Bingowings said:

The Imperials have been given new orders, to capture the Falcon (not to destroy it or allow it to escape).

The fleet prior to that had been scattered to pick off the Rebels evacuating the base (we only see the first transport escape unscathed it doesn't follow that all of them did).

The aim is to knock out the hyperdrive (which they don't know isn't working) and to slow the ship down so it can be caught in the tractor beam of one of the capital ships.

The new orders and coupled with the prior orders make the sequence entirely consistent with the plot.

So why don't we see the rebels getting "picked up", and instead watch Luke flying around space camels? Wouldn't that be kinda important? But no, we only see the one transporter that makes it through the blockade with far too much ease, and that's the impression the viewer takes away from the whole thing in the end.

The asteroid chase, again, is a bit pointless because the TIEs are far too useless and easy to crash into asteroids, and you know for sure that had the Empire had a sense to send off like 3 times more TIEs, the film would've been a lot shorter.

Hence - plot convenience. Hence - plot serving the action to a degree. Hence - spectacle over substance.

Now, that of course would lead us to the next point - the characters themselves, especially Han Solo, are, to a large part, a "spectacle", too. Solo might've gone through a change and all, but neither his role in the story nor his character development is particularly deep, or important to anything, we first and foremost enjoy watching him being a swashbuckler and care about the romance.

So THAT spectacle is obviously very well balanced with the audiovisual spectacle, and that's what makes the original films such a good piece of entertainment.

In the PT, obviously, the characters were bleak, and the action sequences often made even less sense and felt more artificial.