I have a few:
- Chosen ones, fate, destiny, &c. When you get down to it, a story with these themes is one where a single person or handful of people is ontologically, cosmically better and more important than everyone else. It’s eerily similar to that right-wing meme about how “most people are just NPCs” (though I disliked the trope before that meme ever took off).
- Way too much importance being given to bloodlines by the narrative (note, this is different from them being given importance by characters or societies in the story).
- All of the good characters are handsome and beautiful, while all of the evil characters are ugly and disfigured (with the possible exception of a femme fatale or two).
- Races that are inherently, unchangeably evil down to the last individual regardless of upbringing, society, or material circumstances.
As mid as that movie was it left such a great setup for a third movie and instead of letting Rian or even a third director stick the landing they gave it back to JJ to have a childlike tantrum and spend the first 20 minutes undoing the bits he didn’t like
TLJ was a mid movie, retroactively made shit by TROS. It could have been made better by a sequel that actually built on it and didn’t just flip the table in anger.