[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by Igottago

Disagree on this point. The emperor's back story wasn't important because at that point, there was no back story, those were the first movies. He also took up a role in all 3 movies vs the 1.5 that Snoke was around.
By this point Star Wars has been around for decades with loads of content and additional films at our disposal. Unless this is your first Star Wars movie I'm not sure how you wouldn't be wondering about his identity, given the existing lore.

Snoke's identity doesn't matter within the story. Just as the Emperor's didn't matter. You are projecting your own expectations, which is fine, but looking at it as a movie/trilogy, it works just fine. I don't think this is a good criticism.

As far as Rey's parents -- there's literally nothing else interesting about the character other than that bit of mystery. No dilemma, no adversity, nothing. So they gave up on something that might have given insight into the character and her motivations, and even her god like abilities.

Wow, I don't know if we're watching the same movie. Rey has almost always been the most interesting bit in these two movies. She has lots of adversity, she had to guide herself basically into becoming a powerful force user against the odds. She's fantastically acted and this latest chapter gives her more depth. How she straddles light and dark, she's raw, she's trying to find her own identity, which the parent subplot is a vessel to tell.

I get that you dislike JJ Abrams setup of the trilogy -- but since this is a trilogy, I'm not sure how Rian Johnson could go and ignore virtually everything that was built up in that film and flip the script so wildly in the follow up. Its disjointed and doesn't make sense.

He didn't set anything up. By all accounts he just threw crap at the wall and asked other people to clean the mess. And again, did you watch the TFA? Johnson ignores everything that was set up in it? Bizarre. Johnson develops the relationship between Kylo and Rey which was set up in the first movie. Answers the questions about Luke which was set up in the first movie. Reveals the true character of Kylo, again set up in the first movie. All the major character arcs are substantially pushed forward here. Yet you seem caught up on insignificant details. Snoke was in like two scenes in TFA (seriously who cares about this guy?), Rey's lineage is answered. You might not like that answer, but I think it's a fresh new take. Yay, a character who isn't a Skywalker or a Kenobi or a whoever else. A. New. Character.

Like I said, if they had the guts to reset the Star Wars universe completely, episode 7 was the time to do it. Now they have this sort of half in, half out trilogy going on.

I agree TFA was terrible because it should have been something like TLJ - a clear break. But they felt they had to remind audiences why they love Star Wars. I don't hold the fact that Abrams badly messed up TFA over Johnson's head here. Johnson does his best to make chicken salad out of chicken shat.