The Rise Of Skywalker: The Spoiler Threadening

[Dogfish]

So might as well get a thread for it. Because that's what people do.

I've read a few reviews and word is it stinks. What are you folks hearing?

The problems lie in the fact that they've tried to do The Force Awakens again, but also in doing so cancel out anything interesting that was done in The Last Jedi, and the result of that is, apparently, The Force Awakens But With More Exposition To Cover Over Bits Of Plot They Didn't Like.

Now here's the thing.

The Force Awakens was okay, I suppose? But it's nobody's favourite Star Wars movie. It might make a few people's Top Five Star Wars Movies, because lets face it at this point there are probably only three really good ones. It's a really safe reboot on the first movie, with a bunch of Easter Eggs, and some padding, and it's not bad, but it's not brilliant. And that really doesn't feel like the kind of thing you ought to be aiming for to crown a movie series like this.

I'm thinking this, like Force Awakens, is going to be a film I see, feel disappointed by, and forget within a couple of months.

And this is bad. As much as Last Jedi divided opinions, people cared about it. Nobody gave a fuck about Force Awakens and from the reviews this doesn't seem like a movie people are going to care about long term either. And when people stop caring, I think that's when it's over.

So there's a proper sense for me that Disney might have killed their golden egg laying goose, or the Star Wars one anyway. Or at least downgraded it to a bronze egg laying goose.

[Femina]

No no no, the problem isn't that The Force Awakens was 'okay but forgettable' or that The Last Jedi was 'infuriating but memorable'. The problem is that there was never a central narrative thread to combine them, and lacking one, the films never built upon themselves.

TFA was an unoffensive film that did its job. A New Hope's overall storyarc is the least risky of the originals as well, because its entry 1 of 3. It's job is to introduce the characters, the world, and the stakes. TFA does that, a little clumsily in the worldbuilding side but well enough and entertaining enough to build hype for the next entry WITHOUT ill-will.

TLJ, lacking a unified narrative thread to draw on, chose instead to be a bottle episode in a trilogy that CAN'T have one. Movie trilogies aren't very long, there's no space for bottle episodes! The prequels, for all their faults, have an underlying narrative thread that ties them all together. The original trilogy actually did NOT have this, but the film makers involved very wisely chose to have each film build upon what was provided for it to invent an underlying narrative thread out of nothing. For some reason TLJ chose NOT to build on its predecessor. It took nothing from TFA except what it could unceremoniously END with something akin to contempt, and very selfishly it left very little to work with to build off of itself.

So now we come to the Rise of Skywalker. Let's take a look at where the previous climax films were in comparison. Return of the Jedi had a new hope to introduce us to the galaxy and characters, and the Empire Strikes Back to hammer home that the stakes were higher than ever while ending on a firm and stable platform from which to launch off toward RotJ. Revenge of the Sith actually had the most stable platform of them all to launch off of, because TPM and AotC's were both films that were already doing their jobs in service of the climax BY DESIGN.

What does Rise of Skywalker have? It DOESN'T have the characters this trilogy originally set up or the villains because the bottle episode in the middle separated up the characters and killed its primary villain for shock value, preventing the audience from growing more attached to the intended central group by splitting them up rather than bringing them all together, and preventing the series from having an overarching antagonistic threat. Bad off as the rebels seem by the end of TLJ, the first order hardly seems to be in much better shape, we're certain that by the third film they'll handwave that the first order still is a huge threat... but since its hard to SEE, its hard to take the threat seriously, particularly since its lost its strategic head, replaced by a temper tantrum prone child leader. TLJ built no platform from which to build off of and so RoS has to build one ITSELF in the first half of the film. So now the same invalidating of the preceding film seems true of RoS for TLJ... only its hard to fault JJ for flipping the bird at the story decisions of the man who already showed up and flipped the bird at him two years ago... of the two of them, JJ STARTED this, and is finishing it, his story decisions therefore trump Rians. The irony of JJ returning and taking nothing from TLJ (as TLJ chose to take nothing from TFA) I sincerely hope is lost on no one... even if that means we're just perpetuating the same problem further.

