Rise of Skywalker - lingering questions

Positives

•  To someone who hated the previous episode, this movie seemed like a total repudiation of everything that happened in The Last Jedi.  All of the decisions that went wrong in that film were put right.
• Specifically, Rey was trained, albeit by Leia.  Rey was finally given an origin story and has parents and ancestors. Rey struggles with the discipline necessary to become a Jedi.  She was, in fact, totally defeated by Kylo Ren until Leia interrupted  Ben's concentration.  At last we see how Kylo represented the dark side ascendant.

Negatives

• Still never fully communicated the state of the Galaxy.  Was the First Order  truly dominating the galaxy, or were they just a limited power.  Had they taken over all of the old Empire holdings, was there anything of the New Republic left?  To me, this seemed like an essential piece of world building that was simply neglected.  In contrast, this is handled very satisfactorily in The Mandalorian. 
•  So, what happened to the First Order?  At the very end, when the emperor was again defeated, what happened to First Order ships scattered around the core worlds busily dominating planets?  Do they collapse, presumably without the cohesion provided by Kylo Ren.  This seems like a very unfinished victory.
• And while we're talking about it, we see Kylo firmly in command of the First Order, when the film opens.  What happened between the death of Snoke and the beginning of this episode?  where was Hux?
• 
  

Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child. S1 E1-4

Synopsis:  Two teachers, Ian and Barbara, discuss one of their pupils who seems to be highly unusual.  She is particularly intelligent and eager to learn; and while she is advanced in some areas of study, is less familiar with more local subjects such as the British monetary system.  Barbara had decided to check on Susan at home but when she went to the address given there was nothing there but a junkyard.  Concerned for Susan's welfare, she enlists the help of Ian to try again and find out where Susan lives.

The teachers track Susan back to the same abandoned lot but this time they meet her grandfather, the Doctor, a contentious old man who only wants to be left alone and will answer no questions about Susan or himself.  When Susan appears, the Doctor allows Ian and Barbara inside the Tardis whereupon he activates the transmat and dematerializes the Tardis.  The Doctor has, in effect, kidnapped the two teachers and has no intention of returning them to London. Ian and Barbara are immediately struck with the impossibility of the interior of the Tardis, being "bigger on the inside." Ian has a particularly difficult time wrapping his head around things that contradict the science he knows to be true.

Because he decided to leave in a hurry, the Doctor didn't adequately calibrate their destination, and he has no control of where they will end up.  In fact, they materialize in a desert wasteland and when they leave the Tardis to explore the surrounding area, the Doctor is taken prisoner.  His captors are the local paleolithic community whose main concerns are finding enough meat to eat and discovering the secret of fire to sustain them through the coming winter.

Leadership of the tribe depends on providing those things, and one aspirant kidnapped the Doctor to provide fire for the tribe and claim leadership in the ongoing struggle between Kal and Za.  The recalcitrant Doctor refuses and is about to be attacked by the tribe when Ian and Barbara intervene.  The whole group is confined to the Cave of Skulls while the tribe determines their fate.  An elder woman of the tribe is convinced that fire will only cause conflict within the tribe and she sets the party free.

The tribal leader discovers the escape and, urged by his wife, pursues them.  In the forest, however, he is wounded in an attack by a wild animal, and Ian and Barbara come to his aid.  However in doing so, they allow the tribe to catch them and bring them back to the Cave of Skulls.  At that point, Ian makes fire for the tribe in hopes of being released. The leader Za refuses, hoping they will join his tribe.  Eventually the group sets up the spectacle of burning skulls on sticks and makes a break for the Tardis, narrowly escaping the pursuing tribe.

Review:
For a variety of reasons, this initial episode was a very uncertain start to this very successful franchise.  The season began in 1963, shot in a murky black and white, just three years before Star Trek was released in the US and in technicolor.  While technical sophistication would never be Doctor Who's strong point, in comparison to its contemporaries, the brightly lit Perry Mason or Andy Griffith, it seemed to reflect the styling of something shot 10 years earlier.  I also got the impression that the most effort was spent on the set design of the interior of the Tardis.   The rest of the episode was all styrofoam caves and boulders, with dripping water and wind as background noises.

