I thought the ST was a very, very serious blow overall to the credibility and seriousness as a franchise to Star Wars.
TFA resets the entire galaxy off screen with little to no explanation or effort. George Lucas always had an expanding world and story. TFA also added very little in the form of new looks, technology and the Forcr was very slowly creeping in power to an unrecognizable level. I don’t have a problem with new abilities but once we start breaking in universe rules that begins jumping the shark.
I feel like whenever we get into the territory of breaking in-universe rules? We should point out something. The rules of a movie universe are never usually concrete, they have room to be bent and changed. That’s what makes the Force in these films work so well. In ANH we get a vague explanation on what it is and see it can influence the weak-minded and choke people with such precision you can pinch a windpipe closed. But because Lucas didn’t establish concrete rules? He could expand upon it by then showing it can move objects in ESB and of course the lightning in ROTJ. It was only really the EU that started obsessing about strict rules for how the Force should work and later the prequels of all the things they chose not to expand upon decided Force abilities should be restricted to what we’ve seen before. On that note, the Force… kind of did more insane things in the EU than it ever did in the ST.
TLJ basically cemented the way these new stories would go. Luke and the old guard are broken, weak, and dumb while the new empowered crew has to save the day. TLJ supposedly has a theme about failure. Yes, everyone failed. Except Rey. She successfully resists the dark side, resists Kylo, lifts countless rocks to aide the rebels, escapes snokes damaged ship and steals his private craft, bests Luke in mock combat and is able to show she is truly greater then all the other miserable failures in the film.
Well Luke also succeeded in saving the Resistance and becoming more powerful than one could possibly imagine, Poe learned the lesson about being a smarter leader and Finn learned that how they win and fight is important along with just stopping the bad guy. Also Rey failed to turn Kylo to the light, failed to see Luke’s point that things weren’t just gonna play out like they did 30 years ago and still struggled with the Dark Side by going straight to it and if you’re gonna mention that? We should remember that Anakin was propped up in the prequels as being the chosen one who could be even more powerful than Yoda and the canon acts like this prophecy is not something that was just speculated about and instead was actually how the universe was supposed to play out and on top of that he destroyed the Trade Federation ship when he was nine.
Overall the ST has accelerated the death knell for Star Wars. The magic is gone and you can’t recapture it because the people who run the franchise don’t understand what made it successful in the first place.
I think The Mandalorian, Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, TCW S7, Bad Batch and more would like to have a word with you on that. The thing is, Lucasfilm isn’t about just trying to appease the same old fans who have this rigid idea of what Star Wars is. The old EU was all about the continuing adventures of Luke, Han and Leia in part because when the EU was made, it was a way to keep Star Wars going without any new movies and of course what people want to know is what happened next. That being said, EU writers also made tons of choices based on a desire to not upset Lucas and as a result, played things safe which works alright when we’re talking books and comics but when it comes to movies and shows? If you’re gonna have Star Wars continue, you can’t just dip your hands into the same well of what came before, you have to do new things. You’ve got to allow yourself to explore new angles of old-school characters.