After having a lot of time to digest the final film of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, I have realized the trilogy is not perfect. In fact, it's far from it. I've come to realize it is actually a fairly big disappointment. It had so much potential. It had the potential for people to argue for eons on which trilogy is better: the original or the sequel. Nobody will ever legitimately think the prequel trilogy is better than the original trilogy, and now nobody will ever think the sequel trilogy is better. I have ten reasons why this is the case; ten ways Disney, JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, and Kathleen Kennedy screwed up. These are in no particular order:
1. Rey is too much of a Mary Sue
You knew I was going to mention this. She executes flying maneuvers you'd expect only out of a very experienced pilot. She fixes the Millennium Falcon with ease. She uses a Jedi Mind trick without practice. She wields a lightsaber with competency against someone who's trained their entire life (although he was wounded). Kylo should have easily been able to handle her in TFA. It's hard to relate to a character that is so good at everything she does. More on Rey later.
2. The back and forth between JJ and Rian
The sequel trilogy suffered from the inconsistency of directors. Rian undid some of what JJ did, and then JJ undid some of what Rian did. It left the trilogy feeling more like three separate barely connected films. There's very little connecting the three films other than the characters. One example is JJ hyping up Luke's lightsaber, only for Rian to have Luke toss it over his shoulder.
3. No good romance story
Something prevalent in the first two trilogies is a romance sub-plot. In the prequels, we had Anakin and Padme. In the original trilogy, we had Han and Leia. In the sequels, we have nothing even close. We had a kiss between Finn and Rose in The Last Jedi, but that romance was forgotten about in the next film. We then had a kiss between Kylo Ren/Ben Solo and Rey, but there was very little to zero romantic build up. He had just barely turned to her side. The kiss felt forced and out of place. If they had started building up the romance in The Last Jedi (or TFA) then it would have made a bit more sense.
4. Force Powers introduced that add plot holes, ruin integrity of Star Wars
I'd say one of the things that bothers me most about the sequel trilogy are some of the force powers introduced in it. I'm ok with the mind extraction power Kylo used on Poe (although why didn't Vader learn this power?). But what I don't like are the dyad, force heal, and new force ghost powers. The dyad allows matter to be transported thousands if not millions of miles. This means people could be transported, right? They basically introduced teleportation in Star Wars, which belongs more in Star Trek. Force Heal means no one has to die, and makes us wonder why no Jedi ever learned it before. I like how JK Rowling said that once a character dies in the wizarding world of Harry Potter, they're dead. That is no longer the case in Star Wars. And the last thing that really bothered me was Force Ghosts and their new "powers". Apparently now they can cause lightning strikes, use the force to lift objects, and even hold solid objects (Luke holding the lightsaber). Why don't they help out the living world more often, then? What rules are there?
5. Missed opportunity at the end of The Rise of Skywalker
When Rey is laying down and the Jedi are speaking to her, we hear Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, Anakin, Mace Windu, and even Kanan Jarrus I think. It would have been a million times more awesome to see them as Force Ghosts. To see all of those characters rally behind Rey and help her would have redeemed TROS and even the entire trilogy, more or less. It would have been a way to tie all the films (as well as a couple TV shows) together and probably would have instantly become a Top 5 Star Wars moment. But instead, all we get is their voices and it has nowhere near the impact it could have.
6. The handling of the original trilogy characters
I feel like Luke, Leia, Han, and Lando all could have been handled better. Even R2D2 and C3PO were mere afterthoughts, although I understand wanting to focus on BB-8 (and sell merch). But there were so many things I wish we had seen with the four human characters. I wanted to see a Han and Luke reunion, a Han and Lando reunion, and maybe even a Lando and Leia reunion. The only "reunions" we got were Han and Leia who were "separated" (don't agree with that), and Luke projecting himself to Leia. Meh. And the way they all were killed off... did they even have to be killed off? Why can't they just live out their last days in peace? At least perhaps Lando does. Han dies so violently at the hands of his son? That's an awful fate for a fan favorite. Luke dying from overprojecting? Ok...
7. Rey's lineage is a massive head-shaker
My absolute preferred lineage for Rey would have been to have her somehow descended from Obi-Wan, perhaps a (great) niece. What Rian Johnson did in TLJ was have her parents be nobody, which I definitely would have preferred over her being a Palpatine. At least as a nobody, that teaches kids (mostly girls) that even if your parents are nobodies and not that successful, that doesn't mean you can't be. Instead, it shows that there has to be some lineage in your family tree in order to make a name for yourself. And knowing the main "hero" of the ST be descended from ultimate evil is just an unsettling feeling.
8. There is no clear villain throughout the trilogy
In the prequel trilogy, the main villain was Palpatine AKA Darth Sidious. In the original trilogy, it was Darth Vader and then the Emperor. In the sequel trilogy, there is no consistency. It goes from Kylo/Snoke to Snoke dying leaving just Kylo to Palpatine and then Kylo turns. There is no clear number one villain in the trilogy. It's not Snoke, he was only in a film and a half. It's not Palpatine, he was only in one film. And it's not Kylo, because he turns and betrays his own "master". There's no one clear villain for the audience to root against.
9. Side characters that are discarded or boring
The sequel trilogy introduced a lot of side characters: Captain Phasma, Rose, Finn, Poe, General Hux, and Zorii Bliss. Captain Phasma was built up with a bunch of hype but dies in a lame fashion in TLJ. Rose was basically forgotten about in TROS. Finn was possibly force-sensitive but we get no resolution on it. Poe was an ace pilot and former smuggler... but what else? His character had no substance. General Hux was a villain who turned for a petty reason. Zorii Bliss was someone from Poe's past who no one cared for. There was very little to no depth for the secondary characters in the ST.
10. Missing an epic lightsaber fight scene
There was no epic lightsaber fight scene in the ST. The closest we got was in TLJ when Rey and Kylo teamed up to take out Snoke's guards, but that fight had flaws and wasn't exactly a fair fight. There was no fight scene with the magnitude of any of the OT fight scenes. There was no fight scene that left us thinking how awesome it was after it finished. This is just my opinion, but I think it's an opinion generally agreed upon by the Star Wars fanbase.
The sequel trilogy was not entirely awful. I only pointed out its flaws. It had its strengths, too. Kylo Ren had more depth than Anakin did in the PT, and Adam Driver killed it in the role. The visual effects and music were all top-notch, with the visual effects the best Star Wars has seen so far. They blended practical and visual effects better than the PT ever did. The acting, even outside of Driver, was pretty good for the most part. But it just pains me as a huge Star Wars fan to know that the ST could have been so much more. I think someday we will get a Star Wars trilogy or movie series that people will universally regard as magnificent, but the sequel trilogy is unfortunately not that trilogy.
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