I will read your post and respond when I can. Too long to read at the moment. EDIT: I agree with you that there was no plan. That's jj Abrams for you. Have you seen his Ted talk about the "magic box" or whatever? He purposefully didn't have a plan. It's like part of his creative process. It's stupid. Disney hoped they could wing it and it turned into a disjointed mess. To be fair. Lucas winged it a little with the original trilogy too. Vader was never meant to be Luke's father and Leah was never meant to be Luke's sister. But it worked out much better. And I have a huge soft spot for the phantom menace. It came out when I was 9. I loved it. Even jar jar. And I also agree that after the phantom menace, the rest of the prequels just became spectacle, with little substance. But here's what my argument ultimately boils down to, I think: They're just movies. They hold a lot of nostalgic significance with me, and I still enjoy each movie to varying degrees, but in the end, it's just a fairy tale. Why do people feel so personally attacked by these new films? It's Hollywood shlock, what do they expect? It was made by a bunch of scumbags. You either separate the film from the people behind the camera (writers, directors, producers, studios) and try to enjoy it, or you don't. And if you don't like the film on it's own merits, then you don't like the film. No need to get so angry and vitriolic (not saying you are. Just fans in general). I dont know man. I like to enjoy things. There's things in the sequels to enjoy. I thought tfa was good. It kind of went off the rails in tlj and tros, but whatever. Now, with favreau and filoni taking on more responsibilities, the future of star wars looks good. One can only be hopefully optimistic.