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.
That’s a really good take. It’s why the sequel trilogy felt so disjointed. It wanted to be both a fresh start for Disney but also wanted to play it safe and have the nostalgic lore of the originals.
JJ and his “mystery box” approach worked for getting people interested in the “fresh start” aspect. However, without any actual payoff, TLJ retroactively undoes any intrigue or mysteries of TFA. The surprises of Empire don’t make watching ANH worse in its plot points (for the most part) but TLJ makes all the questions from TFA basically pointless.
ROS needed to be the second film–it clearly was a mishmash of his 2 and 3rd film ideas scribbled on one page, since ROS introduced so many extraneous characters…in the finale? If the 2nd film had at least followed naturally with the 1st, the new characters introduced in 2 would have natural storyarcs flow into 3, like Lando from Empire to Lando the hero in Jedi.
There may be a way to do an edit that shaves off all the extra pointless characters and mixes TLJ and ROS into a more coherent storyline.