Random refrigerator thought, but when did the Resistance come into possession of a bombing fleet? Was it before or after the attack on Starkiller Base, where the entire mission was to hit a large, stationary target with as many bombs as possible? Leia refers to the bombing fleet as if it’s a treasured part of the Resistance, and there are dedicated Resistance crews and everything.
For that matter, when did they get that cruiser and those support ships and their crews? Did they just happen to arrive right after the events of TFA? It’s heavily implied that all of the Resistance attack ships are devoted to the Starkiller assault, and they bemoan that they have no chance without the Republic fleet (which is comprised mostly of capital ships). If they had a massive cruiser the whole time, the Leia would surely have used it to match FO forces at the Takodana battle instead of arriving later in a dinky transport.
I wish I could turn my brain off and enjoy this movie, but it feels like I’m supposed to question these things based on TLJ’s technical plot that draws attention to just this sort of thing.
It’s like the reason people want to know who Snoke is. It’s not because Snoke must be so important in his own right. We want to know how the galaxy-wide celebrations (is that heretical to say here?) at the end of ROTJ gave way to…a new Empire(?) with limitless resources. We assume it’s because of Snoke. And so we want to know how it happened.
Who was the Emperor? How did the Empire get how it was in the OT? The OT didn’t answer these questions and people aren’t complaining about that now.
We didn’t need to know who the Emperor was or how he rose to power because that happened before our story started. Wanting to know who this guy is, where he’s been all this time and how he undid what our OT heroes accomplished so quickly is very different.
I got no dog in this fight, but this is a defense I see often and it doesn’t work.