I got a lot of flack when The Last Jedi came out because, I agreed with the critics rather than the audience. I doubled down and tripled down. I acknowledged some plot and logic flaws but pushed for a look at the bigger picture.
I keep looking at the last trilogy and realizing that I was wrong.
One thing that I'll maintain is that The Last Jedi was the best film of the last trilogy; but, that's like saying that the Cowboys are the best team in the NFC East. That said, I could see myself doing a lot of what Rian Johnson did given the circumstances following the complete ball-less mess that was The Force Awakens.
How was The Last Jedi supposed to carry the weight of Empire given its predecessor?
Within the narrative of all three films, if you can even find one, the problem started with The Force Awakens and doomed the entire trilogy. That problem, of course, is Rey.
This isn't a jab at Daisy Ridley at all. I think she's a strong actress and she's even stronger when her character is actually...well...a character. The problem is that Luke's story in the original trilogy was a classic gross hero's journey. Rey couldn't embark on a hero's journey because she was a hero to begin with. The last trilogy was like stretching Air Force One into nine hours and expecting us to keep caring about James Marshall though the end.
In A New Hope, Luke starts off as a stupid, sheltered, idealistic kid. He wants to go to war and his loving parent figures are wisely trying to keep him out of it. His first venture into a saloon in the city would have gotten him killed if it weren't for Obi-Wan stepping in. We see him get shot in the ass by a training drone. All of the successes experienced in the film came as a group effort. Luke needed everybody around him. He barely touched a lightsaber in A New Hope, much less did he get into a fight with a trained Sith.
In The Force Awakens, Rey handles the Millennium Falcon with more skill than Luke handled his X-Wing. She's able to pull the lightsaber to her with the force with no effort when Luke needed extreme concentration to pull his lightsaber out of the snow in the Wampa cave in Empire. And, the first time she holds a lightsaber, she beats a Sith who has been training for his entire life.
Luke didn't get into a lightsaber fight until the end of Empire. Vader is toying with him. The only reason that Luke came out alive was because Vader didn't intend to kill him. He lost his right hand. He got put in his place. He was dealt a crushing defeat that put him in his place.
Rey, by the end of the The Force Awakens, would have killed Kylo-Ren if the world didn't conveniently split in half.
Where do you have to go with this? Rey is already more powerful with no training than Luke was with two films worth of training and combat experience. Rey lacks any of Luke's youthful hubris or naivety. Like Luke, she doesn't know who her real parents were; but, that's not a character trait, that's a plot convention. A New Hope didn't make Luke's journey about finding who his parents were. The Force Awakens made Rey's search for her origins what the trilogy was about because she's about as interesting as a wash cloth.
This is where I still ask people to put themselves into Rian Johnson's shoes.
If you could give a goldfish fingers and a laptop, it would probably write something resembling a J.J. Abrams script. What J.J. Abrams handed to Rian Johnson was the opening episode that follows a character who is already indestructible and has no personality flaws, her main concern is about who her parents are, and the last scene in the movie is her finding Luke.
Okay, well, where do you go with this that makes it interesting given the last seven movies? I wouldn't be surprised if Abrams had it in his head that Rey would somehow be a Skywalker; but, Abrams also relies on mystery boners and making Rey a Skywalker would be boring as hell. Making her a Kenobi might have been workable but not impactful. Johnson certain speckled enough evidence of some dark origins to justify her parentage being on the dark side. That doesn't make The Rise of Skywalker even a bit better. At least Johnson was grasping at an opportunity for the trilogy to end in a way that dealt with some character journey rather than having it wrap up with something boring, nonsensical, or both.
The protagonist was the main story problem. There were a lot of problems in that, I think, that Abrams and Johnson actually hated each other's movies and were in rebellion mode against each other.
Still, the biggest problem with the trilogy has to have been Kathleen Kennedy. I think that her posing with her all female staff in their "The force is female" shirts says most of what we need to know.
You see, characters like Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, The Bride, I could go on, were all admirable, interesting, compelling characters. But, they were created in this weird time in history when we could show women having flaws and weaknesses and showing them failing and know that we're not showing women being weak. Those women are human beings just like men or whatever else you want to call yourself.
This is one of the reasons why the original, animated Mulan was a good movie and the live-action remake was a steaming heap of shit. In the original, Mulan struggled to keep up. It was like G.I. Jane for kids (and better). Mulan is fighting an uphill battle; but, it's through her mental strength and determination that she succeeds. In the remake, she's leaving the men in the dust and displaying Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon kinds of abilities.
God forbid we show a woman with any flaws in this day and age!
That's the problem, the Mary Sues floweth over. It doesn't stop with Star Wars. Almost everything Disney is going down this path.
This isn't sustainable, either. Bad stories are bad stories. I've never seen a great story about a protagonist who is flawless and invincible and never has to learn anything from anybody or suffer a defeat.
Anyway, I tried to think highly of the final Star Wars trilogy. I don't know if I can look at it with rose colored glasses anymore.