Absolutely. “Lightspeed moves at the speed of plot” was a phrase created to explain how Empire Strikes Back’s timeline made any sense (it still doesn’t, really. Neither does the ‘12 parsecs’ retcon they made w/ Solo’s boast) and the thing I keep coming back to is that none of these logic gaps and nitpicks would matter if the story was good at distracting you from them. Or if the story was good (and executed well on top of that) at all.
It’s not as if these problems were explicitly addressed IN the story that it’d make the story better. That’s the real problem. Even if Merry’s whole point in the movie was to stand over someone’s shoulder and explain how Lightspeed Skipping made sense, or how the necklace got located so quickly, it wouldn’t make those scenes any better. Sure, they’d be more logically sound, but that’s not worth much if you’re not emotionally engaged, and Rise of Skywalker isn’t great at that, so all the logical leaps being made just become all the more glaring.
Well said, I don’t need everything to fall into place perfectly into place. It never did, not even in 1977. However, moments like that in TROS don’t feel like a case of bending the rules in order to get the point across. More like lazy storytelling.
Ultimately, I think the new elements that the Disney Trilogy added to the Star Wars universe are simply not worth much. It really didn’t add that much of importance besides concluding the story of the original main trio of Star Wars characters and leaving the galaxy at a point of uncertainty for the future of the New Republic, the Jedi and the Sith. But Rey has a yellow lightsaber, how cool is that?