While I wouldn't dare claim to be a writer or have any experience that allows me to critique their script but as a fan, I do not understand why this trilogy experienced any difficulty. In my opinion, JJ, who had only contractually agreed to one movie if I remember, did a fairly decent job leaving a lot of open-ended storylines that could have been incredibly interesting. Who is Rey? Finn? Spoke? How did the Sith power rise out of the ashes of Palpatine's death and Vader's redemption? How will Luke, Leia, and Han respond? They had new characters to explore and old characters to carry their storyline into the future. Was JJ's story safe? Sure Rehashed? Sure.... but there was so much for Rian Johnson and now JJ again to go in some really interesting directions. They have the expanded universe and countless fan-driven stories to pull from but instead, they act as if they had to handcraft every microscopic piece of these movies but that's simply ridiculous and required no level of cleverness or cinematic genius to construct.
I simply don't get it.... and while I get the honorable sentiment of Rey choosing to be "a Skywalker", that simply just dumps on the story of 4, 5, & 6. Vader's redemption and Luke's part in that storyline has completely been nullified and now somewhat hollow. Regardless, I'm going on Saturday to witness this myself but after reading the spoilers my opinion of this trilogy has now reached an even deeper level of disappointment. It's a continued realization of missed opportunities for absolutely no reason at all.
