But a script isn’t the same thing as this overarching “plan” that people keep referencing, which is more accurately a conceptual security blanket for fandom to let them feel like everything is alright, some faceless person at Disney has Kennedy/Abrams/insert-director-here “under control” and they won’t mess up Star Wars.

You can make a good movie out of a subpar script. It’s happened many times. For example: Star Wars. But I’m not even arguing that you don’t need a great script. I’m arguing that constantly suggesting an overarching plan would have made things right is wishful thinking, because this director doesn’t follow plans even when they ARE good, or further, when they’re HIS OWN PLANS.

I don’t want to confuse the idea that “script” = “plan” here, not in the way we’re all constantly talking about “The Plan” as in “Disney should have had a Plan” or “See what happens when Kennedy doesn’t hammer out a Plan.” Do I wish the script had been better? I wish everything had been better. But sometimes collaborative art projects just don’t come together despite everyone’s best intentions. For example: The Phantom Menace.

“The Plan” has become this weird mythological safety net for fandom, and the truth is most everything that fandom loves didn’t really have a plan, and even if there was, it wasn’t really adhered to.

“The Plan” wouldn’t have saved The Rise of Skywalker. It needed good ideas, and all it got were bad ones.