I think there’s plenty of humor in the OT that is somewhat meta and dresses down the typical conventions of genre films. Maybe not to the extent of the ST but I find the humor in the latter trilogy to be a not unnatural extension. It’s funny because I’d say the attitude of “Don’t worry, even the characters in the movie know this is a bit silly” is something that can be found in the original film and one of the things I love about it. Obviously you take that too far and you’ve undercut the world you’re building but I truly am not sure where TLJ supposedly did that.
I can. General Hux, who was presented as a complete fanatic, a competitor for Kylo Ren, and one of the people in charge of the FO, became a complete joke in TLJ. The ST had three main villains Kylo Ren, Snoke, and Hux. Out of those three one villain was killed, while another was turned into a laughing stock, first with the yo momma joke, which made Hux seem incompetent, and non-threatening. Then there’s the humorous way Snoke chastised his subordinate, which at first glance would make Snoke seem very powerful, but considering Snoke ends up dead, it ultimately only serves to make Hux seem like a sniveling weakling. Then there’s the way Kylo throws Hux around like a rag doll at the end of the movie, and there are a number of other scenes, where Hux comes across as a parody of an imperial officer, rather than a true menacing villain.
The faces of two complete baffoons, one was in the right movie, the other in the wrong one imo:
There was a mutual respect between Tarkin and Vader in An New Hope, which supported the idea, that both these villains are threatening, and competent in their own way, Vader with brute force, and Tarkin with his intellect. Even in TESB, they never made Admiral Piett seem like a joke for example. While Vader killed several of his underlings, this mostly served to make Vader seem powerful and feared, but never in such a way that the imperial officers seem like incompetent fools. This approach made Admiral Piett an effective bad guy in ROTJ, where he actually seemed far more comfortable in his position than in TESB. I really can’t take General Hux seriously any more after TLJ. He’s been relegated to being the Alfred of the ST:
