What’s your thoughts on the prequels? They were all Lucas with no corporate boxes to check.
The Prequels had very different problems than the Sequels are having. They are like opposite extremes in so many ways, it would take a book-long analysis to sort through them all. And in most cases, the OT falls somewhere in the center of those extremes, which is why ultimately they will likely prove to be the "better" films (not just through nostalgia-colored glasses).
The PT was one singular vision - Lucas literally locked himself into a room and essentially no one saw each script until it was done (heck, no one saw a script for the last one until the week they started
filming). The ST is being made by committee, who has as its priorities checking off a wide swath of boxes. I mean, you literally can go scene by scene in TLJ and reverse engineer the script to see that list.
The OT, on the other hand - was in the middle, where Lucas was the guiding force but was constantly kept in check by other people invested in making the best story possible (and back then, he listened). That's why it is no shock ESB is widely considered the best of the films - it is the one that was made most collaboratively in that sweet spot.
To be totally frank, the real crime of the PT really was that the first 2/3 of it largely told a story no one really cared about to begin with. When I was a kid playing with Star Wars toys, I never heard anyone say "Gee, I wonder what Darth Vader was like as a cute little kid or as an obnoxious teenager?" That said, when they went that direction, it can't be argued that the films didn't tell an epic story - that it may not have been the story people were interested in, but at least it was huge and worthy of the Star Wars name in that respect. This also allowed it to be filled in - you will find a lot of people are softer on the PT these days because the Clone Wars TV series spent a lot of time cleaning up some of the story mess as it was set between Episode II and III (though of course, it couldn't save the ending issues - like poor Padme).
Of course, with the ST it will depend on how the last film turns out - but so far, even ignoring all the incongruities between TFA and TLJ, I think what will prove to be the biggest issue is that when watched as a whole - many of the key moments just don't hold a lot of feeling because of the compressed time-frame it has forced on itself. I mean, Kylo and Rey have known each other
for about a week.
It is really hard to buy into it as an epic when you realize that. To people in the theater viewing TLJ, it has been a couple of years in between films so it doesn't hit at first blush - but it's just a matter of
days in the timeline of the story. So these characters who basically just met have these dramatic relationships - personally, it makes it feel so silly to me.
And that's not even getting into things like Finn, who when you realize this just comes across as a horn-dog with an obsessive/stalker personality, LOL. That's another example of where the OT was in the middle - look at Leia and Han's romance in TSB- it was made clear that time had passed and events had happened between films, which made it feel a lot more realistic. In this timeline, Finn met Rey on a Monday, spent Tuesday with her, spent Wednesday looking for her, was in a coma on Thursday, woke up on Friday, and made goo-goo eyes at Rose, the first girl he meets. (That's why Poe's line to him "you must have a million questions!" literally makes me laugh out loud - how could he have a million questions about the mere day or so that has passed since he was knocked out?)
That's why TLJ feels like a bunch of checkboxes - because the overall story really doesn't make logical or emotional sense - the scenes/dialogue in it are to serve an external purpose to "fit everything in" instead of feeling like the natural progression of a story.
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