude. What gets him in REAL trouble is his flippant disregard for Leia's orders, and subsequent attempt at brushing off losses in exchange for glory ("But I took out a dreadnought" instead of "I made a bad call, and I should have handled it better"). The demotion would have been a temporary punitive measure to teach him that he NEEDS to own his mistakes.

Poe's "Wasteful" Attack on the Dreadnought

• Poe gets demoted, as noted above, for disobeying orders and sacrificing many of the Resistance's fighters and their entire bombing wing to destroy the First Order dreadnought...that had just obliterated the evacuated ground base in a single firing, was preparing to fire on the cruiser, and was implied to be able to destroy it in one shot. This is treated as wasteful glory-seeking, when the Resistance cause would have been better served by escaping into hyperspace before it could fire. Shortly after his demotion, however, First Order ships begin popping out of hyperspace behind the cruiser and its escorts, revealing that they were capable of tracking them. They're able to get away by surviving the bombardment long enough to accelerate to a range at which the weapons on the ships pursuing them can't penetrate their shields and do any further damage. As opposed to what would have happened if the dreadnought had popped out of hyperspace a few moments later than the star destroyers, charged up another double shot, and destroyed the cruiser before it could get out of range (the autocannons clearly pack a lot more punch than the other ships' weapons, and don't seem to have as much of a problem with range dissipation). Poe's "glory seeking" ultimately saved everyone who managed to escape. Granted, he couldn't have known it would play out like this at the time, but it seems like he would at least be owed an apology later; instead, it's never even brought up.
  • The First Order could have ended the whole movie right at the start had their Dreadnought fired on Raddus and her consorts first, rather than wasting time bombarding the already mostly-evacuated base. Knock out their fleet, and what's left of the Resistance isn't going anywhere, no matter what defenses they have on the planet.
  • Most likely everyone was just too busy trying to get out of that mess alive to think about how much worse it would have been if the dreadnought hadn't been destroyed.
  • You're analyzing it with the benefit of hindsight. When Leia demoted Poe, it was for disobeying a direct order to disengage, wasting not only lives and equipment but also time they could have used to gather the bombing fleet and hyperspace away (which put the fleet in range, and in danger, of not just the dreadnaught but also the Destroyers.) At this point, no one knew the FO would be able to track them through hyperspace, so, from Leia's perspective and with her available knowledge, Poe made a serious mistake. Whether his actions were vindicated later on, the demotion made sense when it was issued.
  • He didn't waste them - he expended them, like a commander does, and, taking into account their atrocious design, got a good value at that. Also, what do you mean "wasted time"? If these ships can jump to HS at any moment and from any place, then what does it matter where some of them ended up? All the surviving ones could've jumped away the moment the mission was complete. In fact, nothing was stopping Leia from commencing the jump and leaving Poe's wing to deal with the dreadnaught and then to jump away at their leisure. X-Wings are HJ-capable, aren't they?
    • Yes but if you "expend" a third of your fleet taking out one ship, be it an exceptionally powerful one or not, out of an enemy fleet with at least half a dozen more around the same size with slightly less firepower that's called wasting those resources because it could have been way better spent elsewhere. Poe achieved a Pyrrhic victory saving the Rebel fleet from a danger he put it in by refusing to disengage and rejoin the main fleet when they were ready to go giving the big scary Dreadnought time to lock onto them.
    • "because it could have been way better spent elsewhere" - Like where? No, honestly, with how much crap Leia and Holdo give Poe over those miserable deathtraps, I would very much like to know what was the original plan for them that Poe so recklessly sabotaged and that would've yielded more than taking out a unique battleship with its base- and fleet-destroying weapons and thousands of crew, including trained officers, whose importance you're so eagerly trying to downplay. "giving the Dreadnought time to lock onto them" - And this is just not true. The dreadnaught locked on target and fired before Poe refused to disengage, and back when Leia was perfectly happy with his actions. The only reason the resistance survived at all is because the dreadnought fired on the ground base instead of the ships for no reason. This also means that by the time Leia gave the disengage order, the bombers were already near the dreadnaught, and if they tried to fall back, they would have most likely just been shot down anyway, and the dreadnaught would have got time to recharge to fire on the ships.
