TFA was not ambitious. The writers were clearly sticking to things they knew worked, and there were definitely traces of committee writing (Finn's wobbly character, mandatory jokes inserted between scenes). On the other hand the pacing was brisk enough I was never bored, the jokes had really good delivery, and I liked the way the characters bounced off one another. TFA never tried to pretend at grandeur, sometimes to the detriment of its emotionally impactful moments, and fully accepted it was a fun movie about space wizards.
As an intro to a guaranteed trilogy, it did its job by introducing characters I wanted to learn more about. And at the time I saw the mystery boxes as convenient fill in the blank spaces for future writers who wanted to expand the setting and otherwise didn't give a shit about them.
All fancy new force powers got a pass as TFA had a need to establish power levels for its saga in order to take full advantage of modern CGI.
Rey flipping the mind reading on Kylo is okay. Kylo Ren picked out specific images and memories to mock her with. Rey managed to bring up... the glaring insecurity and obsession that runs through his entire character, which is already incredibly evident from his garb and behavior. And probably did it through the connection he opened, doubt he bothered to set up defenses since he was used to breaking people with no ability to fight back.
Rey's ease in picking up the mind trick is slightly dicey, but otoh she tried it on someone who'd been brainwashed into service after being kidnapped as a child. The only character I can think of with less mental willpower than that would be a
decraniated. Plus I don't think the mind trick scales with proficiency? It works if the target is weak willed, or it's completely worthless. If it's not going to solve any problems involving a named character, whatever.
And seriously, it was a stormtrooper. She probably could have escaped by enticing him to shoot so he'd miss and blow her shackles off.
IMO the final act with Starkiller base only falls on its face because it forced in one too many Death star parallels. Take out the shoehorned "X-wing must blow up for the some reason even more exposed reactor core" and the infiltration mission to rescue Rey and destroy the base from the inside is fresh enough for me.
Didn't care that Rey beat Kylo "giant hole in my stomach + mental breakdown from patricide" Ren. He trashed Finn and Rey was about to follow before she tapped into the Dark side to win,
which he wanted her to do. Not necessarily the winning part, but Kylo successfully made Rey taste the power of the dark side. He won a victory by fundamentally shaping the way she learned to interact with the force (this is actually followed up on in TLJ with Luke pointing out Rey's lack of hesitation when reaching for the dark side). I did have a theory that he'd deliberately thrown the fight to further tempt her with the power trip, but was also fine with him just misjudging his own condition and her potential to draw on the dark side.
Not sure what people are even complaining about with Rey piloting the Faclon. The only questionably skillful driving is when she lines up Finn's shot at the end, which could easily have been fixed by having her pull straight up instead of doing a loop de loop. The rest of the time she constantly smashes into things and the entire ship is wobbling like a drunk UFO. That time she fixes something before Han is because she undid a modification he didn't know had been made. Not any superior insight into the falcon's workings.
I don't understand the complaints about the setup restricting paths for the sequels. The First Order came off not as a obvious Empire 2.0 but as a terrorist cell led by Empire weebs. It wasn't a massive crushing boot on the head of the galaxy, it was a small organization of fanatics with views so unpopular they had to resort to kidnapping children to get new recruits. The real threat was whoever supplied them with enough resources to build Starkiller. It was TLJ that went on to fully cement them as an Empire stand-in by retcon-ing them into a galaxy wide threat that could soak Starkiller with ease.
After they blew up the base I wasn't envisioning Empire v Rebels again, I was envisioning what kind of glorious kick in the ass Leia would give to the New Republic with her I TOLD YOU SO card. Obviously they needed to clean up any FO remnants, but if she kept up momentum maybe the New Republic would start an effort to bring the law to outer rim territories instead of resting on its laurels. The sequels could later revisit planets like Jakku and show improvement there to represent the peace and prosperity the New Republic could bring to the galaxy.
Or maybe Leia would wait for Rey to confirm Luke's location while helping the New Republic recover, then go park her entire fleet on his front door and ask for an explanation. Or maybe Luke hadn't given up on his nephew and that's why Kylo still felt the light calling to him. Or maybe Luke does start training Rey but instead of becoming his sole apprentice she's joining the surviving pupils of the New Jedi Order, training in isolation from any possible contact with Snoke after what happened with Ben. Or maybe... you get the idea.
TLJ had more original concepts in comparison to TFA, but I would strongly contest the idea that it was groundbreaking in comparison to most modern media. And its humor, pacing, and character interactions took a massive nosedive. The jokes made me cringe, the dialog and general interactions were clunky AF, and the execution for all those original ideas was so poorly thought out and presented it
unsold me on the messages Johnson was trying to convey. It was the first star wars movie where I started looking at my watch halfway through.
And at the end of the day I came to see another Star Wars movie because I thoroughly enjoyed its spin on classic formulas. Johnson's attempted deconstructions of those formulas told me nothing interesting and ended up reducing my interest in continuing to follow the characters. It completely failed as the second movie in a trilogy, tearing down the things I liked from the first and building up nothing to be excited for in the third.
