I think a large part of being a Star Wars fan for a large section of its fandom is in the exercise that goes along with classifying, quantifying, and for lack of a better word, TRADITIONALIZING what Star Wars is and can be. Whether that’s a conscious decision or not, it’s what a ton of people have been doing for a very long time, and I think this (kind of odd) discussion about the directorial style of JJ Abrams and “Star Wars” is interesting, in that it seeks to nail down an almost immovable visual vocabulary for Star Wars - without recognizing that the primary reason Star Wars’ approach to classic mythology resonated to young people was partially because Lucas’ visual style hadn’t ever been applied to the myth like that.
Star Wars worked in the first place because that’s not how you were supposed to shoot fantasy and myth. It wasn’t supposed to look, move, or sound like that. And it’s because it didn’t that young people were more easily able to key into the universal (and ancient) themes and meanings in its mythology.
I think part of why The Force Awakens worked so well for a lot of people is because it freshened up Star Wars’ visual language on a larger scale than it had been over the 30 years prior. And that language was always evolving and changing anyway. Empire doesn’t look like Star Wars very much at all, and it certainly doesn’t move the same way. And Jedi has its own visual language.
A lot of the “rules” about what Star Wars is and how it can look like literally don’t exist anywhere but in our heads, codified and quantified through group discussions among people who don’t have any actual control over what Star Wars is or what it looks like. Snap-zooms (and hand-held photography!) didn’t exist in Star Wars until Attack of the Clones. Slow motion didn’t exist in Star Wars until Empire Strikes Back. Dream Sequences didn’t exist until Revenge of the Sith.
If the myth (whatever shape it might take) is to survive with modern audiences, the visual language of its telling needs to shift accordingly. Star Wars itself taught us this. To argue that Star Wars itself can’t continue along that path because it’s not “Star Wars” once you do that is self-defeating.
You have to let this thing grow otherwise it becomes stale. And if that means hand-held photography and whip-pans, so be it. Just use them well, is all.