Star Wars, at its best, resonates because it is 'The Hero's Journey' distilled. How well ROGUE ONE & THE FORCE AWAKENS follow this outline, in order to present their respective protagonists as a mythical hero.

All book quotes from:
Campbell, Joseph, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3rd edn (Novato: New World Library, 2008).

The excellent essay on Star Wars ‘Ring Theory,’ by Mike Klimo:
http://www.starwarsringtheory.com/

MUSIC:
'Jyn Erso & Hope Suite,' 'Your Father Would Be Proud' - Michael Giacchino (Rogue One OST)
'Across the Stars' - John Williams (Attack of the Clones OST)
'Yoda and the Force' - John Williams (The Empire Strikes Back OST)
'The Jedi Steps and Finale,' 'Rey's Theme' - John Williams (The Force Awakens OST)


A time-saving deletion:
“If The Last Jedi continues with the example set by The Force Awakens, we can expect Rey to undergo training in ‘The Road of Trials,’ and confront Kylo Ren once more in ‘The Meeting of the Goddess,’ before pursuing some form of reconciliation with Ben Solo in ‘Woman as the Temptress.’ Next comes an appeasement on Rey’s part with her familial history and metaphysical connection to the Force in ‘Atonement with the Father’; Rey’s relinquishment of self in pursuit of a higher ideal or enlightenment in ‘Apotheosis’; all culminating with ‘The Ultimate Boon,’ a defeat so heavy it provides the realisation of what it will take to overcome the enemy, leaving the external soul not only unaffected, but fortified by the injuries of the body.

Notice how vague these transitions are. We know nothing of the specific obstacles, and it’s in the details that storytellers have adapted the Monomyth for millennia to tell tales relevant for all walks of life.

Rian Johnson’s script for Episode VIII almost certainly hasn’t followed this precedent. Doing so would risk the film feeling like a rehash of The Empire Strikes Back, which would draw significant ire and claims that originality is dead. However, I fear that the more fans cry out for something ‘new,’ the less these films will feel like Star Wars. Rogue One is the first piece of evidence the series isn’t structured to survive dilution by re-imaginings as easily and effectively as a superhero franchise. Each superhero can be considered a stand-in for a mythological Greek god, representing a given moral worldview, where drama can be extracted by any situation that prods and violates the shortcomings of their disposition. Rogue One was held afloat by the inclusion of intertextual callbacks - of things we know - like X-Wings, Stormtroopers, and Darth Vader. Take them away and it’s a bland war/heist movie, with a tepid emotional arc, and underdeveloped sub-plots.

Too often we see recurring ideas in TV and film and consider them cliché, the work derivative. Failing to consider that what appears to be a failure of imagination might be a integral feature. Every ‘Episode’ of Star Wars begins with a crawl text. No one considers this a rip-off of the other films, it stands as a formal representation of shared subject matter, or a ‘house-style’. Just as the information in crawl paragraphs changes with every movie, a healthy expectation of every new Episode is that it finds new ways to tackle similar or related themes.”