I enjoyed the movies overall (wouldn't hold them up as masterpieces by a long way though) - but do agree with this...
Imagine a version where she isn't just slighted tempted by the darkside during TLJ but ends up falling to it completely, and for a time does effectively rule, with Kylo, but she actually surpasses him and starts to go almost to far (to the point where he is like "woah, okay... this is seeming a bit too evil now, even for me!" - which would tie in nicely with the reveal about who she really is if they wanted to stick with that)... Ben could then go the other way (but sooner than in the final movie) and end up ultimately either defeating her (or if killing off the female lead as a villain was too much, maybe getting through to her in the end and bringing her back to the light)... Could even have avoided having actual Palpatine show up and instead go the route that she was being controlled or influenced by his ghost/presence in some way
She could have been so much more. Just look at what Frank Herbert did with the godlike characters of Paul and Alia Atredes. Even if you discount the first part of their stories, once they achieved their status, they still struggled with the fact of what they were. Paul was a cipher of his visions, trapped into the future paths he saw, collapsing his choices down to what his prescience observed. His power controlled him. Alia was overcome by the personalities of her genetic memory, the source of her power and knowledge.
There were so many ways they could have taken Rey, and yours is just one of many suggestions that would have made her a better character and given her a better story. They never even bothered to explain why she was so perfect. They could have made her nothing but a conduit for the Force, but she could have struggled with that, searching for her own life beyond just being a hand for higher powers. People could have identified with her just for her not wanting to be trapped into a path not of her own choosing.
Any subtlety in Rey's character and story was lost because she's nothing more than a mcguffin to hang the rest of the story on. Despite the fact that she is the central character, she's dull and boring, with nothing interesting or likeable about her. Doing anything good with her was beyond the imaginations of the likes of JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson or Kathleen Kennedy. They were desperate to make Rey a female superhero for the Star Wars universe, they forgot to make her a person. Those supposed one dimensional comic book heroes in the MCU such as Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor, Captain America etc actually have a thousand times more humanity in their stories than anything that's come out of Disney Star Wars.
It's ironic that by doing such a bad job with such a high profile female lead, then claiming it's all down to "men not liking female leads" instead of admitting their own failings, Disney Star Wars has actually done women a disservice. They've "proved" that a female lead can't carry a franchise like Star Wars, and it's being blamed on the misogyny of the audience, rather than the fact that poor films do badly, whatever the gender of the lead is, and whatever IP you plaster over the front of the movie.
This was a high profile chance to do some great films that just happened to led by a great female character, and they blew it. They made the same mistakes as the likes of Doctor Who, Star Trek Discovery, Picard, etc. Agenda and visual effects were prioritised, while good stories and characters were thrown by the wayside. They need to stop letting showrunners and directors do the writing, because they've shown time and time again that those people do not have the necessary skills.
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