There was a long Facebook post in the past year or two that carefully broke down how every single disaster in the film was just a byproduct of Leia demoting Poe, an act that the film bizarrely set up as the "right" thing for her to have done. I wish I could find it but alas.
Found it!
"I recently re-watched [The Last Jedi] and I noticed something new that I don’t recall hearing anyone talk about before. I don’t claim to be an aficionado on movies, but here is my 2 cents.
The movie strikes me as written from the end to the beginning.
This is how I feel the movie-writing process went:
- Rian Johnson wanted to open up with a frantic battle scene where the First Order comes up on the Rebels trying to make a last-minute escape. Then they end up in a long “race thru space” and end up on the base of a planet where Luke and Kylo can have a final lightsaber battle.
- However, there needed to be a reason the Rebels would continue running, so there needed to be a major battle where the Rebels lost much of their fleet (enter the battle where Ackbar dies and Leia sort of dies but then doesn’t).
- Then they had to figure out a way for the Rebels to be able to get to the planet without the First Order blowing them all up (enter Holdo and her hyperspace-defying act).
- Who pilots this heroic suicide mission? It can’t be Leia. She needs to be on the planet to reunite with Luke, as the script doesn’t have time for their reunion anywhere else. Ackbar would have been a decent choice, but he had been chosen to die in the Raddus, so we need to create a new character, Holdo.
- How does the First Order know to look for the fleeing Rebels? Well that is because Rose and Finn were betrayed by a codebreaker.
- Why did Rose and Finn need to find the codebreaker? Because they were arrested for a parking violation when looking for the guy who supposedly was the only one in the galaxy who could disable the tracking device the First Order was using, and this random guy just happened to also be a “one-in-a-galaxy-codebreaker”. Imagine the odds of having 2 of those guys on the same planet at the same time?
- Why did they need to search for this codebreaker? Because Poe didn’t trust Admiral Holdo when she said to trust her. He deduced that, since she wasn’t willing to divulge any plan to a senior flight commander, that meant she didn’t have one, so he made his own.
- Why were they in this situation? Because the fleet had been largely destroyed, Admiral Ackbar was dead, Leia(marry poppins) was in a coma, and Holdo was the next in line.
- How did the fleet get destroyed? Because the First Order was tracking them.
- Why was Poe not considered important enough to tell the plan to? Because he had been demoted by Leia after showing he was a hot-head and disobeying her direct order to disengage.
There are a lot of issues with this line of storyline, but let me just say the whole thing unravels immediately at point 1, which is Poe being demoted.
We have seen time and again in the first 7 Star Wars movies, how hierarchy in the Resistance/Rebels often results from more of a group effort, and not as much from 1 single leader. Individual commanders, including fighter commanders (like Luke Skywalker and Poe), often have a lot of leeway regarding making individual decisions. We can see this represented earlier in this same battle, when Poe approaches the First Order, and Leia is heard telling him she doesn’t approve of this idea. However, by allowing him to go ahead, she is demonstrating his freedom to make his own decisions to a point.
The issue at hand later, when he deliberately disobeys her order to withdrawal, is even more murky than it appears. Poe disobeys her and continues to disable the defenses of the dreadnought. Once finished, he calls in the bombers. Note: this is AFTER Leia has already ordered him to withdraw. She easily could have simply “pulled rank” and forced the bombers and other fighters to choose between her and Poe. The fighters may not have, but the bombers almost certainly would have sided with the direct order from the Admiral. However, she doesn’t do this. She allows Poe to continue to call the shots. So either she is backtracking on her initial decision to tell Poe to withdraw, or she is playing with the lives of dozens of crew in order to teach Poe a lesson.
However, his decision turns out to be a resounding success! The Rebels lose all 6 bombers and probably a couple fighters, and in return they knock out a few Tie fighters and a huge and powerful dreadnought. Given the small size of the bombers, their slow speed and maneuverability, their lack of a proper shield, and the fact that they need to be directly above their target in order to hit it, it is almost a miracle that any of them even managed to get close to the First Order, let alone take out one of their main ships! These bombers are literal death traps, and any time they are committed can realistically be considered a suicide mission. That exchange of resources is a major win for the Rebels, regardless of the situation they are in. A proper comparison would be the current Chinese Navy losing a destroyer and a handful of jet fighters in exchange for sinking a US nuclear supercarrier. Regardless of the situation, that is a trade the Chinese would take any day(providing of course that they were at war).
So how does Leia react? She slaps him in the face out in the open and demotes him.
Sure it seems like a dumb move for Leia to do, but is it really that big of a deal? Well, the domino-effect of the entire movie rests on Poe being demoted, so yes this is a big deal. If this demotion is completely ridiculous then it calls into question the veracity of the rest of the movie. Now, Leia could have made a mistake in demoting him. However, the movie does not do this. It actually shows Leia doubling down on her mistake later in the movie, when she backed Holdo’s silent plan and sided with her against Poe.
Then you get this nonsensical and completely idiotic moment between Leia and Holdo where they both say how much they like Poe. I laughed out loud the first time I watched the movie at just how ridiculous this scene was."
