The struggle of both Rian Johnson in Episode 8 and JJ Abrams in Episode 9 to answer the question of how to tell the story post-episode VI raises another pertinent issue with such film-making sagas: understanding the time and space of the story itself.
While The Force Awakens adequately established the franchise, Rian Johnson's poor middle film was a destabilizing effort that put too much demand on this, the final chapter. Unlike Abrams' earlier success, the pressure this time around is too much for him to overcome. He is left only to conclude his expansion venture with what is a frustrating and unremarkable experience.
Abrams and his writers added a new problem by reintroducing Emperor Palpatine as this trilogy's arch-villain, as he was in the previous two trilogies. In Episode VI, Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader had tossed Palpatine down a skyscraper-sized elevator shaft. Are we to suppose it had been a soft landing? More than likely, Abrams et al. hope we won't suppose anything.
Reprisals by just about every cast member in the saga will either titillate or irritate depending on viewer disposition, especially since most of these cameos are inessential to the immediate action. As force-ghosts and SGI allows, the dead never have to remain dead; they enter a digitalized holding cell to be recycled ad infinitum for Disney's profit.
This parlor trick results in (a) whatever heroic act a character undertook in previous films being rendered utterly meaningless (b) any death of a current film's character being stripped of any poignancy because we've grown wise to the fact that this trilogy will drag them back into the story.
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