Having Thrawn would’ve made the ST disconnect from the PT and OT, unlike Palpatine. Stopping Palps’ return is a natural progression that lines up with the previous two trilogies and ties the saga together. Imagine if Voldemort was killed off in Book 5 and Snape took his role for the final two. There would be no consistent overarching villain. They wouldn’t feel like legitimate series finales to the other 5.
Then they shouldn’t have made a Sequel Trilogy. The saga already had an ending. It was called RotJ. If the only way they could think of to make the ST feel connected to the first 6 movies was to bring Palpatine back, then they just shouldn’t have bothered, since they had nothing to contribute.
In any case, it would have been better to bring in a new villain like Thrawn, one who’s imposing without being so powerful as to upstage the original villains, than to dig up the old villain to upstage himself. Have the ST act as more of an epilogue to the saga rather than trying to one-up what came before.
And no, Palps’ return does not ruin the OT. Anakin only did it to save Luke, and you’re somehow fine with it in Civil War, Logan and Infinity War.
I haven’t watched any of those three movies. I’m not a Marvel guy. But what you’re using here is Whataboutism. Just because the same issue might be present in those other movies doesn’t excuse the issue in the Sequel Trilogy. Other films having the same problem doesn’t make it okay.
From Anakin’s perspective, yes, he was killing Palpatine to save Luke. But from a broader saga perspective, it marked the destruction of the Sith and the restoration of the Jedi. Changing that moment to being just a little inconvenient speed bump in Palpatine’s plans was stupid and undercutting of the original story.
And no, TFA is not a rehash of ANH. Yes, it takes similar elements, but that’s because it was necessary for the characters and story. For example, Starkiller is a way of showing that the FO is more advanced than the Empire.
Why are they so much more advanced? How did they get that way? Why does the Republic not consider them a threat?
And no, nothing that they recycled was “necessary” to the story. JJ made clear in the commentary and interviews for TFA that he wanted to bring all these familiar elements back (desert planet, new Death Star, Cantina, Stormtroopers, Rebels, old ship designs) because they were familiar to the audience, and would be registered by viewers as quintessential “Star Wars” imagery. It had nothing to do with the story or characters.
Kylo killing Han is different from Vader killing Kenobi - whereas Vader killed Kenobi specifically because he was a Jedi, Kylo killed Han because he didn’t want to be conflicted anymore but it didn’t work and traumatized him >even more.
I will agree with you that the two deaths are different, since Obi-Wan’s death was far better. Han’s death was pointless and disrespectful. Having Han fail to save his son, then just get stabbed and falling (as a CGI corpse) down a bottomless pit was terrible. The screenwriters definitely intended the deaths to parallel each other, though. There’s no point denying that. Particularly in their placement in the story and in the way they affected the protagonist witnessing the death.
The fact that Palpatine canonically saw Vader’s betrayal coming and was prepared for it is ridiculous on its own.
By that logic, the Holdo maneuver is perfectly explained by the shield things or whatever in TLJ’s novelization. We’re judging the movies on their own merits.
Of course, any explanation for Palpatine’s return is better than the absolute nonsensical drivel the movie gives us. TRoS doesn’t even try or care. As bad as the canon explanation is, I’d rather take a bad explanation over no explanation. I’m doing the movie a favor by including out-of-movie sources that try to prop the movie up, since it really can’t stand on its own merits.
That’s a little less compelling than the way you describe it.
Ah, yes, making sure that the personification of the metaphor for the current generation being affected by and facing the same struggles and battles as the previous one is gone once and for all is not compelling. Ah, yes, the new generation facing the same threats as before and defeating them in their own way or with the right lessons learned or whatever shit happens is not compelling.
Except what reason do we have to believe that Palpatine is gone for good this time? At least Dark Empire, for all its issues, bothered to explain how the heroes were able to prevent Palpatine’s return in future stories, ensuring that he could never come back to life. After TRoS, though, what is there to stop Palpatine from just possessing a new body somewhere else? Is he going to be like Sigma from Mega Man X and just keep coming back over and over again until it becomes comical?
Rey didn’t kill Palpatine in hatred. That’s the point. She even says as much earlier: “All you want for me is to hate. But I won’t. Not even you.”
You’re missing the point. Palpatine’s spirit is still out there. They just destroyed his body again, like in RotJ. So what give TRoS’s ending any more finality than RotJ’s ending?