All of these things together make the film what it is.
Yes. I understand. But to me the story is the foundation of the movie. A house with a bad foundation cannot stand. It’s a bad house. It does not matter what colors you paint the walls, how thick the carpet is, or how fancy the kitchen appliances are – it’s a bad house.
A movie with a bad story is the same. Bad.
Your criticism popped up very early on when you read a bullet point list of steps that are similar to ANH. Yes, when it’s stated like that it sounds awful. But, aside from Starkiller, they felt like polite nods to 1977 while a new story was being told.
No, actually I wrote that bullet point list. And it still holds up. I could add to it all the silly, contrived conveniences in the film, too, which I didn’t bother to do. If you enumerate the very long list of silly conveniences that occur in the story and then evaluate them with an entirely open mind (which is entirely vital), I don’t see how any reasonably intelligent person can’t arrive at the conclusion, “OK, yeah. This is pretty stupid.”
And forget that these conveniences have been explained. That’s another logic trap that people keep falling into. Just because a movie “explains” something doesn’t mean the explanation makes sense or is, you know, good. Any amateur writer can slap together an “explanation.”
Whereas TPM felt like a let down that ‘oh well, at least it has a few key moments that worked’. This felt like one of the first action adventure films in recent years with actual heart to it, with some definite flaws that could be tightened up. It will probably adjust in people’s rankings (most likely, from ranking right above Jedi to right under), but I suspect that its legacy will not be that it was a major misstep, but rather a return to glory that was just a bit too safe. The long term opinion is going to depend somewhat on what the next two films do, though.
Time will tell. I’m convinced that as more open discussion comes out, people’s attitudes will change. We have to get through all the euphoria, zealotry, and logic fallacy defenses first, though.