Funny I said this, the many execution problems pale in comparison to the real conceptual change to SW that this movie engages in.
Star Wars was conceived as a western, set in space. White hats and black hats... this movie just made Star Wars no longer about the eternal struggle of good vs evil but turned it into a world of shades of gray....
That’s the real issue with this movie longer term, the execution problems are small potatoes compared to the fact Star Wars is not longer a battle of Good V Evil, but all about shades of gray and moral relativism.
This will damage the brand long term... people deal with shades of gray all day every day, they go to the movies for escapism... this turn in SW is the real long term problem... there is really no impetus to see what happens next.
It’s not really shades of grey. It’s acknowledging the story told so far. Many a SW fan has talked at length about how the Jedi are, in the end, rather ineffective and kind of dumb. They have all this power but the majority of Jedi training is in not using, being stoic, having no attachments, and being neutral. They aren’t actually good guys at all. When they find “the chosen one” who will “return balance” to the Force they don’t even bother to notice that they’re in charge and they don’t WANT balance. Meanwhile they work closely with a barely closeted Sith Lord to help him kill the Republic and build the Empire, and they never even notice the fact that he’s running both sides of the war.
In a lot of ways LJ gets SW BACK to what it was. It breaks it away from the Skywalker soap opera it had become, it actually gets it BACK to good vs evil while discarding the Jedi (not actually good guys) vs Sith (pretty much just anti-Jedis without much direction other than not being Jedi). It breaks SW out of a naval gazing spiral it got into near the end of Empire. We now have a bad guy whose bad because that’s what he wants to be, and he’s being opposed by good guys not primarily motivated by weird stoicism. It’s actually much more black and white now than it has been since Darth wound up Luke’s father.
George Lucas’s first installment of Star Wars, was masterful. Let’s face things, he literally forever changed the world with that installment. But, let’s take a moment to identify why we could so easily learn to “love” each major character.
Lucas spent time describing Luke as a farm boy, living with his loving Aunt and Uncle. We watched him work, and yearn to leave home. We watched him get sucked into something bigger than himself, against his will. By the end of the first movie, we knew things that Luke would do, and would never do. We knew that Han was a scoundrel, but one with basic principles of loyalty. We knew things that Han would readily do, and what he wouldn’t do. The same can be said for Leia.
By the end of movie 3, we knew these charctes very well. We knew how they could work together, and form a team, that they could depend upon one another. Alas, the 30 year lag between the first installments of SW, caused Lucas to lose this storytelling capabilities.
In every installment from that point, there is NO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. We have no clue what any of the charcters in the last several installments care about; and we generally do not care about them. Rey, who has starred in the last 3 SW installments has absolutely NOTHING to endear us to her. She stands for nothing, but what she FEELS at any given movment, and that can be from slicing Kylo to pieces, to taking falling madly in love with him - depending upon her mood at the time.
There is nothing engaging about ANY of the new characters, from the bug-eyed old woman who apparently is in pistol battles for reasons unknown, to Kylo who seems like a spoiled Milleanial who didn’t get his nap, to the droids who exhibit more personality and charisma than any of the living creatures. The Black Stormtrooper offers NOTHING to the movie, other than he is a black character.
All Disney is doing, is shaking the money tree.
This is exactly how Asimov ruined the Foundation stories. I was a huge sci fi reader as a kid. The second trilogy threw out literally everything that made the first great literature.