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It's a bit of a digression, but I found it funny (and admittedly unsurprising) for acoup to say that he thinks the story would be improved by making admiral purple hair uncontroversially competent and Poe incompetent UNTIL he realizes his error of not listening to his female superiors. That's an extremely sanctimonious and unfun storyline (sexist to boot, though who cares if it's this way around?) and I wouldn't be surprised in the least if that was the original intention, but was scrapped on contact with focus groups to make it more fun.
It’s a fix because “hothead learns to respect the bigger picture” is a Star Wars narrative in a way that “young prodigy becomes cowed by failure” is not. The latter is less fun and even more sanctimonious.
Like, imagine if Luke’s response to losing his hand was “huh, I guess Yoda was right,” and then he goes back to Tatooine for the rest of his life. Lame!
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The proposed story there is actually "Poe learns to listen to his superiors, who got there by being good at their jobs". You could tell that story in a sanctimonious way (and evidence suggests that Johnson may well have done so), but it isn't inherently so. A hothead young guy having to learn to listen to the wise older mentors is a pretty old and respectable story trope.
This is weird because Poe really isnt that young. He was uh (looks up dates) played by a 38 year old actor when TLJ came out? Plus he was already a main character in TFA, and that movie made it a point to show he was already a character with experience, just like han in the original movie.
It really comes across the opposite way. The older, higher ranking officer expects blind obediance. Poe is clearly correct, but she wont listen to him because he didn't have enough stars on his uniform. The only solution is mutiny
Poe is, what, a O-4+? Rank in Star Wars is fucking ridiculous, seems to go lieutenant-captain-commander-major-colonel-flag ranks. Rank titles are based on how cool they are and the jump from captain to commander in Star Wars seems to be Captain-Major in real life, and Colonel is "highest field rank" while Majors mean nothing in the show.
In any case pre-demotion Poe would absolutely have had pull to request clarification of operational details from the OIC (I'm sure Vice-Admiral is Star Wars speak for 2nd highest dlag, but Admiral for a "fleet" of like 6 is fucking pathetic). Rank doesn't stop a shit order from being shit and grunts do expect more than "just do it" because clarifying objectives is what lets NCOs or field officers be flexible in fulfilling the task instead of rushing to wait. Holdo is a shittily written character who had no reason to hold out her (stupid) plan, and that whole space siege was definitely the worst part of the movie even without this weird slapdown of a dickwaving session.
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I mean, the ACOUP blog agrees with you that as written in the movie, Poe is correct. That's why he says the story is badly written. But that would not be the case in his hypothetical alternate version of the story, so I don't think "but Poe was right" is a valid criticism of the blog's idea.
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In addition to not fitting the genre, that storyline makes Admiral Purple Hair either the protagonist or the Obi-wan style mentor, so it would have had to have been a very different movie (thought her ending still works)
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