From the very beginning I've called The Last Jedi an incredibly SELFISH movie. It actually is a good film taken on its own. It's theming is great, all the little nitpick problems a lot of people have are just nonsense (bombs dropping in space aren't a problem in a universe we've accepted that sound traverses through already, its FANTASY, i.e. space wizard did it) but every single thing it did well, it did at the EXPENSE of the films that came before and after it. So Rise of Skywalker never had a fair shot to begin with. It was left a faulty platform from which to start.

I've always expected RoS to be an underwhelming outcome, and I still expect that by the time I finish watching it, I'll find the fault for it lies in The Last Jedi... the film that's tried it's damned hardest to destroy the Star Wars franchise. Kill the past indeed. I could be wrong, find that RoS is just bad on its own... but a climax in a trilogy rarely has the space to fail its predecesors ENTIRELY on its own. Since TFA was a fairly stable platform then, if the cake is structurally unsound, and the frosting hasn't even been applied yet, that means THE LAST JEDI DID IT!

[Dazzle1]

So might as well get a thread for it. Because that's what people do.

I've read a few reviews and word is it stinks. What are you folks hearing?

The problems lie in the fact that they've tried to do The Force Awakens again, but also in doing so cancel out anything interesting that was done in The Last Jedi, and the result of that is, apparently, The Force Awakens But With More Exposition To Cover Over Bits Of Plot They Didn't Like.

Now here's the thing.

The Force Awakens was okay, I suppose? But it's nobody's favourite Star Wars movie. It might make a few people's Top Five Star Wars Movies, because lets face it at this point there are probably only three really good ones. It's a really safe reboot on the first movie, with a bunch of Easter Eggs, and some padding, and it's not bad, but it's not brilliant. And that really doesn't feel like the kind of thing you ought to be aiming for to crown a movie series like this.

I'm thinking this, like Force Awakens, is going to be a film I see, feel disappointed by, and forget within a couple of months.

And this is bad. As much as Last Jedi divided opinions, people cared about it. Nobody gave a fuck about Force Awakens and from the reviews this doesn't seem like a movie people are going to care about long term either. And when people stop caring, I think that's when it's over.

So there's a proper sense for me that Disney might have killed their golden egg laying goose, or the Star Wars one anyway. Or at least downgraded it to a bronze egg laying goose.

O.K so no one has a coronary I will not attack Rey.
Force Awakens was not that much difference from New Hope
Subsitute Farm girl to Farm boy on a dessert planet
planet killer in both
Masked helmeted main villain
Main villain kills dad as opposed to killing teacher

[tallyho]

^^^Spot on. Force Awakens was an exercise in lazy derivative writing, with an appallingly bad portrayal of general Hux,who due to his heavy Irish accent was forced to overpronounce every syllable with the consequence that he had all the menace of a deformed wombat. Compare Cushing and his quiet polite understatement. That man killed planets for a living. He didn't get excited, he didn't panic, but above all he didn't OVERACT

[Femina]

^^^Spot on. Force Awakens was an exercise in lazy derivative writing, with an appallingly bad portrayal of general Hux,who due to his heavy Irish accent was forced to overpronounce every syllable with the consequence that he had all the menace of a deformed wombat. Compare Cushing and his quiet polite understatement. That man killed planets for a living. He didn't get excited, he didn't panic, but above all he didn't OVERACT

I mean... Hux is much WORSE in The Last Jedi so... I agree a bit here, Tarkin and the Empire itself overall always appeared much more threatening and competent than the First Order.

[theScribbler]

No spoiler reviews:

[Dogfish]

I've actually liked Hux in TFA and TLJ, he's rubbish as a person, but loads of people are, and the portrayal of him as a rubbish person is fine. Cushing as Moff Tarkin oozed old-school military professionalism, Hux is a political fanatic raised far above his abilities by connections or dumb luck, and yes, he's an annoying, faintly comedic character who doesn't seem fit to wear the uniform, but that's an entirely legitimate kind of character for him to be. I certainly don't think the performance in either movie was bad.

