Here is a bit of a hot take tht I have - TRoS does not really represent a rejection of good storytelling practices by Lucasfilm. The more information is revealed about this film, the more firmly I believe that the bulk of the blame is on the side of Bad Robot. 1/?

I think that in the discussions surrounding this particular movie people put a lot of focus on the failings of the story and way to little attention to the realities of making a film. So, let's remind ourselves why Abrams was hired to direct IX and the reason was... time. 2/?

Iger wanted to end his CEO tenure with a bang, so Star Wars also had to have its end by December 2019 at latest. Rian Johnson was allegedly asked to direct it, said he'd love to, if the release date was pushed to 2020 and when that was not possible..., 3/?

Michelle Rejwan, whose job it was to find a replacement for Trevorrow, contacted Abrams who declared outright that yes, he will put out an Episode IX by the end of 2019. So, there was an obvious time constraint on this movie that certainly h an affect on its quality. 4/?

Would it have been impossible for Episode Ix to turn out at the very least decent under these circumstances? No. It wouldn't have been easy, but a two-year long production cycle for a movie of this scale is not unheard of and usually doesn't end this way (look at MCU.) 5/?

But we are where we are. With an awful Episode IX. Why? Let's look at whom I consider to be the main culprit - JJ Abrams. He is not that bad of a filmmaker. He has a great eye for casting, his characters are always likeable, he's one of the better action filmmakers out there. 6/?

But he has also a couple of weaknesses that led us to a movie we got in the end. He is incapable of handling plots more complex than "we have to chase the MacGuffin," which also feeds into his inability to do good endings. Any story should be about something. 7/?

It should have some central idea that is driving it forward. In case of Abrams' movies I feel like this driving idea is "I want to feel like watching A New Hope as a kid again." A simple story on its surface, with clearly defined good and bad guys, and a straightforward plot. 8/?

The moment you try to introduce some complexity, some ambiguity, his stories collapse. It happened at the end of M:I III (argably his best film,) it happened with Into Darkness, it happened with TRoS.

His other issue, one discussed less frequently, is that he is indecisive. 9/?

Whenever people talk about Abrams, you nearly always hear how he has like 100 new ideas every minute, which leads to constant changes in design, in plot, and so on. Filmmaking requires lots of creativity but when faced with a tight schedule, you need to make decisions FAST. 10/?

When you have a schedule as tight as TRoS had, there is no time to fool around and redo stuff ten times over, because it leads to a mess of movie.

With all of this taken into consideration, it becomes obvious why the editors of Abrams' movies have these weird notions... 11/?

on how you cannot actually write a blockbuster movie and how all of them are constructed in editing. Editing is what makes or breaks movies. Before cutting the movie together, the only thing that exists is a huge pile of scenes. Editing is what formulates the movie itself. 12/?

But even the best editor cannot make a good movie out of a collection of ill-conceived scenes. A great example - Thelma Schoonmaker and the Snowman, the laughably bad crime film from 2017. The reason why movies like LotR or ANH came out as good as they did is... 13/?

because there was a strong foundation to build a movie upon. In case of TRoS, this foundation in form of a clear central idea just was not there, so we ended up with a truly hollow picture.

PS. The reason why I don't really consider TRoS to be this downfall of SW storytelling is because in its current form Lucasfilm's biggest responsibility in terms of storytelling is keeping the Star Wars universe more or less together. They are a production company which hires...

other people to create these stories for them. Sometimes these people do a wonderful job (Claudia Gray, Rian Johnson) and sometimes they don't (Chris Terrio, JJ Abrams,) which is fine. It's just too bad that "the epic conclusion to the Skywalker Saga" was one of the bad ones.