ST Poe Dameron/Oscar Isaac Discussion Thread

The stuff with Finn was good. Him just arguing with women in TLJ endlessly... not so much.

 

His leadership arc is terrific. It all starts out like this.

Two people.
One man.
One woman.
One promoted.
One demoted.
Both of whom share a common link to the General and both of whom benefit from the General and are balanced out by the General.
Both get off on the wrong foot with the other.
Both may on some subconscious level be envious of what Leia likes about the other.
Both begin to mistrust and misjudge the other.
Both form need to know plans.
Only one of those two people had the authority to do so.
Only one of those people didn’t have to share anything that they didn’t want to.
Only one of those people was in a role where keeping some info classified below certain ranks is common in other films.

The arc is meant to frustrate by design and the drama comes from showing human frailty and ego in leadership roles under stress and how judgment prematurely can lead to awful first impressions that can be difficult to overcome.

He learns from it but there’s still more to learn when trying to fill Leia’ shoes and he later has to. When Finn tells him “Leia wouldn’t do that” and he replies, “Yeah, well I ain’t Leia.” And Finn says, “That’s for damn sure” it’s a great moment. When he talks to Leia as he did when she was comatose I loved that scene. Lando coming in to reassure him with words first was great and then again later with action as he is feeling the full burden of leadership.

It’s crazy that he nearly was killed off first act. What a shame that would have been. One of my favorite characters overall.

 

@Ender_and_Bean I think you mentioned before that Poe's speech is one he might wish Holdo had given. I'm curious about what you meant by that.

 

Favourite fun Poe Moment in TROS is when he pulls out the torch in the caves. I’ve laughed each time I’ve seen it. It’s silly but I don’t care.

Favourite Poe Moment overall in TROS is him at Leia’s side just unloading his self doubt. One of the rare moments that JJ absolutely nailed.

 

Poe officially has the second
most screen time in TROS total after Rey.

 

"Thank you for your support, General. Happy beeps."

Exalted delivery boy of the best dialogue ever.

 

One of my favorite characters in the entire saga.

 

That first part being delivered over the comm makes it even more humorous IMO.

 

Poe’s evolution from incredibly confident — to the point of being brash — flyboy fighter pilot into a man struggling to reconcile his own leadership preferences as a subordinate, who then steps into the big chair while revealing the self-doubt and weight of leadership expectations is up there with the best non-force related character arc in the entire trilogy: Han’s.

I used to think the same of Finn but I now consider him a force sensitive character.

 

Oscar really brought the character to life. Brilliant. Now the story group have to work out how he abandoned his life as a spice Runner to join the Resistance fit in with his previously established back story as a Republic pilot recruited by the Resistance.

 

The VD has already established that he left the spice runners several years before entering the Academy as a Republic pilot, and several years before the Resistance even existed.

I figure it's just Zorii conflating things in her own head.

A few years after his leaving, she found out about the Resistance, and that he was in it, and presumed he'd joined the Resistance all those years ago, unaware it didn't exist then.

"Zorii has come to erroneous conclusions" satisfies me quite well.

 

When Poe says, "Don't let them scare you," to his squadron, I always thought that's hilariously bad. Like he's coaching an AYSO soccer team not leading a military.

Anywho, Poe should have mutinied against Holdo much sooner, would have saved a lot of lives. There were so many ways that the crew of the Raddus could have been saved if only their captain was courageous, clever and had earned their respect.

 

Interesting POV. What could Poe have done to save the crew of the Raddus sooner?

 

Oscar Isaac was great, but wow did they not know what to do with Poe in TLJ and TROS.

 

Pretty simple really. Just throw her ass into an airlock immediately after she gives the doomed speech. Then use the shuttle that Finn and Rose took to ferry the crew off to Canto Bight or any other safe planet.

 

They did Poe so dirty in TLJ, for the sake of a godawful character like Holdo.

 

It's hard not to interpret her as a scornful Hillary Clinto parody. She's a doomed anti-leader, resolved to go down with the ship, committing suicide and taking everyone with her. Poe, the rational veteran knows it's insane, but gets scolded for mansplaining how terrible her strategy is. Thanks Rian.

 

How many could fit on that shuttle?

 

As many as the plot dictates?

 

Poe doesn't get much love. He can be a jerk sometimes, but damnit he's hard not to love. I'm so glad he was never killed off.

 

So, I know I'm in the minority here but I don't like Poe Dameron.

I loved him in TFA. I liked him a lot in TLJ despite my issues. But I honestly can't stand him by TROS. If anything, he's a completely different character by the end of the trilogy. Not because of any particular character development or progression, but simply because the writers had no idea who they wanted Poe Dameron to be. In fact, I would argue that each movie in the ST has a different Poe.

TFA Poe was awesome and a really nice guy. He was a good leader, a great friend, and extremely noble and understanding. Not to mention, he was snark machine which is one thing that TROS decided to keep, but Poe was cool because he nice and snarky. He was basically the SW equivalent to the popular nice guy in high school that everyone liked. You could argue that he was underdeveloped but honestly not every character needs Luke or Anakin level-character development. I would have been completely fine with Poe just being the supporting character to Rey, Finn, and Kylo who were always more interesting characters.

