TFA was honestly almost painful for me to sit through. Partly because I dislike JJ Abrams’ frenetic directing style, and partly because the film felt so transparent. It was a carefully crafted recreation of Star Wars, like a theme park ride, but it never felt like a true sequel to RotJ. So many of the creative choices in TFA only make sense from a meta perspective, not an in-universe perspective. And the film couldn’t justify its own existence, nor could it justify its undoing of RotJ’s happy ending.

TLJ was definitely a more intriguing film to watch and analyze. I don’t like the film, but it felt more genuine and less corporate than TFA. TFA had Bob Iger’s fingerprints all over it. TLJ felt like Rian was really trying something more meaningful. I don’t think he succeeded, but the effort was apparent. I do think that fan edits can help TLJ a great deal to work as a coda of sorts, if much of the filler and bloat were removed and it was cut down to just Ahch-To, the Supremacy, and Crait. All in all, it’s definitely the most worth watching of the trilogy.