Rebel Moon is like if you took Battle Beyond the Stars and Dune, put them in a blender, and then made it pretentious and boring.
As for Denis Villeneuve’s (huge fan of his movies by the way) comments, I can sort of see where he’s coming from, even though I love that movie (in fact, it’s my second favorite of the series and I’m even wearing a Return of the Jedi shirt as I type this, lol). It did fall back on formula a bit (another Death Star for example). I don’t mind the Ewoks, but he said he was 15 when he saw the movie and at that age I didn’t really care for them. I mainly love the movie because I love Jabba the Hutt, The Emperor, and the stuff with Luke and Vader. And it’s optimistic, which is nice. It ends on a good note.
Anyway, maybe he’d have liked Return of the Jedi more if David Lynch had directed it.