No, TLJ is not close to the Empire Strikes Back- In terms of movies/reveals it's by far the best Star Wars. I can see what you're saying on formula but Empire was something that you could really spoil for someone watching the series for the first time. There's no big reveal in TLJ and you don't care about the characters or story. It ran too long, the plot was all over the place and it was just a bad movie. For example, if we had the same level of SFX in both movies, and followed the plots between the two, Empire would have been like an academy award worthy movie, where as TLJ is just trash. I mean the new characters they've tried to introduce are just boring. Maybe it's because star wars was fresh/new area for Scifi but I just don't think the new characters/story are worth being interested in. Don't get me wrong I'll watch it, but I don't think they'll ever be able to recapture The Empire Strikes Back.
I am sticking with my prediction from The Force Awakens: Rey is a clone of Luke, made from his hand that he lost at Bespin.
Not sure if "clone" would make the most sense there... But, I do think they need to re-visit what happened to that hand... the throwaway line that Maz delivers in TFA ("that's a story for another time") was either dramatic foreshadowing, or lazy writing that allows them to just avoid having to explain it. Before TLJ, I would have been highly disappointed if it was the latter... but seeing as how they were willing to waste an entire 2nd act of a 3-part trilogy on a whole lotta nothing... now I'm just apathetic and not surprised if they truly are lazy, and this is just one contrived cash grab.
Everything Disney does is a cash grab. They now own a ton of beloved properties they are milking for all they are worth (Star Wars, Pixar, Marvel etc.) However, that fact has never bothered me because they have been extremely reliable. I was never worried about the trilogy because of how safe Disney has been. TLJ is the first time Disney outright failed me as a viewer, not only failed to entertain, but failed the lore of the beloved property. I could tolerate a less than awesome movie, it happens, but everything about it was insulting. I'm still stunned the final product we saw was deemed acceptable by the mouse.
In TLJ, Luke was TERRIBLY written. The boy who grew up on an isolated planet and longed to learn the ways of the force, join the rebellion, be a part of the action (not just sit on the sidelines), and make a difference.... ...now wants to live on an isolated island, deny the ways of the force, ignore the rebellion, avoid the action, sit on the sidelines, and be left alone?!?!? THAT'S NOT LUKE! If they wanna make something new, that's cool. Introduce new stories (that make sense) and characters that complement the stories. If you do that, we'll enjoy them (i.e. Poe, Rei, Finn, Snoke, BB8). But trying to change the DNA of well-established and beloved characters is a BAD IDEA. Trying to introduce useless characters just because you want us to like them (JarJar, Rose) is a BAD IDEA. There are countless stories to tell. At this point, telling the SAME STORY over and over again is a BAD IDEA (they've done the "destroy the death star" story three times now). SIDE NOTE: The've done a TERRIBLE job of creating the Kylo-Ren character. He's too much of a weak, failing, crybaby to ever be a truly evil character... and he's done too much wrongdoing to ever be one of the good guys. The result: We don't like him as a villian. we don't like him as a hero. ... So, we just don't like him at all.
I thought the Marvel series have been well written, well thought out, and ultimately even more profitable than expected due to the quality of things. Seems like they put all the effort into this, while Star Wars has been more lazy than anything because it's never failed.... even with terrible prequel writing.
Marvel had 1 guy with an overarching vision in charge of the whole thing. Star Wars for whatever reason decided for these 3 movies to do the ol' elementary school thing of "ok, Timmy, you write a chapter then hand it to Billy and he'll do the next one, then Timmy can finish it."
so when our generation gets older, i assume the star wars franchise will die. the younger generation never experienced the original trilogy and the 2nd trilogy. i had the original trilogy on vhs and watched it often as a kid, and when the second trilogy came out, i was young enough to really like it. if they don't improve, then i the star wars name will sadly fade into obscurity. i think the current trilogy is still living off of the original greatness... but don't know how long that will last.
Wha? So did they forget to regrow the penis? And basically every other feature that would make her look like Luke?
