I presume this is the whole "Art of" book for the film that has been leaked.

Great! Now that I've seen these images, I have no inclination to buy the artbook.

Ben never having any interaction with Chewy is such an unbelievable wasted opportunity.

That white Pilot outfit for Poe and yellow jacket design for Finn are both AWESOME! Original but still star wars-y, instead we got some lame second hand outfits. There seem to be a lot of wierd concepts that were thrown around. Beautiful pieces of art, tho.

It looks like a lot of the final movie's set pieces were essentially locked in at a previs stage, with them juggling the plot details later and later.

I'm not sure what people's problem with the returned Emperor is, personally. It was an EU staple, so maybe that's why it felt organic to me (in abstract, if not in execution). There definitely could have been more meat on the bones of Rey and Kylo's interactions, and I lay the real problem at Poe and Finn (sadly). While they're fine characters, they really have nothing to do in this trilogy.

In the original trilogy, Leia and Han go on their own little pointless side adventure in Empire and fight a war with teddybears in Return. They are the lens through which we see the political conflict of the galaxy (the Empire's corruption of Lando, the depravity of the Jabba's criminal underworld, the assault on... teddybears).

It's clear Finn (and Rose) were supposed to be doing the Empire thing in TLJ, but it was too pointless and had no real consequences. And Finn and Poe were occupying the same military role from Return in TROS, but the battle lacked logistical clarity to cut through the noise. The politics were a superficial garble in the entire sequel trilogy, so that's part of why this side of the story suffered. The storytellers didn't want to spend time on it, but they wanted to spend time with the characters tasked with it. And the result is... fluff. So much fluff.

Here's a video that I think hits these points really well.



But the Rey Kylo stuff did work. And this concept art is just confirming to me that the trilogy would have been much better off if they had ditched the supporting cast entirely and just followed Rey's journey. Sure, Rey meets Finn and Poe in TFA, but then maybe they just show back in TROS for the final battle. Similar to how Rey was mentored by Han, Luke, and Leia in turn, we don't need to maintain this supporting cast across the entire trilogy.

It would upend the original Star Wars trilogy mold they were aping, and be something of a disappointment for people who liked Finn, Poe, BB-8, Chewbacca, Rose, and C-3P0, so I understand why they were afraid to do it. But they didn't need to be there when they didn't serve the story.