@slamsoze Rian Johnson is an egocentric lunatic. You're totally right on your remarks about The Last Jedi... The Leia superwoman comes to mind (unfortunately), but to me the one that stands out the most is that bullshit of the Laura Dern character kamiklze-smashing the enemy destroyer with her ship going into light-speed. Hell, why didn't they do that with the Death Star in the New Hope, and bothered to do that trench run?! All they needed to do, was get a few droids, and "auto-pilot hyperspace" half-a-dozen X-wings into the Death Star and be done with it...
If gabe thinks Rogue One is a snooze fest (I think the same), I wonder what he thinks of Force Awakens and The Last Jedi
2 ) and 3) You're right. I kinda forgot to mention how Disney trivialized Jedis also... Even worse than trivializing everything else.
4) Both movies (Force Awakens and Last Jedi) are SO BAD, and so the total opposite of memorable, that I don't even remember that part you mentioned...
My take on the whole thing is that, although Rogue One is watchable/passable, I find it really annoying that Vader does the "badass" spree at the end, but then you roll back to 1977 in the New Hope (which, chronologically, is just after the events of Rogue One), and he needs a flying droid with a syringe to interrogate his own daughter... Sure, I think Lucas gets a pass because he's the mastermind of the whole thing, and back then, he didn't have the tech/money to realize his concept. or whatever... He was never a good director to begin with, and the prequel trilogy just proves that: great concept and (maybe) story, but abismal/cheesy (Padme & Anakin) acting, casting and characters (Jar-Jar Binks, enough said).
But for people that grew up with these films (me included), after 1 movie to complete all trilogies (Rise of Skywalker), it's easier to get a scope of the whole thing: How The Empire Strikes Back is the high point of it all (so above all the other movies), not only chronologically (it's the "mid-point episode", with 4 coming before, and 4 after), but also in what the great character arc in that movie defined everything that had to come after it, and how everything that happened before that came to a high point in that Episode: Love triangle between Han, Leia and Luke, with the first two coming out as a couple, the father/son relationship between Luke and Vader (that revelation being the absolute "pinnacle" of the whole series, not to mention the most memorable scene). It's a masterpiece that makes all the other 8 movies ('cause this new one will probably also suck balls) seem mediocre.
It's no coincidence that it's the best movie (Ep. 5) , most probably because Irvin Kershner was such a great director, several steps above of all the other directors that were cast on all the movies (J.J. Abrams comes close, but he blew it with Force Awakens, mostly because he tried to carbon copy a New Hope).
I guess that what most saddens me is that they brought back the 3 major characters (Han, Leia and Luke) just to completely shit on their heads. Han gets killed by a sibling with the "NOOOOOO" scene (carbon copy of Vader killing Obi-Wan in the New Hope), Leia goes superwoman, whatever... And Luke is a hopeless green-milk drinking depressed old hag: you can see a lot of Mark Hammil's interviews on youtube, and see how he hates (and with good reason) what Rian Johnson did with the Luke character.
The Han Solo movie is probably the most pathetic of all Disney ones. He speaks "wookiese" with Chewie and there's a cheesy explanation on why his name is "Solo".
I think Mandalorian would be more than OK, if it didn't have so many clichés... But I guess that by now, it's kind of a "learning process" (as much absurd as that might sound) for Disney.
But in the end, Disney Star Wars is a complete cluster fuck.
