I've been 100% behind the ST since TFA, and loved TLJ (despite the digs people like to put into people for doing so). However this film did nothing for me beyond some tiny aspects like Adam Driver again doing a good job in my opinion. Ian being yet again high quality, and Oscar really making Poe the best new character to come into this trilogy.
I get JJ perhaps wanted to attempt to skip over aspects of TLJ to smooth things over and bring this finale to more people, but to me he failed by bringing back Palpatine and then creating another brand new force power of healing that does nothing but simply have to happen to make the story carry on.
Leia's saber looks god awful to me, and lacks anything that would make me want to replicate it, let alone like the look of it.
I'm seriously disappointed that they caved in and had to have a backstory of family for Rey, that at the same time provides no meaningful answers or any real sense.
Palpatine being back, ruined Anakin's sacrifice and importance for me.
The digs have been equally aimed at non ST fans too to be fair but aside from that I agree with your take on this movie.
Essentially the Skywalkers end up being utter failures and die in vain. A Palpatine usurps their property, their accomplishments and ultimately their name as her own, despite having no significant connection or relationship to them and not having earned any of it, except for plot contrivances that could have made for interesting narrative choices had they been developed by more competent writers. In all honesty there were some good ideas presented here, but just handled poorly. Only now the triumph of the classic characters has been rendered meaningless and the legacy of the Emperor himself stands on their ashes. They should just rename this the Palpatine saga, because looking on the entire 9 episodes it's clear that he is really the focus of the story. Skywalker saga my ass.
In fairness J.J. had a huge mess to clean up after Rian's movie so I can't blame him entirely, though he did present problems right from the start with TFA. The trilogy should have been outlined and adhered to from the beginning which has been proven now to be a false narrative despite what Lucasfilm wants the public to believe otherwise we wouldn't have ended up here. Kathleen Kennedy has some share in the blame of all this too for not doing a better job of overseeing this, but it's too late to really say much else regarding her involvement.
The result of this movie and now the end of this trilogy is why I have rallied against the continuation of the Skywalker saga. Ever since TFA was announced I just felt like this had better be worth it and should add something meaningful to those movies and not just exist for the sake of making more money. Sadly all they've done is take away from the previous films.
In the end this is what we got. What a shame. What a damn shame. I hope now ST fans can understand where I'm coming from, at least in the sense that we should all expect and demand more from Star Wars as a property and not settle out of brand loyalty.
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