I tend to disagree. Kennedy and Disney fell victim to the hype that is JJ Abrams. He gave us a start to a trilogy rather than a stand alone film that is part of a trilogy (the man just can’t figure out how to end his stories). Rogue One on the other hand is a fantastic adventure that takes two paragraphs from the ANH opening crawl and makes a truly great movie out of it. The most like the OT of any of non OT films.

I love your description of the prequels - “At least with Lucas you got fascinating failures.” I think you nailed that.