I didn’t give the prequels a pass. I just said they are slightly less soulless.
I’m not sure though how working for Disney automatically leads JJ Abrams, Gareth Edwards, Rian Johnson, or Ron Howard (among the many others involved) to create soulless works. People like a movie or they don’t.
It’s not just Disney. I watched the first two movies and found them soulless. There are films made under the Disney banner that have soul, but those are primarily products that aren’t poised to gross 2 billion dollars, so the corporate overlords don’t take as much interest in meddling with them.