We’ve certainly augmented a few things in light of TLJ, but I do not share the appraisal of TROS ignoring TLJ. It clearly wanted to retcon some stuff, though.
Yeah, that’s what I’ve been saying. TROS didn’t just “ignore” TLJ like so many people are saying, there were several references to the events throughout the movie:
- The plot as a whole is only facilitated by Snoke and Luke being dead.
- The Skywalker saber has clearly been taped together after it was broken in TLJ.
- When Kylo has his vision, it plays some audio of Luke saying “Ben, no!” from TLJ.
- Kylo can’t rebuild his helmet if it was never broken in the first place.
- When Kylo talks to Rey on Passana, he says, “I offered you my hand once.”
- When Kylo reveals the truth about Rey, he explicitly compares it to his earlier revelation about Rey’s junk trader parents.
- Hux being the spy makes no sense without Kylo treating him like trash in TLJ.
- When Rey heals Kylo, she responds to Kylo’s earlier statement, saying “I did want to take your hand.”
- When Luke talks to Rey, he mentions the lesson he learned in TLJ, that it’s wrong to run away from your troubles.
- When the Resistance is planning their attack, one of them mentions “Holdo manuevers”.
And that’s just the stuff I remember off the top of my head. Point is, someone who skipped TLJ and went straight from TFA to TROS would be hopelessly confused.
Of course they couldn’t just ignore continuity and have Snoke and Luke be alive and such, but it basically does everything in it’s power to retcon everything TLJ set up.
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Kylo frees himself of the oppression of his Master Snoke, except now he just works for another evil mastermind.
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Rey has lost her Master Luke, the only one who could “show her her place in all of this”, except now Leia can suddenly train her when that was never considered.
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Kylo destroys his helmet and let’s go of the past, except he still worships Vader’s helmet and puts his own helmet back together.
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Rey was nobody, she had no part in this story, except she’s Palpatine’s granddaughter and her parents were killed by an assassin Luke and Lando chased across the galaxy.
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The Skywalker saber has been split in half, except it was fixed off screen, it works perfectly fine and the previous damage is never mentioned.
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The Holdo maneuver is a one in a million, Rose… etc. etc. etc.