I don’t think TLJ contradicts TFA on Finn’s arc or on the political situation.
It’s not so much that TLJ contradicts Finn’s TFA arc. It’s that Finn’s arc and treatment in TLJ is insulting and patronizing. Finn had been abducted and brainwashed since he was a toddler to kill for an authoritarian regime. Then, whether through the Force or through his own conscience, he rejected his lifelong programming and broke free. He was frightened, confused, and traumatized. He had never been out in the real world on his own. He went out of his way to protect Rey, a stranger he came to care about when there was essentially no one else in his life. Both Finn and Rey have scenes on Takodana where they run away from fear, yet only Finn is ever called out on it or made to look bad from it. Some people claim that Finn was selfish in the third act because he only went on the Starkiller Base mission to find Rey. But Finn owes the Resistance nothing. Finn has every right to want to be left alone and get away from the people who brainwashed and oppressed him. After TLJ, many people retroactively viewed Finn’s actions in TFA as those of a cowardly, selfish man, because that’s how TLJ framed him at the start. (Then there was that Lucasfilm story group member on Twitter who had a weird animosity toward Finn, and used to constantly tweet about how Finn was a coward who needed to be taught a lesson in TLJ). But Finn standing up to Kylo, a man who symbolized Finn’s lifelong oppression, was a moment of great personal significance and heroism for Finn. But it never gets brought up again. Ever.
Both Finn and Kylo get seriously injured at the end of TFA. Only Kylo’s injury is treated seriously and used to try to make the audience sympathize with him. Finn’s is glossed over, and his awakening is played for laughs. Finn then gets admonished for trying to leave to protect Rey, even though it is well within his rights to do so. He is not obligated to stay with the Resistance. Then he goes to Canto Bight, where he gets lectured about child slavery and war profiteering, despite being a child soldier, and then he doesn’t even help the slave children who are stuck there. There’s no sense of recognition he feels towards them, when there ought to be. And he leaves them behind to be punished for letting the Fathiers escape.
Then he gets lectured by DJ about how there are no truly good or evil factions in the galaxy and how none of the fighting matters. And Finn actually seems surprised and considering of this idea. When he should absolutely know from experience how horrific the First Order is, given what they did to him, and would fiercely reject what DJ is saying. Only one faction kidnaps children as soldiers, and the other faction only exists to try to stop them.
The whole of TLJ treats Finn like he’s a selfish child who needs to be taught a lesson about the world and about committing to a cause. There were so many directions they could have taken his story after TFA. Force sensitivity. Leading a Stormtrooper rebellion. Going on an actual personal journey of self discovery that isn’t just him learning that the Resistance is good.
The Last Jedi is far more deserving of the “Good story, bad execution” title than the prequels. The Last Jedi has a compelling story about the legacy of the people and events of the Star Wars Trilogy, which is unfortunately undermined by bathos too much, but it’s still there.
The Force Awakens, I think it’s the weaker of the two, but because it doesn’t really have as much substance as the Last Jedi. Maybe that’s “Meh to okay story, good execution”. Maybe we can fault it for that, but the first movie in the other two trilogies were a lot less complex than the latter two movies, and they were both probably for the better for that. It was an enjoyable movie and the Last Jedi picked up the slack for it.
TFA isn’t merely a simple story. It’s a hollow story. It was JJ who pushed the script in the direction of being a soft reboot, and I’m pretty he’s the reason we never got to see a functioning New Republic or New Jedi order in these films. There were countless stories that could have been told post-RotJ that could have honored the original story and appealed to nostalgia while still telling something new and interesting. This notion that the film had to be a soft reboot in order to “remind people of how great Star Wars” is entirely false. You can use nostalgic imagery within a new, original story. You don’t need to copy the story beats as well. And in doing that reboot, TFA entirely undid the OT. The heroes of the OT lived long enough to watch everything they had fought for come crumbling down around them, not just partially, but in its entirety. The New Republic was a spineless failed state. None of what they accomplished survived. And their lives post-RotJ were miserable and fraught with failure. The EU for the new Disney canon had to contort itself and create a depressing new timeline just in order to make the plot of TFA happen.