My intention is not to be needlessly critical, but this seemed to be a very slow start to so auspicious a series.  The greater weakness of the episode was the rather static storytelling of the whole narrative. 

The main story of the plight of the stone age tribe felt rather static and drawn out.  If the story meant to interest us with the struggles between Kal and Za it largely failed.  I'm also unconvinced that this entirely imaginative portrayal of paleolithic life had any historical value at all.  We don't have any idea what a stone age existence looked like so this is all simplistic speculation.  In short, the cave man story was boring.  Our party is made captives, escapes, is kept captive again, and escapes a second time, finally making it to the Tardis.  Neither the Doctor nor Susan contribute anything of import, while Ian passes on a few words of wisdom and Barbara models compassion by saving the injured Za.

The majority of the story concerned the internal politics of this stone age tribe, rather than dealing with our main characters, but in doing so it established one of the basic premises of the show. Most of Doctor Who is about him as an observer of other people's stories.   It isn't about a grand quest that he himself must complete.  He generally doesn't go to these worlds with things that he wants to accomplish.  He largely has no deeds to do, and no where that he has to be.  Instead, he stumbles into a complex situation and spends much of his time figuring out where he is and what is going on.

His position as an outside observer can be a strength, giving a perspective that provides a solution.  This can also be a weakness, however, when the Doctor can be entirely passive, merely watching what is happening as seems to be the case with the cave men.  In the end, it is Ian who give the tribe the fire, and Barbara who goes to help the injured Za. This is a tension that the entire series attempts to balance, and sometimes struggles with; is the Doctor the prime mover in creating the narrative's resolution, or is he simply a passive observer, offering us a window into these unusual science fiction worlds.

The other tension that the story must negotiate is the position of the companions.  At their worst, companions are simple narrative devices that function to ask questions that the audience needs the answers to, (what's that, Doctor?) or as plot devices to get captured, feel confused or frightened, or act irrationally.  In this episode, Barbara is called on to scream, and be overwhelmed with emotions, providing some of those basic functions.  At their  best, companions offer insights into solving the problem, and bring a humanizing element to the often bizarre stories they are thrown into.   Not only can they ask the questions but also provide the answers.  At the least, the audience must sympathize with the companions, because they often don't really understand what the Doctor is feeling.

Throughout this first story, we  aren't sure who we are supposed to identify with.  Is the irascible Doctor a hindrance, or the prime point of contact for the audience?  At least in this episode, we more closely associate with Barbara and Ian.

There is an interesting moment when Ian and the Doctor clash about marching orders and then later when challenged by Za, Ian defers that leadership of his "tribe" belongs to the Doctor.  It's a moment  of development for Ian, where he recognizes the Doctors wisdom.  And I think that also affected the Doctor as well.  Earlier, the cave men were about to kill the Doctor when Ian plunged in to his rescue, and while he only succeeded in getting himself and the others captured along side the Doctor, at least he did forestall the Doctor's execution.  It is the character of Ian who has the most nuanced development here

This first episode had the seeds of the great show that Doctor Who would become.  However, it constantly felt unsure of itself.  My overall rating is 2 stars out of 5.

There is a difference between Superhero comic book characters and the kinds of characters found in more traditional storytelling.  The difference is that comic book characters are infinitely malleable.  There is no limit to the degree to which comic book characters can have things happen to them that may negatively impact their character.  But there is always the possibility, if required by the author, that these negative changes can be reversed. 

Almost everything that is external to the character can change, be destroyed, and subsequently be restored.  This is most obvious in the comic book trope, Not Really Dead, where a character is actually killed in a particular storyline, only to re-appear later and they're completely fine.  And it is up to the pleasure of the writer as to whether we get an elaborate explanation of their resurrection or if it is simply passed off without comment.

What cannot change, however, is their style and attitude.  Deadpool or Ironman are both irreverent, wisecracking, anti-authoritarian heroes, and this attitude is as much a part of their character as the more narrative sense in which characters are developed.

Traditional characters are developed through the events that happen to them throughout their lives, and the choices they make when presented with these crises.  For a comic book character, these choices almost don't matter, unless they are necessary to the plot, and then only temporarily.  For a traditional character, the choices made in pivotal moments literally define who they are ever after.  Frodo decides to take the ring, Faramir decides not to take it from Frodo.  These milestones are reflections of who the character is, and also where the character development goes from that point in their lives onward.  

In contrast, the actual choices Comic Book characters make are entirely irrelevant to their character, as long as they make these choices with the appropriate attitude.  Fighting and conflict are classic examples of this.  When Thor fights the Hulk, the outcome is entirely meaningless.  The audience has no expectation that the outcome will have any impact on either of these characters development or trajectory.  Neither of them will actually die as a result of the encounter.  The only impact is on the swagger and attitude that they temporarily project during and after the event.  The event is important because it highlights the differing strengths, tactics, and fighting styles of the two heroes.  

Should a seemingly longer ranging outcome occur, for example if Odin is blinded, it won't have any long term impact on the character, but it might represent a short-term change that causes a temporary imbalance.  And it is through these temporary changes that short run series are created.  The end of a series is usually represented in a return to the status quo.  When Odin loses an eye, it does not meaningfully limit his actual eyesight.  When Thor loses an eye, Rocket makes him a new one.  

Sometimes a comic book state change does occur.  These changes allow the writers to explore the attitude of the character from a different perspective. For example, Odin has gone on to Valhalla and Thor has taken his place, representing a state change in the universe. But if the writers should need to see Odin return, the audience would not be surprised if he made an appearance.

Star Wars Episode IX: Teaser Trailer Review

At the Star Wars Celebration convention, JJ Abrams and his team released the teaser trailer for the next installment of the main Star Wars saga.  The title for episode IX has been revealed to be "The Rise of Skywalker".

So where does that leave me now?

My overall impression after watching the trailer was positive.  I liked the trailer, and it made me want to watch the movie when it came out this Christmas.  Having done this, it did its job as a trailer well.

Episode IX has a difficult task to accomplish.  Overall, it needs to heal the rift between fans, and bring the betrayed disillusioned fans back into the fold.  To accomplish this, it needs to simply tell a good action adventure story involving the struggle between good and evil, and have the good triumph because of its goodness.

More specifically,

1.  It needs to find a way to honor the original trilogy and the character of Luke Skywalker (Luke is a violent hobo.  Han is a deadbeat who abandoned his son.  The victory of Endor was meaningless.)

2.  It needs to repair some of the more destructive decisions that TLJ made.  (Luke is dead. Snoke is dead.  Rey is a nobody. Kylo is a tempermental child. Po and Fin are pointless failures.)

3.  It needs to restore and fulfill some of the long story arcs laid down by The Force Awakens, ignoring most of what happened in TLJ.  (Luke is not dead.  Rey has an important backstory.  The vision of the lightsaber held essential clues to the past and the future.  Luke has been playing the long game on Achtoo that is finally coming to fruition. Leia is an effective general caught in a difficult situation but she holds the hearts and minds of the resistance and of everyone who yearns for freedom and peace in the Republic.)


Now, in watching the trailer, I find that they have addressed many of those elements.  Not perfectly, but at least seriously.

Scene 1.  Opens with Rey in the desert.  Is it Jakku, or Tatooine?  Simple but new attire, but with a lightsaber hilt prominent at her side.

Here, we see that Rey is back, she is confirmed as our main hero and that she is a Jedi.  Something has changed and she is no longer the uncertain Force user she has been previously.  She wears the saber, rather than carrying it.  It is ready to be used.

But which saber is it?  The last lightsaber she had seemed to be torn apart in the force-grip struggle with Kylo Ren. This one looks like it is the same hilt repaired.  Notice, the silver and black longitudinal striping.

So, Rey has taken Luke's broken saber and put it back together, just as, presumably, she has taken the broken Jedi Order, using the sacred texts she rescued from the Jedi Temple on Achtoo, and put it back together.  Rey appears here with a restored saber and a restored Jedi training.

I think this is a subtle acknowledgment of a concern among the fans.  Rey has done the work necessary to restore the saber and make it work properly.  We all saw that it was broken, we knew that Rey took the pieces, and that this restoration must have taken careful study and detailed reconstruction.  What we're saying is that this work is a representation of the work that she needed to do to advance her Jedi training.  It is a representation that things have changed over the year since we last saw her.

Rey is breathing hard, in this scene.  It's another reference to the past.  This is hard work.  She is listening, feeling with the force, she can tell that something's coming.  She calms her breathing.

