The Rise of Skywalker is to The Last Jedi as Justice League is to Batman V Superman - Dec. 28, 2019

To use the analogy notation you might remember from the standardized testing of your youth... The Rise of Skywalker : The Last Jedi :: Justice League : Batman V Superman. Both follow-ups have a similar relationship to their predecessors, and a similar nature as a response to them. To be blunt, for both, the second movie is a dumb mess; a corporate course correction in response to a lot of outrage from a group of internet detractors with loud voices. It dropped all of the plot threads from its predecessor, completely changed in tone, and wrecked some of the more interesting and universe-challenging questions asked by the movie before it. Now, The Last Jedi was not a perfect movie and neither was Batman V Superman a perfect movie...

...J.J. Abrams spent The Force Awakens setting up so many threads and elements with abandon that it was practically a blueprinted assignment for the next director. A J.J. Abrams second movie probably would have been all about Snoke, the Knights of Ren, and Rey's secret parents. Johnson responded to this assignment by turning it around from these expectations and doing something else, with Luke, with Snoke, with Rey's parents. It was unexpectedly dark, and more real. I loved it.



Similarly, after all the outrage and blowback from the destruction at the end of Man of Steel, expectations were for a nice and inspiring Superman story justifying his heroism and establishing the comic book character everyone wanted restored after the Zod death. Instead, Snyder made Bruce Wayne the advocate character for the portion of the audience that blamed and hated this adaptation of the character for those consequences. It was unexpectedly dark, and more real. I loved it...

...and so both Justice League and Rise of Skywalker are dumb movies with fetch quest plotting and nothing at all to say about anything. Their themes are as shallow as those of an episode of Super-Friends or Star Wars: Resistance... whatever the most kid-friendly version of the IP is out there becomes the blueprint.