The film should want you to feel sad that Chewie is dead, not, “Lol it’s fine! Here are some jokes!” The emotional beat doesn’t land if the film undermines it in the next scene - that’s the same exact reason why the Chewie Reveal scene was cut from Ascendant in the first place.
Interesting choice of words there: “the next scene”. If you take a look at the movie, the next scene is actually a whole grieving scene that takes place on the Falcon. As a result, the film has already accomplished making you feel sad. I believe what we’re arguing about is whether or not the film should remain on that grief for an extended period of time or keep the plot going without that weighing down its options (since he is actually still alive).
Oh sure, there’s the “Heroes Regroup” scene, which is all of two minutes long, and already has a bit of (much more gentle) humor when 3PO comes and holds Poe’s hand. If you think that two minutes is enough time to mourn the death of a cultural icon, then great. My point is that, as jarbear says, we’ve stretched out the delay until we learn that Chewie is actually alive. What if we allowed the emotional undercurrent to match? Then the relief comes when we learn Chewie isn’t actually dead, rather than when we learn that “PoE wAs A sPiCe RuNnEr.”
I believe what we’re arguing about is whether or not the film should remain on that grief for an extended period of time or keep the plot going without that weighing down its options (since he is actually still alive).
A) We don’t know he’s still alive. And B) The plot doesn’t get “weighed down” by having a moderately less flippant tone. It’s possible for a film to be serious and still move the plot forward.
I’m with jarbear on this one.
EDIT: bbghost, nice job with your edit! Looks like you had the same thought as MR.