What the actual fuck? Episode VIII is quite literally the worst mainline Star Wars movie made. I consider even episode IX to be better, not by a big margin but still better for no other reason than to try and salvage the clusterfuck that was episode VIII. Here's a short list of things episode VIII got wrong.

• Threw out pretty much every story thread Episode VII set up
• Did a complete character assassination of Luke
• Turned Leia into a force user because, well I don't even know why.
• The entire casino world plotline which is not just entirely irrelevant to the plot but also completely fucks with timeline of events.
• That whole thing between the purple haired captain? and Poe. Especially that super secret plan that for no fucking reason was never explained to the rest of the crew.
• Breaking the whole hyperspace explanation and the whole space combat consistency with the hyperspace kamikaze
• The asian lady plot
• The ending sets up literally nothing for episode IX

The whole movie is one massive misstep that derailed the entirely sequel trilogy. I get Episode VII wasn't anything magnificent but the entire point of episode VII was to reaffirm to the fans (who were skeptical about the continuation of Star Wars considering Episode III didn't really leave on a high note and Episode VI kinda tied up the loose ends) that the series is going somewhere and isn't nosediving off a cliff. That's why they effectively redid the Episode IV plotline, because it was a safe starting point that sets up characters for episodes VIII and IX. Abrams even left a rough draft for VIII and IX but then Johnson was given full creative control to throw the entire trilogy draft out the window and do whatever the fuck he wanted. We don't know if episode IX could've ever been good because episode VIII fucked the entire trilogy so hard it became impossible to salvage.

The only context in which Episode VIII could be better than IX is if you view them as individual movies and not a part of a trilogy. And you know, Episode VIII probably could've been an okay standalone film. But it wasn't. It had to respect what episode VII set up and it had to give episode IX something to follow up on. It didn't neither and for that both Episode VII and IX are worse off simply because episode VIII exists. In fact the movie almost killed the entire franchise by taking all the characters and storylines and driving them off straight off the cliff.