ST Laura Dern (Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo) in TLJ

I see the issues with her character as being the total accumulation of all her scenes and the contradictions they end up displaying. Johnson fell in love with the idea of surprising the audience with a twist where an ancillary antagonist in an ancillary subplot turns out to be actually a heroic and reasonable authority figure, but the plotline constructed leads to a character who loses control of her crew through her contradictory and inconsistent actions and command style, and whose "brilliant, but simple" plan only even comes close to working because the film is portraying everyone involved in the Space Chase as idiots unable to put 2 and 2 together. Now, Dern and Johnson's portrayal of the character through acting and directing hits pretty much *exactly* the right emotional beats for the intended story, so as long as you don't think about the actual sequence of events in the plot. If you *do* think about the sequence of events in the plot, then the entire subplot becomes incredibly weak, and possibly mortally wounded by logic running totally contrary to its intended messages.

Like, Holdo *can* reprimand an insubordinate and recently demoted officer, and refuse to brief him on the plan because she enforces strict discipline and professionalism... But then that same discipline and professionalism wouldn't allow that same insubordinate and recently demoted officer to challenge her authority and denounce her as a traitor on her own bridge. If the first event is to be taken seriously as a justified aspect fo her command style, than the second simply does not work; either Poe is being read in to the mission by a capable commander with a diplomatic style and patience with emotional crew members, or Poe is going straight to the brig and won't be able to accidentally expose the plan to DJ. The result is a plot point designated to show Holdo as a calm professional leader, with Poe alone at fault for the mistakes made, but the actual outcome of the sequence is to paint Holdo as a Captain Queeg character whose command mistakes make a bad situation worse. And if these events have compromised the evacuation plan, then really, Holdo should not be smiling about Poe, since he almost lead internecine warfare over the bridge of the Raddus, and Holdo utterly failed to prevent it despite clear and outright warnings.

And when it comes to the actual plan, everything is just a wee bit stupider than it has to be. The only reason the Resistance even has a chance to from a plan is because Johnson wrote the FO as idiots unwilling to use their hyperspace, Starfighter, and capital ship advantages to end the chase in minutes... But the best plan the Resisatnce can come up with is one where, because they've been going towards a planet in space for 18 hours, they've failed to conceal their destination from the FO... So Johnson's doubles down on making them idiots by having none of the FO extrapolate how going in a straight line works in space with limited fuel... But then, the Resistance plan involves a cloaked ship that, as far as we're shown, doesn't have actual invisibility, while the First Order has these things called "Windows..." So Johnson dumbs down the FO even more by giving them a "decloaking scan" that they apparently needed to be told to use... Only for Holdo's last action to show that apparently every single major military mind on Star Wars, including herself, failed to realize how lightspeed + mass = Super-Weapon scale attack move until just now, long after she needlessly sacrificed the life of multiple transport captains when she should have made them missiles auto-piloted into the FO fleet.

The entire plotline could have used significant reworking in the writing stage, especially since the main character element of the section is ultimately two minor characters in the ST, with the main leading one (Poe) being a character of so little consequence that eh was originally supposed to die in TFA.

 

And yet the only reason Resistance members aren't attacking each other on the bridge is because Leia wakes up and her reappearances stuns everyone long enough for her to stun Poe and de-escalate the situation. Poe and his supporters are set for a prolonged gunfight at a moment when crew cohesion is needed because Admirla Holdo will neither brief him nor enforce crew discipline, and not because it makes sense for a character Johnson and Dern are trying to portray, but because Johnson wants to make it a surprise when Poe turns out to be wrong, and is allowing his desire for a "twist" to overwhelm his skills as a logical writer.

And if we're going to downplay Poe's mutiny by talking about its size, that really doesn't make the situation better; Holdo can't hold her own bridge from a handful of pilots and support staff led by a demoted officer she allowed to challenge her authority directly, and doesn't have enough crew attention for them to notice their commanding officer is beeing threatened in a giant public hanger? The scenario Johnson has created completely contradicts the competent and professional image he's trying to have Holdo express.

