Just because TLJ had new ideas does not mean they were good. And when you compare that does not stop people from trying new things. Andor is radically different Star wars. Comparing two second movies in a trilogy to each other to analyze structure is a valid comparison.

“Nothing will replicate the feelings had watching beloved movies for the first time, and expecting anything to match that is just an excuse to be dismissive of it.” Expecting a movie can not match the feelings of watching a beloved movie is just an excuse not to judge it.

Also saying stop using hypotheticals when you say above “even a subpar writer could have…” Is contradictory.

I get what you are saying and I know I am being that guy but there has been a lot of historical inaccuracies that continue to this day in your post.

Whatt you mean by better. Doctrinally I’d say the allies were may more advanced. German vehicles (including planes)broke down more required way more labor to repair. In fact most of the german army was horse drawn. Most German “wonder weapons” had huge glaring downsides that made them impractical and as you pointed out were fielded in small numbers because it was a lot of last ditch not ready or well thought out things. German jets could not stay in the air long. And if we look at non jets German planes arguably were worse than allied fighters. P-47 did better at higher altitude had an easier time to kill other fighters due to armament of its german counter parts and could take a beating like a redheaded stepchild the likes of which would destroy German fighters.

German tanks broke down a lot and could not move great distances. On the subject of tanks, sherman’s were not ment to fight tanks this was before the USA adopted the main battle tank. But they could go farther and faster on the same amount of tread of a German tank and had comparable armor to a tiger due to armor slope. Just didn’t have the gun the german tanks had.

Meanwhile allied advancements in tech were way less showy. Radio communication advancements, time on target math, radar, gyro stabilized turrets, proximity fueses… I could go on for example US artillery was just leagues faster than Germany could ever hope to be.

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.