Who did more damage JJ or Rian?

Would you be interested in sharing the reasons why you think so; turning Luke into a cynical failure is pretty bad but IMO bringing back the Emperor does more damage because it means the story was fundamentally changed from being about the Skywalkers to being about the Palpatines. The way I see it that is worse than depicting the character of Luke, 30 years after ROTJ, completely wrong. Not saying that isn't terrible in itself, but I think Palpatine is worse.

Yes I agree, this whole ST failed to begin with because of how terrible TFA was; Rian's film felt a bit like an "FU" to TFA. So despite the fact that TLJ is terrible, I think I hated it less.

Lucas tried too, and that doesn't make the prequels any better.

The new trilogy is crap, both with JJ and with RJ. This is not about 'fanboys', it's about demanding a minimum level of quality and storytelling in a movie.

Yes exactly. Rian was just a middle made that got a bunch of crappy destroyed pieces of story to try to desperately put together. Though he got the character of Luke totally wrong, continued on the crappy storyline, undermined audience expectations in some of the worse ways, and embedded a bunch of heavy handed nihilistic/leftist politics into the story; all of this was done because of the crap that he was handed.

For example, He would not be able to depict Luke as he did if Luke wasn't already absent without explanation in TFA. What good reason could there be for Luke to be in hiding? JJ did not have an answer and left Rian the bag of crap to come up with answers. Maybe Rian came up with bad answers but the damage was already done, at least how I see it.

Lol; yes a big part of the failure is on her complete inability to manage this IP, but she did not actually write or direct the films. It seems her input was rather without care and limited to making sure that the female characters were in the lead rules and depicted as superior to the male characters. At least that is how it comes across.

But I was not asking who out of everyone was more to blame; I was limiting it to between the 2 writers/directors which hurt the IP more. K.K. was not a choice for the purposes of this discussion. That would have to be saved for a whole other discussion on the executive failures from Bob Iger (Disney) and Kennedy (lucasfilm).

Lol, yeah that is true; "Ruin" could only do so much damage with one film. JJ got and took advantage of having double the opportunity to Destroy the legacy of star wars. he was quite successful.

https://www.quora.com/Does-Bob-Iger-deserve-as-much-blame-for-the-problems-with-the-Star-Wars-sequel-trilogy-as-Kathleen-Kennedy-and-or-Rian-Johnson-Iger-wanted-a-redux-of-the-original-trilogy-That-basically-destroys-the-sequel-trilogy/answer/James-Edward-Hinds

Mistake #2: JJ Abrams’ shaky (but brilliant) beginning

As near as I can tell, Abrams more or less intended The Force Awakens to be a cross between an audience fan theory sandbox and an improvised drama. He sets things up, the audience creates fan theories, the next director picks a few of those fan theories to make a film, lather rinse repeat. While I can see this in how Star Wars was originally written, I think this is a generally poor match for what Star Wars needed to grow into the future.

I do want to commend Abrams, though. If this was his idea, it’s a dark genius plan that could have (and probably should have) worked for a trilogy or two, anyway, whether it matched well to Star Wars or not. Alas, that was not meant to be.

Mistake # 3: Rian Johnson

Even after The Last Jedi, I still do not think Johnson is a bad film director. Rather, he was a poor match for Star Wars. But more to the point, he was an atrocious choice for continuing Abrams’s fan theory sandbox. He opted to break it over his knee rather than take any of the ideas.

That’s kinda the weakness of improvised drama. If you don’t work as a team, it will go bad fast.

I guess that The Last Jedi is a product of Johnson overpitching ideas to producers with pet ideas. Most of the ideas are good enough to make an enjoyable movie from…had they been isolated. But these ideas don’t play well with each other, conflict for screen time, and the next thing you know, The Last Jedi hits theaters as the distilled essence of turd.

Mistake #4: Returning To Abrams

I like Abrams’s work when it comes to somewhat vapid popcorn-seller movies, and I am impressed with his idea of bringing improv techniques to cinema. But he has one fatal weakness that anyone who watched Lost knows. It’s actually a common problem among people who do improv.

He is clueless when it comes to endings.

I 100% agree with this. My take was about midway through TFA I came to the conclusion that there was no hope for the disney trilogy. I had already been getting annoyed with Rey since the moment she started 'conversing' with BB-8 (how the f*ck can a human speak binary?) but also Kylo/Snoke/First order having no proper set up and just poor development (the heavy handed scene with Snoke/Kylo with "the droid is in the hands of your father, HANNNN SOOLLOO!". I think the moment that the force was forever broken though was when Rey just 'figures' out how to use jedi mind trick (one of the most advanced Jedi powers ever shown).

How can people still defend this film and pretend that JJ had a plan and Rian ruined it is somewhat beyond me, hence the conversation I started here.

While there is truth to what you say, had JJ told an actual coherent story Johnson would not have been able to have so much free rain to 'subvert' (actually undermine) expectations. The fact that everything was so open ended in TFA left nothing but 'creative' freedom for RJ to have his way with. And since he is obviously not a big Star Wars fan and as you said was extremely egotistical (as well as hyper political and nihilistic) it lead to the disaster that we got.

My Opinion is that is JJ fault for handing a 'monkey' a loaded weapon, sort of speak.

As bad as she was at managing the franchise, the question was for which of the 2 writers/directors did more harm.

From appearances Kennedy just provided a few politically inspired guidelines (such as a overpowered female lead) and then didn't care what the directors did at all.