kung-fu panda is literally the same story that some people wanted the st to be all along, “mentor who trained first student who went pure evil has to train second student to beat him” except it actually does that concept and theme well without the “replace your kids!!” theme

both kfp and sw are aimed at kids except sw is aimed at slightly older kids and the premises are kind of similar, except there are some key differences that give the sw story unfortunate implications. the first is that in kfp, the former student/current villain isn’t an underdog

and isn’t conflicted about his current path, and his turn to evil wasn’t his mentor’s fault. the mentor still failed for not seeing the turn coming, but there wasn’t a situation where a greater evil was manipulating the first student as a kid or a “almost killed him” situation

and the hero isn’t a prodigy but an underdog. this is one of the important points of difference: rey beats ben in the first third of their story, which is a sign that the story isn’t and can’t be about rey and her friends having to beat ben for good at the end

there’s just no conflict because people already know rey can beat him. and the lesson isn’t about a “your compassion was your undoing because you let him live, you have to learn to kill him” message either because she didn’t let him live on purpose, it was just the planet split

and rey was totally willing to kill him in tfa. meanwhile kfp has a hero who seems outclassed by the villain and has to work his way up to beating him. and most important through it all is that there’s no doubt in kfp the villain’s evil. he’s already committed to that path

and everyone’s accepted it. meanwhile in sw, leia clearly wants her kid back and han dies trying to reach out to him. even luke, the most cynical of the ot trio about ben, *is wrong* and the narrative makes it clear he’s wrong. he says “no one’s ever really gone.”

even if you forget about the family saga part or the ot’s themes and just say the st was telling a “worthier heir replaces the one who turned evil” story, there were ways sw could’ve established that from the start. ben/kylo could’ve been more powerful and committed to evil

and he could’ve beat both rey and finn in the first battle where the best rey could do was save finn and get them both out of there on the falcon in the nick of time, to show the heroes’ main obstacle would be defeating kylo ren. he could’ve been shown faking his conflict

on purpose to lure han, which would’ve been shown in tfa if it was true. or, he and rey’s tlj connection would’ve started happening in the first movie and rey would’ve trusted him or had doubts about him being evil at first so it would make narrative sense as a twist

anyway this was really rambling, but the point is an intentional, competent version of even the general tros story was possible because it’s been done. it just didn’t make sense as the end of the trilogy they already wrote and the narrative wasn’t pointing in that direction.