Hmm, we have some points of agreement and some points of disagreement.

I agree that The Force Awakens is derivative, but this wasn’t a big deal for me. I care way more about character than plot, so it didn’t matter too much if large parts of the plot were just cloned from A New Hope. I loved the new characters, and they carried the movie for me.

I really, really did not like Rogue One. For the same reasons that I did like The Force Awakens. The characters. You know your movie has a problem when your most compelling character is the damn droid. The only characters I found even remotely compelling were Krennic, Galen (who was barely in the movie), and K2SO.

I loved The Last Jedi on opening night, and I still do.

Though I do agree about Canto Bight. That sequence evoked from me the same feeling that I had for the entirety of Justice League. Which is to say, such a mundane sense of boredom that I actually fell asleep in the theater during Justice League. During Canto Bight, I found myself looking around the theater rather than at the screen. Because I was bored. That has NEVER happened to me before with any Star Wars movie.

I don’t see how Rey being a “nobody” is a problem. Anakin was also a nobody who was born to a slaver. He also happened to be the Chosen One.

I think this line from Snoke is the most important quote from the entire movie:

“Darkness rises, and light to meet it. I warned my young apprentice that as he grew stronger, his equal in the light would rise. Skywalker, I thought.”

Rey is absurdly powerful in the Force with very little training, and this line tells us why. The Force has imbued her with power, in the same way that it did Anakin.

I think that line all but came out and blatantly said that Rey is the next Chosen One.

My thinking (speculation) is that the prophecy has a free will component that allows the Chosen One to either succeed or to fail. A lot of people seem to believe that Vader fulfilled the prophecy when he killed Palpatine. But what if he didn’t? What if he failed?

What if he failed BECAUSE he killed Palpatine?

The second most important line in the movie, I think, is when Luke is explaining the idea of balance to Rey. Warmth and cold, life and death, peace and violence. And between it all, a tension, a balance that binds it all together.

I believe what Luke is saying here is that the Jedi Order’s idea of balance was naive. Balance is not the eradication of the dark. That idea shows the Jedi’s vanity. Without the dark, there is no balance.

Which seems to suggest that the only way to achieve balance is for Rey and Kylo to both survive. Or for them both to die.