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''[[TheLastJedi]]'' is less a film about good defeating evil by outsmarting the villains and more a tale of both sides tossing around the IdiotBall and the good guys only surviving by because the villains have have it in their possession longer than the good guys do.
* The opening battle of the film has Poe Dameron take his single X-Wing in a frontal attack against a First Order dreadnought, the ''Fulminatrix'', to disable its deck guns so it can't defend against the bomber attack that follows. Reasonably okay except for the fact it's Poe hitting the dreadnought solo. The bombers take the form of vehicles that must ''drop'' their ''unguided'' bombs from underslung bomb bays, using a ''handheld trigger'', so that they fall onto the dreadnought from directly above, ''all of this taking place in space, i.e. zero gravity''. Additionally, they're flying in such close formation that the destruction of one bomber by enemy fire also takes out several others. The sequence is clearly another GeorgeLucasThrowback to WorldWarII movies, but a badly misplaced one.
** Plus despite the traditionally [[PointDefenseless|bad point defense]] in the franchise, Hux doesn't have any fighter screens to launched until after Poe has already destroyed the point defense on the ''Fulminatrix''. [[NeverLiveItDown|He also falls for an obvious prank call]] and has the ''Fulminatrix'' fire on the (mostly evacuated) Resistance ground base that is not going anywhere rather than the Resistance capital ships preparing for a hyperspace jump. [[{{spoiler|The fact they have a Siege Cannon near the end of the movie is impressive as this sequence gives the impression the First Order never heard of the concept before.]]}}
** Even discounting the Bombers, the Resistance has it's own stupidity in this scene. Specifically Leia who tries to call off the attack as it is happening and when Poe shuts off his comlink, never tries to give a similar order to the Bombers directly. After everything is said and done, Leia claims the at the attack was too risky and demotes Poe. However the Resistance is a military with a chain of command. Leia, being at the top of the chain of command, would have to give her approval of any battle plans. If it really was too risky, she could have vetoed the plan before it happened and not revoke her approval when it was already underway.
** To quote a famous admiral who died an inglorious death in this film: "Our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude!". Poe's determination to destroy the ''Fulminatrix'' was not motivated by him being hot-blooded and irrational. He correctly points out that it is a "fleet killer" and it's main cannons are able to fire right ''through'' ground-based deflector shields. This means that it would be a one-shot-kill for ''any'' Resistance ship or base. Destroying it was as much a matter of survival as destroying ''Starkiller Base'' was in ''The Force Awakens''. Ironically, if it had not been destroyed, then the Resistance would have been wiped out halfway through the movie.
** The lack of a TimeSkip raises even more problems for Rey as mentioned below as well as raising the question why neither the bombers or the capital ships were used to attack ''Starkiller Base'' when they would have done it quicker than with a few dozen Starfighters (and one of the capital ships is even called a bunker-buster meaning it would be perfect for that situation)
* The shocked reaction that everyone displays towards the fact that the First Order can track ships through hyperspace. They did exactly that in ''The Force Awakens'' . It was how they discovered that the Resistance base was on D'Qar -- by tracking Snap Wexley's X-wing when he returned from his surveillance flyby of ''Starkiller Base'' . That the First Order knew to target D'Qar immediately after Snap's flyby should have at least put the idea into everyone's heads. For that matter, Han was able to detect the ''Millennium Falcon'' as soon as Rey flew it off of Jakku and similarly expressed concern about the First Order having hyperspace tracking. The latter was after the Guavian Death Gang and Kanjiklub had managed to locate ''him'', despite him having taken a detour from his planned route to recover the ''Falcon''. It comes across as Leia and the other Resistance leaders being stuck in 30 year old notions of what can and cannot be done with regards to tracking ships.