[tallyho]

^ So how the F did he make general without getting force choked? He's the Empire/First Order's Jar Jar Binks!!!!
No one says " FIYARRRRR, WWWUHENNN RRRREADY!" and gets taken seriously, - tell me that wasnt overacting. Listen to his real voice and his broad Irish brogue and it all makes sense.A tragic, inevitable sense. He cant pronounce in a serious accent WITHOUT over pronouncing every syllable. As a fanatic he is utterly unconvincing. That speech to the troops in TFA was unbelievably lacklustre considering it was meant as some sort of Munich - style rallying call.

[Dogfish]

^ So how the F did he make general without getting force choked? He's the Empire/First Order's Jar Jar Binks!!!!
No one says " FIYARRRRR, WWWUHENNN RRRREADY!" and gets taken seriously, - tell me that wasnt overacting. Listen to his real voice and his broad Irish brogue and it all makes sense.A tragic, inevitable sense. He cant pronounce in a serious accent WITHOUT over pronouncing every syllable. As a fanatic he is utterly unconvincing. That speech to the troops in TFA was unbelievably lacklustre considering it was meant as some sort of Munich - style rallying call.

That's the point though, he's a poor shadow of better men. Now you could argue he's poorly directed and fucks it up and so they achieve that result unintentionally, but that's how I read it. Must confess I haven't pulled apart his performance line by line so maybe I'm remembering him as better than he is because I'm a big fan of his da (In Bruges and The Guard are a couple of my favourite movies).

Also worth remembering if it's meant to be a fascistic rallying cry, it's sort of fitting that the man to give it is a straggly looking dweeb standing before an army of brainwashed child soldiers. Because that's generally what fascist regimes actually look like once you get past the propaganda. The First Order was, in organisational terms, a messy bitch when compared to the brutally efficient Empire. And this is why, snot nosed twerps leading conventional forces, angsty goth siths acting as supernatural muscle, an egg headed space-nonce playing at emperor and unreliable soldiers who didn't want to be there a lot of the time. They're like ISIS compared to the Ottoman Empire.

[tallyho]

Dont forget he's a ginge.
No one follows a ginge into battle.

[Dogfish]

Dont forget he's a ginge.
No one follows a ginge into battle.

Follow/Push out in front as human shield, tomato/potato.

[tallyho]

Damn, no like button!

[RedMountain]

The biggest issue with this entire trilogy IMO is that it has been poorly scripted/written, the actors aren't given hardly anything to work with, and the core characters have been split up for most of the adventure. They also waste a lot of characters throughout the three films. Finn is largely reduced to comic relief, Captain Phasma never gets to do anything, Snoke was an absolute joke after being teased as one of the most powerful dark side force users, and they regulated Poe to the bench after seeming like they were going to make him a keystone character in the first movie. They tried to cram way too many characters into the new saga instead of just focusing on a small base as the original trilogy did. The writing has made the First Order look completely inept throughout, made Snoke laughable as "Supreme Leader," and overall hasn't allowed for a lot of character development.

To me Force Awakens was "to safe" of a movie that counted on nostalgia and people aching for a new Star Wars movie, Last Jedi was a jumbled mess of poor writing and almost no character development and lots of wasted plot points that largely wound up meaning nothing, and Rise of Skywalker is basically just an attempt at something "safe" the fans might like with lots of action and pretty visuals. Personally I enjoyed it, it was entertaining, but still has a ton of WTF or "why/how did that happen?" moments that are poorly scripted and not explained and will most likely be further explained in some tie-in comic or novel that no one ever looks at. Feel bad for some of these actors as they were able to do a halfway decent job with the garbage scripts they were given for each film. At the end of the day though it's still Star Wars and it's still mostly entertaining, though I preferred both Rogue One and Solo to any of these new trilogy films.

