I liked the sequels, at least probably more than your average person, but I still think they are trash. The individual plot beats are fun, the cinematography is great, the characters feel like they largely fit in the universe, and it makes some decent political commentary. But bring it all together and it just doesn't really make a lot of sense, moment to moment its great but you start to think even a little bit and something always feels a bit off.
I think that just about any individual scene in the sequels could have been expanded out to a pretty solid movie in their own right.
But the just kept picking up new ideas and letting them drop without seeing them through to bounce to another idea.
The force dyad thing with Rey and kylo? That was fucking cool.
Storm trooper defector to the rebellion? Hell yeah!
Spy craft heist thing in a casino? Not exactly breaking any new ground there, but hell, there's a reason James Bond movies and oceans 11 movies and such keep getting made, it works.
Arms dealers selling to both the empirefirst order and the rebellionresistance? Yeah, let's get gritty and political with it.
Palpatine clone? Fuck it, fine, why not? They did it in the old EU, I guess it can work. Cloning is an established technology in-universe, why wouldn't sheev have a couple spares hanging around. Let's get real weird with the sith alchemy to transfer his consciousness, maybe get some plagueis flashbacks, or some nightsister artifacts or something, we can make something of this.
Running around the universe finding sith mcguffin artifacts to lead you to a hidden planet with some kind of secret superweapon? Yeah, that could be a fun time. Shit, you could make a whole trilogy or tv show of that idea if you wanted to.
God-damn Broom Kid.
There, that's like 6½ good ideas they could have fleshed out into at least as many decent movies and kept the gravy train rolling, but instead they crammed half-assed versions into 3 movies.
I agree. I had a lot of hope after episode 7, but it turned out so bad. A lot of the individual elements, like you said, are good. But the whole trilogy is definitely less than the sum of its parts.
Look man, if an eager Carl Weathers bent over at the door translating Babu Frik long after it was necessary doesn't warm your cockles, you're probably more broken than a Dizonite during a death wail.
So funny too because the accent is just right that it's difficult to know if it's a different language or not at first but by the end of the scene it becomes easy to understand.
It's even better that Weathers directed that episode.