From the Rise of Skywalker Spoiler discussion thread:
Quote Originally Posted by SharkyMcShark View Post
Re: Canto Bite, there are two things to consider

1) It was meant to fail. It was a dogfaeces plan, that then failed and got a bunch of people killed, same as the plan to attack the Dreadnought at the start of the film. It's part of Poe's arc. He has to learn that you can't lead by flying by the seat of your pants. You can't lead on rash impulse. That might get you by as a fighter pilot, but it gets people hurt when you apply it to leading. As with Luke in ESB, the film bothers to show him and his plans failing. I'm not saying its my favourite section in any Star Wars film, but it has a purpose. Ironically, to say it was pointless and led to nothing is both to miss the point entirely but also kind of get it. It doesn't move the plot forward - in fact it hinders our protagonists. It absolutely moves Poe's character forward though.

2) It really doesn't take that much screen time up. It's literally two sections. The first is that they land and get chucked in jail. The second is when they escape from prison and free the planet. It's not like it's cutting back for forth for the whole middle third of the film.
As you've just pointed out, in those other examples, the failure was an important part of the character's development. It was meant to be painful lesson for Poe to care about the wellbeing of those under his command and not blindly sacrifice his troops for the sake of completing missions. Otherwise they'd be no better than the First Order who treat their soldiers as entirely expendable resources (and strips them of their humanity). I'm not entirely sure what Finn and Rose's personal journeys were with the Canto Bite scene, and especially if it was worth the narrative diversion.

I wasn't entirely satisfied with Poe's journey either... the whole mutiny side-plot seemed unnecessary. I get that it's telling us that he's trying to grow and learn as a leader, but they already accomplished that with the Dreadnought bombing scene. Extending it with the mutiny thing seemed unnecessary (again, less is more) and also illogical from a story POV. Why didn't Leia and Holdo just tell Poe what the plan was? Especially when he had guns pointed at Holdo. We see that when Poe discovers Holdo's plan he actually thinks it's a good one and wholeheartedly agrees with it. Why didn't they just do this from the beginning? Geez...

Quote Originally Posted by Miss Kitty Fantastico View Post
Not necessarily - the First Order only picked up the Resistance transports because DJ sold them out to save himself, which he wouldn't have been able to do if Rosefinn hadn't recruited him and then let him overhear Poe talking about them having cloaked ships. I mean sure somebody on the Supercalifragilistic might've thought to scan for cloaks anyway just in case (you'd think that'd be routine, but maybe once you've built a ship 60km wide there's not much left in the budget for repairing wear-and-tear on the scanners so they save money by just having a guy look out the window instead), but just from what's on screen it looks like Holdo's original plan (the one that didn't involve ramming) might've worked. Of course they'd still have needed somebody to come pick them up, but they'd have had more time to play with while the First Order chased an empty cruiser, and "Hey can we get an Uber?" might have gotten a better response from the Resistance's so-called allies than "Hey giant laser pointed at us and we're doomed, wanna come join in?"
This makes me dislike the Canto Bite side-quest even more now.