[Dazzle1]

Right now YouTube is slowly showing the Grand Admiral Thawn trilogy in pretty good animation

This is far more enjoyable than the Disney trilogy

Oh and as I have stated gives you a strong female character other than Leia: Mara Jade and another strong supporting one in Winter

[Dogfish]

The big failure seems to be that Abrams fucked the dog with the conclusion to the story.

And bearing in mind it's a spoiler thread, here be spoilers. And no I'm not going to tag them, it's in the flipping title people.

They kill off Ben Solo, and they kill him off and more or less immediately discard him. There's no force ghost, there's no funeral like Darth Vader got. And it's like, Han gave his life because he thought he could save this kid. Luke gave his life by using a force projection rather than kill him in combat because he thought he could save him. I think maybe Leia dies the same way in the new one I'm not sure, but the point is that basically all the characters from the original trilogy are sacrificed to save Ben Solo, and they fail, and he dies. And it's like, then they just carry on, and they sort of adopt Rey instead because, apparently, fuck their actual flesh and blood child they literally died trying to (and successfully, albeit it only for a moment) redeem.

Abrams just followed the Vader plot point, but the stupid bastard didn't have the common sense to understand that his earlier movie, never mind TLJ, had given Kylo Ren a completely different arc to that of Vader, and by shoehorning in that plot, he had broken the story. Like, literally. There are ways stories are meant to work, and if you break them, that's not radical or clever, you've just fucked the dog. And it seems Abrams has done that, by giving Ben Solo a pointless death he by extension gave Han Solo a pointless death, and that's just a dick move.



People have called this a hopeful end to the new trilogy, looks like it just turns everything into a tragedy, but importantly a stupid and shitty one that doesn't make a lot of sense. And it's an argument that makes a lot of sense, even without having seen the movie.

[Femina]

The big failure seems to be that Abrams fucked the dog with the conclusion to the story.

And bearing in mind it's a spoiler thread, here be spoilers. And no I'm not going to tag them, it's in the flipping title people.

They kill off Ben Solo, and they kill him off and more or less immediately discard him. There's no force ghost, there's no funeral like Darth Vader got. And it's like, Han gave his life because he thought he could save this kid. Luke gave his life by using a force projection rather than kill him in combat because he thought he could save him. I think maybe Leia dies the same way in the new one I'm not sure, but the point is that basically all the characters from the original trilogy are sacrificed to save Ben Solo, and they fail, and he dies. And it's like, then they just carry on, and they sort of adopt Rey instead because, apparently, fuck their actual flesh and blood child they literally died trying to (and successfully, albeit it only for a moment) redeem.

Abrams just followed the Vader plot point, but the stupid bastard didn't have the common sense to understand that his earlier movie, never mind TLJ, had given Kylo Ren a completely different arc to that of Vader, and by shoehorning in that plot, he had broken the story. Like, literally. There are ways stories are meant to work, and if you break them, that's not radical or clever, you've just fucked the dog. And it seems Abrams has done that, by giving Ben Solo a pointless death he by extension gave Han Solo a pointless death, and that's just a dick move.



People have called this a hopeful end to the new trilogy, looks like it just turns everything into a tragedy, but importantly a stupid and shitty one that doesn't make a lot of sense. And it's an argument that makes a lot of sense, even without having seen the movie.

Kind of hard to blame a dog fucking failing to follow through on story arcs made with one giant steaming pile of 'fuck your narrative' sandwiched between both of your movies.

TFA bred a dog, TLJ killed the dog, RoS was just forced to drag the carcass across the finish line in accordance with the demands of the bereaved. Someone was going to have to do it, but it was never EVER going to be pretty, and frankly its difficult for me to bemoan this one for being an inevitable failure.

Or in other words, by the time THIS movie got made, there wasn't actually a dog left to be fucked. This result was the inevitable outcome of canceling most of your story arcs in the second entry of your proposed trilogy.

