The Last Jedi... I still don't think it was good
There's been some exchange of opinion regarding Ryan Johnson's entry in the Star Wars franchise. Initial response was poor among longtime fans. And any positive feedback from newcomers was sparse. Rotten Tomatoes has long since abandoned its system of audience reviews leaving a one-sided argument from paid critics that constantly gave the new trilogy a veritable "two thumbs up".
Some fans of the series have taken the time to look the movie over again in hopes of finding something they didn't appreciate before. A standout is the decision to make Rey's parents nobody. Personally, I don't agree that making her a nobody was a good narrative decision but that has more to do with how the first two films ultimately played out. I just as much despised the idea of Rey being related to Palpatine. That just seemed like stupid writing.
It's been stated that Rey's parents being unimportant nobodies with no connection to the Force sends the message that "you don't need to be from a special bloodline to be powerful." But due to the absence of any exertion of effort or at the very least the cliché training montage, the message instead is that "a woman doesn't need to be from a special bloodline to have ultimate power."
There's constant comparison between Rey and Anakin Skywalker in the discussion of Mary Sues. Both are intuitive, powerful, highly skilled with virtually no training, and have virtually the same story beats. The one difference is the last crucial detail that defines a Mary Sue: everyone seems to love and trust her for absolutely no reason. There's no prior connection, she's a stranger with strange powers not to mention the previous person with her potential joined the empire and slaughtered the Jedi.
Anakin doesn't possess this trait. Qui-Gon chooses to train him solely on his devotion to the prophecy that implies this boy is the chosen one. Everyone else is concerned about the potential danger of this unindoctrinated youth. Obi-Wan doesn't initially want to train Anakin, he takes him on to honor his deceased master. Even Padmé initially finds Anakin useless and later even creepy. She doesn't automatically love nor trust him.
Possibly the only person to be wary of Rey is Han Solo but only because he's curious how she got the Falcon.
I'm not saying that the Last Jedi was "a bad movie" solely on the basis that "Rey is a Mary Sue". I simply found Ryan Johnson's decisions to be outright horrible narratively speaking and one of the main story beats (Finn and Rose on Canto Byte) could have been removed for the sake of actually showing us that Luke was really training Rey. The closest thing to an enjoyable scene in the film was the battle against the Red Guard. But... why the hell would these guys sacrifice themselves in battle when their leader is already dead? What kind of idiot writes like this?
I guess a better question would be, why do I even care? Disney is making moves to erase these three films from canon anyway. But as much as I am filled with disappointment at how these films ended up, I just see that they could have been made better. It didn't have to be this way. Disney's biggest mistake was and will always be the decision to disregard all of the stellar novels that had gone before. The First Order... mistake. Snoke... mistake. Palpatine... mistake. Just bad.
This has been another meaningless rant. It's not as if anyone's listening.
