Why The Force Awakens was the fatal blow to Star Wars
https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/comments/sfoje2/the_argument_for_why_the_force_awakens_was_the/
In the world of Reddit, Youtube, etc. the Last Jedi generally takes the core of the blame for killing Star Wars. And while the Last Jedi is in fact quite a bad movie in a wide variety of ways (it fails as the middle film of a trilogy, it destroys the internal logic of Star Wars space-travel and space-combat, etc etc etc...) I'm here to argue that from a storytelling perspective, the Force Awakens is THE core fatal blow to Star Wars. It is not a contributor to killing the Star Wars story - it killed it, straight up. And it's a fatal blow that can't be fixed by events after the trilogy films or by adding additional events between Return of the Jedi and the Sequels.
On a superficial level, it might seem strange that the Force Awakens is the fatal blow. At least on initial viewing, and especially if viewed in a vacuum, it is probably the most fun film of the sequels. More than the other sequels, especially in its first half, it nails, superficially, the aesthetic of Star Wars. And, largely due to the fact that it just lifts most of its core plot from A New Hope, it is the only film of the Disney trilogy that sort of works as a standalone film; with it having a beginning, middle and end to its story. It's the only Disney trilogy film that you could show to someone in a total vacuum and have it mean something to them. Given all that, given that I'm making a strong case here for it being the best of the Disney trilogy films, it might seem odd that it is also the worst film - but it is.
The thing that makes Force Awakens fatal is baked into its soul, it is the very thesis of the film. The thesis is that everyone in the original trilogy failed. Everyone in the original trilogy is some combination of a failure or a straight-up loser, and to the degree that they had any positive influence on the universe, it was fleeting and quickly and totally undone. "Undone" does not even fully encapsulate the totality of the failure, as the catastrophes that take place during the Force Awakens are in fact far worse than anything that happened during the Empire's reign. In short, the efforts of the heroes during the first trilogy are rendered at best meaningless, or at worst a sort of naive false victory that actively planted the seeds of an even worse future.
And yet this is actually only the first half of the killing blow. The second half is illuminated by the term Disney eventually started using to sell their trilogy - the "Skywalker Saga." This name sounds like a romantic & nostalgic enough marketing term, but giving it any thought sheds light on why the Force Awakens is so fatal to Star Wars overall story.
Before the sequels came out, Star Wars ALREADY HAD a trilogy about heroes whose efforts all came to nothing, whose efforts at heroics actually ended up making the universe a worse place. This is the prequel trilogy. Putting the quality of the sequel films aside, this overall story arch only works because the original trilogy exists as redemption. The original trilogy exists to tell the audience that sons (and daughters) do not need to be or inherit the sins of their fathers, that redemption from failure is possible. To tell us that family is not destiny, etc.
Except that the Force Awakens inverts this. The existence of the Force Awakens turns the original trilogy into a second prequel story - and I don't mean just literally, I mean thematically. It creates a situation where BOTH THE FIRST AND SECOND Star Wars trilogy are about people trying to make the galaxy a better place, failing disastrously, falling to their own sins and vices, and then relying on a new generation to find some sort of (apparently very fleeting) redemption.
So this brings us back to the marketing term, "The Skywalker Saga." As noted earlier, this term is supposed to evoke, romance, nostalgia, and evoke the potential viewer's general goodwill for "the Skywalker family." In a world filled with evil, we need someone to trust, and who can you trust if not the heroic Skywalkers?.......Except, the Force Awakens clearly and irrevocably turn the Skywalker family into a net-negative for the Galaxy. The Force Awakens turns the Skywalker family into a horrible raging, narcissistic menace that have been unleashed upon the Galaxy, and everyone everywhere would be better off if none of them had ever existed.
Before the Force Awakens the story of the Skywalker family was of a young, troubled man who fell to his demons and took part in horrible crimes against the world...and his humble son's (& daughter, in a different way) quest to save the world from his father while at the same time refusing to ever give up hope of redeeming his father... cont'd