[Dogfish]

Kind of hard to blame a dog fucking failing to follow through on story arcs made with one giant steaming pile of 'fuck your narrative' sandwiched between both of your movies.

TFA bred a dog, TLJ killed the dog, RoS was just forced to drag the carcass across the finish line in accordance with the demands of the bereaved. Someone was going to have to do it, but it was never EVER going to be pretty, and frankly its difficult for me to bemoan this one for being an inevitable failure.

Or in other words, by the time THIS movie got made, there wasn't actually a dog left to be fucked. This result was the inevitable outcome of canceling most of your story arcs in the second entry of your proposed trilogy.

Nah. Abrams had already killed Han to save Ben. He had already portrayed Kylo Ren as weak, vulnerable (from a dark side point of view) and open to redemption. The Last Jedi only continued that story arc by having him kill Snoopy or whatever that bighead dipshit was called.

It was pretty clear by the end of TLJ, taking into account TFA, that the meat of the third story arc should have been the redemption of Ben Solo, that he should have been the one that got to turn his back on the dark side and live. Because if he didn't live, and he didn't live, then Han and Luke died for nothing.

So the trilogy ends on this massive bummer. The characters from the original trilogy die for nothing, die trying to save a character who just dies, and then no further fucks are given.

And then to add insult to injury of any semblance of proper story Rey just replaces Ben (as far as the force ghosts are concerned) and that's just fine?

I'm basing this off what happens in terms of plot points, I don't know how most of it happens yet, but I mean, this feels like a catastrophically broken story. Like, what was this trilogy even about if Ben Solo dies? It's less a story and more of a senseless tragedy. Three generations of Skywalkers live, suffer and die and it turns out for nothing. Fantastic story.

You can't blame The Last Jedi for this. The main plot of this trilogy (or at least the first two thirds of it before the plot switched to LOL DEAD), the redemption of Ben Solo, was in fine shape by the end of that movie. Abrams just fucked up.

The sad part is that this isn't even a trying to please one set of fans or the other thing, this was a breakdown of storytelling 101.

Amazing to think these movies, some of the most high profile movies of the decade (would have been THE highest profile movies of the decade if they'd been any good) had so little planning that they managed to fuck things up this badly. We saw the exact same thing happen with Solo, the amount of reshoots and so on that film needed, because Disney don't know how to pick up the eggs from their own golden goose.

And it's Disney's fault too. They clearly thought Star Wars was idiot-proof, so they let an idiot make 2/3 movies and the result was idiotic.

[Femina]

And it's Disney's fault too. They clearly thought Star Wars was idiot-proof, so they let an idiot make 2/3 movies and the result was idiotic.

Math doesn't work. TFA most people like... TLJ most people are divided over, to early to say but this one seems divided as well. That's 2/3 of the series causing rucus... but both by different directors... one of which did the one most people are okay with.

Problem isn't in the director, never was. Problem was in the pudding. No planning, no direction, seat of your pants, passing things back and forth like a good narrative is a softball. You cant make an opener movie of a trilogy, give its sequel to a guy who wants to make a completely different type of movie, then expect that somehow they will all magically gel for the conclusion.

TLJ BROKE the trilogy. Ben Solos redemption is nothing, just a sliver of pie in an ocean of production problems. And come on, Ben Solo surviving wouldn't have fixed anything.

[tallyho]

You cant make an opener movie of a trilogy, give its sequel to a guy who wants to make a completely different type of movie, then expect that somehow they will all magically gel for the conclusion.

Didnt they do that in the Original trilogy? Empire's a totally different movie to the banality of New Hope.

[Visitor]

You cant make an opener movie of a trilogy, give its sequel to a guy who wants to make a completely different type of movie, then expect that somehow they will all magically gel for the conclusion.

Didnt they do that in the Original trilogy? Empire's a totally different movie to the banality of New Hope.