* [[{{spoiler|After being put in a [[ClosedCircle|trap]] with diminished forces, Leia and Holdo decide to evacuate the main cruiser to a secret rebel base, keeping this dubious plan secret from the crew. In fact, they refuse to acknowledge that they have ''any'' plan whatsoever. It involves taking the four ships the Resistance had left, limping away in a Stern Chase, burning out the last of their fuel to limp to a base holding little more than a bunch of rusted, antiquated, salt-corroded equipment to hold a LastStand. This is while it's known the First Order can track them. This secrecy results in a mutiny and a [[ShaggyDogStory|pointless adventure]] of Finn and Rose that almost [[PoorCommunicationKills|gets a lot of people killed, and it lets the support ships get picked off like flies and ends with what's left of the Resistance forces as sitting ducks.]] The transports also don't have shields, weapons, or hyperdrives when we clearly see them using transports that all three of those features in the last movie that disappear into the ether for the sake of this movie]]}}
** The First Order gets in on the action as well, unfortunately. [[{{spoiler|There is no reason why the First Order shouldn't try to have half the fleet do a hyperspace jump ahead of the Resistance Fleet and end the battle right there. There's also no justifiable reason why they don't unleash all their TIE fighters against a fighterless Resistance fleet after calling back Kylo Ren; ''he'' may be too valuable to lose, but two [=TIEs=] managed to blow open the bridge without any preliminary attack and there's no fighter force to counter them. A ZergRush of such [=TIEs=] would almost certainly either annihilate the entire remaining fleet or cripple it early.]]}}
** [[{{spoiler|Finn and Rose park their ship on the beach outside Canto Bight, and don't move it when told it's illegal to park there, making it the only reason for authorities to be alerted and their mission to fail.]]}}
** [[{{spoiler|The battle on Crait has plenty. For starters the First Order should fire whoever designed the siege cannon for not being smart enough to make it a walker when we saw the [=SPHA-T=] from ''[[AttackOfTheClones]]'' which was this very concept 50 years earlier. Secondly the Resistance makes no attempt to use their artillery cannons against the either the First Order [=TIEs=] or the Siege Cannon and instead trying to use ''Anti-Personnel Blaster Rifles''[[note]] which shouldn't even work as these First Order [=TIEs=] have DeflectorShields. [[/note]] and [[TheAllegedCar|barely stable Ski Speeders ]] respectively. Nor do they consider letting the First Order use their Siege Cannon and then using GrenadeSpam and MoreDakka to slaughter any Stormtroopers who come through the bottleneck.]]}}
* While the Emperor was overconfident to the point it killed him [[{{spoiler| unlike Snoke, at least he kept the lightsabers in his sight.]]}} One ends up needing a HeroicSacrifice and achieves NearVillainVictory while the other [[{{spoiler|gets blindsided not even half-way through his plan.]]}}
* Rey [[{{spoiler|expecting Kylo Ren to rejoin the light side falls apart when you realize that not once in their entire subplot has he expressed any desire to do anything remotely in that direction, not even to express regret or contrition for his actions in ''The Force Awakens'' , including the murder of his ''father''. In fact, he agrees with her accusation that he's a monster, and even his version of the night in the hut years ago with Luke admits that he was already a pretty dark force user, and he never even attempts an explanation for his massacre of some of his fellow students. Rey, meanwhile, starts to ignore everything he did to her and her friends in ''The Force Awakens'' after he agrees he's a monster, making her look like an incredible idiot to expect anything different in him from last film.]]}}
* Captain Phasma [[{{spoiler|falls into textbook BondVillainStupidity when she decides not to kill Finn and Rose with a firing squad like a traditional military execution ([[StarWarsTheCloneWars|or what the Republic would have done]]) instead use Laser Axes. Not Vibro-Axes like Jabba's goons (which would make sense since Phasma justification for forgoing a firing squad is she "wants it to hurt") and then she has the executioners do a bunch of flashy maneuvers so the Finn and Rose don't get beheaded by the time before Holdo's hyperspace ram comes to [[ContrivedCoincidence|conviently]] save them. For added stupidity she and every one else in the hanger[[FailedASpotCheck|somehow lost track of a ''orange and white'' droid that was with them]] that them somehow hijacks a ChickenWalker. She also doesn't seem to learn from her mistake less than 5 minutes ago as she tries to engage Finn in a melee duel [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim instead of just shooting him with her sidearm.]]]]}}
* Rose [[{{spoiler|Ramming Finn's speeder [[NegatedMomentOfAwesome|before he ram his own speeder into the Siege Cannon]]. She did this because of a one-sided romantic infatuation with him but never considered that by ramming him, there was a chance for ''both'' of them to be killed rather than just one of them as it would be if Finn successfully rammed the Siege Cannon. Her rationale that it is more important to save those you love than to destroy the enemy is nonsensical as that was exactly what Finn was trying to do. The fact that we get to see the Siege Cannon firing when she does her speech really highlights her stupidity.]]}}
* Kylo does this big time [[{{spoiler|when goes to confront what he thinks is Luke on Crait. He should have noticed something is wrong after "Luke" was completely un-phased by having [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverKill|every single walker firing on him]]. He also should have [[OffscreenInertia|noticed Luke hasn't aged a day since Kylo destroy his new Jedi Order]] and is using the lightsaber he saw get destroyed in Snoke's throne room. All signs point to it not being the real Luke but he chooses ignore them all and confronts him directly without ordering the rest of his troops to storm the base. End result a MeaninglessVillainVictory as Kylo's incompetence leads to The First Order capturing the base [[BookEnds|''after'' the Resistance finished evacuating.]]]]}}
* The entire point of the film, and indeed this trilogy, is the importance of protecting the New Republic from the imperial ambitions of the First Order. Yet the New Republic is almost entirely excluded from the story despite the opening crawl of ''The Force Awakens'' stating that the Resistance is supported by them. While it is true that their capital was destroyed in ''The Force Awakens'', the Republic canonically spans tens of thousands of star systems and expanded universe materials state that the Republic's military was comparatively small because they supposedly encouraged member systems to have local defense forces. This makes it very odd that the Resistance is trying to flee in the opposite direction to the Outer Rim the day after they destroyed the super-weapon the obliterated the Hosnian System -- which they have telemetry to prove. It's not like it can be argued that they are trying to protect the Republic by luring the First Order fleet away, since the First Order will inevitably return their focus to subjugating the Republic once they lose interest in the shrinking Resistance.
* ''[[Transporter 3]]''.
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