"We've passed on all we know," Luke says in a voiceover.

Again, the obvious reference to training.  The knowledge has been passed on to her, it is accomplished.  Luke has done this, but he says "we", suggesting that others were included in her training as well.  Whatever happens next, one argument for the Mary Sue is gone.

"The thousand generations live in you, now."  Luke's voice continues.

The thousand generations is a direct reference to Obi-wan Kenobi's speech to Luke on Tatooine, "For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the old Republic."  We've done two things here:  first, we've given respect and a proper call-back to A New Hope and the Original Trilogy, tying this movie back in.  This is a continuation of that arc.  Second, we've remembered the important elements of that first film, Good vs Evil and the medieval mystic knights that were the Jedi.

It's also a reversal of the claims of TLJ.  The Jedi Order hasn't been destroyed; it continues in Rey.

The scene moves and shows us three things:  The newly drawn saber, a blaster pistol strapped to her side, and the blob of light which will resolve itself into a pursuing craft, as the camera pulls it into focus.

The saber she has drawn prompts the question, "will she ignite it?  It was broken last time we saw it?
But next, our eye is drawn to the pistol.  Why would a Jedi wield a pistol, something that Kenobi and many other Jedi and Sith both disdain?  But this is the same one that Han gave her on the Millenium Falcon. It's not identical, though Rey may have made some modifications to the barrel

These elements of her history are being pulled together to form who she is now.  And it is further pointing out that she is a new kind of force user.

"But this is your fight." Luke concludes.  Fade to a card that reads "Every Generations Has A Legend"   This is the same message that appeared in a trailer for The Phantom Menace.  So we're referencing the prequel trilogy here as well.

In a spinning location shot we move to the side and hear the characteristic sounds of a Twin Ion Engine, as a TIE style ship moves briefly into view, trailing a billowing cloud of sand.  This is clearly an enemy, and a reference to the Imperial enemies of old.

Rey is galvanized to action and ignites her saber.  Not only does it work but it is blue, just as it was when it belonged to Luke.  Rey is poised for action

Jump to a pair of gloved hands, holding the controls.  Not sure who this is, but we've characteristically seen Kylo Ren wearing black gloves similar but not identical to this.  Of course it's perfectly reasonable for Kylo to pick up a new pair of gloves, or it could be someone else.  The controls are not identical to Kylo's old TIE fighter, these being D grips while the old one was a joystic with a thumb stick.  So, it could be Kylo with some new gear, or someone else entirely.

Rey begins running away from the ship and at the last minute hurls herself into the air, leaping over it.

 We get a good look at the TIE Interceptor-style ship, with the red paint reminiscent of the First Order.  This is not identical to the Silencer that was identified earlier as Kylo Ren's personal ship, but I tend to think it is the same.

We never see where she lands as we fade to the next card.   "This Christmas"

Leia's Theme plays in the background as a ship traverses a rocky landscape toward the lights of a city built on three distinct levels.

Jump to Kylo running through a red-tinted woods, his lightsaber ignited as he body slams an opponent to the ground.

A First Order stormtrooper accompanies Kylo's assault.

A mysterious pair of hairy hands, not human but not entirely Wookie appears to be repairing Kylo's broken mask/helmet that he smashed in TLJ.  This appears to be another signal that JJ Abrams is repairing things that RJ broke in the previous installment.

IN the next scene Poe, with a blaster, and Fin, with Rey's staff appear in the rocky desert.  This is something I've been waiting for, something that should have happened in TLJ but was broken: Fin and Poe together on a mission, both appearing competant and getting the job done.

BB-8 and Dio-9 as the cute robot trope is passed along in the next film.

Jump to Chewie in the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon with an unidentified figure in the second seat.   In the reverse shot, that person is revealed to be Lando Calrissian, apparently having a great time as the Falcon jumps to hyperspace.

Card: "The Saga Comes to an End"

Jump to another desert scene as a sand skiff, reminiscent to those on Tatooine at the start of Return of the Jedi.  This further suggests that the film is set on Tatooine, rather than Jakuu.

The sand skiff is pursued by what appear to be Troopers on speeder bikes and eventually jet packs  as it thread's its way through explosions. In the next shot, the occupants of the skiff are revealed to be Fin, Poe, and Threepio, unexpectedly.   Again, this is further promise that Fin and Poe will be getting their adventure time together.

