> You seem to have forgotten that it's entirely possible for "fantasy" to have more complex themes than "evil space wizards vs. good space wizards," or that something must be only one or the other. Star Wars is solidly both, and as far as its sci-fi aesthetic goes, it's more grounded than Star Trek, which runs entirely on nonsensoleum sometimes.
Not really. I mean, yes, fantasy as a genre can obviously explore deeper themes and does so all the time. But Star Wars is a morally unambiguous universe. It really, truly, does not fit to try and have a nuanced discussion of morality while other more important characters literally commune with the universe and draw power from the sides of light vs. dark. Whatever themes you draw out are just not supported by the environment around them.
Nobody cares about greedy capitalist when evil space wizard is standing next to him.
> I mean, the actress is American born, of Vietnamese descent, but sure, Chinese is basically the same thing, right?
As a mixed Asian, shrug, whatever. I am willing to bet a substantial amount of money she existed only to appeal to chinese audiences. If she's actually vietnamese, sure, good to know.
> And that was one of the best themes of the Last Jedi. Of course there would be war profiteers - we already know this because the OT gave us Mos Eisley and Jabba the Hutt and bounty hunters. "greedy war profiteers and evil capitalists" aren't at all unknown to the franchise. The problem here is this sudden dump of complexity should have been a throughline with Rose for the entire trilogy. It certainly would have been better than "This time the Empire is even more fascist and the Death Star is huge."
If you're saying it wouldn't have been dumb if it was just an entirely different story, then sure.
> The "faction" doesn't identify itself as the Dark Side. It identifies itself as the Sith.
The leader of the Sith is called "Dark Lord of the Sith". They identify as as ON the dark side all the time if you really think that's an important distinction.
> Also the Sith and the Dark Side weren't known for "destroying planets at a time." The Death Star was built by the Empire, and yes, while Palpatine turned out to be a Sith (as a retcon) they even made a point of having Darth Vader point out how insignificant the "technological terror" of the Death Star was compared to the Force - not the Dark Side specifically, but the Force in its entirety.
I really think you're splitting hairs here. The bad guys are the ones who destroy planets. The good guys are the ones who try to prevent the bad guys from destroying planets.
> But Rose wasn't, she was just badly misused as a character.
Meh. I was happy when her first appearance in the final movie is basically. She seems like a boring character to me.
"Wanna come on the main adventure?"
"Nah too busy"