I can't tell if you're being wilfully obtuse or not and it's very concerning. But on the assumption that you're not I will answer after please leave me alone. We have very different views of the series and I do not think there is anything productive with arguing with a brick wall for either of...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
"After that please leave me alone" what a strange attitude, just don't reply next time if you don't want to?
Anyway,
So in order: Willing to try and fight evil, Luke Skywalker is turned into a symbol and people think "I can be just like him" then we get the kid with the force power and it's all very. 'The Force is for everyone not just these weird space monks who keep killing half the galaxy because one of them has a no very good bad day.' And yeah there was a little in TROS but not nearly enough, and clearly that wasn't something JJ was interested in.
When I say try something new, I mean instead of falling into the cylical: 'The Empire rises up but plucky heroes stop them because something something the power of love' That you have to get the people as a whole to rise up, or we'll just be here again in two movies.
Hm the big huge fleet at the end was "not enough" and "not something JJ was interested in"?
It's true that specifically in TFA, the mantra was technically "find Luke to light the spark of the Resistance", so the common public doesn't seem to have been part of that equation.
However, the notion that a "public uprising" is a new idea to this series, is not in fact true - it was a central part of ep4, and then subsequently got dropped and forgotten about in the next 2:
"Holding her is dangerous - if word of this gets out, it could generate sympathy for the Rebellion in the Senate."
"I've traced the Rebel spies to her - now she is my only link to finding their secret base."
"She'll die before she'll tell you anything."
"Leave that to me. Send a distress signal, and then inform the Senate that all aboard were killed."
"The Rebellion will continue to gain support in the Imperial Senate-"
"The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us; I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the old Republic have been swept away."
"That's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?"
"The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line - fear of this battle station."
"I would like you to be my guest at a ceremony that will make this battle station operational; no star system will dare oppose the Emperor now."
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
"Not after we demonstrate the power of this station."
At most one could say they don't specifically mention "the most commonest of common people" but rather talk about the "Senate" and "star systems" - however no one said that the Senate didn't represent the people anymore (these are still the "last remnant of the democratic Republic", after all), and "commoners" like Biggs who leave home and join the army appear to make up a good deal of the Rebellion's military force;
and who's gonna fear getting blown up for stepping out of line acc. to Tarkin, just those local systems' government workers and nobody else?
So yeah it is pretty much "the people" - the Empire has to maintain good PR, tries to stop depending on that by building a superweapon, dissolves the structure that they had been relying on previously, and then the superweapon is gone and they appear to be in big trouble.
However in 5-6 this angle is completely dropped, that uprising is never mentioned, the Empire seems as strong as ever, and now the whole thing just becomes "will the rebel army defeat the imperial army" and "will the Jedi win the duel against the
Sith".
So then here in 8-9, the "public uprising" / "new system recruits" element gets brought back, however in a slightly different form - now the FO is unmistakably evil (or at least only appeals to extremist "order" fetishist ideologues) and the public uprising is not gonna occur via everyone realizing how evil the FO is and starting to support the Resistance, but rather, I suppose, by overcoming their fear or apathy and being "sparked" by the Resistance's heroism and successes and "hope". (Who in turn need to get sparked by finding Luke again.)
Which is just a slightly different version of how a public uprising can start/emerge/grow, i.e. driven by knowledge vs. driven by motivation, however not some kinda radically new concept here.
At the end of the day though, what's the huge crucial difference whether the "public joins in or not"? If all these common people can ever bring to the table is just additional forces for the Resistance army, then you'll just get a bigger Rebel fleet to fight against the Empire fleet - and in the end it'll still come down to big battles, perhaps mixed with some other stuff like local crowd insurrections or whatnot.
And TLJ doesn't do anything to imply otherwise - it's all either about who'll come to help them out on Crait,
or I suppose new people developing Force powers and then providing additional telekinesis support? Or what else is that broom boy gonna do?
Then your interpretation of all this as
"When I say try something new, I mean instead of falling into the cylical: 'The Empire rises up but plucky heroes stop them because something something the power of love' That you have to get the people as a whole to rise up, or we'll just be here again in two movies." doesn't really hold up - just because Ep5-6 stop talking about the "public uprising" doesn't automatically mean that "because there was no public uprising, that's the reason the bad guys manage to come back 20-30 years later".
Such a point just simply isn't found anywhere in the films, and the ST or TLJ never imply such a thing either.
And how would that make sense? A public who rose up 20 years ago won't automatically do so a generation later, nor can it be guaranteed to "stay vigilant" after their successful revolution - so it's not like that's some kinda "more reliable or permanent" victory method?
And finally, what's up with the
"then we get the kid with the force power and it's all very. 'The Force is for everyone not just these weird space monks who keep killing half the galaxy because one of them has a no very good bad day.'" talk?
Who said Broom Boy couldn't go dark and kill half the galaxy cause of a bad day, what makes these
""common people"" immune from this risk that affects all these
""weird space monks""?
What are you even basing this on lol?
However that specific point aside, well, as already said earlier, yes: something like a whole mass awakening of new Force talentists, like that Buffy ending, would've indeed been something not done in the movies before;
or, I should say, not in the "Empire won and there's only like 2-3 Jedi left" eras, cause before that there were tons of kids all over the place who were being discovered with innate powers LOL
However in either case it already happened in a singular instance in ESB, so wouldn't have been that fundamentally groundbreaking at the end of the day - and certainly wouldn't've amounted to any sort of "take power from exclusive monk club and give it to THA PEOPLE" like you seem to think it would've done.