In a very blurry fly-by, a ship crosses the sun and appears to fly in front of the command tower of an imperial star destroyer, and down the length of its upper deck. One of its engines is on fire and trailing smoke and flame.

Fade to a pair of hands, (Leia's?) holding one of the medals awarded to Luke, Han, and Chewie at the end of New Hope.  Jump to Leia embracing Rey tightly as a single tear rolls down Rey's face.  A tear for whom, exactly?

Luke's voice over, "We'll always be with you."

We finally see the entire team assembled:  Chewie, BB8, DIO, Rey, Poe, Fin.  and they are off to complete some mission.  Yes! This is what we've been waiting for the entire trilogy.  We've been introduced to these characters, seen them work independently, and now it's time to bring them together.

In the reverse shot we see a windy shoreline and the remains of something immense out in the water.  The outline is reminiscent of the projector dish of one of the Death Stars that housed its super weapon.  Rey is carrying something in her right hand.

Luke: "No one's ever really gone."

Fade to black as we hear Emperor Palpetine cackle in the background.

The black changes to the title card, revealing the true title of the film for the first time:  The Rise of Skywalker.  and then, December.

Pre-Trailer Summary: Episode IX

At the Star Wars Celebration convention, JJ Abrams and his team released the teaser trailer for the next installment of the main Star Wars saga.  The title for episode IX has been revealed to be "The Rise of Skywalker".

So, where was I before the trailer?  My relationship with Star Wars was troubled.  I thrive on new beginnings and the potential for greatness.  I grew up watching the Original Trilogy in theaters.  In 1977 I was seven years old and I went to see it with my uncle and cousins.  I've seen all of the Star Wars movies in the theater ever since.

The original movie was something completely different from all the other science fiction of the time, unlike Star Trek, which was older and clunkier to me.  Lost in Space and Space 1999 were cartoon-like in my eyes (like Little House on the prairie set in space) and Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers, which I watched in their entirety, were fun to my childhood self, but they lacked both depth and realism; they were hyper stylized worlds, actually contained on about 3 sets, and represented noting that I felt I could fit into.  

When I saw Star Wars for the first time, it immediately connected with me, and that connection only grew over the following years.  When Phantom Menace came out, not only did I see the very first screening of the midnight showing, waiting all day in line, but I attended the first Trilogy marathon's that preceded it.

I enjoyed the Phantom Menace, and still do, though I thought that Jar Jar was overdone.  As Attack of the Clones and the Revenge of the Sith were released, I found them increasingly boring.  The decline and fall of Anakin was essentially uninteresting to me and the romance of Anakin and Padme was awkward.  But fundamentally, the second and third of the prequel trilogies were basically tragedies with a downward trajectory, the decline of the Jedi, the decline of the Republic, the fall of the Chosen One, the decline of Ben Kenobi and Yoda and Mace Windu, the decline of peace and justice in the galaxy.  I'm not just talking about low points in the trilogy, but the entire arc of the prequels was downward into tragedy.  And rather than feeling bad, feeling the loss of it, I just felt increasingly indifferent.

The more insidious problem with the prequel trilogy was how it abandoned the essential story elements of the originals, the mystic knighthood, the mysterious power pervading the world, the struggle between good and evil, all set in an environment of a high-tech science fiction action adventure.   Instead, the prequels were about procedural processes in the Senate and trade negotiations and the political manipulations of the Emperor

When I saw The Force Awakens, I was pleased to see that they had returned to what I considered the older style of storytelling.  Yes, many things were derivative of the A New Hope, but Abrams went out of his way to craft elements connecting his movie back to the Original Trilogy.  There were some major missteps, such as the role and fate of Han Solo, but I felt a promise of greater things to come, that I had not felt since...

The Last Jedi was an abomination.  Not only was every directorial and narrative decision wrong, but each was a betrayal not only of the spirit of the Original Series but also of the Abrams movie that preceded it.  Every question that Abrams raised, Johnson answered in the wrong way, seemingly out of spite.  My best approach to TLJ is to simply ignore that it ever existed.  Nothing happened in that film that advanced the plot of the trilogy in any way... to the point that the Sequel Trilogy no longer has any actual plot arc. Many of the characters took steps backward in their developmental arcs, retracing old ground and becoming less heroic in the process, which, no doubt, was Rian's intention.

