To be fair, they also killed the big bad (Snoke lmao) in movie 2 of 3. Without any plan or reason. So they needed a big bad ultimate evil, because Palpatine was behind it all in both previous trilogies. Having him be the big bad in the prequels made SOME sense, but it was slop the third time. I enjoyed it for being a giant embarassment as wells as "old man has way too much fun being goofy evil".

Like they could have had Kylo Ren become the actual big bad, but then people might be upset that their bad boy becomes Space Hitler (despite already being Space Hitler Youth).

They toyed with the girl... That I literally can't recall the name of now. Rei? Ray? whatever. They toyed with her becoming evil, but resolved it so loosely I don't even recall there being a "no this isn't me, this is bad, I'm good" scene.

They could have even had some banality of evil shit, where the rank and file Hitlerites become the villians for a movie. But nah, completely jumping the shark.

[–] Carl@hexbear.net 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I really think that if Johnson had been allowed to finish the trilogy, or if the person who did finish it hadn't thrown all of his ideas directly in the fire, the third movie could have paid off some of these ideas and made the second one better in retrospect.

Snoke was a boring villain. Getting a cheap kill on him to refocus on Kylo was the right move, "somehow Palpatine returned" was the wrong one.

[–] Damarcusart@hexbear.net 14 points 1 day ago

All of those ideas you had sound like they would've involved themes and depth which we can't have, because it challenges audiences, and the focus group testing shows that audiences hate being forced to use the lump of meat in their heads, so it is obviously a no-go.