Hard disagree on the character arcs. Luke’s arc was terrible. He is completely different than he was at the end of return, and thats ok if you can show how it happened. But it wasn’t really shown just told. The flash back scene with kylo just shows the culmination of this supposed change. We take the guy who would not kill the most evil man when everyone is telling him to because he thinks he can be redeemed, and then go to yeah I had a bad vision I thought we should kill this kid. That’s a jarring change.

If they wanted to set kylo up as the bad guy, the character arc needed more work.

I think red letter put it best on the character arcs poes arc was to learn to blindly obey authority. Finns arc was that nothing he did matters at all and that you should not sacrifice yourself in war.

And I think there is an argument to make that the rRse of Skywalker is in part bad because TLJ was badly written as a middle film. It took payoffs that arguably should be in the final film for itself in an attempt to be different and new. It does not really continue the plot for a third film. The whole movie seemed to jump from moment to moment Rian thought would be cool and did not consider really how to get there. That’s why there are all these consistency issues in lore/suspension of disbelief, theme, tone. If we are building a staircase and in the middle we take the parts for the end of the staircase to try and now make it a spiral staircase I don’t care how pretty it looks or impressive the craftsman ship it does not get me to where I need to go.

I think Rian swung for the fences and I appreciate the attempt but he struck out.