Changing My Opinions on the Star Wars Sequels

As recently as a 2020 I strongly disliked the Sequel Trilogy and the whole sequel era in Star Wars Canon. I never outright hated it but I was incredibly disappointed and dismissive of it. However, over the past few months I've reached a point where I don't feel that way anymore. I’ve started feeling more "neutral" towards it and am even warming up to it. Even though the "Legends" timeline for post-RotJ will always be my preferred version, I've  come to enjoy Canon's sequel era as an alternate universe. It's kinda like Lando said in Solo, “I don’t like it, I don’t agree with it, but I accept it”. 

 

What’s funny is that it was an episode of Avatar the Last Airbender that initially inspired me to revisit the Sequel Trilogy (particularly The Last Jedi) and give it another chance. It was the episode in Book 1 where Aang finds his first fire-bending master. The story in that episode was literally the same as the Luke, Rey, & Kylo side of the story in TLJ.  

In the episode, Aang found a fire-bending master who was living as a hermit. This "old master" initially refused to teach Aang out of fear of the destructive power of fire & fire-bending. This teacher had a student turn against him, join "the dark side", and destroy everything...only for Aang to come along and help restore the old master's faith...sound familiar? Re-watching this episode made something "click" and inspired me to revisit TLJ and give it another chance; seeing as Luke's characterization was one of my biggest issue with it. I watched the movie 5 times after that (along with the commentary and the Director & the Jedi), as well as watching the whole trilogy again a couple of times. I started to eventually soften my stance towards the TLJ & ST in general. I still have issues with the ST but they're not things that cause me to write off the whole era/trilogy.    

Some of the things I actually really liked from the ST were Kylo/Ben across all 3 movies (Adam Driver carried the ST imo), as well as the concept of the Force Dyad. I just wish the Dyad concept had been explored more. It  reminded me of Revan & Bastila, as well as The Exile & Kreia, from Legends. Also, I'm not a "shipper" (but I do like Kylo & Rey's "yin & yang" dynamic), but if you hate "Reylo" you must also hate Revan & Bastila since it's pretty much the same story. 

I also loved how "Zombie Sidious" was depicted in The Rise of Skywalker as an "ancient evil" and had a more horror inspired presentation; the Sith Temple also had a really cool design & aesthetic. However, Sidious's return is something that definitely needed to be foreshadowed prior to TRoS & explored more in the movie itself (it might've helped to actually have a plan for the ST 🙃).