My other problem with the sequels is that they had zero respect for the legacies of the heroes and villains of the OG trilogy.
Luke Skywalker:
They took all the morality, courage, and nobility out of his character and made him a failure. He failed morally when he tried to kill his own nephew for having bad dreams about the dark side (which makes no sense considering that this was the same guy who laid down his life on the chance that Vader could be redeemed).
They made him a coward--he left his friends and family to fight and die without him.
His New Jedi Order failed to accomplish anything meaningful on any level.
He failed to teach Rey anything significant about morality or the force (when Star Wars was always about morality to begin with).
He died anticlimactically without the audience ever getting to really see what he was made of in a proper duel.
...and in the end Rey had to rebuild everything in his place.
Anakin: Bringing Palpatine back defeats the whole point of his destiny as the chosen one who was fated to bring balance to the Force. The whole saga was really about Anakin's rise, fall, and redemption (He, Obi-wan, and the droids are the only characters to show up in every movie pre-Disney.) His sacrifice means nothing now, and Rey has to clean up the mess that he started. Failure.
Obi-Wan: Was once a war hero and a great jedi who changed the fate of the galaxy. Now he's just an old, deceased crackpot who did little but train two generations of FAILURES.
Leia and Han: Their family fell apart, and the whole new republic they struggled and fought to establish failed Neither one of them lives to see their republic restored, since Rey has to rebuild everything in their place (notice a pattern yet?). The Skywalker bloodline is extinct, having been exterminated completely and replaced with a Palpatine.
C3PO and R2D2: They were the original bystanders to the whole saga from the very beginning. The two of them are the only characters to have been witness to nearly every important thing that happened across all six of the original movies under George Lucas. They're given next to nothing to do and are absent through most of the sequel trilogy--especially R2, who was effectively replaced by BB8. This breaks the narrative cohesion behind having these two lowkey characters having been around to witness the whole saga unfold.
Lando: They shoehorned him into the trilogy at the last minute, and we never get to see him reunited with any of the OG heroes from the original movies. Luke, Han, Leia, are never reunited at all and never share a scene altogether in the trilogy at all. At least Lando didn't die, I guess.
I give the prequels a lot of crap for being bad movies (Episode 3 was decent), but at least they had a clear vision that did something for the lore. The dialogue was trash and the excessive CGI sucked, but we still got a central conflict that was different. The enemies were different (Maul, Dooku, Grievous, , Oppress, Ventress). The politics were different. The new planets and aliens we got to see were different. We saw the Jedi in their prime. We got a dope cartoon (Clone Wars) that expanded on the lore. They gave us new characters that were memorable (Mace Windu, Maul, Plo, Ahsoka, Rex). The prequels had their flaws, but they still gave us SOMETHING, and they didn't have to tear down the legacies of the original heroes in the process.
What did the sequels give us that was dope or iconic on any level?
...
Porgs?
