So please enlighten me. You have said that TFA craps all over the original trilogy. How is that so? So how was everything the heroes achieved undone?
Let's start with your assertion that TFA and the Zahn trilogy begin with the same premise. Now, like you, I wasn't impressed by the Zahn trilogy, but the idea that TFA and the Zahn trilogy begin with the same premise is false. It doesn't take a very deep dive to discover that, it's obvious from the very first scene of both narratives.
Like each of the three original three films, the Zahn trilogy begins with a shot of a Star Destroyer. But in this case, it's a Rebel/New Republic star destroyer launching X-Wings. At the beginning of the Zahn trilogy, the rebellion has built on the success at Endor to become the overwhelmingly dominate military force in the Galaxy. For five years they've gone from victory to victory. The hold out Imperial troops are on the run, disorganized, demoralized, and awaiting defeat. The former rebels have by far the most powerful fleet in the Galaxy. Everyone is convinced that they are about to bring the war to a successful close, and people who have supported the rebellion are legitimately excited about the future. They are filled with hope and confidence, and brimming with expectation of a bright tomorrow.
In TFA, the New Republic is a moribund organization, lacking in military power, almost wholly disarmed, that has in despair given up the fight unfinished. The Imperial have reconstituted under the banner of a religious fanatic, and have successfully built a third and vastly more powerful planet destroying super-weapon. People have become jaded. They are tired. They are depressed. There heroes have failed them. The war has dragged on now for the better part of 80 years and it is no closer to an end in sight than it was before. With no military to speak of, the only group willing to go on fighting is a small rag tag band of rebels that have been secretly and illegally funded and are lead by 'General Leia'. Launching attacks in X-Wing fighters from their hidden base, they are the only hope the galaxy has versus the Empire and it's new Death Star... I mean the First Order and its new whatever they called it.
That is not the same premise. That's practically the opposite premise. Indeed, Zahn is the figure that gives the bad guys a new hope. In TFA, the Rebels are still looking for a new hope.
Fortunately they find it in a force sensitive orphan who has grown up on a remote desert planet. But where will this new hope go to receive training? Rumor has it there is an ancient Jedi warrior that has survived from the time of the last war and who has gone into hiding. Armed with Darth Vader's old lightsaber, Luke... I mean Rey, goes on a quest to save the Alliance from a Dark Sinister Sith Lord and a devastating planet superweapon. Along the way she runs into a Wookie and an old cynical smuggler named Han Solo, and together they journey to find Princess Leia. Can this rag time team bring Hope to a suffering galaxy?
How was the character growth Fleeting? It seems like the characters have still grown a lot.
Aside from not only recycling the plots of the former movie, and returning things to square one, they returned characters like Han back to where he starts at the beginning of 'A New Hope'.
Like we've still got basically two Jedi - Rey and Luke. And we've still got basically two Sith - whats-his-name the emo Darth Vader wanna be and that shadowy hologram guy that gives him orders. And golly, everyone who is anyone is still related to everyone else in the movie.
But Han is back to where he was in a New Hope. He's become _again_ a cynical jaded scoundrel and criminal who apparently cares for no one other than himself, whose flying around trying to make a few thousand credits to pay back debts he can't pay off. Now what's so disheartening about that is that over the course of three movies we've watch Han consistently grow in moral integrity from movie to movie, until he has become a self-sacrificing, caring, person who thinks more about the happiness of other people than he does himself and who believes in the power of the force. He had become a legitimate hero. And now he's right back to square one. Worse, he's a far less sympathetic person than he was before precisely because he ought to know better, and because before he had no better options. Now when we find him, he's abandoned everyone. He's abandoned his wife. He's abandoned his best friend. And he's abandoned his child. When the going got tough, he just ran away. Han Solo is turned not just into a cynical scoundrel, but in to a moral cretin.
Luke Skywalker, when the Galaxy needed him most? Ran away. Went into hiding. The fight got too much for him. The Galaxies greatest warrior needed a time out. He had to go run to his safe place. At least Obi Wan stayed around to watch over his charge. Luke can't even bother to do that.
Fortunately though, Luke Skywalker was never the Galaxies only hope. We've always known that there was another Skywalker. And she had as great of potential and power as her brother. He prophesied, "You have that power too. In time you'll learn to use it as I have." So, no problem. If one galactic hero fails, there is Leia to take up that burden and that mantle. Leia, the most caring, the most valiant, the courageous character in the whole trilogy. She's not going to fail the galaxy. She's never going to give up on life or on her dream for a just and peaceful galaxy. She'd never give up on anything. Golly, when she was suffering from having her whole planet blow up, not only was she still fighting to the last, but she took time to comfort a farm boy she barely knew who'd lost his mentor. All you got to do is find Leia right, because if Luke can't be the galaxy's greatest warrior - then she will be. It's her destiny. What's this? You say that Leia has become a bitter old cynical hard-bitten woman, who has failed at marriage, failed in politics, failed in life, and hasn't even managed to become a Jedi? Where is her lightsaber? Where is her power? Is it because she's a girl that she can't be the galaxies greatest warrior? You've got that Mary Sue Rey, so why do you have to spit on Leia like that?
It's because they need to reboot everything back to square one.
How did they undo their very philosophies? How are they wrong? How were their victories actually defeats?
I'm tired of talking about this. I had tossed these things out of my head because I don't like thinking about things that make me angry. But the whole original was about the power of faith, love, and hope. And TFA is about faithless people in dark galaxy, being told that it's not about winning it's about struggling eternally, finding out that love does not conquer after all and does not really mean anything. We find the heroes have forsaken each other and all of their honor. And it craps on the whole original trilogy and on beloved character's worse even than books like 'Ender's Shadow' messes up classics like 'Ender's Game'. And with a lot less good of an excuse.
You say these things (and lots more) but never explain why or how they are true.
This is going to sound really harsh, but since you ask, and since you insisted on challenging me on this the way you did, it's because I didn't expect to have to explain what is so self-evident.