More like, just, you know - the background army of extras would've now also had some magicians in it, not just regular fighters.
Then at the end of this post you say something about how "Rey was willing to make the Jedi into something new, unlike Kylo" and it's like, in what ways, and where was anything like this ever implied?
force stuff, and I'm honestly not sure what you are saying. So in terms of placement. Rey is slotted into the role of Luke in the OT. Both are effectively orphans, but Luke had family and Rey doesn't. By both narrative convention and Star Wars logic this *matters* and since JJ doesn't believe in answering questions. He never does the ground work for Rey.
In ANH we have Luke talk about his father, we have Obi-Wan talk about him, we have Uncle Owen talk about him. The seed is planted that Luke gives a shit about his dad and is deeply invested in him being a hero. This makes the Darth Vader reveal impactful because like Luke we had built up this idea of who Anakin was in our heads. This hero murdered by Darth Vader and in turn we understand Luke's desire to save him. Because we've had two movies of Luke going 'I wish my dad was here so I can love him.' And it ends up working out for him.
Rey on the other hand, we're given her nebulous belief that her parents will come back for her. But she has no family, she has no real friends, no one talks to her about her parents. We aren't told anything about them besides they left her on Jakku. There is no Obi-Wan to say that her Mom was a kickass space robin hood or something. No we get Han and his whole deal with Kylo Ren.
So TLJ goes 'well since JJ in his notes just said: ?????' for this, I guess the answer is that they're no one special and Rey is truly the every(wo)man with no ties to anyone.' and then builds on that with Rey defining herself as a Jedi not like Luke did in imitation of his father, but as her own person because it's the *right* thing to do. While resisting Kylo's ridiculously well formed abs.
Then the TROS goes: "Wait we can't have the Luke character not have any connnection to the main badguy! This is Star Wars!" And proceeds to make Rey Palpatine's grand daughter...but it doesn't work becaue Rey does not know Palpatine, she hasn't spent two movies thinking about her grandfather. There's no emotional connenction, so it falls flat on it's face.
Which is a problem because like you had something perfectly good with Rey at the end of TLJ. She's not the heir of a grand wizard or anything, she's just a person who decided to do the right thing and has the power to do so. But gottaa push the shiny button so we get what we get.
Two points here,
1) This almost would've been true, had TFA not presented the "parents left" plot point with such a level of gravitas and emphasis, and then included it in the "lightsaber Force vision" montage just to make sure no one mistook it for some banal "oh well, orphan on a backwater planet why not" thing.
However this inconsistency/retcon factor aside, I'd say both these versions of the Rey arc are about equally good - "mystery parents/origins tied to the main plot in some way", vs. "complete rando chosen by the Force for having a pure heart / limited attachment to staying home / etc.". It's just that TFA emphatically did the former, while TLJ disregarded it and went for the latter instead.
(Although even within TLJ, why would the cave pick such a weird and spooky way of conveying "your parents were random drunks"? Uhhhh, infinite mirror copies of Rey, 2 figures in the "mirror" fuse into 1, etc., and all that just meant..... "forget your parents they drank themselves to death on Jakku"?
So really, TLJ seems to be in quite a dissonance with itself here. Or it implies Kylo might be unreliable and not be telling the whole truth?)
2) Both want a similar combination of "do the right thing and save the world", "help friends", "live up to revered elder mentor figures", "fulfill mystical Force destiny that wants me to do all those things listed" - it's not like Luke just wanted to imitate his father while Rey just wants to do the right thing, so why misrepresent it in that fashion? Why exaggerate this supposed difference between them beyond any recognition?
In TLJ Rey just has to erase the "biological parents" entry from that list of "mentors to live up to", that's all that happens here really.
Rey never proceeds to go "f Luke f Han f Leia I'm my own person" or anything of that sort - that's more Kylo's philosophy, which he only starts after he begins to resent Snoke for chewing him out too hard.
3) There's some nuggets of truth to this point, cause Palpatine does come out of nowhere (narrative wise), and various aspects and details of his return left a bit to be desired in terms of execution, thus preventing it from being as convincing as it could've been - certain clunky lines early on (that've gone viral since then),
the "Palpatine is in fact his real family name, and he just banally fathered a son who then married and fathered Rey" seemed too mundane and in dissonance with the "I'm an ancient being died many times using cloning and spirit transference rituals" angle - should've been some spacier, spookier, occultier form of "parenthood" probably;
and then Rey's "dark side tendencies" hadn't been shown previously either, so this also kinda came out of nowhere.
(Not that Luke did in ANH either - the automatic/inherent danger of him slipping into the dark side was introduced to ESB as suddenly as the Emperor retcon, and that does indeed create a certain degree of discontinuity. However at least it's in the 2nd movie and not the 3rd?)
So is it reasonable to say that there's some weaknesses in the whole "emotional connection" and "not sufficiently set up in 7-8" department? Eh, sure.
However if in TFA the implied implication seemed to be that "Rey's parents have some spooky connection to Snoke or the rise of the FO, or something in that vein", and here the reveal is that Snoke = Palpatine puppet, then "parents had ties to Palpatine and left Rey on Jakku for that reason" is a reasonably natural pay-off to that set-up - tweakable details notwithstanding.