It seems like I dislike this movie for the same reason that many people like it: the underlying message of hopelessness.
Luke is actually a depressed hermit instead of a noble hero. Sacrificing yourself for the greater good is actually not a good thing. It doesn’t matter if the Resistance loses and everyone dies, because some Harry Potter cosplayers will rise to defeat whatever fascist government is in charge at that point. For a franchise all about heroism and the light beating the dark, TLJ sure loves to portray heroism as the wrong choice every time. I used to love this movie because of the subversions, but now that I think about it I realize that the subversions actively harm the thematic structure of the saga.
Not really.
Everything you’ve mentioned is more of a TROS criticism, if anything. TLJ says the opposite about pretty much all of your points. Which is interesting.
Really? In my opinion TROS was binary good-evil to a fault. It seems crafted to be the polar opposite of TLJ’s unsympathetic portrayal of heroism. I wish they took the middle ground. You can have the heroes go through a moral crisis without showing heroic sacrifice as a bad thing.