I think the theme of “letting the past die” is directly tied to the character arcs of the Luke, Rey and Kylo but is NOT challenging Star Wars lore. Quite the contrary.

Luke tries to let the Jedi order die with him but he can’t do it.

Kylo thinks literally killing the past is the way forward but looks increasingly unstable. He tries to kill Luke and it causes him to be fooled at the end by him.

Rey lets her need for her past, dominate her present. She looks for people to believe in Han, Luke, even Kylo because she had no parents to believe in her.

Luke, Kylo, and Rey all fail in learning to live with their past but our protagonists learn to ACCEPT it and our antagonist continues down the dark path of DESTROYING it.

What is this telling us? It’s telling us that we have to accept what has gone before, (previous films) and not throw them away, but we need to move on into new unchartered waters by learning from our mistakes.

I think people are reading the wrong messages from TLJ. Rian wrote a love letter to its origins and tried to boost its vitality.

I know, right? I couldn’t make it through an hour of his first Star Trek movie. No amount of lens flare was going to save that…

I liked Force Awakens, which I’m pretty sure had a female in the lead role.

I loathe The Last Jedi, not because of female characters, but because it is AWFUL!!!!!!!!

I was more bothered that there were no men given positions of power in the Resistance. They even had to kill Ackbar so Laura Dern could have something to do.

Equality would mean equal, as in, having power on both sides.

I like women just fine, and I even liked TLJ just fine while watching it, but the moralizing in the film is obvious and poorly handled.