Okay after hearing Ben’s ‘nostalgia for Weimar’ we were led to believe that before the Empire the world was a better place and the Empire just ruined it all.
But if ESB told us one thing it’s Ben is not a reliable narrator.
I could have handled a muddier peek at the galaxy he grew up in IF that world was convincing.
Not only are the Jedi not what you expect in the PT from watching the OT they are bizarrely stupid and kind of creepy. However I would draw issue with you saying the Sith were more adaptive and less stupid.
Palpatine is kind of smart but that’s really more a manifestation of him not being as bizarrely stupid as almost everybody else. It’s like someone dimension shifted Henry Kissinger into the world of Idiocracy(2006). And that too could be fun, Richard III is fun, Black Adder is fun. If Palpatine had been the focus of the story it could have been delecious.
If the OT was the story of the struggle of a slowly growing band of Rebels against an oppressive Tyrannical Empire, the PT is the story of one clever man playing two sets of badly directed assholes against each other. My only real objection to the PT are the scripts and how they are delivered.
The whole saga seems to be fueled by nostalgia (from the characters and the audience).
The OT is born of nostalgia from a myriad of different sources (only some of which are space opera). The PT and the ST are built on nostalgia for it.
In terms of what the characters are doing the main driving characters yearn for a past or play on such feelings.
Palpatine feeds Padme the line of the Republic ain’t what it used to be, he feeds Anakin tales of how great the Sith were and that the Jedi aren’t as selfless and heroic as they make out to be. In his Sith guise he feeds the Trade Federation the promise of a return to an age without regulation getting in the way of conquest and plunder.
Obi-Wan feeds Luke the line of things were better before the Empire, Owen feeds Ben the line of things being better before he turned up, Lando is keeping a bubble of the past floating in the sky and is willing to sacrifice old friends and old ships to protect it, Luke is pushing on Vader the line that Anakin was a better man than Vader.
In TFA so far we have the Resistance seemingly nostalgic of a time when they had the whole galaxy to liberate. Ren and the First Order in general are nostalgic for the certainties the Empire seemed to provide, to the point of dressing in versions of old Imperial uniforms and venerating relics of his fallen grandfather. The nostalgia generated by the Jedi, in particular Luke but fetishised by Anakin’s saber is a major part of the story. The nostalgia Han and Chewie feel for their glory days on the Falcon is also a big chunk of that movie.
It seems no matter if the story looks forwards or backwards it’s always looking at a past. It’s a space opera set a long time ago. So if it’s true to form it will keep doing that.