Star Wars: How Episode 9 Fixes The Last Jedi’s Biggest Mistakes
Turns out respecting the wider trilogy IS worthwhile.
You'd have to be living under a rather large Kyber deposit to not know Episode IX's first teaser just dropped, and man what a cautiously optimistic slew of reactions. The vast majority of fans and general buzz is skewing very positive indeed, focusing on the likes of Rey mastering the Force to take down a TIE Interceptor with a backflip lightsaber attack, or seeing Billy Dee Williams once again pilot the Millennium Falcon, but it's worth pointing out: Disney are very much in damage control mode.
Slice it whichever way you like, The Last Jedi remains a supremely divisive film, much like Empire Strikes Back was across the early 80s. Rian Johnson made a ton of unbelievably bold script decisions (whilst discarding all of The Force Awakens' major plot points), but this literally fractured the fanbase right down the middle.
Either you appreciate what Johnson was trying to do, or it flew in the face of two years' worth of expectation and prediction - not to mention wider established characters and motivations.
Now with Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, J.J. Abrams is back in the saddle, and VERY quickly he's set about uniting everyone back under one roof.