After The Rise of Skywalker came out, many fans like myself were left disappointed. But a lot of people blamed The Last Jedi as the film that derailed the whole trilogy for several reasons:Luke was a hermit.Finn was “sidelined”.Rey was a nobody.Snoke was killed off.But in my opinion, most of these "problems" were really the fault of The Force Awakens. Let me go through each:Luke was a hermit.Many people blamed Rian Johnson for making Luke a broken, disheveled, and pessimistic character in The Last Jedi (until the very end of course). They say that this was unnecessary and used mainly to “subvert expectations” without a wider thematic purpose.Ok but, what was Johnson supposed to do? Johnson could only work with what he was given, and JJ set up that Luke disappeared on an island for several years after Ben turned into Kylo Ren. I ask you, what other logical reason would Luke be on the island for? Would it be to hide from the First Order? Maybe, but Luke Skywalker is not a coward. Why else would he hide? The only logical natural human reason would be that there was a major change in his character and he became pessimistic about the force and the Jedi. Given the story beat that JJ Abrams had handed him, Johnson wrote a natural continuation of Luke’s journey in the trilogy. You can like it or not, and that's totally valid. But if you don’t, you really shouldn’t blame Johnson.Finn was sidelined.First off, what do people even mean by “sidelined”? Well, most people I’ve asked basically just think Finn should’ve been a Jedi and led a Stormtrooper rebellion.Well, the second thing did actually happen in IX, it could’ve been executed and set up better (the latter you can partially blame TLJ for) but it did technically happen.As for the first thing, was JJ really setting that up? If that were the case, why did he knock Finn unconscious? Why didn’t he send both Rey and Finn to the island to go meet Luke and both become Jedi? Finn wanting to become a Jedi should’ve been set up in the first movie. Finn showed a lot of potential in TFA but JJ never followed through with Finn wanting to learn the ways of the force. It could've worked naturally. He and Rey had both learned about the force from Han and Maz, but JJ didn’t do it. He straight up knocks Finn out of consciousness as a method to separate him from Rey. Leaving the next director with absolutely nothing to do with the character.Given what Rian Johnson was given, it makes perfect sense to scale back some of Finn’s screen time and make his story about learning to fight for a cause. In TFA, he basically only does stuff for Rey. In TLJ, he becomes a true rebel. You can disagree with the execution, I have problems with it myself, but the concept makes sense given what Johnson was handed.Rey was a nobody.Ok, but what else was she supposed to be? JJ gave 0 hints to it being anyone important. In fact, you could argue that they could’ve been setting her up as a nobody from the very start. Daisy Ridley actually kind of confirmed this:But some fans took this [nobody] reveal as hard as Rey, claiming that Johnson went for shock value instead of developing the character. But while speaking to Rolling Stone (via Variety), Ridley said the “no one” parentage idea actually came from Abrams himself: “Well, J.J. was the one who was like, she is of no one, so it wasn’t just ‘The Last Jedi’ where that was the message.https://ift.tt/GwzAJl9 don’t know why JJ backpedaled on this. My guess was that he is a more insecure writer than Johnson and he felt that he needed to give an explanation for Rey’s raw power by making her a Palpatine after everyone started complaining about it after TFA. He also probably wanted to create conflict between Rey and Palpatine in order to make it seem like Palpatine didn’t just come out of nowhere in the story. But there’s no way this was his original plan. Palpatine is not mentioned once before TROS.Snoke was killed off with no explanation as to who his character is and why he's important.This, actually was mostly on The Last Jedi. But I’m still going to blame TFA for giving Johnson next-to-nothing for what to do with the character. JJ likes his mystery boxes and he probably thought that leaving Snoke shrouded in mystery would make the character more intriguing than actually explaining who he is and why he’s important in the first movie. I found Snoke to be a very bland and generic Star Wars villain. I, unlike many fans, was not intrigued by any fan theories as to who he was, I didn’t find that important really.Snoke’s backstory being explained in 8 and then him being killed by Kylo in 9 would’ve been the most boring and predictable thing ever. I find what Rian did to be way more interesting: killing Snoke in 8 to make the audience think that Kylo was going to turn but the reality was he ended up becoming Snoke, the main villain. Snoke's origins could've still been explained in 9, but it was Kylo's First Order now. People universally agree that Kylo Ren was the most interesting part of the Sequels but that is really only because of The Last Jedi.I don’t know why JJ felt he needed to bring Palpatine back to have a main villain. Colin Trevorrow’s script didn’t and it was perfectly fine.The fact that JJ just wrote it so Palpatine “made” Snoke proves that he had absolutely no clue from the very beginning as to what to do with the character.On one final note, in case there’s any doubt: JJ Abrams was an executive producer on TLJ. If he had a problem, he could’ve spoken up, but he didn’t.It's the Rise of Skywalker that didn't follow up on what TLJ set up. TFA didn't set anything up, everything was left open-ended. JJ can not like what Johnson did (which he should've voiced his doubts if he didn't), but he can't just retcon all of it.In conclusion, a lot of the controversial choices that Rian Johnson made in The Last Jedi start to make perfect sense as natural evolutions of the story once you take into account what he was given by JJ Abrams.Moral of the story: Have a plan, and don’t hire a Trekkie. via /r/StarWars https://ift.tt/pTCoaFW
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