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[Lovechild]

And she escaped from imprisonment on her own
And she has the Force
And she found Luke's lightsaber and got crazy visions from it
And she herself wanted to go meet Luke

Really there is no one better suited for the mission.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Really there is no one better suited for the mission.

And that is bad writing. Let me ask you, what is more interesting? The person who can easily accomplish something accomplishing that thing, or the person who can't easily accomplish the thing who must struggle to accomplish it anyways?

[NRDL]

This was not what happened with Poe. And the bomber deaths were not Poe's fault. Poe wasn't the commanding officer, the actual commanding officer failed to countermand Poe's call to bomb the ships. Then, Poe gets all the blame when things go pear shaped. That's another way to read it, but Leia Organa deserves the blame since she was actually in command as far as I can tell. If you read it as reality, it's more like she scapegoated him for her own failure to issue appropriate orders.

How was "Pull back, Poe" not the appropriate order at the time?

[Reelya]

    The fact that Leia said "pull back Poe" is actually more damning to her failure of leadership. It clearly shows that she had the authority to whether things went ahead or not and was completely cognizant of what was going on.

    Poe wasn't actually the commanding officer, Leia was. Leia failed to give the appropriate orders to pull the bombers back, then Poe gets all the blame when everything goes wrong, despite the fact that the commanding officer basically let it happen when she could have stopped it.

    This was just bad writing: if they wanted to make it clearly Poe's fault, then they should have had Leia's shuttle out of communication, thus making Poe the actually officer with command. If a captain wants to lead a charge, and the general can stop it, but doesn't act to do so, then it's the general's fault, not the captain. The general should be demoted, along with the captain.

[Lovechild]

Let me ask you, what is more interesting? The person who can easily accomplish something accomplishing that thing, or the person who can't easily accomplish the thing who must struggle to accomplish it anyways?

Both are interesting, if it's a good story of course. Examples: Conan the Barbarian for the first case, Rey's struggle to recruit Luke in the Last Jedi for the second case.

[smjjames]

And she escaped from imprisonment on her own
And she has the Force
And she found Luke's lightsaber and got crazy visions from it
And she herself wanted to go meet Luke

Really there is no one better suited for the mission.

How the heck did she find his lightsabre? It was supposedly lost on Bespin Cloud City, I know that, but theres no story AFAIK that says it got picked up and exchanged hands over the years.

I'll go look at wookiepedia though.

edit: EU to the rescue! http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Anakin_Skywalker%27s_second_lightsaber

[NRDL]

The fact that Leia said "pull back Poe" is actually more damning to her failure of leadership. It clearly shows that she had the authority to whether things went ahead or not and was completely cognizant of what was going on.

Poe wasn't actually the commanding officer, Leia was. Leia failed to give the appropriate orders to pull the bombers back, then Poe gets all the blame when everything goes wrong, despite the fact that the commanding officer basically let it happen when she could have stopped it.

This was just bad writing: if they wanted to make it clearly Poe's fault, then they should have had Leia's shuttle out of communication, thus making Poe the actually officer with command. If a captain wants to lead a charge, and the general can stop it, but doesn't act to do so, then it's the general's fault, not the captain. The general should be demoted, along with the captain.

I'm not entirely sure how Leia was meant to stop the bombing run when Poe clearly cut off communications from her, gave the signal to the bombers himself, who were clearly loyal to their immediate officer in the field. Even if Leia would have been able to directly contact the bombers, the likelihood of them still going ahead with it because Poe decided they should would have been really damn high, considering how easily Poe was able to set up a mutiny later on, composed primarily of people who work with and trust him over the actual command structure.

[Lovechild]

edit: EU to the rescue! http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Anakin_Skywalker%27s_second_lightsaber

"Six years later, the mad Jedi clone Joruus C'baoth ordered that a clone of Luke be produced from the appendage, and that he be armed with Anakin's old weapon."
Old EU sure was crazy

[smjjames]

New Canon leaves it extremely mysterious as to how it got to that Maz Kanata alien, but hints at it by saying she collected artifacts and stuff over the centuries.

Theres certainly a lot of room for New Canon or New EU to spin some sort of connection.

[Jopax]

So wait, Poe can shut down the comms of all the bombers trough his X-Wing? Was his X-wing some sort of CNC hub or something? Seems kinda dumb to place something so valuable on a small and fragile fighter which is cannon fodder most of the time. What Leia should have done is overriden Poes orders to the bombers and called them back (tho I think they'd have died anyways because yay for big, slow, vulnerable craft) and watched the idiot suicide himself trying to kill the dread.

[smjjames]

Speaking of the bomber wings, whatever happened to the accompanying fighter wing? People learned pretty quick that you either need to accompany bombers with fighters or fly at night if you don't have absolute or near absolute air superiority.

I'd imagine the same rule applies to space combat if the mega destroyer or star destroyer could still spit out fighters. Of course though, they were being desperate.

And also, complete breakage of physics since the bombs wouldn't just drop as if they were in atmosphere.

[Jopax]

Eh, they could be accelerated by some means, or they could just have gravity generators on the bomber for that purpose (as that fucking stupid scene clearly shows the presence of gravity on the ship). Or they could be relying on the gravity generated by the big ship they're bombing? Either way, it's fuckin' dumb and a bad design to boot (not neccessarily visually, but functionally, this is what happens when you put cool before logic folks)

[smjjames]

It's hollywood anyway. Space combat using real physics would probably be a mostly unexciting affair.

Until moviegoers demand realistic space physics, they're going to keep doing that.

[Reelya]

Space bombs don't seem very Star Wars either. I mean, when in the last 7 movies do you see explosive projectile weapons used?

So not only are they silly, it's like they deliberately decided to manufacture these ridiculous weapons that we never see used before, then they give the people in the field shit for using them in the only effective way that makes sense. The bombers have to get so ridiculously close and correctly aligned with the enemy ship that it's crazy to think you'd build a fleet of them, then complain when they get blown up doing their job. Any ship that's big enough that you need the bombers is guaranteed to have on-board fighter fleets and the like.

[Harry Baldman]

Speaking of the bomber wings, whatever happened to the accompanying fighter wing? People learned pretty quick that you either need to accompany bombers with fighters or fly at night if you don't have absolute or near absolute air superiority.

I'd imagine the same rule applies to space combat if the mega destroyer or star destroyer could still spit out fighters. Of course though, they were being desperate.

And also, complete breakage of physics since the bombs wouldn't just drop as if they were in atmosphere.

What about those X-wings that were actually deployed with them (you know, all those guys that took out the turrets and such, Poe's crew)? The problem was that they kind of got blown up for the most part by the ship's defenses.

As for the bombs, doesn't seem like that much of a physical stretch that they'd drop out of a ship, considering the ship has artificial gravity to give them a slight amount delta-v and nothing to really decelerate them between there and the target. It's not really clear how the artificial gravity works, mind you, or how exactly it plays with something falling out of a ship, but it checks out from an internal consistency standpoint at a glance.

That said, it'd be way cooler if they were, I dunno, a giant plasma thing instead. Like a capital ship cannon with a ship built around it, kind of like this thing.