You know, honestly, I have no idea how I felt when he died. I don't remember seeing Star Wars the first time. But what does seem clear is that he warns Vader that he only becomes stronger through death. So it wasn't exactly the end.
But that was part of the magic of the original movie. He didn't need to be on the screen for a long time for the audience to know how important he was to the story. The same can be said of any good character.
The same can be said of Rogue One. Each character was there for a reason, each fulfilled their role, and each had an important part to play, regardless of their time on screen. Yes, it has holes, but they're forgivable in the context of a movie that requires suspension of disbelief. And all of them except the robot died, which worked because 1) it made them more valuable, and 2) it's likely what would happened in a real life situation where a high risk, shoestring operation actually succeeds. There's no absurd last second rescue; just enough help to get the job done, and lots of people died trying.
[...]
The robot's death was the
only death that had any emotional impact for me.
I don't see what purpose the others served in the plot, and I didn't form enough of an emotional bond with any of them to care when they died. Every single one of those deaths should have
hurt and I felt little if anything when they died. Even the implied-gay couple that had so many genuinely funny lines in the movie.
All of those deaths were merely interesting because don't normally have that many main characters or prominent supporting characters die in the same movie like that.
It was also interesting in that it was obviously patterned after a war movie (ironic given that "war" is in the name of the franchise), while the others are brainless (often overly literal) presentations of the monomyth surrounded by Flash Gordon trappings with samurai and cowboy elements sprinkled in for flavor.
Maybe the problem is that I no longer place the original trilogy on a pedestal.
Episode 8 took all the brainless action fun of the rest of the franchise and actually had some worthwhile things to say.
It talked about toxic masculinity in a way that beautifully book-ended the introduction of Princess Leia in that first movie. The notion of a female action hero and a princess who can save herself was shocking and new and interesting in the 1977. It changed the way we talked about women's roles in movies. It's sad that Carrie Fisher died, but it's poignant that her last Star Wars movie had something to say about how action movies tend to promote some not-so-good aspects of the social construct of masculinity. Episode 4 asked us to stop treating women like prizes to fight over and to take them seriously as agents capable of imposing their will on the world. Episode 8 was a nice mirror asking us to look at aspects of the social construct of gender that hurts men.
On top of that, we got a nice little discussion about what happens when we put heroes and legends on a pedestal and rob them of their humanity. Luke hated having been robbed of his humanity, hates that part of him bought into the bullshit, and in the end embraced his role as a legend because he could use it to effect a positive change in large numbers of people.
Rogue One was just a bunch of people dying to fulfill a single sentence of scrolling exposition at the beginning of Episode 4, and it had editing and narrative problems that made it fail to live up to its potential given the amount of talent involved in the project. I liked it, but to me it was just an above-average action movie. Episodes 7 and 8 are what I wish the prequel movies were.
