I couldn’t disagree more on force awakens. I mean they took Luke and made him a worthless maguffin. Who does that? He was the main character of the original Saga of episodes IV, V and VI. Because they couldn’t figure out a way to include him without upstaging the Disney characters. The one thing i did like was Finn, i liked Poe, i liked Rey and her scavenger on Jakku story. But its a bad unoriginal story and completely derivative on purpose due to the prequels having the perception of being so bad they left a stank on Star Wars.
You could still have new characters like Rey, Poe and Finn and easily set it in the far future. Don’t repeat the same beats rebels vs empire. Don’t crap all over the legacy characters. The sequels are a mixed bag. But the one thing they botched Luke, Han and Leia. Completely and utterly. Its almost unforgivable.
I’ve said this before elsewhere, but the biggest problem with getting Star Wars “right” is that it means different things to different people. So one person’s “new and exciting” is another person’s “disrespectful and unforgiveable” and neither one is necessarily wrong. The sequel trilogy, or at least the first 2/3 of it, hits every note I want out of Star Wars, so I enjoy it. For some that’s the opposite of what they want out of Star Wars, so they hate it. We’re both right.
I see people losing their minds with excitement over what they’re doing with Luke in Mandalorian, and I’m just thinking that they’re ruining it by bringing him in, and I still feel that way. But they’re ruining what “I” personally like about it. I’m also cackling with glee over Boba fighting weird Harryhausen monster and trying to teach Tusken’s how to ride speeder bikes, and some people thing it’s horrible. Star Wars is so incredibly subjective.
I also think that if Mark Hamill hadn’t publicly reacted negatively to how Luke is handled in TLJ, people wouldn’t complain nearly as much about it, and might be able to find the good in it. It’s the best and most interesting performance of his career. I think it’s very weird that he turned the conversation on it so publicly when he did such good work. It’s a bit disrespectful to Rian Johnson, to me. He wrote these beautiful scenes for him and gave his character a lovely send off.