I think that, plain and simple, what many people wanted TLJ to have been was unattainable. I think no matter what LFL/Disney/RJ/JJ did people would complain. That doesn’t mean complaints aren’t valid. It means they’re damned if they do and they’re damned if they don’t.
Couldn’t disagree more strongly. The overall tone, pacing, characters, and setup from TFA were great. Keep doing that for 3 Star Wars movies and everyone loves them.
The things that suffered in TFA were the literal ANH soft-reboot items. Starkiller base, Empire vs. Resistance, Snoke. It would be very easy to not do this in the sequels. Hell, it would be easy to mostly edit them out of TFA.
No one would care – at all – that the Disney Trilogy copied some general “hero’s journey” structure from the OT. The issue was the aspects that remade ANH.
They wouldn’t be damned if they made a normal, competent Star Wars movie like TFA. Just don’t literally remake the same movie from the OT.