Paige’s sacrifice is actually an important point of comparison. She destroys the dreadnaught, yes, but the Resistance has lost all their bombers (plus many other fighters), so was it actually worth it? I tend to think even if Finn did destroy the battering ram, it wouldn’t have been worth much. That’s just one weapon, look at the rest of the First Order fire power at hand. The Resistance plan to hold out in that base probably only worked if they didn’t know they were there. Poe’s plan to destroy the cannon mirror’s his plan to destroy the dreadnaught - taking out something very destructive yes, but ultimately the smarter decision is to know when it’s time to cut your losses and get the fuck out of there before you lose all your people on a suicide mission.
That’s basically the distinction, between fruitless suicide mission and noble sacrifice. The film isn’t suggesting that sacrifices never work, you just have to know when it’s worth it. Both Holdo and Luke had no choice. Holdo has to stay behind to pilot the cruiser and was going to die anyway. She would have likely gone out peacefully if the remaining Resistance didn’t need help in that very moment. Same as Luke. Snoke found out where he was from Rey so there’s a decent chance the First Order was already on the way to destroy the island. Luke was obviously prepared to die without putting up a fight, but realized ultimately how much he was needed.
It’s essentially two different equations.
Who’s to say that Finn’s sacrifice wouldn’t have been worth it? My assumption was that Finn’s intention from the start of his run was to kamikaze his ship into the cannon. Would it have been fruitless? Possibly, but the movie failed to make it clear that it would have been fruitless. Also in saving Finn, Rose could have easily killed both of them with zero upside.
I didn’t get the sense that Finn was always going to kamikaze, I can’t figure where that’d come from. He wasn’t the only one going out there, there were a bunch of skimmers (if he was going to kamikaze while they were attacking, that’s probably info he should have let them know). Finn only seems to make that decision when the rest back off and he’s left by himself and without working guns.
So if the message we’re supposed to take away from this is: Sacrifice is sometimes worth it, but you just have to weigh the cost/benefit depending on your specific situation–it’s not a very strong or clear message, especially for a Star Wars movie. This kind of goes along with a general trend in this movie of presenting a idea or message that should be simple and muddling it due to what I can only chalk up to poor execution.
No, that’s not the message. The message isn’t about sacrifice, it’s about knowing when to pick your battles and saving what you love not destroying what you hate. To sacrifice or not to sacrifice is not exactly the crux of those scenes (this isn’t Infinity War when they’re literally talking about the concept of “trading lives”). Poe is not doing a cost/benefit analysis of sacrifice when he devises these missions, and that’s essentially the point. He’s doing these crazy missions and not really even considering that they might end with sacrifice. (In fairness, I think I worded my last post confusingly, when I talked about Holdo and Luke’s “noble” sacrifices - I don’t think either of these scenes are trying to give a message about sacrifice, in those cases I think their sacrifices are tangential to what those scenes are primarily about).
The dreadnaught and cannon attacks are not about sacrifice, they aren’t designed that way. Paige wasn’t always going to have to sacrifice herself, nor was Finn. When I say they’re suicide missions I mean they’re that way because they both end up going south in a way that will get everyone killed, not that they’re going into it knowing that everyone will die and that’s that (ala Rogue One). The person who’s really learning the lesson here is Poe. Paige shouldn’t have to have sacrificed herself, but she ultimately had no choice. Same with Holdo too in a way, now that I think of it, because Poe’s mutiny/Canto mission causes the First Order to learn about the cargo ships. The difference with Crait, is that Poe has learned his lesson and decides to call off the attack before it gets to the point where someone needs to sacrifice themselves (the pick your battles part of the message). Not that it was necessarily a terrible plan, but when they start getting picked off almost immediately, that’s when it becomes clear that this is a mission that will get everyone killed, and that’s when Poe decides to right his earlier wrong, and “disengage” before that happens.
For Finn, it’s the other part of the message. He’s always hated the First Order, but for the last movie and a half, his solution has been run away rather than fight. Now that’s he’s made the choice to fight, he’s running headlong into it. But he still needs to learn that being on the Resistance is not about simply fighting, it’s saving (that basically gets down to the heart of the conflict - the First Order is going around wreaking havoc, while the Resistance is, well, resisting).
The film’s juggling a few different things when it comes to these sequences, so I guess I can understand the confusion, but I don’t think the messages are complicated or unclear.