Well this thread is kinda a downer, init?
Rather than repeat what everyone else has so eloquently enunciated about the flawed first two entries being entirely buried under the avalanche of TROS’s inadequacies, I think I’ll turn an optimistic eye toward…THE FUTURE BUM BUM BUM.
Y’all remember how the Prequels were the worst things ever which totally destroyed all interest in Star Wars until the kids who grew up with them got terminally online with their nostalgia and were backed up by the competent character resuscitation known as the Clone Wars?
The same thing’s gonna happen to the Sequels.
Give it eight to ten years and I all-but guarantee that the most glaring character deficiencies and plot holes of that entire time period will be enthusiastically backfilled by the creative team at Lucasfilm with the Thrawn streaming show and Resistance Rebooted Part IV or whatever they come up with to bridge the month between TLJ and TROS. We’ll all be looking back at TROS as that critical flop that nevertheless paved the way for the brilliant arc in Season 3 of Ahsoka where she confronts the Sith Eternal while Rey is simultaneously confronting the specter of Palpatine reborn.
The machine never ends, and even the most disastrous films are merely fodder for future stories where fan dissatisfaction is harnessed and transmogrified into jubilation when the narrative justice denied the films is retroactively rendered in cinematic CGI upon the small screen.
I guess that’s optimism, anyway.