Emperor Palpatine:
What the heck was his long term goal anyway? I mean, literally what did he want to achieve? If he wanted to rule the galaxy again, he already had the tools necessary: a fleet of mini Death Stars and a loyal military to use them. Why did he bother waiting for Kylo Ren to show up before making a move? Why did he leave the ships hanging out on his planet where they’re most vulnerable? What was he trying to accomplish militarily/politically?
If Palpatine’s Plan A for regaining youthful vigor was for Rey to strike him down in anger, thereby making herself susceptible to the dark side and subsequent bodily possession by Palpatine, why did he tell her about it? She was there to kill him. If he just kept his mouth shut, or goaded her into avenging her parents, he would have won. Why did this arch manipulator galactic puppetmaster turn all Republic serial villain just in time to make Rey hesitate?
After Palpatine discovers that he can use the power of the Force connection between Rey and Kylo to heal his own body, why does Palpatine act like Rey is a threat? Sure, he has a Plan B now that doesn’t involve stealing Rey’s body, but Plan A should still work, right? The only thing that’s changed is Palpatine is stronger and Rey is weaker. So when Palpatine is attacking the rebel fleet with Force lightening and Rey pops up to try to kill him again, why doesn’t he just keep blowing up x-wings and let her kill him if she wants to, as per the original plan?
Having inexplicably decided to fight Rey, why does Palpatine keep shooting Force lightening after it starts ricocheting and tearing his face off? I mean, I get why he does this in Episode III; he is manipulating Anakin while keeping Mace Windu from decapitating him. But here he’s not trying to manipulate anyone by looking helpless, and, until the last five minutes, getting decapitated by Rey is what he has desired the entire movie.
Luke Skywalker:
If Luke knew that Rey was related to Palpatine, why didn’t he tell her? I seem to recall Luke was displeased when his own Jedi Master concealed his relationship with Darth Vader.
Why, during the many years Luke apparently spent looking for the two MacGuffins that point the way to Planet Sith, did it never occur to him to look in Emperor Palpatine’s room on the Death Star? Shouldn’t combing through that wreckage been one of the first things the New Republic did after the Battle of Endor? Isn’t the Emperor’s sock drawer the first place someone searching for Sith artifacts would think to look?
Kylo Ren:
Speaking of the MacGuffins, if Luke couldn’t find one despite years of looking, how does Kylo Ren track one down so easily? He makes it seems effortless. (Apparently the official companion publications say that Kylo finds MacGuffin 1 on planet Mustafar, inside what used to be Darth Vader’s fortress. So Luke spent years hunting for these things, but didn’t look in Emperor Palpatine’s room or Darth Vader’s house.)
Why does Kylo Ren bring MacGuffin 1 to Rey when he’s trying to stop her from finding MacGuffin 2? His whole deal at that point is forcing her to rely on him to find the Emperor. He even destroys MacGuffin 2 so she can’t possibly use it. So why did he bring another one along with him?
This gets even weirder when you consider that he crashed his first ship earlier in the movie. Are we to understand that Kylo wired the MacGuffin into a ship, crashed that ship, retrieved the MacGuffin from the wreckage, wired it into a new ship, and then flew that ship straight to Rey?
(The two ships do look the same, so I suppose it’s possible that he just has, like, a garage of identical pointy black ships. But then why did he pick the one with a MacGuffin in it to chase Rey? At first I thought maybe he still needed it so he could take them both back to Planet Sith, but later it’s a major plot point that anyone who knows the way can fly there, no MacGuffin required.)
General Pryde:
When General Pryde is watching the rebels ride warthog-horses across the top of his spaceship to break his very important antenna, why does he not just tilt the ship and tip ‘em off?
Lando Calrissian:
Why was Lando on Pasaana, anyway?
How did General Lando recruit an enormous fleet of reinforcements, when all previous rebel distress calls for the past two movies have gone utterly ignored?
Finn:
How did Finn fail to notice an entire extra spaceship? Either the transport he watched Chewbacca get loaded into had already taken off while he was getting Rey and he missed it, or else the one that Rey accidentally blew up was the first to take off and Chewie’s ship was still just sitting there where Finn left it. Either way, how do you miss an extra spaceship in the flat open desert?
Sith Knife Maker:
How did they know the exact shape that the wreckage of the Death Star would make when viewed from a specific cliff with enough accuracy to make a knife with the same outline?
Dead Jedi:
Why wouldn’t they talk to Rey all the earlier times she was trying to get in touch with them? Seems like every Jedi who ever lived was willing to chat at the end of the movie. So what changed?
Rey:
Why symbolically lay Luke and Leia to rest on Tatooine of all places? Luke hated it there, and Leia’s experience of the place primarily consisted of being enslaved to a giant slug monster.
Other:
Why bother pretending to kill Chewbacca when you’re not going to allow the characters to respond to his supposed death before learning that he’s actually still alive?
What narrative purpose is served by taking us to Poe’s planet, introducing us to Poe’s old friends, blowing up Poe’s planet, then quickly revealing that all of Poe’s old friends miraculously survived?
Why tell the audience exactly how C3PO’s sacrifice is going to be reversed before he even makes it? Sure, C3PO thinks R2D2’s memory banks are notoriously unreliable, but the audience knows that’s not true, so it doesn’t even work as a misdirection.
Are there deleted scenes in which Rose gets to actually do anything?
That split-second lesbian kiss at the end lampshading the widely criticized lack of LGBTQ representation in the series, was that a Legend of Korra-type thing where the parent company literally forbade the creatives from doing more, or was that the extent of directorial efforts to address the issue?
Was the entire script reverse-engineered from a checklist of fan service moments?
Is this the most perfunctory event movie I’ve ever seen?