Complete disregard of Vader as a character after he had already been set up in TFA as a major influencer and inspiration to Kylo. After a few mean words from Snoke, Kylo smashes his helmet to pieces, symbolically smashing his obsessed Vader-like aspirations and everything that had been set up in the previous movie. Trying to delete Vader from a Skywalker-saga SW movie is like trying to delete Hitler from a WWII documentary. Can’t you wait until you get you start your own non-Skywalker SW trilogy, Rian?
General Hux was set up, almost literally, as a young ascendant Hitler in TFA. Now he is the butt of silly tone-deaf jokes? I thought Kathleen Kennedy was supposed to be supervising Rian?
Snoke’s comment about the Dark in Rey and the Light
Kylo, Yoda, and Luke all talked about destroying the past. I didn’t really mind this at all until I realized the second, much deeper meaning of this dialog was that Rian Johnson was ACTUALLY COMMENTING ABOUT THE PAST STAR WARS MOVIES THEMSELVES WITHIN THE MOVIE HE WAS COMMISSIONED TO DIRECT! He was literally talking about destroying all the Star Wars tropes that came before HIS movie.
The movie almost feels like Rian Johnson hates J.J. Abrams. “Oh you created Poe to be a hero, you think Snoke should be an important character, you want Rey’s bloodlines to be important, you probably wanted Luke to be a more heroic character, you wanted Vader’s presence to be felt through his inspiration of Kylo? Well I am going to kill the past because this is MY movie! Oh… And I bet you thought the Knights of Ren was a cool idea too. Well, fuck you about that too.”I do think there is a good Star Wars movie in there somewhere utilizing TLJ footage as a rough cut.
I agree with your long post and these couple paragraphs nail it
Thanks! I probably should have made the post a little briefer, but thanks for reading!
How about Poe’s character though? It feels like they took a hero from TFA and turned him into one of those commercials you see every day on TV where the wife is the clever one and the husband is barely smart enough to chew his food and would be lost without her. (Because of course, it would be highly offensive if the wife was made stupid.) Disclaimer: I am HUGELY in favor of women and diversity in SW–as stated in my post, but don’t take a character who has already been established as a competent heroic leader make him a moron simply to fulfill a feminist agenda.