I guess my question is.. if we love ANH, then why not love TFA? It really is a huuuuuge rip off of ANH. But for me, and it's all subjective anyway, if a story is good - a story is good. I can easily just get lost in the world they are giving me. And TFA never allowed me to escape out of that world.
I love BB-8. I liked the questions around Rey. I LOVED Ren and the Solo death was such a moment. To me... one of the best Star Wars moments. I thought both actors did their best. I am a huge Chewbacca mark. And it followed TFA almost identical. Partial map... new young jedi... fun loving droid... holy shit fun.
Thennnn there was 8. Being a wrestling fan, I can EASILY get lost in stories and not think of plot holes. But so many times in 8 I remember just thinking in the threatre "what the f*** is this?"
Because it’s a new hope wanking itself off to a pretty blatant narrative. They made the lead a female, the other a black actor and then tried to play it up to the current climate which at that point in time when TFA came out, was about being diverse and less about actually fleshing out characters. The entire 3 movies forced Leia and Rey down your throats even when the story naturally led you to wanting more from Kylo Ren. They retconned Rey in the end and tried to fix her story but that just made you despise her character even more, but Ren, try as they might to make him less of a focal point to Rey, was always a better character and they wasted it in the end.
Then go watch Rogue One, where the character of Erso is more organic in the story and you sympathize with that character far more than you could with Leia “Mary Poppins” Organa odd arc in the story like some weird Fairy Godmother character and Rey “I guess I’m a Skywalker” Palpatine. Nothing about TFA felt new or natural to me.
The stuff with Ren and his father, those were great because they felt organic to the story, it felt like the very few things that weren’t forced down your throat. At that point, you don’t know Kylo’s story like you do in episode 8. But you’re already fascinated and compelled by his anger and what not.
Rey? In the end, they did what Marvel does with its characters, she started doing shit that more powerful people before her, could never do and was doing it basically with ease. Like, gtfo of here with that nonsense mate.
7, 8, 9 were the Superman Returns of movies.
Even the actor that plays Finn called them out on it, they used him to promote the movie for diversity but they really had no idea how to progress his character, why? Because when you try to force diversity, your story usually ends up sucking because it’s not a natural progression from the story and its characters, Finn was a traitor, then he was just there, oh btw he is also force sensitive but really, meh who cares. Poe? Great pilot, but let’s really not delve too much into that, lets just make him like most Marvel characters, turn him into a sarcastic comic relief type of bloke.
Just how I saw it then and see it now.