Jay said:
I don’t agree with people who think TLJ is a good Star Wars story/movie, but that doesn’t mean they’re making excuses for something they know deep down isn’t good, which I think is what many would call an “apologist” today.

There are contexts in which “apologist”/“apologetics” doesn’t carry that sense. It just presupposes that a given thing has been attacked, and so someone else is defending it. It makes no presumption as to whether the attack OR the defense is, in itself, right or wrong.

I’m accustomed to using the term positively in my own circles, and so I wasn’t making a veiled insult to anyone who likes TLJ.