3 10-cent commemorative coins would have gotten 3 fanboys who know Star Wars front to back to write a lore-loyal exciting adventure involving potentially new force powers, cool new characters, and a coherent plot.
And yet, we got the drool dribbling out of the mouths of Disney executives at the thought of all the money they made.
You could shit in a bag, label it "Rancor poop" and make a million dollars with zero effort. Guess what happens when you actually put in effort to make things Good?
The word Fascism was coined be Mussolini because it was a reference to the Roman Empire. Fascism is often about restoring past Empires.
Luke tried (and succeeded) to bring his father back from the dark side.
Rey does not attempt to ring her grandfather back from the dark side. Why not? because he's dead. You can redeem your family but you can't redeem your ancestors because they're dead. You also can't confront your ancestors, but science fiction allows characters to do things that aren't possible to do in the real world.
Rey confronts her evil ancestor and rejects him. Takes on a different name, She understands her ancestor doesn't define who she is.
Children in school right now learning about what their evil ancestors did, what should they do? Take their side? Or realize like Rey did that they don't have to identify with what their ancestors did. You can identify with the good people from the past even if you aren't related to them.
Fascism relies on wanting the things that your ancestors had. Reject that idea and you reject fascism.
Also if you've ever seen a statue of some evil dude being removed, you will see a reproduction of an evil person that died a long time ago being moved around on a crane.
The problem with RoS isn't that it didn't do anything interesting, it's just it didn't tell you that it was doing interesting things. So people would know what to post on twitter immediately after watching the movie.
TLJ has the appearance of an interesting movie but actually did nothing. RoS tried to appear like a dumb action movie while actually doing interesting things.
And I didn't even go into the layer about the grieving process, but that's obvious isn't it? Movie starts with a guy literally denying death and ends on Chewie inheriting Hans's medal and Rey burying the lightsabers. The Sequel Trilogy was about death after all, so it's obvious the last movie had a layer about the grieving process... right? RIGHT?
The look on Oscar Isaac's face as he delivers that line is something else.
It's the face of a man who has been back and forth with the scriptwriter and director all day, and is resigned to the fact that this is the best they can come up with.
Even the writers didn't seem to know. It was like they'd been handed some weird madlibs type shit and had to work Palpatine back in, even though the previous two movies hadn't alluded to that in the slightest.
Even the groans from the rebels sound like "Jesus, three movies for this shit?"
If you look at Alan Rickman saying "By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings" and Oscar saying this, it's the same pained expression, but only Rickman was acting.
Poe doesn't know or care why fascism returned, he just knows he's going to fight against it.
The hot take internet culture rejected the movie simply because people don't have the capability of understanding the layers and interpreting anything. It's a shame really it's the most interesting of all the Star Wars movies (though not the best, the editing was janky as hell). But people are more interested in consuming nitpicky memes about Star Wars than watching an actual Star Wars movie.
But it's a movie that provided petty nitpicky assholes on the internet many hours of entertainment repeating the same false memes that only indicate that they didn't actually watch the movie. You got what you wanted, so you should appreciate JJ Abrams for satisfying your cynical and petty nature with all the negative memes you're still repeating over four years later.
I'll just be over here enjoying a Star Wars movie that has layers about the relationship between our connection to our ancestors and fascist movements, the grieving process, and still isn't so overly serious to not have a layer with the Emperor blasting lightning bolts at X-Wings.