Prequels weren't great, but they were decent. I'd recommend watching them.
There is a lot to live up to being prequels. People going to judge harshly.
7-8 were just plain bad, I enjoy Star Wars stuff a bunch. I like the prequels more than most I feel. I don't even have one single care to watch the 9th.
I doubt it will change in 10 years.
Memes, sure, but they will be only how bad they suck. People who meme about the prequels usually enjoyed them at least a little.
I love giving first time watchers the machete watching order. Watch episode 4 and 5, and then watch 2 and 3 to give Vader some backstory after he reveals that he's Luke's dad. Then cap it off with episode 6 as the conclusion for Luke's and Anakin's story.
Or I can start with Rogue One. I know one of my friends became a fan after watching Rogue One.
My new favorite order is been Rogue One, 4, 5, then 1, 2, and 3 of the Hal 9000 edits, then 6. The fan edits are generally a little shorter, so the watching them all between 5 and 6 is less of a slog than the original 1, 2, and 3.
I saw the originals as a child, and thus loved them.
I saw the prequels as an adult, and was kinda meh on 1 but loved 2 and 3.
While still an adult, I felt the same way about 7 and 8 as I did about 1.
But 9? I thought there was something wrong with me at first. I literally couldn't believe what I'd just seen. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars on that! It still hurts my brain to imagine all those people buying off on that script... It must have been an emperor's new clothes sort of situation. Such a waste of so many things.
The Last Jedi also has a lot of problems, but The Rise of Skywalker is possibly the worst film in the entire franchise. I’m still annoyed about the fact that they had a better script with a genuinely interesting story (Duel of the Fates), and cancelled it for the shitshow that was Rise of Skywalker.
I found 9 enjoyable, but I had no expectations that it would be good or coherent. 8 made sure that there was no chance of that.
For what 9 had to do in a single movie, it did a reasonable job. Kylo had to be redeemed, Rey needed her jedi moment, an actual threat needed to be established, Leia's death needed acknowledgement, rebels/resistance needed to be more than 20 people on a ship, poe and finn needed some sort of arc, and the good guys had to win.
What was so wrong with the Last Jedi? I see reactions like this a lot but I thought it was far from being the worst star wars I've seen, and as a casual watcher of this series it was one of the few of them I actually enjoyed.
The main criticism of The Last Jedi is that it threw away everything The Force Awakens had set up. By the end of it there was almost no Resistance, no Snoke, no Luke (which might be a good thing considering what it did to his character), no payoff to the setup for Rey's past, and everyone who wasn't Rey or Kylo went backwards in their character arcs.
Just like The Force Awakens was hated by fans for throwing away the resolution of the original movies in order to set up A New Hope 2.0.
As part two of a three part series it fails miserably, especially if you factor in meta information like Kylo will be good by the end of 9 or Carrie Fischer passing. If you pretend it's a stand alone movie and not in an established universe, it's a bit less bad.
It killed every thread from episode 7, and didn't make new ones. It created major canonical problems with the Holdo maneuver and hyperspacetacking. It just copied empire, but in a slightly different order and threw in the throne scene from episode 6. It used the played out theme of the failures of the jedi, that the first 6 movies covered pretty thoroughly amd better. It declared Poe a failure, but the battle as depicted shows he was clearly right to get the dreadnought kill. The whole concept of the galaxies slowest chase, despite hyperspace existing. There's several instances of people teleporting for the plot, notably Rose saving Finn. The casino side plot to find a one of a kind super hacker, but a random guy in jail can do it too. The leaders of the bad guys are now Hux, who was turned into comedic relief, and Kylo, who has to be good, and was bested by Rey and Luke. Rey never gets training, and never fails (other than failing to get training), remains absurdly skilled with the force. Finn's character reverted from the growth at the end of the previous movie, and then had essentially the same arc.
The movie did have some really great looking cgi though. The holdo maneuver looks amazing. The red on crait is stunning.
You have to admit, it was a very bold decision to make a trilogy about the Clone Wars and then not show the Clone Wars until someone decided to make a show about a child soldier in a tube top.