Empire Strikes Back was what we got when Lucas found out how much money he got to make a sequel. Splinter of a Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster was suppose to be the sequel with the idea that there was going to be a low budget. Lucas had only a vague idea of what he was going to do and never expected to have the money to do much of anything.

The movies kept changing based on money and audience reactions. There's never been a true plan beyond let's make 9 movies.

[Damselbinder]

The best way to approximate my emotions on this is that it felt like watching a fanfiction. Everything is dorky and silly and fanservicey and if I squint it becomes fun, I GUESS, but... the script was dumb, the characters are unde-rdefined even by Star Wars standards, and ultimately we end in exactly the same place that Return of the Jedi ended.

There are two ways you can justify doing a series of films of this nature. 1) Make them really original, and expand the universe a lot, and make the whole tapestry of Star Wars richer. 2) Go safe as hell, but then just write really, really good scripts with really good actors and just be super high in quality of everything.

This uhh... wasn't really either.

[Femina]

You cant make an opener movie of a trilogy, give its sequel to a guy who wants to make a completely different type of movie, then expect that somehow they will all magically gel for the conclusion.

Didnt they do that in the Original trilogy? Empire's a totally different movie to the banality of New Hope.

Not really? Its mostly the same group together (sans Luke whose off training) mostly working together towards evading the empire... you can 'almost' say this about TLJ I suppose... but then what ESB DOESN'T do... is It doesn't spend the majority of its effort actively concluding plot threads from a new hope or WORSE canceling them out like a psychotic attempt to thwart Chekhov's Gun and mostly forwards momentum while leaving several loose but imperative plot threads leading into RotJ. That doesn't happen here.

BUT, I'll say this. Each Trilogy is an example of something here. The prequels are a trilogy all working towards a harmonious goal from the get go, and because of that, no matter how bad the acting and direction get, there's never a point where the narrative thread gets lost. The original trilogy is an example of individual films made without a goal but which BUILD upon each other enough that they end up working... and this new trilogy is an example of three films we're told are connected to each other, which DON'T build upon each other, and therefore end feeling disconnected and broken. This recent trilogy isn't really a 'saga' trilogy. These movies are more like events that happen in the characters lifetimes... I mean... they were so light on villains in this one they had to drudge up the f'king Emperor... whose introduced in The CRAWL! And the crawl itself for this one read like the crawl of an entry film, not the climax of a supposed trilogy, detailing what feels like a decades worth of crap we don't see onscreen because its trying to give us an entry point... in THE CLIMAX!

These films aren't connected with each other at all. TFA is a decent 'new hope' film. TLJ ignores TFA and scorched the earth so hard that RoS was forced to tell a whole movies worth of 'this is stuff that happened' in the crawl scene to avoid having an exposition heavy front end and STILL had to fill the front end with further exposition because the second movie wasn't interested in doing its job and providing a platform for a climax film.

I'm not against unconnected films, I don't mind the IDEA of 'rogue ones' and 'solos' or even films with the characters from the actual sagas that are mostly unconnected from the trilogy arc... but I can't forgive the narrative scribble of making one of those solo arc films in the CENTER of a supposed trilogy. The Empire strikes back does do a lot different from episode 4 that much is undeniable, but it still takes what came before it, and it still leaves a platform for episode 6 to launch from... I'm not 100% sure I think RotJ took that platform exactly, but the whole 'rescue han' intro is at least connected to it well enough to feel like a logical entry point.

[Dogfish]

TLJ BROKE the trilogy. Ben Solos redemption is nothing, just a sliver of pie in an ocean of production problems. And come on, Ben Solo surviving wouldn't have fixed anything.

Of course it would! So many of the original characters died for him. Everybody dies trying to save him and they fail. That makes the story a tragedy, and the fact that Rey is effectively adopted to replace Ben (And This Is Meant To Be A Good Outcome) makes it a creepy, stupid tragedy.

But this is the nub of it, ultimately it's a trilogy too stupid to recognise the story it was trying to tell amid all the fan service and attempts to mimic the originals.

