“What she has to do now will take all the rest of her strength” or whatever she says hardly clarifies much. It just says “Carrie Fischer’s character is about to go die.”
At least it clarifies that she’s making an active decision to do “something” vis a vis Ben, and that whatever it is requires the last of her power, similar to Luke’s final actions in The Last Jedi. Honestly, I’m not sure the visual storytelling here is strong enough to convey even that, as clunky as the line is.
Good point. I think the only way to be sure would be to play with the cut and see if it’s missed. Personally, I think the sense of what’s happening is pretty clear with the visuals given in the TC. As soon as the fight between Kylo (her son) and Rey (her student), both of whom she has a connection to, is truly engaged, we get the shot of Leia dropping her headset and walking away from the command center. To my way of thinking this is the echo of what we’ve seen from Yoda and Obi Wan several times throughout the saga, a pained sense of connection to a disturbance in the force. After Leia is walked off by Connix, the next time we see her is in silhouette and calling to Ben. The fact that, as Maz says, “to reach her son now, it will take all the strength she has left” seems obvious to me in that, after she’s done just that, her hand drops and she’s clearly gone. Nobody had to explain that the effort of Luke’s projection in TLJ was precisely the thing that ended his life.
Again, your point is well taken. I am admittedly biased in that, while I resent hand-holding exposition most of the time, I am particularly irked by the fact Maz has been made into a character with all the force sensitivity and intuitive power of Yoda, not because she’s particularly important in the workings of the force, but because the movie needs her to be to speak the internal monologues of other characters. It makes her a cloying annoyance when I watch the film. I thought she and her ancient wisdom and intuitions were handled gracefully in TFA, but not so in this most recent film.