Maybe I wasn’t been clear… I actually don’t give a shit about rules for “active/passive protagonists”… I only care if a movie is good or not.
I thought Rogue One was awesome and could care less whether it followed some made up rules for screenwriting or not.
Those “rules” are what makes a movie good though. They aren’t arbitrary.
Well I guess TFA and Rogue One must have followed them since by all ways we have to measure critical and audience reaction the films are considered very good to great.
I’m being a bit tongue in cheek; there are definitely guidelines that I think can help many screenplays be more successful… but they aren’t nearly as important as you make them out to be. A compelling story and characters are far more important. You can follow every rule in the book but you will still fail with out a compelling story and/or characters
One could pretty effectively argue that TESB breaks by far the most “screenwriting rules” of the OT films… and it’s easily (IMO) the best