I’m sorry, but I think you’ve approached this piece with a pre-defined narrative that doesn’t actually fit the facts.

First of all, you say:

When Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, entertainment industry observers seriously questioned the $4.06 billion price tag he paid for the Star Wars franchise.

Did they really? Which ones? If so, those observers were fools. For Disney’s $4 billion pocket change, they got Star Wars, plus Indiana Jones and a handfull of other properties, as well as Lucasfilm, ILM, LucasArts, Skywalker Sound etc. They’ve since made their investment back after just three films — and that’s before the Star Wars branded theme-parks open. George Lucas gave it away.

Now, on to The Last Jedi:

Many of the film’s most controversial story points are rooted in various characters holding the saga’s most time-honored tropes to task:
[…]
• Luke Skywalker tosses his light saber off a cliff, later saying: “The legacy of the Jedi is failure… I’m ending all of this. The tree, the text, the Jedi. I’m gonna burn it down.”
• Of those sacred texts, Yoda says, “Page turners they were not… Time it is, for you to look past a pile of old books.”

Except, does the film hold these tropes to task for more than a nano-second before losing its nerve? By the end of the film, despite Luke throwing Anakin’s lightsaber off a cliff, Rey retrieves it, uses it in battle, and even clings on to the broken remains as if they’re sacred objects!

Of the Jedi texts — while we think Yoda burns them, in fact he’s mistaken. Rey has already taken the books and stowed them away on the Falcon, presumably for later bedtime reading — or to use them to form another Jedi school. So much for letting the past die.

Then Kennedy would double down. In Last Jedi, women have taken control of the Resistance.

Well, white women have. I must admit I raised an eyebrow at the cross-cutting of scenes of important white characters being in charge and giving orders (Leia, Holdo, Rey, Luke, and Hux, Kylo Ren, Captain Phasma), with scenes of their non-white subordinates — all of whom work below deck and hold much lower ranks i.e. Rose, Finn, Poe (and of course the duplicitous DJ).

It isn’t just that the major new characters in the franchise are played by women, blacks, Latinos, and Asians.

Definitely a step in the right direction to be more inclusive, but is The Last Jedi really such a radical improvement compared to the thirty year old original trilogy in this regard?

We have the bumbling Finn, a black character sure, but hardly a figure of authority. Compare him to Lando Calrissian, a black character introduced in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) as leader of a futuristic world. In his second appearance he held the rank of General, and was “Gold Leader” in the Battle of Endor.

Not to mention Leia herself, the least distressed damsel in the history of modern cinema, she made it very clear she was in charge even in the 1977 original, before commanding the rebel base on Hoth in the sequel. In Return of the Jedi she’s seen to be taking orders from a new leader of the Rebellion: Mon Mothma (also a woman), and even a non-human in the dignified form of Admiral Ackbar. Sadly Ackbar was deemed not worthy of an on-screen death in The Last Jedi, much to the dismay of many long-time fans. But do alien characters really deserve respect anyway?

Rey turns out not to be a Chosen One, and is instead a woman who is “no one from nowhere.”

According to Rian Johnson, who has said he was told nothing of Rey’s background and was free to decide it for himself. What a shame then, that J.J. Abrams wrote this contradictory line for Rey in The Force Awakens: “Classified? Me too. Big secret.”

Refusing to recognize years of YouTube-fueled speculation

It’s a matter of opinion of course, but the above line, as well as many other subtle nods in The Force Awakens (Rey pointedly not having a last name; Rey’s Skywalker-heavy flashback scene; the scene of child-Rey screaming as a ship takes off; Kylo Ren’s oddly knowing “What GIRL?” line) was the film itself fuelling and encouraging speculation.

Until this moment, as so often happens in classical Hero’s Journey narratives, the power of Star Wars flowed like royalty through Skywalker blood.

“Until this moment” – so, was Yoda a Skywalker too? I missed that. What about Ben Kenobi, was he of royal decent? And then there were all those thousands of Jedi in the wretched prequels — they had to come from somewhere…

Let’s not forget that Luke himself was conceived as a nobody-from-nowhere, a humble farmboy setting out like David to fight the evil Empire’s Goliath. In 1977’s Star Wars his familial Jedi connection was merely mentioned in conversation and hardly significant. Only in the sequel did Lucas change course in order to deliver the mother of all twists. Johnson has said Abrams is free to do the same in Episode IX and backtrack on Kylo Ren’s words, so let’s not count our chickens just yet.

If we are to survive, we must move beyond viewing the universe as a cosmic war between good and evil.

Again, to me, the situation at the end of The Last Jedi seems more polarised than ever. Evil “Sith” Ben Skywalker is now entrenched in his position as leader of the First Order, every bit as much as newly ordained Jedi Rey is as de-facto leader of the Resistance. Luke himself says:

“Every word of what you just said was wrong. The Rebellion is reborn today. The war is just beginning. And I will not be the last Jedi.”

Many of us want things to stay the same. We yearn to go back to a “better time.” We want our fairy tales to fall into familiar patterns

This, finally is the biggest point. I fail to see in what way the storyline of even the wretched prequels is comparable to the new or original trilogy. Say what you will about those films (and I’ve said plenty), but they attempted to craft a radically different story.

By contrast, it’s this new trilogy that seems overly familiar and covering old ground. I see nothing new in The Last Jedi. Where others seem to have witnessed a wholly original, brand new story and new direction for the franchise, I see a fairly unimaginative remake of The Empire Strikes Back. Remaking/reimagining/re-whatevering the best film in the series is not ‘taking a risk’.

Just like Empire we have:

• An opening in which Star Destroyers appear in orbit and attack the rebel base.
• A spaceship chase through space for much of the movie.
• One of our injured heroes is in a watery medical pod.
• Our young Jedi protagonist being trained by a reluctant Jedi Master on a mysterious primitive world.
• A Force-vision in a darkside cave.
• A misleading vision of the future which causes our hero to abandon their training to try to save someone.
• A visit to a futuristic city with a dark secret.
• There our heroes meet a duplicitous new character.
• Our Jedi hero’s plan to save someone ends in revelations and failure.
• Imperial Walkers vs Rebel Speeders on a white planet.

etc etc etc

I’m glad so many people did like Last Jedi, but I think long-time Star Wars fans were really ready for something new.

[And I’m going to be very interested in the reaction from long-time Mary Poppins fans when we find out in Mary Poppins Returns that Mary considered butchering all the children in their beds with a kitchen knife because they were naughty. I sure hope fans aren’t going to be bothered by that, move with the times people!]