Even though TLJ was a tonally and thematically inconsistent mess, it had its moments. All the Luke stuff was actually pretty good. At least the space horses were freed. Screw broom boy I guess. Sacrifice isn’t the answer, but it worked pretty well 15 minutes ago. Superman Leia had my sides in orbit. Carrie Fisher’s passing was pretty sad though. Its such a shame that’s what we have to remember her by. The moment with Luke and Leia at the end almost had me in tears. One of the reasons I haven’t revisited that movie tbh. It kinda bums me out thinking about it now.
TFA was pretty good at the time. I defended it for being derivative at the time because I felt like re-establishing the series was honestly necessary after the prequels. But in the intervening years, unfortunately that movie being so successful started the trend of “soft reboots” in Hollywood where they just remake the same movie beat for beat with the older cast. Yeah yeah, Ray was overpowered. Yeah it was dumb. Yeah a lot of the criticism towards the character isn’t in good faith. It was pretty hard even for a jaded cynic like me not to be excited for new Star Wars.
The problem is the character never had any room to grow. When the protagonist defeats the villain in the first movie, where do you go from there? In Star Wars, Luke runs away from Vader in the hanger bay. In Empire, he scores a few small hits, but gets his ass kicked, and in Jedi he matures enough to hold back his anger and not go down the same path his father did. Ray feels like her arc is a straight line. Any time she does have something going on, they hit the Voyager magic reset button.
Your parents were nobodys, come to terms with it. Lol jk you’re the space devils offspring or something. It’s so fascinating how they managed to alienate everyone and please no one. I’m still mad Finn and Poe weren’t a thing. Even the actors were pretty shocked because of how good the chemistry was between those two characters. It’s the one romance that would’ve landed.
Admittedly other than TFA I haven’t seen any of these movies since release so I’m not equip to have an in depth discussion like some of you guys. I’ll lurk moar. Hope everyone’s well with everything going on.