Taking this comment to this thread.
For myself I would say I don’t hate any of them and I would, some day, rewatch every single one of them, but I can’t pretend that I like TPM, AOTC, R1, Solo, TFA… (I like some of them when propertly fan edited though) I can enjoy them, find qualities, rewatch a few sequences and be glad to see the “SW soul” supplement in them compared to the average blockbuster, but I honestly don’t like all of them. As a whole, it’s different, and maybe the “I-IX” experience may give the Saga something more as a complete movement than what just separate entries do.
ATOC and TFA are the only ones I did not fully enjoy on my first viewing. Both have segments that just took me right out of the film and derailed the story for me and I have never been able to recover from that. Both need a good fan edit (I would do it very lightly with as few changes as possible) to bring them up to the nearest stories. I cannot say I hate any of them, but those two I have the most profound issues with. Though in contemplating it, one of my issues with TFA has led to a personal retcon that solves a lot of issues for the entire Star Wars universe. Still, it would be a better movie if that was not needed. And the sections of ATOC are just bad and need to be axed.
Indeed AotC’s bad bits, while pretty bad, are relatively harmless. It doesn’t uproot the story or universe. It’s just bad scenes and/or dialogue that can easily be cut. It’s not the same as the problems some people have with TLJ or that I have with RotJ that come from taking the saga in an infuriatingly terrible direction. Granted, some of the problems are also the sort of harmless, easily removed, stuff with no implications down the line, like AotC, which just makes them even worse.
Out of curiosity, what is the headcanon you mentioned concerning TFA?
Both TFA and TESB have some issues with the use of the word system. Take it as it is typically meant, that of a star system, and both those movies are derailed by science. But if you take that to be a planetary system (a planet and its moons) you can have the Millennium Falcon fly from Hoth to Bespin in a reasonable amount of time and you can have the people on Takodana watch the destruction of the Hosnian system without it being completely impossible. But even in the same system, watching the destruction of the Hosnian system stretches believably too far for me.
That would mean a weapon designed to destroy an entire system is actually not destroying the entire system, and also begging the question of why a pirate hideout is right next door to the Republic capital.
Well, first off, what we see destroyed is a planetary system, not a star system. We see a planet and its moons destroyed. No star visible on screen or indicated at all. The phrase system destroying would thus be defined as a planetary system, not a solar system. As for a pirate hangout right next door, its not like that is unusual in real history or the Star Wars universe. Capitals seem to be a good place for crime.
The ‘official’ sources would disagree with you:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hosnian_system
I agree with the sentiment that the planets are too close together, but that’s yet another JJ not caring about astronomy thing.
There are canon (or at least common headcanon) explanations for these two things.
The ESB one has been debated for years. But basically, the Falcon has a secondary, albeit extraordinarily slow, backup hyperdrive. It’s like a spare tire for space travel. This also explains how the Empire and Boba Fett got there before they did once they knew where they were going.
As for why everyone can see the destruction of Hosnian Prime… it’s definitely a hand-wavy explanation but this is what Wookiepedia says.
When the Starkiller Base superweapon released the quintessence [dark energy] it had collected within its core, it was transformed into phantom energy [another state of dark energy], which would follow the line of egress that had been provided by the weapon’s technicians according to planetary rotation, inclination, etc, through a hole in “sub-hyperspace”, until it was intercepted by an object of sufficient mass. When the beam of phantom energy interacted with a planet, it ignited its core, creating a pocket nova. Large amounts of phantom energy could create temporary rips in sub-hyperspace, which allowed the Hosnian Catacylsm in 34 ABY to become visible from across the galaxy as it happened.
So basically, since the weapon made light/energy travel faster than lightspeed itself, it created a disruption in space-time, which made it so the light from the destruction was visible at hyper-light speeds across the galaxy. So not only could the people on Takodana see it, but so could everyone else if they were facing the right direction. I know in the video game Battlefront 2, the characters can see the Hosnian destruction from another planet called Vardos.
Is this Star Wars or Star Trek?
But the better answer is that it’s just Star Wars, the same galaxy where starships fly like there is air friction, where you can hear sound in space, and giant worms live in asteroids. Did I forget to mention the space wizards with laser swords?
The problem is not with the existence of impossible technology and creative portrayals of physics, but in how well they are established in order to tell an effective story.
Friction and sound in space (and associated living conditions) connects the fantastical elements to something understandable and engaging to average movegoers. The sound aspect also could be interpreted as creative license on the part of the moviemakers as opposed to being actually there (the Radio Drama goes this route).
Lightsabers are like swords but made of light. Maybe impossible but only wielded by the magical wizards so they might be magical too.
Magical wizards are well established before the halfway point of the first movie and are a primary aspect of the story.
The Death Star is established as impossibly destructive in the opening crawl of the first movie. Its plausibility is not an issue because of this - it’s a brute fact around which the entire movie turns.
The Starkiller Base is not a brute fact from the outset of the story. It appears partway through, uses technology we’ve never seen before and is never mentioned again, all to only be of so little consequence that the destruction of the Hosnian system can be removed from the movie without any significant impact on the main characters. This is why I dislike the ‘space wizards’ defense of these movies - it is so often used as a blanket defense of lazy, convenient writing.