    • Bombarding a planet, destroying a First Order starbase, attacking regular Star Destroyers in ambushes where they might have had a chance at survival. The possibilities go on and on as to what could have been a better use for the those bombers then destroying one ship with literally a dozen others of similiar scale present. As for the Dreadnought locking on it was locked onto the ground base which was already in the midst of evacuation when the audience drops in so clearly it needed some time to aim its guns if they managed to empty the whole place before hand. Poe had already been ordered back once his diversion tactic was done as planned, he chose to ignore that at which point the Dreadnought would have started movint its aim to be on the fleet. If not for the First Order being able to track them through hyperspace there would be literally no point to destroying it since they'd be gone before it could target the fleet if not for Poe disobeying orders. Not to mention those are bombers they aren't going to get back, they can't build more right now as well as it being unlikely people are selling what with how the galaxy just went to war again, and may well have been an important part of Leia's long term strategy for once they linked up with their allies.
• In other words, the movie has no idea where the bombers were supposed to be used and no interest in exploring that further than painting Poe as the wrong one. Also, no, the Star Destroyers were clearly not of similar scale, none of them was shown to possess comparable firepower. Also, no, the Dreadnought fired before Poe refused Leia's order, meaing that Poe's actions didn't matter. If it locked on the Raddus from the very beginning, like any sensible person would've, the ship would've been toast. Also, no, even if they'd escaped without being tracked, letting the Dreadnaught live would've simply meant waiting for it to find and destroy their next base. Also, again, if those slow-ass bombers managed to reach the Dreadnought in the few minutes the battle took, this means they were dispatched long before Leia gave an order to turn back, and Leia was ok with their dispatchment, meaning her order was both confusing and meaningless - the bombers likely wouldn't have made it back before the Dreadnought reloads and fires on Raddus. And if the bombers could go to Hyper Space by themselves, then nothing stopped Leia from contacting them directly and ordering to do so, and if they wouldn't have listened to her, then she's a horrible leader, and any "long term strategy" of hers was doomed anyway, so there was no harm if Poe least took out a capital ship.
• It wants Poe's sacrifice to be a senseless waste of life, however, the dreadnaught seems to be strong enough to defeat the Raddus later in the movie and therefore needs to be destroyed now to prevent. It could have made it so that the Raddus was strong enough, or fast enough, to avoid the blast from the super charged cannons but that in turn would greatly reduce tension. However, this would clearly imply that Poe was just seeking glory instead of thinking ahead tactically. Alternatively, Leia and a few others could have reflected on how many were lost, adding some narrative weight as Poe has to recognize quietly how senseless these sacrifices might be if the Rebellion loses, which could have happened at any moment in Leia's eyes. As presented, Poe achieves a strategic victory from a military perspective even if its a tactical failure from a military perspective and yet it teaches a lesson to a hero that saved the day even if it was at a cost.
  • They had no idea the FO could track them through hyperspace. The idea was to get as many people out as they could, not engage in an extended firefight. Poe's job was to keep the dreadnought distracted long enough for the Raddus to be in a position to flee, not to destroy it.
    • A battleship is not a single person you can distract this way. The point-defence system that Poe engaged, and the main weapon that was targeting the Raddus should be perfectly capable of acting independently. In fact, they were - the main weapon did fire while Poe was doing his thing, it's just that it fired on the empty base instead of the Raddus for no reason. Besides, whether or not they knew about the tracking is irrelevant. If FO found one base, they could find the next one. The dreadnaught had to die, there's simply no going around it.