TLJ Poe was a bit of a mixed bag. At the time, I liked that they made his character more flawed and with more baggage, but I realized now that it's what started his flanderization. He's a lot more of a hothead in this film, putting the "rebel" in "rebellion. I found it interesting at the time because it was something that wasn't really seen that much in Star Wars. I mean, sure, you had the OT3 not always following the rules but to see a character soldier so blinded by his visceral hatred for the FO was pretty compelling. However, Poe's whole plot with Kylo is even more stupid in retrospect because he learns nothing. It was posed as a lesson that he needed to learn about prioritizing the lives over the group instead of the mission, but he's still not that great of a leader in TROS either and the final mission nearly gets everyone killed anyway. And yet, Poe in this movie is still recognizable. He has fun moments with Finn, a real relationship with Leia, and it was okay to see a darker version of Poe in TLJ because the whole film is darker than the first one because of all of the external circumstances that are tragic and dire.

TROS Poe Dameron, though? Yeah...I have no idea who this is. This Poe Dameron is a complete 180. He's arrogant, borderline-misogynistic, overly flirtatious as opposed to the smooth guy he was in previous films, he has a criminal history because of course he does (he can even hotwire a car), he bickers and argues with Rey because of course he does, the occasional snark he saves for the villains he gives to everyone even when it's uncalled for, his friendship with Finn is a bust (which I will talk about in a different thread because this one doesn't seem to be rife with discussion), and he is a massive, MASSIVE jerk to C-3PO. Seriously for all the people that hated on Rey for how she apparently treated Luke in TLJ, where was all that same energy for Poe Dameron in this film? The whole point is to make him the Han Solo of the ST, but...we already had a Han Solo in the ST. Poe Dameron should be Poe Dameron.

If anything, Poe only comes out this in some ways better than the other main characters because his later portrayal is far more pronounced than his initial one. He was a jerk for a lot longer than he was an actual nice guy. And don't even get me started on how different he is in his own comics, you know communicative, respectful, kindhearted, honorable...you know? Heroic and all that jazz. I'm guessing the writers for TROS definitely didn't read those.

 

I go back and forth on Poe.

I like him but would rather have had more development of Finn than Poe’s backstory or major arc.

I love the banter especially with Hux at the start of TLJ.

 

Like Finn, he’s a bit of a nonentity for me. Oscar is great, but the problem is that he was never the lead male role, and that is down to two issues. First, again like Finn, they pluck a guy “from the ranks” to be the lead, and that just isn’t very interesting. Not like say, Han Solo the intergalactic smuggler with a cool co-pilot and an even cooler ship. There seems to be no great background or individuality to him (or Finn) that makes me want to care about him any more than any of the other X-Wing pilots. Only in TROS did he start to look a bit more individual and feel like he might have a bit of backstory to his character.

Second, he has to play second fiddle to Han Solo in TFA, the ultimate leading guy. In The Last Jedi, he is then upstaged by Luke (after being emasculated by both Holdo and Leia) and in TROS he is trumped by the return of Ben Solo. So, as dashing a lead character he might look, he actually isn’t one.

 

@The Deuteragonist : Good post. I don’t personally see the disconnects as dramatically as you but I appreciate your perspective nevertheless.

To me, he’s the same. It’s just that the situations increasingly test him more and more and when he’s tested outside of a cockpit he gets defensive and snarky and insecure. I think it’s a realistic trait and I enjoyed seeing it develop in different ways for direct situations.

I’ll offer up some of connective tissue you couldn’t find that worked for me. The FinnPoe bromance is tested in IX at times and you can tell that comes from being friends long enough to move out of the honeymoon phase and into the “I’m going to tell you what I think regardless of whether you want to hear it or not” phase.

And yet their bromance moments still come back from time to time. In TROS, when he tells Finn he wants him as his General, and they both referred to themselves as such it was in the spirit of them first meeting each other 13 months or so ago. Same for when he comes to help him in TLJ from leaving the sick bay. Or later when he jokes, “You’re not dead!”

The insecurity moments are also some of my favorites because Issac plays them so well. It’s a really enjoyable mix of masculinity meeting insecurity. Like in TLJ when he hands him the jacket and realizes the sewing job is pretty crappy he’s insecure about it and defensive and mentions how he’s been busy so it was the best he could do and walks off in a way that reminds me of when he’s talking to Rey in TROS and realizes he’s left the Falcon in a poor state and tells her she’d know what it’s like if she was out there. It’s an interesting mix for me and it leads to a unique character design that I feel is consistent enough through all 3 to work for me. Based in part because I see the situations he’s in testing his patience and skills more and more in ways he’s less sure of i himself about. His talk to Leia’s body in TROS reminded me of when he went to see her in coma in TLJ.

I bought it. I like him a ton as a character and he’s climbed into my top 10 overall for the entire saga. It’s not only that he’s a complicated mixture of traits but also that his skills flying are a blast to watch. That they gave
him a sexy bounty hunter ex-girlfriend and spice runner past on top of all of this added to it all. I was happy for him when those ships arrived. I felt that weight of leadership for him there.

If you can get me thinking, laughing, feeling and admiring then that’s a good character for me and a good actor combining.