The problem isn't really with the character concept of Admiral Holdo; a badass commanding officer in a dress who clashes with Poe over command styles and in reaction to his mistakes. The problem is that Johnson didn't write an intelligent plot to convey this point, instead taking narratives shortcuts and broad, archetypal writing insufficiently supported by cohesive internal logic. The result is a highly improbable story that ignores logic where it would be inconvenient, and all so that a character who was initially so minor he was supposed to die can be taught an important lesson that the film contradicts by having the correct option still be *really* stupid. And on top of this, the unintended lesson is that the film's diverse cast was in the wrong for not blindly listening to the white woman, the same white woman who the plot unintentionally has share the blame for the deaths of 90% of the Resistance but has smile beatifically at the guy who holds the lion's share of the problem.

The subplot is supposed to be be a sharp character-based military drama with progressive themes and complex characters. Instead, the plot ends up being a mildly racist and possibly sexist random sequences of events that don't reflect any kind of common sense or military discipline on any parties' side.

 

I've moved past the problem being *only* that she won't brief Poe on the plan; I actually think that decision has strong internal logic and consistency with Poe's recent demotion and insubordination. The standards I'm using to determine the intelligence of the plotline only deal with the lack of briefing *in the context* of that decision being paired with her lack of reaction to his calling her a traitor and loudly disputing her competence on her bridge.

My standards are: In a plotline that depends on invoking some degree of military realism to accomplish its narrative objective, characters apply internally consistent decision making paradigms that do no contradict or undermine their logical basis.

Why is Holdo not going to brief Poe? Because Poe was insubordinate and defiant to Leia's orders, undermining and countermanding them, resulting in the deaths and destruction of the bomber fleet. Poe is thus classified by Holdo, in this moment portrayed as a commander with a good disciplinarian streak, as a liability to the chain of command who abused his privileges as an officer and must be relieved of those privileges lest he wreak more havoc. So long as the film holds to this logic, we have intelligent writing; Poe's actions can believably deserve his demotion, and honestly, you don't really need any more scenes between Holdo and Poe in order to accomplish the narrative objective (mutinous Poe compromises the evacuation plan.)

What is contradictory about letting Poe call Holdo a traitor and not get punished? It's the exact opposite type of decision making paradigm, flying directly in the face of Holdo's original portrayal at the start of the subplot. Poe is again abusing his privileges as an officer and hero to directly and overtly challenge and undermine Holdo's command, but rather than apply her earlier disciplinarian methods, Holdo applies diplomacy, contradicting her earlier decision that Poe's abuses should be prevented and be cut off, as he would be if she acted as a disciplinarian and had him arrested and thrown in the brig. Now, a diplomatic approach wouldn't be so bad if she applied the clear and effective diplomatic response; brief Poe on the plan (which is again absurdly simple and kind of stupid, but one which the film shows he would have accepted). But she doesn't; she arguably chooses the worst possible response to her scenario in the context of her previous decision. She neither enforces crew discipline nor defuses Poe with a quick briefing. She instead speechifies a bit and leaves the man who called her a traitor free to wander the ship and compromise their plan.

See? The issue isn't any one decision. It's that the cumulative decisions work against the intended message of the subplot. The reason for the contradiction is also pretty clear; Johnson sought to obfuscate Holdo's heroic nature, emphasize her role as a minor antagonist in Poe's story, and preserve an ambiguity around her actions in an attempt to surprise the audience with the later reveal of her "correctness." But he failed to apply consistent logic by keeping Holdo's decision making paradigm consistent, or to apply logic to his plot afterwards by having Holdo portrayed as moderately flawed as an excuse for the inconsistency. And since the rest of the plot also relies on inconsistent and contradictory logic, there's less room to extrapolate an acceptable reason or to evaluate the issue as a forgivable mistake. One logical inconsistency is a mistake; when all the subplots are peppered with inconsistencies, we have bad writing.