Maybe we just didn’t need more movies in the Skywalker Saga. But no matter what I did, there would have been a plan. You can deviate from the plan a bit if you want, but there needs to be one. You can’t go from movie to movie not knowing what’s coming next or you wind up with Episode IX. That was how they really failed.
Agreed. Although a good trilogy or franchise isn’t totally dependent on pre-planning - the original trilogy, for example - I think it really helps. I know this is more important for TV shows, but hell, take Star Wars Rebels: by the time you reach the end of season 4, it’s obvious that things have been set up from the start of the series. The OT worked better partly because it had George Lucas as a guiding force, whereas JJ Abrams’ mindset when making TFA must have been “ok, how do I make this one movie really really good and make sure there’s stuff for the next director to follow on with”.
A friend of mine told me recently that he thinks sequels to “finished stories” are always a bad idea. Sometimes they work out, but more often they simply damage the ending of the originals. Having Luke, Han and Leia as failures, broken and separated from each other was the best way to make a ‘passing of the torch’ story compelling - and that’s the problem. I might enjoy TFA as a film, but I can never watch the ending of ROTJ the same way again.