[Femina]

TLJ BROKE the trilogy. Ben Solos redemption is nothing, just a sliver of pie in an ocean of production problems. And come on, Ben Solo surviving wouldn't have fixed anything.

Of course it would! So many of the original characters died for him. Everybody dies trying to save him and they fail. That makes the story a tragedy, and the fact that Rey is effectively adopted to replace Ben (And This Is Meant To Be A Good Outcome) makes it a creepy, stupid tragedy.

But this is the nub of it, ultimately it's a trilogy too stupid to recognise the story it was trying to tell amid all the fan service and attempts to mimic the originals.

okay okay, I relent one part of my preceding comment. Ben Solo surviving wouldn't have fixed anything except the fact that he died... which isn't all that important to me personally, but if it was for you I'm sorry.

But...

Darth Vader died in episode 6, and there were sacrifices for his redemption as well *shrug*. Solo surviving wouldn't have changed that they had to drag in the Emperor as a ringer villain because they killed the trilogies villain in the last film... and if we're going to be resurrecting villains, why not just resurrect Snoke and not the one that was the climax of the preceding trilogies? Ben Solo surviving wouldn't have fixed the fact that the first film set up Rey's parentage as a big deal, the second canceled it out, and then this one canceled the second one out again. Ben Solo surviving wouldn't have fixed the exposition heavy info dump of a crawl we got for this film, it wouldn't have fixed the blink and you'll miss a scene speed editing/exposition heavy front end of the film. Ben Solo surviving wouldn't have fixed that the movie has no less than three McGuffins. Ben Solo surviving wouldn't have fixed that we only introduced force heal a day earlier in the Mandalorian television show but are just flashing it around now like its basically no big deal. Ben Solo surviving would not have fixed the power sea-sawing between all the characters... it wouldn't have fixed that we're ignoring characters already introduced in preceding films to start introducing new ones way to deep into the story to have any time to do anything with them... etc.

I guess what I'm saying here is, at this point... does it really matter if Ben Solo survived?

Maybe I'm being overly diagnostic though, I mean if you can get over all the rest of the problems, and Solo surviving at the end would have ultimately helped you enjoy the whole trilogy flaws and all It'd be something... so I get it, I'm sorry the film failed you in this area... I'm just saying that this trilogy was destined to fail us from the moment TLJ began and was neither a sequel to its predecessor nor a prequel for its climax. That was the moment none of these films were never going to work together as a unified whole. Ben Solo didn't do that.

[batgirl1969]

Zorii Bliss should have totally seduced Rey....or better yet the other way...Rey jedi mind tricks beautiful blonde Zorri to strip and worship Rey's body until kylo appears and joins the action too!! Imagine a Skywalker/Palpatine baby....would set the galaxy on fire!!

[Imagineer]

The Force Awakens broke it.
The Last Jedi tried to fix it.
Rise of Skywalker sold off the pieces on eBay.

JJ Abrams, and whoever hired him, are to blame.

But if you don't like that take, here's another one: the producers' reaction to social media ruined Star Wars.

And another one: they believed they could MCU the Star Wars universe, thinking them the same when actually they're opposites. Then they thought they took the same approach, when actually they took the opposite.

Finally: maybe the Star Wars business should just be about deifying Luke Skywalker and his Amazing Friends. (Star Wars worked in the first place because it stuck to classic feel-good tropes.) If that's the case, JJ Abrams should have been chained to a desk (or alternately locked out of the building) until the whole Third Skywalker Trilogy was written; he should have been committed to directing all three (or alternately locked out of the building); and by the end of the first picture everyone in the theater should have gotten a wink and a nudge that Rey was Luke's daughter and Ben was adopted. And everyone hired from top to bottom should have had an explicit understanding that they were signing on to perpetuate a cherished Boomer mythology and it didn't need or want clever input from any meddling kids.

Tangentially related, I expect a ham-fisted retconning of the MCU within three years.