TFA is one of the most corporate, shallow, manipulative movies I’ve ever seen in my life. The only aspect of the story that interested me in the slightest was Finn, and maybe Kylo. Everything else felt like a cardboard cutout of the OT, or a Hollywood product wearing the dead skin of a Star Wars movie. It was obnoxious and had nothing to offer while teasing the audience with future mysteries in a cheap ploy to drum up excitement for future films. It had no substance. It was a hype tool.
TLJ was slightly better in terms of artistic integrity, but was less polished. The film was a bloated mess that attempted some profound metacommentary that would challenge the themes and ideas of the saga, yet failed to fully understand what it was critiquing. The film misinterprets basic concepts of the Jedi and the Force, like not understand what “Balance of the Force” means, or acting like the Jedi are meant to be pacifists. The worldbuilding was barely existent, and by the end of the film, the galaxy had never felt smaller. The ending, which was supposed to feel inspiring and uplifting, instead felt empty and depressing.
Speaking of which, one cool thing about 7 and 8 that was missing for 9 was the metanarrative about the IRL legacy of the OT told through the in-universe legacy of the OT. Pretty much everything interesting about 7 and 8 was dropped for 9.
That’s largely why the sequel trilogy doesn’t work. It’s far too concerned with metanarrative that takes you out of the saga instead of just being about the characters and continuing the story in a logical direction. The characters of the OT are not their actors. The real-world history of the Star Wars franchise is not the history of the galaxy. The films are more about Star Wars, either paying tribute to it or challenging/subverting it, rather than just being Star Wars films.
The Rise of Skywalker is the one that’s rotten to the core, fundamentally broken, but that’s its own fault. The first two sequel movies were coherent, and gave ample opportunity for 9 to be as cohesive, but that’s where they dropped the ball.
I cannot imagine any alternate reality where TFA and TLJ both exist and Episode IX was good. The story had run into a dead end. The universe was shrunken. The end of TLJ feels oddly upbeat, as though we should be excited for the supposed new world of possibilities that await our heroes. But that’s not what we saw in the movie. We saw a film that was catastrophic for our heroes, and should have ended with them in mourning for all they’ve lost, and for the tragic fate of the galaxy falling into the hands of a madman. TLJ was a Pyrrhic victory for the First Order, but still a victory nonetheless. They had essentially obliterated the Resistance as a faction. Kylo couldn’t carry the film as a main antagonist, though. Not after having been humiliated over the course of the two films. Palpatine was brought back out of desperation, because JJ was aware of that fact. TLJ doesn’t work either as a second film in a trilogy, or as a penultimate film in a nine-part saga.
If there was ever a sequel trilogy to Lord of the Rings
I don’t think the Star Wars Trilogy and Lord of the Rings are really comparable in this regard. The story of LotR is the culmination of history itself in-universe, but the Star Wars Trilogy feels relatively self-contained. The nature of sequels to either of them would be very different.
I don’t think they’re as different as you believe. Tolkien actually did start writing a sequel to LotR, then scrapped the idea when he realized it was a dead end and would only undermine what he had already written, and be quite depressing.
“I did begin a story placed about 100 years after the Downfall, but it proved both sinister and depressing. Since we are dealing with Men it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless — while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors — like Denethor or worse. I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going around doing damage. I could have written a ‘thriller’ about the plot and its discovery and overthrow — but it would have been just that. Not worth doing.”
The Original Trilogy was a fairly traditional fantasy tale with a happy ending. Any sequel trilogy released later could never be viewed in isolation from the Originals, especially if it included the same characters, since it would fundamentally alter that original story in a much bleaker, more cynical direction. The three trilogies can’t be fully divorced from each other, as much as I would like for them to be. It’s a continuously running story from Phantom Menace to Rise of Skywalker. The creative choices made in the sequels have consequences for all the prior films. They recontextualize their events and characters and how people perceive them. That’s not something that writers should consider lightly.