Obi-Wan Kenobi

Rogue One is absolute top tier Star Wars, I think I might even put it 3rd behing TESB and ANH. So far and away the best modern SW.

I can't for the life of me remember Rogue One, I do remember it being good but can't tell you why.
I liked Solo and even saw that twice because the wife fell asleep for the best bit, twice. So will likely watch it again.
And I did enjoy all 3 of the sequels, I like pretty much everything Star Wars and at this point even hating on the prequels seems overdone. I didn't particularly like them though but the kids love them.

The best thing about Rogue One was

Seeing as I can't remember I'm guessing it was the pew-pews.

Rogue One just needed some editing.

The worst thing about TLJ is that the next film tried to undo it all.

It gave it plenty to work with that wasn’t the emperor being alive, Rey being his granddaughter or any of the other shite.

Surely TLJ set up Kylo to be the main villain and the Resistance rebuilding to face him? There should be enough there to base a main storyline around. A couple of simple plot threads to add a second and third layer and you have an enjoyable romp. It doesn’t have to be too deep.

As for the Last Jedi subverting expectations, I cannot get on board with that entirely. People were disappointed that Luke was a hermit. But they were fine, with TFA, showing that there was a massive galactic threat, that Leia saw coming, just abandoning the Resistance to go searching for the history of the Jedi? The way TLJ dealt with it was a bit clumsy, but it gave a better reason for Luke flouncing off.

The space chase was awful. Considering they could launch their fighters after Kylo took out the hangar bay, they could have kept up a sustained attack with the fighters. Pie’s attack at the beginning showed that it was an effective means against the ships cannons. There was room for some real tension there.

The casino was equally clumsy. Handled a little better, it would have provided something nuanced about the role of capitalism in war.

Space Mary Poppins, I don’t get the complaints. It didn’t look good on screen. But Leia unconsciously using the force to save herself was fine. In my humble opinion.

The real waste was characters like Finn and Phasma. Two pretty good actors, given next to nothing to do.

They still had Hux and Kylo Ren as antagonists. They could have used the knights of Ren for more than 20 seconds...
The First Order was still about...The only bad guy they actually lost was Snoke...

As for where they could have gone, maybe show what the First Order looks like under Kylo's command (probably fall apart as he's still too emotional/inexperienced), the rebellion recruiting force sensitives but also regular people and even defectors, the realisation they can't win with just a handful of heroes, what Luke implies in Ep 8.
And personally I would have liked to see Rey and Kylo switch sides. Rey seduced by power to save the rebellion, Kylo having to face his war machine killing his mom or Chewie or something.
Then having them realise that there is no dark and light side to the force, just troubled people forced to extremes...No need for genocide if you're angry about something, no need to become a celibate monk if you want to help people..
And then in the finale they can have Rey and Kylo taking on the knights, Finn and Rose leading the common folks and breakaway stormtroopers and Poe accepting his place as the new face of the rebellion after Leia passed...

I'd really want to see finally someone tackling the issue that came up with Finn in that most stormtroopers at this point don't know any better and would throw down their weapons if they could just see what the result was...

Or you, know anything else...There are multiple outs and interesting angles to go in besides "kill that one dude (again) and the new empire dies"...

If the script/treatment for Trevorrow's third installment is genuine, one of the ideas was genius: that Kylo is "haunted" by the ghost of Luke. We're used to Force Ghosts being good things that our heroes want to see, but the idea that Luke's spirit keeps popping up to try to see the good in his nephew, but Kylo hates it, is fascinating and could have offered both emotion and humour. But then there were a lot of good ideas in that treatment, such as Finn leading a working-class revolution against the First Order on Coruscant.

well your movie is better than the trash that we got...
But Hux was reduced to a slapstick comedy character in TLJ and Kylo Rens path to redemption had been so heavily foreshadowed in both TFA and TLJ that trying to make him the big villian wouldn't have worked. So that leaves the Knights of Ren.... Who? yes who are they and why are we supposed to care again? Are they even mentioned in TLJ?

I would have actually liked Rey to go bad, though I think continuing with TLJ's themes of both the dark and light sides being bad would have been more interesting.

TLJ left Kylo in an interesting place, where he could have gone either dark or light. Hux's rivalry with Kylo could easily have been spun into something interesting, and he could still have been made into a proper bad guy. It'd have been better than just suddenly drafting in a random new bad guy general (and I normally love Richard E Grant).

Or they could have just done what star wars usually do and bring in a random new bad guy sith.

PS/ where did this idea that using the force needs years of training come from? Luke can block blaster bolts with his eyes covered about 5 hours after meeting Ben. Anakin and Leia are both implied to be using force powers subconsciously. I mean, if you're going to subconsciously use force powers then when you're about to die seems like a good time. 

Yep and my point was it was next to impossible to come up with something good and original after TLJ as it in no way works as the middle part of a trilogy. Their is no Overriding Arc as everything that was set up in TFA was basically just kyboshed in TLJ.

If the Last Jedi was the Final film in the trilogy I'd have a lot less problems with it, but its supposed to be the middle movie, not a vanity project for a director who just wanted to 'Ta Da I got you' everybody at the expense of an overall story.

To be honest though you can't blame Johnson for this he is a decent director who was given free reign by JJ and the Disney fuckwits who thought it would be a good idea to create a new star wars trilogy with no idea how it would pan out after the first film....

Like I said if it was the final film I'd have a lot more time for it, but its not and it basically destroyed any chance of a coherent trilogy.
All directors if given complete free reign will turn their film into a vanity project. This was a middle Star Wars film and he should have been given some parameters and an overriding arc to work with. 

Or they should have just given him the last film 

But TLJ performed basically the same function as ESB.

The first in both trilogies was where the goodies won and everything was grand. Then the second one was where they said 'hey, you know how you thought this was going to go? Well it's not!'.
Which basically gave the 3rd film the option to go anywhere... but it just went back to the old blueprint.