World building is overrated. It’s one of the many things that killed TROS.
I actually felt like there wasn’t enough world building. There was way too much exposition, but exposition and world building aren’t the same thing. World building fleshes out the movie’s universe, giving it the proper context. Exposition is an inconvenience, something the movie just needs to get out of the way.
In my opinion, a proper example of world building would be explaining the whole thing with Palpatine’s return. “Secrets only the Sith knew” isn’t a sufficient explanation. We need to know the broad strokes of how he returned, and why he can’t return again. Otherwise, it just feels like Palpatine can come back any time he wants.
That’s not quite right. Explanations aren’t necessarily world building. In fact having someone spell out how Palpatine survived is exactly what I’d call exposition, which is something that TROS tries to avoid as much as reasonably can (which is only so much).
For example, the First Order captain’s medallion is world building. Zorii saying “free passage through any blockade, landing privileges” that’s exposition.
I somewhat agree. I think describing how Palpatine survived would be exposition, but the way he goes about it is worldbuilding for the Sith. They are forever intertwined.
In that essence, “exposition” isn’t bad either. I think we can all agree understanding why Palpatine returns is important.
For me the biggest issue with the ST’s “worldbuilding” or “exposition” or whatever is it doesn’t add logically to the earlier movies. When you jump from Ep 1 to 2, you are going in expecting Obi-Wan to be training a now Jedi Anakin. Ep 2 to 3 you expect the Clone Wars from how things last ended. 3 to 4 you expect the Empire to be in charge.
The jump from 6 to 7 is so frankly confusing because we expected to see Luke with a Jedi Order and the New Republic established. Yes, it’s perfectly reasonable to have tons of stuff go down in 30 years, but in terms of storytelling it feels strange. “Return of the Jedi” also is a very strange title when you think about it nowadays. With TLJ, it’s more a case of them having some sort of chance to fix these issues, but they doubled down instead. So it’s not really RJ’s fault, moreso him following Abram’s suit.
The closet comparison I can make is if Revenge of the Sith came out first, and then everyone got hyped for the sequel 19 years later… only to find the Empire was destroyed just a year after ROTS, Anakin was redeemed off-screen and is now missing, and Luke is training to be a Jedi like the entire PT never happened.