I was obvious to me that whole segments of the film, including Canto Bight and Captain Phasma, were meaningless and could disappear without changing anything, but as I looked more closely at each scene and each element, I began to realize that none of them advanced the overall narrative from where we left it at the end of The Force Awakens. 

At the end of TFA, the Resistance had defeated Starkiller Base, but the location of their own hidden base was revealed and they have to flee from The First Order.  Rey is seeking out training in the ways of the Force.  She has found Luke. Poe is a skilled but reckless pilot who is maturing as a leader of the Resistance.  Fin is a troubled soldier who recoils from the horror of battle but willing to risk his own life for the sake of a greater cause.

At the end of TLJ, the location of their base is revealed and Resistance has to flee from The First Order.  Rey is seeking out training in the ways of the Force.  She has found the Sacred Texts. Poe is a skilled but reckless pilot who is maturing as a leader of the Resistance.  Fin is a troubled soldier who recoils from the horror of battle but willing to risk his own life for the sake of a greater cause.

Fin

.When first conceived, Fin was one of the most intriguing characters of the new Star Wars trilogy.  In many ways the concept of Fin as a reformed Stormtrooper was entirely new.  We've already seen prodigy Jedi in the form of Anakin and Ahsoka Tano, and hotshot pilots were numerous in A New Hope, not least of which was Luke, himself.  And we'd seen the clone troopers in the Clone Wars.

But Fin gave us a new perspective on the SW universe.  He broke through the impersonal facade with which the Empire cloaks itself.  The most impenetrable of all are the entirely armor-clad stormtroopers, where we never see a human face.  As a character, Fin takes off the helmet and reveals, not a clone, but a unique person with fears and moral principles and failings.  Someone struggling with what is right, and with the moral agency to choose not to participate in the mass slaughter of innocents.

In The Force Awakens, Fin had an entire arc of his own, more so than most of the other characters.    Fin went from chafing under the oppressive structure of the First Order to balking at the evil acts he was ordered to perform, to forming a brief alliance with Poe, to actively helping Rey.  He could have simply abandoned her the moment he heard the tell tale sounds of the tie bombers, but instead chose to warn her and aid her in fleeing, even to the point where she didn't need him anymore.  In many ways he needed to be helping someone.

So the brief opening scene shows us this entire character arc of Fin's but we also become aware of conflicts within himself.  Like Rey, Fin is looking for a place to belong.  Ripped from his parents as an infant, he has grown up within the First Order as the only family he has ever known.  Captain Phasma was in some sense the parent who raised him, and Fin was rebelling against her autocratic teaching  as well.  But in leaving the First Order, now Fin has no place in the Universe.  His interaction with the Resistance initially is more one of convenience than of any inner conviction.  At the same time, he doesn't want to continue to live a lie. And he wants to escape from the continuous violence that the First Order represents.

When he reaches Maz's smuggler's refuge on Takodano, he has gotten himself into a difficult situation on many levels.  He 's a fugitive from the First Order.  He's misrepresented himself to Rey as being associated with the Resistance, He wants to avoid conflict and the Resistance seems to be the center of the conflict.  Fin is the lonely ronin who has left his wicked master and now walks the earth in search of peace.  Only, he cannot find it

Instead, he is drawn back into the conflict, drawn by circumstances, by a plea from his friends, by his own sense of loyalty.

The Way Forward

Last time, I talked about what wouldn't work.  Here's a look at what might be a better start.

Basically, this is going to come down to the things that were promised in The Force Awakens.

1.  Luke isn't dead. 

Probably the biggest mistake that this second trilogy made was the way that it treated the legacy characters of Luke, Han, and Leia.  Rather than giving them a noble role as the returning heroes that all the fans loved, they were each made fallen heroes:  failed generals, failed parents, failed crusaders... Too much nihilism was packed into Rian's attempt to make a french art house film.

The final dagger in the side was when drunken hobo Luke was killed off by vanishing into the Force after his astral projection to save Leia.  Rather than a triumphant sacrifice, it was the last gasp of a has-been, using up the pitiful remainder of his strength; the once-proud warrior now enfeebled with age, with disillusionment, all his beliefs betrayed, all his dreams shattered.

