When Subverting Expectations becomes Expected.

Individually none of the subverted expectations in The Last Jedi are ones I couldn't have been fine with.  A couple kinda bother me ideologically but I'm someone who's fine with Zach Snyder's Superman, there is plenty I can look past.

People forget some fans were wanting Rey's parents to be nobodies all along.  I personally argued early in 2016 that she's not a Skywalker by blood, I could have gone either way on her having some other lineage.  And I'm fine with how The Last Jedi made this reveal, the suggestion of some that they should have "shown not told" naturally irritates me, this is exactly the kind of situation where "showing" would ruin the fact that it's supposed to be an intimate character development between her and Kylo.

The only pet theory I had that got nixed was Snoke being Plageius (which I still think is what Abrams intended, they've admitted Johnson ignored the original plans).  But even there I'm ultimately fine with actually seeing a Dark Side apprentice overthrow his master finally.

And I could go on and on about how many other twists in this movie I could have been fine with if they were executed better.

The issue is the movie really transparently started to feel like subverting for the sake of subverting.  And as I'd said before, if that was being done for the sake of leading to a radically new Status Quo for the Galaxy even that could have been fine, but instead all this "not the Star Wars you were expecting" just leaves everything right back where Episode IV started, a rebellion massively outnumbered by an overwhelming Empire.

Digibro made a video about some Anime getting Lazy with it's Meta.  And I don't entirely agree with that video, I enjoy plenty of Meta Digi would call lazy.  But what I like that he doesn't is stuff that celebrates genre conventions, if you're gonna try to make fans of those conventions feel ashamed of themselves for liking them, it better be serving a message like Sucker Punch, not simply shallow status quo reinforcing trite like TLJ.

The Last Jedi is a very well directed movie, and for that reason I'm sure I'll get some enjoyment from re-watching it when I finally get around to doing that.  But good directing doesn't save weak writing.

In plenty of contexts I'm fine with things seemingly insulting their own fans, because sometimes a segment of the fanbase deserves to be insulted.  So I'm fine with what Geoff Johns did with Superboy Prime in Infinite Crisis, and I loved in The Force Awakens reading Kylo Ren as an allegory for Prequel haters.

But like End of Evangelion, The Last Jedi feels like it wanted to insult all Star Wars fans, (even the ones who are still defending it).  Original Trilogy fans, Prequel Trilogy fans, old EU fans, new EU fans, and especially The Force Awakens fans.  I still stand by what I said before, that the most important thing the New Trilogy needs to do is bring in new fans.  And TFA was already doing that, TLJ needed to expand on what TFA started in a satisfying way, instead it got so obsessed with doing the unexpected that it become totally expected.

In Avengers Infinity War the narrative expectations of the MCU are also subverted every step of the way.  But it serves a thematic purpose this time because the ending it's building to is also not conventional.

Here is a video on TLJ that kinda helps clarify some of my point.
Star Wars The Last Jedi What Went Wrong.