Explain to me how The Force Awakens or The Rise of Skywalker were any better than The Last Jedi? I thought all three were garbage but at least they took some risks in the second movie. JJ promised not to play it safe and it was total BS. He played it safe and pandered. I feel bad for Johnson having to follow up rehash known as The Force Awakens.
Webb, I'm GLAD YOU ASKED!!! (I need to finish my MOC today and this will serve as a great way to wast some valuable time).
There has been a lot (a lot) written on the subject, but I will try to distill it down to a few key components. First, to defend (sort of) JJ Abrams. I agree that The Force Awakens (TFA) is derivative of A New Hope (ANH), at least in terms of plot. Let's set that aside for a moment, because I will get back to it. JJ introduces a cast of interesting characters (maybe with the exception of Poe and Snoke, who is more of a mystery villain), lays out a multi-part story arc, and puts together a fairly competent and visually stunning movie that sets up a resolution to the Skywalker saga. Specifically, it centers the story on NEW characters, but tethers the world to the old ones, and sets up Luke as the key piece of the wheel for the next component of the story. How do you create a new trilogy to tie together the old WITHOUT Luke, Han, Chewie, Lando, and Leah? You can't, but you need to establish the new characters and their importance to the overall story, because JJ has to retroactively pretend there was a grand finale trilogy to tie up all 9 movies. So he does his job, sets things in motion for the 2nd and 3rd movies (Who is Rey and how does she tie into this family story? Where is Luke and why is he gone? Who is the first order? What happened to the Republic? The Sith? All WILL BE REVEALED in the next episode!!). This is the expectation. Yes, JJ did not take risks, and he planned to give the fans what they wanted. It was a by-the-numbers adventure film with lots of McGuffins used to introduce the central cast and story. Did he try to blow anyone's mind? No. This is Star Wars, not Casablanca. And I think he really succeeded. Now, back to the "starkiller base" plot. I totally agree this is just a 21st century take on the "death star", which is basically exactly the same but with more. The last act sets up a plot very similar to ANH, no doubt, which I believe serves to introduce NEW fans to the old story. However, aside from this plot, the rest of the movie does stand on its own, and I don't think the "death star" plot is of particular interest or essential to this film outside of wiping out the "resistance" and the giant unfair killing machine (for now). The central story here is about Rey, Luke, and Ben/Kylo Ren, and their relationship. This is a family story, after all, so thematically it is quite different than ANH. I thought it was well-executed and I enjoyed watching it, 100% in agreement with you that the plot is derivative relating to the star-killer base (but not really in other ways). It was fun and exciting. And set expectations for the rest of the story as to how it may unfold.
Then Rian Johnson made The Last Jedi (TLJ). I had 3 major problems with this movie.
The first is that the movie is set up as a device to subvert expectations to move the story in a totally different direction rather than continue the story set up in TFA. Rian had stated that he set out to make a new "Empire Strikes Back" at least in that he thought it would be very different but remembered as the best in the series. He sets the tone right away with the Luke/Rey scene. We finally see Luke- remember, the plucky, annoying kid who defies the odds to not only be a pilot, but the savior of truth and justice by taking down the Empire, all the while resisting the power of the dark side, to save his father and the universe? Remember that guy? Well, let's subvert your expectation- turns out he's an a-hole who wanted to murder his Padawan and now lives as an angry hermit. Who cares anyway, this is Rey's story now. Remember the story about Rey and how she fits into the Skywalker family? No one cares- she's not related at all so stop thinking about it. Expectation subverted. Remember Kylo Ren and how we were going to see how he fell to the Sith? No, he hates everyone and wants to "kill the past". Snoke? Forget him, he sucks. Let's just kill him off so we don't have to talk about him anymore. SUBVERTED. Now, don't get me wrong, some of this was interesting and on it's own could have taken the story to really interesting places, particularly the Kylo/Rey relationship. The entire story is set up for them to join forces... and then they don't, really wasting anything of interest that could have happened there. The last an perhaps most memorable is the white male/hero trope of Poe going against his commanders to save the day with a crazy side plot... SUBVERTED- it was all a waste of time that instead of saving the Resistance it basically destroys them. Rian basically tries very hard to undo the story arc set up by JJ Abrams, and it is both painfully obvious and sad. The key problem is that this movie is part of a trilogy- you can't just ignore what JJ had done, as it weakens the entire story. This is especially true because none of the things he changed had any consequence. Poe is now a traitor to the Resistance- but at the end, he gets a slap on the back with a jolly "I like him". WTF.
The second problem is that the plotting is contrived to drive the story in horrible ways rather by character decisions that we can relate with. Stating that there is no difference between TFA and TLJ is like saying there is no difference between "Batman V Superman (BVS)" and whatever Marvel movie was out at the time. BVS was cringeworthy because plot drives the story, not characters and their decisions. Remember "Martha!"??? The story is really driven by terrible decisions that HAVE to OCCUR otherwise the story ends. BVS is basically driven by Batman and Superman not talking and just fighting, because if they took 2 seconds to explain themselves the fight would not occur and and the movie would be over. You maybe did not notice this, but your brain did. Even if you didn't understand it, your brain said "this movie sucks" because of the contrivance of the plot. It probably said to you, "why don't they just...." and you are out and the movie sucks. TLJ makes a lot of very similar stupid plot points to drive the story that are completely baffling and take you out of the story because your brain can no longer suspend disbelief. And this is what makes a movie suck. A few key examples- The key plot of the Resistance is that they will run out of fuel, yet they just left their base and were charging their ships, AND the First order apparently doesn't need fuel, AND there is a tracking device so they can't use lightspeed, BUT they can sneak off and probably get fuel and bring it back, AND this is not internally consistent with anything we had seen before in Star Wars... Another, and probably the best example, is the plot requiring the sub plot of Poe and Finn and Rose going on their McGuffin chase for no reason. They only did it because they knew they would die if they did not try and purple head Commander has no plan... Except there was a plan no one bothered to tell them about, because if they did, they would just have spent the movie sitting in their quarters playing cards or something. Ugh... This ties directly into the last and most egregious resolution wherein Captain purple hair shows that she did have a plan all along, but when that fails she goes into lightspeed directly into the First Order armada, destroying every single ship. If it was possible to do this, they should have done it before they lost 25/26 ships on a stupid chase. And now why bother to have space battles at all, just point a small ship into Starkiller base and hit the auto Lightspeed button. Ughhhhhhhhhh.....
The last is the weakest, but I had to bring it up. The writing/dialogue, particularly the scenes that are supposed to be funny. Poe calling General Hux and pretending he can't hear him when stalling for time (ughhhh)... The bombers in the opening sequence needing to "fly" over their targets to "drop" bombs even though they are in space and as far back as in ANH bombs were shot like missiles... Poe being chastized for trying to complete a mission at the beginning despite going out in said mission to begin with..... arggggg....
With all that said, the WORST thing about TLJ is that it is completely unwatchable. I tried to watch it again before the new one came out so I could catch up on the story.... but I couldn't get through it despite 2 tries because it is SOOOO BAD.
So for the new one- It was never going to be good. It needed to resolve not only the entire Skywalker story, but also make up for the fact that Rian Johnson went off the rails. JJ did what he could by pretending almost nothing in TLJ actually happened, but there was no way he could really fix everything and conclude this story.
