Kylo’s motivation is muddied and makes no sense, and him being tricked by Sidious to think he is talking to Vader as a voice in his head is stupid. You think Anakin would have shown up a force ghost and been like hey kid I was redeemed. Or maybe Luke would have told him. Or his mom. It made no damn sense.
I understand the general gist he is supposed to be Hayden Skywalker 2.0 and wants to be Darth Vader. Down to the general whininess and smashing stuff. And the bad boy Emo. And toxic romance with Rey to mirror Padme and Anakin. Darth Caedus in the EU was already that. The 2.0 Anakin and Vader. That is why I hated that series. Redoing the prequel. Though Mara’s Jade’s murder as sacrifice is probably an indirect inspiration for Han Solo’s death.
Show me the darkness grandfather, I’m going to finish what you started. Kylo kills his father who loved him for no reason.
Luke was afraid, he saw Vader in him as he saw Vader in himself.
Rey being an analogue for Luke as the replacement hero, fine but they did nothing with it except have his exact story path at the end. Instead of redeeming Vader its redeeming Kylo and adopting the Skywalker lineage. And she is set to rebuild the Jedi order he failed to rebuild.
We don’t know why it failed except for Ben Solo. Did Luke follow the prequel Jedis failures. We only get a sense of that from Luke’s speech in the Last Jedi. He continued the same mistakes as Kenobi, the same hubris.
All the conceits of the Last Jedi that the Jedi were wrong and the force is wider and deeper, light and dark. Abandoned for the stupidity of Rise of Skywalker. Poorly adapting Dark Empire. And partially redoing Return of the Jedi.
You can follow on Last Jedi and stick the landing perhaps with a decent episode 9. But how do you explain the resistance only being big enough to fit in the Millennium Falcon. And ROS was nothing but bunch of course correction and retcons.
I like the idea of Finn as a rogue stormtrooper and a potential Jedi who could lead a Stormtrooper rebellion. I like the idea of Rey as a scavenger. And they did nothing with these concepts. Those two characters could have been written to be so much more. I also liked the idea of Rey as something pure and like someone who only does good. I didn’t like the forced darkness added to her character or the Palpatine backstory. I’m fine with the general idea of her being tempted by the dark side in The Last Jedi. Did she need to be a Skywalker I thought she was, but Rian had the novel idea she was a nobody. An everywoman to do away with the prequel concept of a magic mutant bloodline. The Reylo aspect would have to go away if they were related, I wasn’t partial to it anyway.
Nearly every issue I have with the Last Jedi could be solved with some story changes, fixing the pace of the film and adding needed exposition, I can’t say the same about The Force Awakens in a general sense. And the Rise of Skywalker or the Rise of Palpatine is worse than Attack of the Clones.
If I was in charge of the sequels I would have hewed to the OT and avoided the prequel entirely. Luke, Han and Leia would have actual real roles in the story. Not being some minor fulcrum for other characters or to be killed off.
Disney was right in not redoing the prequel, where they tripped themselves up was doing requels of the OT, instead of sequels where the characters and world progressed. But Darth Maul as the big bad would have been laughable, even the return of Palpatine is less stupid.
I would have liked to have seen the New Republic and the fragile balance of keeping the peace and watching Democracy actually be restored. And a successful Jedi order. Let’s says like a 100 Jedi or so. Luke as a Jedi Master and leader of all the Jedi’s.
Amazingly even in a different version you could still have a character like Rey as a student of Skywalker and a Finn. And there is no reason why Poe couldn’t be Rogue leader of Rogue Squadron after Wedge steps back. Rose Tico could be a mechanic or something along those lines and friendly with Finn and the Rogues. There is a million different ways the story could have gone.
The one major change I would make is to do away with the rules on attachment and Luke would have a wife and children. He would also have more nieces and nephews. Would there or should there have been new Sith. I’m more than half against having them at all or any random darksiders, I would have preferred a new enemy if possible. If Sith need be, it should be something new not the rule of two.
Perhaps we could have more than 2 or 3 lightsaber colors. If Sith need to exist don’t name them Darth. the only Darth should be Vader. I never liked that retcon. Its not Darth Exar-Kun or Darth Ulic- Qel Droma. As much as I like Kotor and Revan.