Why not just jump to Crait first?

• Where was the Resistance trying to go? Since they end up within a day's flight of Crait at sub-lightspeed, it seems plausible that was their original destination. If that's so, why didn't they drop out of hyperspace right next to it? If they weren't going to Crait, the fact that a Rebel base was within a day's flight is a pretty Contrived Coincidence.
  • Well, for one, the First Order didn't know about it, so if they went straight to Crait, the FO would follow and realize "oh, that must be a Resistance planet!" That's what the jump was for—not to get to a Resistance planet, but to lose their tail. So their original destination was Crait, they just left hyperspace far enough away that the FO wouldn't notice it, but close enough that their stealthed shuttles could make it in relatively good time while their cruiser was destroyed, seemingly taking all of them with it.
    • But they couldn't have been planning to use their stealth shuttles originally, because originally they didn't expect the FO to track them through hyperspace. So why not just travel straight to Crait in the original jump?
    • Because it's better safe than sorry. The best commanders have contingencies, backups, and cautionary measures for every plan then make, and this one was no exception.

Commanding the bombers

• One thing that is very unclear from the movie is how Poe could have initially caused anyone to defy orders other than himself in the opening scene. Leia, Ackbar and presumably the other admirals were all present. How could Poe issue orders to the bombing squadron that they could not simply overrule by issuing different orders directly to the bomber crews rather than going through Poe? This seems like a very contrived plot point, intended to deliberately to create internal conflict within the Resistance without making any sense given the situation presented onscreen.
  • This is a bit worse when you consider the supplementary materials which suggest that the bombers were assigned to the Ninka (the tricked-up looking Corelian Corvette ship), which was Vice Admiral Holdo's command. Of course, her bomber crews ignoring her orders just to follow Poe to their deaths also adds some depth to her friction with him (although that in turn makes her later claim to Leia that she likes him because he's trouble itself problematic...)
  • Leia might have decided not to contradict Poe's orders because the bombers were too committed at that point and would have just been destroyed retreating without even destroying the dreadnaught. Officers know there's nothing worse for their authority than issuing an order that will not be obeyed.
  • Traditionally field commanders get a lot of leeway because they simply can't ask for permission from above for every decision due to long range communication - that includes sometimes going against letter or spirit of orders. Of course in a modern army there is nothing (in theory) to preclude direct communication to the super upper top brass, but there is a reason for ranks between "supreme top commander of everything" and "just some grunt" to exist to this day. Of course Leia could have pulled rank on every single fighter and bomber pilot, but before she could have gotten through to everybody half the plan would have come off. And half a plan is as good as no plan...

Why does someone need to stay behind to pilot the ship?

Why can’t they just do whatever the space ship equivalent of throwing a brick on the gas pedal is so that everyone can evacuate? Before she needed to get in a drivers seat to pull off her hyperspace stunt, Holdo is just kind of standing at the window watching the shuttles, and the ship appears to still be moving without constant input.

• We simply don't know what command inputs the ship needed or how often in needed to be given them. It is also possible she was intending to input further manoeuvrer orders once the civilian shuttles were clear to further draw the First Order fleet away.
• The Visual Guide said that the ship was designed to be more automated and thus require less crew to operate. Which begs the question further of how come Holdo didn't do what George Kirk attempted in Star Trek (2009)? The only reason it failed in that movie was due to the damage sustained to the Enterprise, but in the Last Jedi's case the Raddus is still pretty intact when all the shuttles are offboard. Holdo could have inputted that the ship lead the First Order on a bit before ramming. Come to think of it, I wonder why once the shuttles were being shot she didn't activate the turbolasers of the Raddus in panic and desperation to draw the FO's fire away. I assume that they are part of the modified automation anyway.
  • For the last one, they've been out of range of the turbolasers for the whole movie, which was the whole nature of the chase.
  • If the Raddus missed the Supremacy while no one was onboard, the Resistance would be down a ship and they would pick the lifeboats off just as they were already doing. With Holdo on the ship, she can fine-tune the calculations and set a new course (possibly jumping back to the Supremacy's rear to cripple her engines) if her plan failed.
  • Except that at the moment the lifeboats were leaving the plan was simply to lead the FO fleet away. Holdo obviously only came up with the ramming idea after the ruse was exposed and the boats started to get shot.