Except that wasn't what Luke's character was all about, and he certainly wasn't old or feeble or used up.  Luke should be in the prime of his life, as a Jedi.  To take that away from fans was unkind, to say the least.  I personally think it was a betrayal of the trust that George placed in Lucasfilm

What really happened:
 Luke was successful in his mission to Achto, and did actually attain some enlightenment there.  His power in the Force is greatly magnified and he has mastered moving in and out of the Force at will.  What we saw was Luke shrugging off his self-imposed exile at the Jedi Temple, now firmly resolved to enter the conflict with the first order.  He had attained a deeper understanding of the Force, but with it, had harbored some doubts about his place in the struggle.  Was it really his place to wield the force in this conflict..  The calling from Leia, and his subsequent conversation as a Force projection with Kylo convinced him that it was right for him to act, and that Kylo needed to be stopped, and that this task was his responsibility.

That is the story that we want to hear about Luke.

2.  Rey's parents aren't drunken junker nobodies.  Rey is connected to the Skywalker or Kenobi lineage.

One of the greatest accomplishments of JJ Abrams in the first movie was the establishment of Rey's character and the narrative arcs for her to follow.   Rather than completing these arcs, Rian decided to cut them off, sending Rey's character spinning without foundation.  The most symbolic of these was in intentionally subverting the most interesting things that Adams established about her in Force Awakens:  the lightsaber Force vision and the way she felt drawn to Luke.  

Rian ruined all that by destroying the significance of each of those moments.  Through Kylo, by having him minimize the significance of the lightsaber vision, and through Luke, by having Luke toss the lightsaber over his shoulder in a comic, buffoonish way.

 Rey's character lacked a traditional "earned" backstory, where, like Luke and Anakin, she learned to wield the Force.  Instead, it looked like Rey was just unreasonably proficient with the Force, diminishing any struggle or challenge she had to face.

What Really Happened:
Anakin and Luke's stories were enriched by surmounting the challenge of learning to use the Force.  This will be important for Rey as well, but her story was enriched by the unique circumstances of the Force calling to her.  Far more than simple historic scenes were conveyed to Rey through her initial encounter with the lightsaber at Maz Kenata's temple.  Yes, it gave her visions, but I think it also conveyed to her some rudimentary understanding of the Force.

I think this was possible because first, I do think that the Force calls heroes when it has need of them.  I think it is very clear in the film that Rey was called to the basement area of Maz's temple, called to that specific wooden trunk where the saber was kept.  Neither was it just a coincidence that Rey happened to be on the planet in the company of Han Solo. As Obi Wan said, "In my experience, there's no such thing as coincidence."  Everything that happened to Rey on Takodano was shaped by the Force.

Second, because Rey was participating in the lineage of a major Force user. The Force vision seemed to indicate that Rey's parents were unique in some way, and she herself felt that there was more to the story of her parents, to the extent that Maz had to talk her out of her compulsion to return to Jakuu. 

And, third, because of whose lightsaber she was holding.  This was the lightsaber constructed by Anakin after he lost his first one on Geonosis, the one he wielded throughout the Clone Wars, the one he lost to Obi wan in Revenge of the Sith, who later passed it down to the young Luke Skywalker many years later and who lost it himself when Anakin cut of his hand in Cloud City. The key to this is that this was not merely a random weapon Rey was using but one imbued with the Force of two of the greatest lightside force users of that time period, Clone Wars Anakin and Luke Skywalker.   The result was that Luke's lightsaber spoke to her because it was powerful, in and of itself, and because it had been wielded by one of her lineage, or very close to it.  It spoke specifically to her, in a way that it did not for Fin, for example, or even to Maz.

Far from being an un-earned golden child, an illegitimate mary sue, JJ Abrams surrounded Rey with many layers of justification for her introduction into the Force where she was imbued with knowledge of the Force on a temporary basis through the Lightsaber.

I also think that we will learn that Rey did quite a bit of training on Achto, both by herself and under the tutelage of  Luke.  While we didn't see much of those scenes, I think that the training did happen, just offscreen.

3.  Rey and Kylo's teen romance no longer exists.

This was never a promising line of the story, and it felt awkward and out of place.