About the Dreadnought destruction:
In the moment it isn’t heroic. There’s a shot of Poe looking at Paige’s bomber falling into a fiery inferno and he does a sad face.
And then while everyone’s celebrating on the cruiser, Leia looks at the death toll and sighs.
The movie’s take on self sacrifice is: Useless self-sacrifice is bad. Paige didn’t need to die. If the battle had gone differently, she would have lived.
Her sacrifice is only useless until it is revealed that hyperspace tracking is a thing, making their destruction of the fleet-killer retroactively heroic and vinticating Poe’s actions. Kinda muddles the message there.
Holdo needed to destroy the Supremacy and only had one way to do it.
Actually she needed to destroy all of the Star Destroyers and had a one-in-a-million chance of doing it. It’s a good thing she lucked out, because if even a single Destroyer was left operational, hindsight would have made her death a ‘useless self sacrifice’. Kidna muddles the message there.
Finn’s self sacrifice wasn’t needed because it wouldn’t have changed anything.
I mean, it might have. He had better odds than Holdo, anyway. Kinda muddles the message there.
So in the first instance heroic sacrifice is bad (wasting life and equipment on bad odds), even when it is later revealed that this sacrifice saved everyone.
In the second, heroic sacrifice is good, even when it wastes life and equipment on even worse odds.
In the third, heroic sacrifice is again bad, and I don’t even need to know the odds because they are surely better than rolling a thousand natural 20’s on a total enemy kill.The theme of TLJ is that noble sacrifice is bad when it isn’t worth the cost. Great. It’s just too bad that the text of the film contradicts and muddles that message at every turn.
Thinking about it that way muddles a message, but it’s less about the mathematical yield of heroism than it is the intentions behind your actions. Poe went after the Dreadnought to deal his enemies a blow, and Finn after the cannon to prove he cared, to “not let them win.”
I actually disagree that the message is about whether sacrifice is useless or useful or what have you. It’s about why you’re doing it, who you’re doing it for, and with. Regardless of if Finn would’ve done anything, his possible death is supposed to be a bummer. He would have died alone when everyone else already decided they’d find another way or die together. Work towards a future, not an ends.
Yes it’s a bummer, but so was Holdo’s death, and that was needed to save the Resistance. What was Rose even thinking when she stopped Finn? They would crash, and provided they survive, run back to the base? And then what? They’d all die. There was no escape.
It’s a minor misstep on RJ’s part that I don’t fault him for: he wrote the scene knowing Luke would return so, of course, Rose will save Finn. I guess no one revised the script? Because if you look at it from the Resistance’s perspective Rose nearly doomed the Resistance.