Poe's ruse

• What was the original plan behind Poe's ruse, which Leia apparently was ok with? He flew in front of the dreadnaught, began to troll Hux, and... then what? How was it supposed to stop the dreadnaught from firing on the base and/or Raddus? It's not like he was actually engaging the imperials in some meaningful conversation, offering them something and giving them a reason to pause, and Hux declared loud and clear that he was going to kill them all anyway. Then Poe punches his afterburner and starts shooting down the point-defence cannons. Key, how will that stop the dreadnaught from firing on the base and/or Raddus? It's not like he's attacking the main weapon, is he? And if a bomb run wasn't a part of the original plan, why would Leia congratulate Poe on a job well done, and only start having issues after he insists on proceeding with the run? What did she think he was doing before? Was the plan "start clearing up the way for the bombers just in case?" But the bombers were so slow there's no way they'd made it in time if Cassidy let go of the Idiot Ball and fired on the Raddus first. Was there even a plan beyond "Poe, do something!"?
  • They didn't need to keep the Dreadnought from firing on the base for long, they were almost all evacuated anyway. All Poe was supposed to do was irritate the First Order commanders, evade their turbo-laser battery, and do some quick damage to slow them down on the response before returning to the Raddus to jump to hyperspace headed for somewhere safe before the Dreadnought could lock onto it and destroy it. After all at this point the First Order doesn't know how much of the Rebel force has evacuated so their priority is surface bombing, they might not even have spotted the Raddus yet and the Dreadnought clearly hadn't targeted it. The fact that his babbling worked out better then expected actually managing to stop the First Order entirely rather then just draw attention keeping part of the weapon loadout of the Dreadnought occupied was just a fun side effect. If he had followed the original plan the First Order would be walking away from this encounter with a damaged Dreadnought, a bombed out but completely empty Rebel base, an extremely annoyed Hux, and the Rebels escaped with the Raddus to who knows where with their bombing fleet intact as well as a lot of useful people still alive.
  • My read of the plan was that Poe was supposed to fly up, disable the point defense weapons on the dreadnought, then the while the dreadnought fires on the abandoned base the bombers fly in and blow it up. The remaining fighters and bombers return to the Raddus and exit the system. I think the fact that Poe hadn't disabled all the gun emplacements meant that the bombers wouldn't have ever made it near the dreadnought and since they had turned their big guns on the Raddus, they didn't think they had time to wait for BB-8 to finish fixing Poe's X-Wing. Had the mission gone to plan, the bombers would probably have still suffered heavy losses and only insofar as Poe disobeying the order to abort the mission is he at all to blame for those casualties. I think Leia, having lost her son and husband days before, was too fearful for Poe's well-being as someone close to her than she was about acceptable losses in combat and that's why she ordered him to return.
  • "their priority is surface bombing" - no, their priority was obviously to destroy the ships posed to escape and then deal with the base at their leisure, since it's not going anywhere. "do some quick damage to slow them down on the response" - how was destroying point-defence weapons supposed to impede the response (i.e. the main gun firing) in any way? Those were different sections and most certainly different gunners. "they might not even have spotted the Raddus yet" - how would Poe and Leia know that? Their fleet was in clear view after all.

Why do they even need DJ in the first place

• So once they finally get to the room with the tracker DJ's amazing codebreaking technique is... sticking Rose's medal pendant in a hole so the door short circuits and opens. Which means they didn't even need him so what's the deal? They could have at least shown him having to do some Hollywood Hacking or the like to break in
  • They didn't need him to get into that door. They needed him to get into the First Order's systems and futz around with their tracking program. They get caught before he has the chance to actually do what they needed him for.

Where did the new ships come from?

• I clearly remember C-3P0 saying in The Force Awakens that those X-Wing (and the transports that don't appear in this movie) were the Resistance's entire fleet. So where did the bombers, Flying Coffins they call transports, and all the capital ships come from? And if they where there all along, why didn't they attack Starkiller Base? It is a well known fact in Star Wars that Capital Ships have far superior range to Starfighters which is why hyperspace capable Starfighters still tend to take long term trips in carriers. Plus one of the capital ships is called a bunker-buster meaning it would be perfect for the attack since that would mean it would be built to destroy hardened ground targets. The lack of Time Skip makes this worse as these ships appear out of nowhere.
  • He wasn't saying the whole fleet as in, "Literally every ship we have," he's talking about the whole attack fleet that was on that specific mission. As for why the other ships didn't go? Starkiller Base was probably the single most defended facility the First Order had, and would've had orbital defense weapons capable of shredding anything bigger or slower than an X-Wing.

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