georgec said:

Decades from now film scholars will look back on this era and point to the prequels as quintessential examples of how storytelling suffered at the expense of CGI, CGI, and more CGI.

You mean as compared to how other special effects styles bring out the best in story telling, like stop motion "Jason and the Argonauts" being nothing but a series of loosely strung together set pieces with no ending, or how class puppets gave us finely crafter epics like "Critters" and "Ghoulies?

and men in suits gave us gripping dramas like "Gamera" and "Battle of the Gargantuas?"

And we can never forget touching character studies like "Robot Jox."