I mean it's swell and all to say we're going to "revive" Star Wars, but maaaaybe do that when you got something to say about it.

I don't know about you but I thought the extended universe was keeping the franchise alive pretty well... looks to me more like a
cynical "hey, let's make some more money with Star Wars" especially since the extended universe was shitcanned by Disney.

But even with all this being accepted by everyone, shouldn't you start a trilogy when you've got something to say ? we barely got anything in the last two movies about how exactly everything led up to that situation where we're still following rebels vs a fascist empire. Everything looks rather untouched and just here as an excuse to have some action sequences, even the characters... Finn is supposed to be this defecting Storm Trooper who's traumatized by what he saw and lived the conditioning and all he's been used for was being a coward that runs away and cracks some cringe jokes during the action... oh and there's this time when he almost had a cool scene by trying to crash in a ship up until another useless character prevented him to do so, thus condemning a large member of the resistance to a painful death because the ship Finn was trying to destroy was literally "firing mah lazor" on the front door of the resistance... huh.

Then we've got Poe who's useless : spends half of Episode VII missing, spends half of Episode VIII arguing with the new admiral (whose plan was a horrible attempt at recreating the "Bridge on the River Kwai" plot device... which funnily enough had old Obi-wan as the major role)

and Rei who just goes to places and does stuff. And this is where the Mary Sue things comes into play, because that's what she looks like. But the problem isn't that she's a Mary Sue, she DOES look like one, but the real problem is that she's got no character : she's a function, like her teammates, she just does things because the script needs her to : she instantly learns to precisely read minds (something we've never seen before btw, I mean sure Jedi can see what you're thinking about, but not exactly what you're thinking in your head...) because the script wanted to tell us that Kylo Ren was conflicted (you know, something we could never have infered by ourselves had the script been more subtle... it could also be argued, and I will argue, that it would have been a way better twist if Kylo had only taken off its mask right before Han's death, with the reveal that he's Han and Leia's son right at this moment... so not only this would have made Han's death way more impactful, it would've showed that Kylo is a complete bastard but also very conflicted).... I mean even Snoke didn't manage to read Ren's mind that precisely ; Rei is powerful with the Force because she needs to escape Kylo who's kinda known to be the strongest Jedi/Sith around, and, in the case of Episode VIII, because we needed to show how Luke had closed himself to the force (she outright says this, I mean, why do you need to say it ? show that Luke has closed himself to the Force..... like Episode III showed in one single iconic image how Anakin had completely turned to the dark side)

All these two movies did was making characters go some place and give semi reasons for the ongoing battles and move on to the next scene. Do we know what exactly is the First Order ? what did Snoke wanted ? how did people let such an obviously dangerous force develop ? were the Jedi even reinstated or was Luke's temple the only place you could really find some ?

All these questions brushed aside with the cartoon level of simplicity : everyone has the Force as long as they really want it (yeah, it's not as if Anakin and Luke really trained or anything). And the problem with this message is that it undermines the original message that you could reach any goal you'd set up to as long as you worked hard enough for it. By replacing this with "oh this kid has the Force because shut up he has it", the new trilogy sends a different message that I'd say is more akin to what reality TV show has been teaching : that we're all great and our lives are great and there's no need to improve because we already have all the merits in the world.

And this is when I hear the usual arguments "it's just a stupid movie about space wizards aimed at kids" ...... and yeah, that is the worst thing you could show to a kid : "you're great, don't change anything" ... Is that really what we wanna teach our kids ? also, if the movie was really aimed at kids, don't you thing the production should take extra care as to not make the movie stupid, because movies is supposedly this art form that teaches stuff and kids are developing their tastes. So, yeah, not only the "it's for kids" is a faulty logic because any work should have some sort of rigor imposed on it, it's also very important to have a movie for kids being well done because kids will develop their tastes on it and making them used to crap is not going to help (I mean I guess the producers don't care, but that's been a well known (and laughed... insert Wayne's World image here) fact for years... )

That's why, as I said, Episode IX is dead before even it's out. It probably will be a box office record, sure, it's probably gonna play safe after the division Episode VIII created, but it won't change the fact that Episode VII & VIII weren't at the service of the Star Wars franchise, they were exploiting it ; and even if IX does a good job, it'll just be a sum of errors giving us something semi-satisfying. But with all the missing context and bland characters... I don't really have any interest in this Episode IX